“Anyway, as I was saying…” Brynn cleared her throat for effect. “As a philosopher, I’m constantly attempting to detach my own biases from the rigor with which I need to approach inquiry.”
Hallie nodded, though Brynn could tell that she was still fairly confused on whether Brynn had a point.
“And if you’d asked me three months ago, I’d have told you that I was pretty good at the separation. But that was before I met the other subject in our case study today. The two of us together create…” Brynn flipped to the next slide, which said, written in all caps, “The Pining Paradox.”
She watched as Hallie pursed her lips, clearly wanting to say something. Brynn waited, but Hallie finally nodded for her to continue.
Brynn straightened her shoulders. “What is the pining paradox? And how did the two of us find ourselves in this situation? There are eight billion people on the Earth. The statistical improbability that we would find one another is mind-boggling. Is it the sheer luck of geography? Do soulmates actually exist? Will this presentation net out in any semblance of coherency to answer these questions?”
Hallie smiled as Brynn clicked through to the next slide. It was a photo of Brynn and Hallie that they’d taken a few weeks ago. In it, Brynn was behind Hallie, arms wrapped around her in a bear hug. Hallie had taken the photo as Brynn’s head had rested on her shoulder.
“The answer to all of these questions is that I don’t know. And, for the first time in my life, I’m okay with that.” For months, this was what Brynn had been circling around in her mind, trying to understand. Ever since Bridget had died, she’d been obsessed with finding the answers to everything and anything that she could learn about. Hoping, somehow, that it would help her loss, and her own life, make sense.
“I don’t know that it’s possible to be rational and to also be in love. And I’m okay with that, too. Because there are some things that just need to be experienced, and I’m lucky enough to be having that experience right now. And maybe it’s somelarger, karmic plan that brought us together, but I don’t know if I believe that. What I do know is that it’s almost impossible that, out of eight billion people, we’d ever meet. And sure, we can talk about age and geographical probabilities, but let’s not get bogged down here.”
That earned another laugh from Hallie, who’d done a very good job of letting the presentation play out until now. “Wouldn’t want to get mucked up in the details.”
Brynn nodded seriously. “Exactly. Because there’s no point. The way that I feel about you defies definition. It’s encompassing and yet never enough. It holds me steady but also makes me feel like I’m flying. It’s both the best and the scariest thing that I’ve ever experienced.”
With that last one, Brynn noticed Hallie’s eyes grow a little glassy.
“It’s a completeparadox. The fact that nothing makes sense is the reason that everything makes sense. Which shouldn’t make sense! Even down to the fact that the more I tried to be okay with just being your friend, the more it made me fall for you. I know that there are great scholars who’ve spent the entirety of their careers trying to understand love. To quantify it and measure it and create boundaries for it to exist within. But I don’t want to do that.”
“You don’t?” Hallie questioned, her eyes shifting back and forth from holding Brynn’s gaze to looking at the screen.
Brynn shook her head. “No. I want to be living it. With you. I want the stabilizing and the confusing and the safe and the exhilarating. I don’t want to pick it apart because, for the first time, I’m too busy enjoying what’s happening.”
She flipped to the next slide, another photo of the two of them together. This time, Hallie was kissing Brynn’s cheek. Reese had taken it last week, when they’d gone axe throwingof all things. “I’ve spent so much time trying to control the outcomes of situations, but suddenly, you were in front of me.”
It was thrilling to watch, in real time, as Hallie started to be swept up in Brynn’s words. She was glad because Brynn was putting her whole heart behind every single one of them. She needed Hallie to understand that.
“I want you to know that, whatever happens, I’m in. And the only reason that I’m not getting caught up in the details is because, for the first time, they’re irrelevant. I’m not trying to make us make sense because it doesn’t matter if we do. What matters is how you make me feel. What matters is that I love you and you love me back. Everything else is something we can figure out together, as we work through it. Because I do love you, Hallie Thatcher. So, so much. And all I want is for you to know that and feel it, too.”
She took a deep breath, her heart hammering in her chest. It didn’t calm when she looked at Hallie, who had a few gentle tears falling down her cheek.
“Please tell me those aren’t bad tears,” Brynn said at the same time that Hallie grabbed her laptop, closing the lid and throwing it to the end of the sofa.
And then she was pulling Brynn toward her, into her lap. “Why are you so insanely perfect, Brynn Fitzpatrick?” Hallie said as she kissed her way across Brynn’s face. Her nose. Her eyelids. Her cheeks. Her chin. Her lips.
“I think I’m just perfect for you,” Brynn answered as she basked in the insistent brushes of Hallie’s mouth, not sure if the question was rhetorical. She would have answered even if she was certain it was because, without a doubt, she knew that to be true.
They’d found one another, and even just having the chance to meet Hallie—let alone to love her!?—defied all of the odds.Especially when Hallie answered between kisses, “And I’m perfect for you.”
Which, for the first time, wasn’t just enough for Brynn. It was everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EIGHT WEEKS LATER
The warm spray from the shower splattered across Hallie’s skin, warming her from the inside out. Even though it was mid-April, there was still a morning chill in the air.
Which she now had to make peace with, given the very precocious one-year-old dog that she and Brynn had adopted a few weeks ago. Technically, Linguini was Hallie’s dog, but Hallie wasn’t sure that Linguini knew that.
The dog’s doubt was evidenced by the fact that, even though Hallie was showering, Linguini, who’d just been taken outside and then fed, was already back to lounging in bed with Brynn. She’d officially moved over into Hallie’s bedroom, so long ago now that it felt like she’d always been there.
When she’d been visiting Brynn at her new job at the Stoneport Humane Society, she’d watched as a scraggly, pathetic-looking dog had been brought in after being found abandoned on one of the backroads. It had only been March then, and hours had probably made the difference between life and death for Linguini.
Their eyes had met as Linguini had pulled herself up to hoist her front legs over the box, and it had been over. Hallie had walked out with her big-eared baby that day, after she’d been checked out by the on-site veterinarian and given all of her shots.
