Daanis gave me an odd look. “Chris.”
“Oh. Erm. He’s texted a few times.”
Sliding into my DMs withHope you are wellandCrazy busy hereand photos of his sunlit apartment. He’d even bought a plant for one of the windows, green and thrivingevidence that he had changed. Unless it was silk. Or…could he have a new girlfriend? Curious, I’d clicked to his Facebook profile. He hadn’t posted since a Stop the Spread chart at the start of the pandemic. His Instagram showed a smiling portrait in surgical scrubs, like a fake friend request from a spam account, and…Okay, there it was. A couples pose from his graduation lunch—the one I wasn’t invited to—with Lauren, the work wife who “didn’t do long-distance relationships.”
I took a deep breath. The photo was a reminder not to project too much. Because Chris had hijacked my dreams and crushed my hopes. But Joe could break my heart.
“The thing is…This thing with Joe…It happened so fast.”
“You’ve known him for years.”
“Yeah, but it’s different now. Obviously. Anyway, we’re taking it slow,” I said. “At least for now. Living in the moment.”
A bright kaleidoscope flashed through my mind. Joe’s eyes seeking mine first thing when he came into the shop every morning. The quick crease of crow’s-feet and the indent of his cheek. The slow, hot burn of his gaze when we made love. All the times I’d felt seen, understood, desired.
All the moments I’d be giving up when I went back to Chicago.
“I understand,” Daanis said. “I just thought…Remember how we always thought we’d be together forever?”
I nodded. “Bosom friends.”
“Kindred spirits!” she said, sounding like my old playmate again. “And what if Joe is your true soulmate, and you guys run off to Vegas—”
I winced. “Not Vegas.” His wife ran off to Vegas. Ex-wife. But still.
“Okay. But you end up here on the island.”
Looking into her shining eyes, I could see it, the future she imagined. Living down the block from my best friend, doing things together the way we used to before I got a tattoo and she got married. Sharing important firsts: first crushes and First Communions, first sleepovers and first days of school. Drinking tea at her kitchen table, taking our children together to the park. Breathing in the fresh air off the lake, the smell of horses and flowers and fudge. Helping out at the shop. Starting a book or at least a book club for teens. Spending time with my mom.
Being with Joe.
I wasn’t ready for a life like Daanis’s. Maybe I never would be. I wasn’t looking for a serious boyfriend / potential husband to slot into Chris’s place. But…how would it feel to stay? To belong?
She touched my arm. “I don’t mean to push you. But Imissedyou.”
I hugged as much of her as I could get my arms around. “I missed you, too,” I choked out.
Joe was right. I wasn’t the same person who had left. Maybe I had to come home to figure that out. I was grateful for the moments, big and small, that had brought me here.
But staying had never been part of the plan.
24
Anne
The boy, nine or ten,smeared his fingerprints on the display case. “That looks like horse poop.”
His mother—thirtysomething, three kids hanging off her—sucked in her breath. To admonish him? To apologize to me?
Before she could drag him away, I smiled at the boy. “It does, doesn’t it? Want some?”
He shook his head. “No. Gross.”
I peeled a droplet of fudge (which did, in fact, resemble the horse droppings on the street outside) from the parchment paper and held it out. “I dare you.”
His mother looked flustered. “We don’t want—”
“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “We always give samples.”
