But he was smiling. A real smile, the kind that transformed his whole face and made him look like someone who remembered how to hope.
The radio shifted to something jazzier. Celebratory, almost.
“Now it’s showing off,” Marcus muttered.
“I think it’s happy.”
“Radios don’t have emotions.”
“This one does. You’ve said so yourself—it has opinions about jazz.”
“Having opinions isn’t the same as having emotions.”
“Isn’t it?”
He looked at me. Really looked, the way he had that first day when I’d burst into his shop fleeing my possessed phone. Except now there was something different in his expression. Something warm.
“You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Probably. Is that a problem?”
“No.” He moved toward the back of the shop, toward the kettle. “I’ve had enough quiet. I think I can handle some difficulty.”
I sat in my chair—my chair, no matter what he said—and watched him make tea. Watched the careful way he measured the leaves, the precise way he poured the water. Everything about Marcus was deliberate. Considered. The opposite of my chaotic, spinning, option-hoarding approach to life.
Maybe that’s why we worked. Maybe that’s why the magic had connected us in the first place.
Or maybe it didn’t matter why. Maybe what mattered was that we were here, now, choosing each other.
He brought me my tea. Two sugars, splash of milk. Exactly right.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“Now?” He settled into the chair across from me—Sarah’s chair, I realized, or maybe just the chair that happened to be where she used to sit. “Now we figure it out. Day by day. Choice by choice.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It is.” He took a sip of his tea. “But I’ve been told that’s how you know it matters.”
I laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of me by the callback to Cassie’s words.
“It matters,” I said. “You matter.”
“So do you.” He reached over, took my hand. “Even when you’re being difficult.”
“Especially when I’m being difficult.”
“That’s debatable.”
But he was smiling. And so was I. And the radio was playing something soft and sweet, and the morning light was streaming through the windows, and for the first time in five years, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Not running. Not spinning. Not keeping my options open.
Just here. With him. Choosing this.
It was the scariest thing I’d ever done.
It was also, somehow, the easiest.
