Book Lovers

THE GIRLS ARE tucked into the air mattress in the upstairs bedroom (I’ve been relocated to the foldout couch), but Brendan, Libby, and I stay up late, picking over the leftovers of Bea’s blackberry pie.

Someone knocks on the door, and Brendan kisses Libby’s forehead on his way to answer it. “Nora?” he calls. “For you.”

Charlie’s standing in the doorway, his hair damp and his clothes perfectly wrinkle-free. He looks like a million bucks. Actually, more like six hundred, but six hundred very well-appointed dollars.

“Up for a walk?” he asks.

Libby shoves me out of my chair. “She sure is!”

Outside, we wander across the meadow, our hands catching and holding. It’s been years since I’ve held anyone’s hand other than Libby’s or Bea’s or Tala’s. It makes me feel young, but not in a bad way. Less like I’m powerless in an uncaring world and more like . . . like everything is new, shiny, undiscovered. The way Mom saw New York—that’s how I see Charlie.

When we reach the moonlit gazebo, he faces me. “I think we need to consider an alternate ending.”

I balk. “We already sent the notes. Dusty’s been working on edits all week. She’s—”

“Not for Frigid.” He lifts our hands, holds them against his chest, where I can feel his heart speeding. His eyes bore into me. Black-hole eyes. Sticky-trap eyes. Decadent dessert eyes.

“We take turns visiting each other,” he says seriously. “Once a month, maybe. And when you’re able, you come here for holidays. And when you can’t, I get my sister and her husband to fly out and be with my parents so I can get up to New York. We video call and text and email as much as we’re able—or if that’s too much, I don’t know, maybe we skip all of that. When you’re in the city, you’re working, and when we’re together, we’re together.”

My stomach feels like it’s overstuffed with drunken, glittering fireflies. “Like an open relationship?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “But if that’s what you’d prefer . . . I don’t know. We could try it. I don’t want to, but I will.”

“I don’t want that either,” I tell him, smiling.

He releases a breath. “Thank fuck.”

My heart twists. “Charlie . . .”

“Just consider it,” he presses quietly.

It didn’t work for Sally and Clint. For me and Jakob. Charlie and Amaya. Even if I can overcome my travel anxiety, even if Charlie doesn’t mind talking me down in the dead of night, how am I supposed to deal with the constant fear of losing him? The anxiety every time he cancels a call or a visit falls through? Waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the day he finally says, I want something different.

It’s not you.

I want someone different.

A slow, excruciating heartbreak unfolding bit by bit for weeks.

I’d take a swift beheading over that death by a thousand paper cuts, every time.

“Long distance never works,” I say. “You said that yourself.”

“I know,” he says. “But it’s never been us, Nora.”

“So we’re the exception?” I say, skeptical. “The people it just works out for.”

“Yes,” he says. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

His eyes rove over me as he regroups. “What else can we do, Nora? I’m open to notes. Tell me what you’d change. Get out your fucking pen, and shred it all up, and tell me how it’s supposed to end.”

It actually hurts to smile. My voice sounds like it’s scraping over broken glass. “We enjoy this week. We spend as much time together as we want, and we don’t talk about after, and then I leave, and I don’t say goodbye. Because I’m not good at them. I’ve never really said one, and I don’t want to start with you. So instead when I kiss you for the last time, neither of us draws attention to it. And then . . . I get on a plane and go home, incredibly grateful for the life-ruiningly hot man I once spent a month with in North Carolina.”

He stares at me, his eyes focused and brow furrowed as he absorbs what I said, his lips pouting. It’s his Editing Expression, and when it clears, he shakes his head and says, “No.”

I laugh, surprised. “What?”

He straightens, steps in close. “I said, no.”

“Charlie. What’s that even mean?”

“It means,” he says, eyes glinting, “you’ll have to do better than that.”

I smile despite myself, hope thrashing around in my belly like a very determined baby bird with a broken wing.

“I’ll expect notes by Friday,” he says.

The rest of the week, we’re running. Libby’s working on the fundraiser ball. Brendan’s finishing the final phases of the mortgage process. Charlie’s at the register, and Sally’s in and out nonstop, getting everything ready for the virtual book club with Dusty.

