I’m confused. “You’re managing his social media.”
“All the photos, yes. And responding to comments, and all that. But Klein took over the captions halfway through your trip.”
My carrot hits the table. “What?”
Cecily’s gaze bounces from me, to Paloma, and back to me again. “I assumed you knew.”
Pressing a hand to my stomach, I pull in a deep breath to calm myself down. Those posts were beautiful. “He didn’t tell me.”
Cecily’s lips purse. “Is this a good revelation?”
I picture Klein below me on the bed last Friday night, the words he wanted to say but swallowed at my request.
I didn’t let him say those three big words to me, but he went ahead and did it anyway. In the only way he knew how aside from speech. Through story.
“I have to go.” I push off from the table, fumbling formy purse. Paloma unwinds it from my seat when my shaking hands fail at the task.
“Here you go,” she says serenely. “Go get your man.”
Will he be home?
What am I going to say?
Am I a fool? Is it too soon? Too soon to love a man who puts me first? Who offered to swim me off an island, talked sense into my dad, tolerated Shane and all the other shenanigans of the week?
No.
It can’t be. It’s too good. Too right.
Maybe falling for someone isn’t a process. It isn’t meted out, like bullet points in a timeline. Maybe it’s a thing that happens quietly, when you’re watching them hug their mother, or pedal a bike under a canopy of trees, or climb a lighthouse during a storm. When they’re reaching for your hand when you’re struggling, just to let you know you’re not alone. Is it when they learn how you like to be kissed, and then to do it well, and often?
If so, I have my answer.
I thunder up the stairs to Klein’s apartment. Four knocks on the door and it opens.
“Paisley?” Worry creases Klein’s forehead. “Was that you on the stairs? What’s wrong?”
He holds out his arms, and I do not fall into them, because I’ve already done that. Ifloat.
“Paisley,” he hums, stroking my hair. “Is there a problem? You’re dressed in work clothes.”
My head shakes, nose rubbing the front of his soft T-shirt. I want to bury myself in this man, get lost in him, never come up for air.
“Your captions,” I murmur.
Klein moves us out of the doorway, closing the door with his foot. He walks us to his couch, and when he sits, I crawl onto his lap.
His gaze searches my face, falling down my body. “I take it you’re happy.”
“So happy. Sublimely.”
He wraps a section of hair behind my ear, rubbing my earlobe between two fingers. “Does this mean I can say what I want to say out loud, to your gorgeous face?”
“Yes.” My hands run through his hair, sliding down and over to cup his cheeks.
“Paisley, I’m in love with you. And it feels like a flash, and also a throb. You are a place where my heart can settle, but still be itself. Your laughter prompts my own, and I didn’t realize how important that was until I met you. To be connected, loved, cherished, to be inspired, to be grounded but not tethered, I knew none of that until you walked back into my life.” Klein grips my face the same way I have his, absorbing the moisture on my cheeks. “We had something back then, Paisley, and we have something today, and that tells me we’ll have something in twenty years. In forty. In fifty. We are evergreen.”
Moisture forms behind my eyes, a salty sting.
