It would’ve been a shame to waste it.
So I turned and I slammed it straight into his motherfucking nose.
He gave a howl of pain, backpedaling in surprise. His nose wasn’t broken. I didn’t know how to throw a punch that hard. But it did hurt my knuckles. He whirled back to me with wild, angry eyes. “The hell, Florence?!”
“I’m not your rival, Lee Marlow,” I told him, shaking my hand because it hurt. “You’re not even in my league. But you better watch me,” I added, and grabbed my suitcase handle again, “because I’ll be the writer you will never be.”
Then I left down the hallway, back toward the elevators.
And I didn’t look back.
Even as he shouted at me to stop, told me he’d call the cops, file a report—I didn’t care.
It felt good, and he deserved it.
And I was never going to think about Lee Marlow again.
Rose was still waiting for me outside, and the look on my face must’ve said it all. Her eyebrows knit together and she shook her head. “Oh, honey,” she whispered, and pulled me into a tight hug.
I told her I couldn’t do it. I didn’t tell her why, but it didn’t really matter anymore anyway. It wasn’t my move to make, and this wasn’t my part of the story to tell. I had helped him get his life back, and he had helped me through mine—and if that was it . . . then it was. He was happy, and so it was time that I was, too.
I went home with my best friend in the entire world, to our small apartment in New Jersey, and I finished writing a love story.
36
Lovely Meeting
Amelia Brown stood in the rain, and she knew she didn’t want to be alone.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, and he met her gaze and held it. His eyes were the deep blue of a summer sky back home, and however angry or sad she was at him, she still found herself yearning for those skies whenever she looked into his eyes. “I was a shit, and I shouldn’t have lied to you about Miranda—it just hurt. And I thought if I just forgot about her, the pain would go away. But I was wrong. And instead, I hurt you in the process. I was afraid.”
“Of what?” she asked, making herself stand her ground. In the dim lights from the house behind her, he looked like a specter from her dreams. Come to haunt her. She had wanted him to return, but she didn’t think he would. “Did you think I’d use your past for a little money and fame?”
“Didn’t you try?”
She winced. “I never sent in that article. I couldn’t.” Because she had realized over quiet dinners at the kitchenette and saving dogs and running from paparazzi—she realized she didn’t want that. She didn’t want a loud life.
She just wanted a good one.
He said, “I know. Thank you.”
She hugged herself tighter. “We’re even, then.”
“You rented the house for another week, I hear.”
“I love the weather,” she replied, shivering in the cold.
“It’s quite good. Would you . . . want the company of a messed-up, burned-out musician?”
She cocked her head. “Depends. Is the guitar included?” She motioned to the guitar slung on his back.
“I was going to serenade you if you wouldn’t listen,” he admitted a little sheepishly, and wiped his eyes. He was crying, though he’d tell her it was the rain.
She took a step toward him, and they were close enough that all she had to do was reach out her hands and take his, and pull him into the warmth of her house on the Isle of Ingary. “What would you play?”