He hasn’t told me how Robert reacted to the BTH news. Hasn’t told me if they’ve communicated about it at all. But after twenty minutes of watching him listlessly read the same two-sentence email over and over, I took him into our room and got on my knees, looked up through hooded eyes and put my mouth on him while he whispered encouraging expletives.
And the whole time, I silently begged him to just love the people who love him back.
Christmas morning, when the house was rich with the scent of coffee and vanilla and pine needles, the windowpanes blurred with frost, I was still half asleep when my eyes peeked open to find him watching me from his own pillow. I yawned and blinked, tracking the muscles pulling his mouth into traces of amusement.
“There’s a joke in here somewhere,” I croaked, “about an older man watching his lover sleep.”
“I’m eleven months older than you,” Alex said, his voice raw, like it always is first thing in the morning. “Besides, do you really want to compare me to the man who supposedly climbed down half the world’s chimneys last night to creep around unawares?”
My nose wrinkled. “But the presents.”
“Just ask me,” he said, his voice evening out the longer he spoke. “Fuck that old man. I’ll buy you the things you want.”
“Finally planning to tap into that trust fund?” I joked, because the alternative would be letting the arousal of what he just said build until I jumped him.
Alex rolled his eyes. “You mostly shop at thrift stores and Trader Joe’s. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to go anywhere near a trust fund to keep you happy.”
“Alex,” I said. “Did you get me Tide Free & Gentle from the Cape Cod Target for Christmas?”
“Give me a little credit, Simba.” He rolled on top of me. “I did so much better than that.”
Thirty minutes later, I was wrapped in a plaid flannel blanket and fuzzy socks when Alex gifted me the entire skin-care line from his cousins’ company—which means he conspired with both his family and mine to have it rush shipped from LA, then squirreled away until Christmas Day.
In return, I gave him a shiny new home brew setup from a local brewery in Nashville, which I showed him on a piece of paper that also explained it would be shipped to his apartment in Manhattan. He said it was perfect, but in my opinion, not quite.
I wanted to get him something amazing for Christmas. On my last day in the city, I even tried to make it happen; I went to the Archives department and asked if they had anything written by Charlotte Yoon. Because I just had this feeling—her being a writer, the connection to Little Cooper through Robert—that maybe she was down there, more of her words waiting for Alex to read. But the archivist came up empty.
Now, after three interviews the day after Christmas, nursing an eggnog hangover, I’m on the couch decompressing. The last interviewer was the type to ask a short question that demands a long answer, never interjecting or redirecting the conversation. I talked so much, my mouth started to hurt, and since it was the third interview of the day, I am mentally wiped at this point. Alex is working a half day, set up in the dining room doing his least favorite task—manning the help desk inbox for BTH tech support. Jerry is at the flower shop, and Dad is out Christmas sale shopping, so the whole place is perfectly quiet.
Alex peeks his head into the living room, eyes flitting over me sprawled on the couch. I roll my head toward him, smiling tiredly.
“Good?” he asks. “A thumbs-up or thumbs-down will suffice.”
I give him a thumbs-up. He disappears without another word, and that’s when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m all the way in love with him. Because he so perfectly understands me.
I don’t remember anything about my fourth interview other than the fact that I love Alex Harrison, I’m tired of saying words, and I need to ask Dad to please upgrade the Wi-Fi.
I’m done by noon, which is the close of business in London. Alex comes into our room and pulls me into bed, hugging me horizontally. Our legs are tangled under the covers. The heat from a floor vent is pumping into the room, cloaking the air in a hazy, metallic warmth that has my eyelids drooping. The way he’s holding me, kissing my temple, both of us silent because there’s too much to say, has my mind reeling, recalibrating everything I thought I knew.
Here’s the truth: my feelings for Alex were never casual. Not even when I hated him did I do it casually. I’m as emotionally invested in him as I am with this dream job. In my head, the importance of it and the importance of him are on exactly equal footing.
I love him so much that part of me doesn’t want this job. I love him so much that I’m glad the BTH launch got denied. Maybe he’ll be forced to stay in New York longer. Maybe we both will, together. A pit of despair wells up inside me, my chest tight with something sweet and lovely that wants to morph into anger. Because I have never loved like this, and it is entirely Alex’s fault.
I think I might never forgive him.
* * *
By New Year’s Eve, Miriam’s back in town, and Alex and I meet up with her, Sasha, and Miguel, who are fresh off a flight from Chicago and staying in a swanky hotel downtown. Miriam and I give the tourists the highlights of the city, cruising around in her family’s minivan. We stop at the I BELIEVE IN NASHVILLE sign, Music Row, a hot chicken restaurant, even Bobbie’s Dairy Dip.
“Casey,” Miriam says. “We are so close to that sketchy Mexican restaurant we used to drink margaritas at in high school. Should we go back there?”
“As much as I love this reminiscing for you,” Sasha says from the back seat, “could we get margaritas somewhere … I don’t know, cooler?”
“Spoilsport,” Miriam grumbles.
“I want the Nashville experience!”
“That would have been—”
“I want the tacky tourist experience!”
“Mir,” I interject. “Just head downtown. Let’s beat the traffic and get this girl on a mechanical bull before sundown.”
It’s a disaster, if a hilarious one. The bull always wins. I tried to warn her.
* * *
At 11:59, under a space heater on the rooftop of a Broadway honky-tonk we paid a whopping $180 to access, the countdown of Ten! Nine! Eight! ringing out with the power of a thousand drunken voices, Alex takes my face in his hands, and I know he’s in love with me when we get to five.
He’s so gorgeous right now, the neon lights of the bar across the street painting him an inky blue. He looks almost like fiction. Like he can’t be real. But he’s also looking at me like that. Like I can’t be real, either.
When we get to four, he says it, his eyes on mine, and in them, I see a million colors inside of one. “I love you.” I can’t hear his voice, but I’ve already memorized the shape of his lips.
On three, I say, “I love you, too,” positive he can’t hear me, either.
We kiss on two, letting those extra few seconds go fuck themselves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“What do you want to do this morning?” I whisper. “On your last day in Nashville.”
“The Parthenon,” Alex whispers back.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table, staring at each other over two mugs of coffee and one stale blueberry muffin. There’s no cause for whispering, yet here we are. Because sometimes, after you admit you’re in love, everything besides that admission needs to get a little quieter.