There’s a new sign in the window, reading MAKE GOOD CHOICES, BUY GOODE BOOKS, and a poster of Dusty’s face advertises both the book club and the Once in a Lifetime Blue Moon Ball.

Volunteers transform the town square, and technically I’ve called off for the week, but some things won’t wait, so I do my best to squeeze in bits of work in between giving the girls piggyback rides and cleaning up my résumé for Loggia.

I’ve always thought of myself as a creature of survival, but lately I’ve been daydreaming. About a new job. About Charlie. About having everything, all at once.

So in that way, maybe this place did transform me. Just not into a girl who loves flannel and pigtail braids.

When we’re together, Charlie and I don’t keep our distance or circle each other warily. We give in to every moment we can, but we don’t talk about the future. When we’re apart, though, we keep the story going over calls and texts.

You’ll spend Christmas in Sunshine Falls and I’ll spend New Year’s Eve in the city, he says.

We’ll get up early and train hop until we find a mariachi band, I say.

We’ll go to town hall meetings and involve ourselves in public feuds, then go back to the cottage and have sex all night, he says. And, We’ll do a taste test of all the dollar slices in the city.

We’ll get to the bottom of the cubed-ham salad at P.S., I say.

I believe in you so deeply, Nora, he says, but not even you can unlock the secret of that great mystery.

I’ll be so busy, I remind him. For the first couple months when I get back, I’ll be cramming in time with Libby and the girls—and, if I get the Loggia job, tapering off my agency work, off-loading my clients to another agent. Then there will be the learning curve of stepping into a new role.

Busy doesn’t scare me, Charlie says.

This, I think, is what it is to dream, and I finally understand why Mom could never give it up, why my authors can’t give it up, and I’m happy for them, because this wanting, it feels good, like a bruise you need to press on, a reminder that there are things in life so valuable that you must risk the pain of losing them for the joy of briefly having them.

Sometimes, I write to Charlie, the first act is the fun part, and then everything gets too complicated.

Stephens, he replies, for us, it’s all the fun part.

It hurts, but I let the dream go on awhile longer.

No one will ever convince me that time moves at a steady pace. Sure, your clock follows some invisible command, but it feels like it’s randomly spouting off minutes at whatever intervals suit it, because this week is a blip, and then Friday night arrives.

Another heat wave breaks, ushering in fall weather, and we set up the tent and air mattress again. While Libby and Brendan walk into town to pick up quattro stagioni pizza, the girls and I lie on our backs, watching the sky darken.

Bea tells me about everything she and Brendan have baked over the last few weeks. Tala regales us with a tale that is either the nonsense ramblings of a toddler or a faithful retelling of a Kafka novel.

After we’ve eaten, Libby suggests Brendan take the king bed to himself tonight, and he says, mid-yawn, “Oh, thank God.”

When he kisses the girls good night, they’re so sleepy they hardly react, except for Tala reaching her little arms up toward his face for a second before letting them flop down on her tummy.

He kisses Libby last, then gives me a side hug (world’s worst hugger), and I feel a bigger crush of love for him than I did the day he married my sister.

“What the hell,” Libby whispers, laughing. “Are you crying?”

“Shut up!” I toss a pillow at her. “You broke my eye muscles. I can’t stop it now.”

“You’re crying because you love Brendan so much,” she teases. “Admit it.”

“I love Brendan so much,” I say, laughing through the tears. “He’s nice!”

Libby’s laughter escalates. “Dude, I know.”

Tala grumbles and rolls over, her arm flinging across her eyes.

Libby and I lie back side by side and hold each other’s hands as we study the improbable number of constellations.

“You know what?” Libby whispers.

“Probably,” I say, “but try me.”

“Even if you can’t see them back in Manhattan, all of those stars will be over you too. Maybe every night, we look up at the sky at the same time.”

“Every night?” I say, dubious.

“Or once a week,” she says. “We get on the phone, and we look up at the sky, and then we’ll know we’re still together. Wherever we go.”

I swallow a rising lump. “Mom will be with you too,” I say. “Just because you’re leaving New York, it doesn’t mean you’re leaving her behind.”

Libby snuggles closer, resting her head on the divot of my shoulder, the smell of crushed blackberries still lingering in her hair. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Just,” she says, “thank you.”

For once, I don’t dream about Mom.