Great Big Beautiful Life(122)
“?‘He never wears shorts. He’s afraid of snakes but not so scared he wouldn’t protect you from one if it came to it.
“?‘He’s generous and thoughtful, and every second you spend not getting to know him is a second wasted. I don’t know what your daughter will say if you ask again for a chance to know her. And I can’t know for sure what Hayden would say either. But I know he takes life seriously. I know he’s not the kind of person to put off uncomfortable conversations now and regret not having them later.
“?‘He is, I think, the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and in the interest of full disclosure, I have a personal stake in whether you tell him the truth or not, because I love him with every fiber of my being, and as someone once told me, when you love someone, you do anything to give them what they need. You unmake the world and build a new one.
“?‘I’ve already lost him, but maybe you don’t have to. Either way, he deserves the chance to say yes or no. He deserves to be asked. Your friend (I think, I hope), Alice Scott.’?”
He stares down at the page for several seconds, and I stand there, trembling with nerves and raw emotion. Finally, his eyes lift to mine, his face etched with tension.
“How did you get that?” I force out.
“She sent it to me,” he says. “Along with her own letter. Explaining what happened.”
My eyes burn. My cheeks burn. My skin burns, even as my insides feel chilled.
“Is it true?” he says finally.
“What?” I whisper.
“Is it true?” he says.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you,” I get out. “I wanted to tell you—”
“Is”—he steps in closer, the letter falling to his side—“it true?”
“About Margaret’s connection to you?” I ask.
His chin moves to the left one inch. “That you love me?”
The tears break. “Of course it’s true. How could it not be? I loved you almost instantly, before I really even knew you. Before I understood it. I trusted you, and I loved you, and I still do.”
“Good,” he says, taking another small step toward the open door. “Because I love you too. I love you so much, and I don’t want to be without you ever again. I’ll move to Los Angeles, I’ll find a new job, whatever.”
“Hayden—”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Alice,” he says. “Every time we try to protect each other, all it does is cost us more time together, and I’m not willing to lose any more. I want to be with you. Nothing else is going to matter to me more than that. Not at the end of my life. Not even now. Nothing will matter more than who I spent my time with, and I want it to be you. I need it to be you.”
I’ve done more crying in the last two months than in the two years prior, and I’m determined to hold these tears back, to be cool, calm, and steady until the end of this conversation.
“Okay?” he says, ducking his head to hold my eyes.
“I love that plan,” I whisper. “And I’m so grateful and honored. But there’s a problem.”
His brow rumples, an expression that hits my heart like one of Cupid’s arrows. “What?”
“I’m not going back to Los Angeles,” I say. “I’m staying in Georgia for now. Maybe forever, I don’t know. I’m working on something new, and even when it’s over, I think I’m going to want to be close to my mom, while she’s still healthy. I love you so much, but I can’t miss out on more time with her. I did that with my dad, and I need this, and I’m sorry, because if it was anything else—I’d give up anything else, but I don’t think I can give up on this, and I know I can’t expect you to wait for me, but I wish that—”
He takes my face in his hands while I’m still rambling. “Alice.”
“I’d love it if you interrupted me right now,” I whisper, heart heavy in my chest.
He smiles. “I hear Atlanta’s a great place to be a music journalist.”
Just like that, my resolution not to cry snaps. Tears fall hard and fast, sliding down my nose, dripping onto my chin. “Really?” I ask wetly.
“Really,” he says.
“Are you sure, because—”
This time he does interrupt me, our mouths colliding, my hands in his hair, his flat and firm against my back, molding me to him, drinking me in. I hold on to him as tight as I possibly can, the sunset scorchingly bright, all that hope gathered in one place.
We pull apart just enough to rest our foreheads together, his hand moving softly, lovingly up and down my back.
“When I let myself dream,” he murmurs against my ear, “or it all comes crashing down—it’s Alice, Alice on my mind. Alice all the time.”
The Story
Their version: Pulitzer-winning biographer Hayden Anderson teams up with celebrity journalist Alice Scott on salacious new Margaret Ives biography From the Far Side of the World.
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? ? ?
Our version: It’s a love story. Like everything I write, that’s what it comes down to. That’s what always matters most to me, about any interview subject: Whom do you love? What makes your heart beat? For whom would you unmake the world, and how would you build a new one?