I shake my head to reassure him. “Absolutely not. But I want to do things differently. I feel like Icanfinally do things differently. The first thing I want to do is apologize to you.”
“Me?” Ed says. “You’ve got nothing to apologize to me for.”
“I do,” I reply. “I haven’t trusted you. I’ve thought the worst of you. I’ve almost been expecting you to make a mistake, or to let me down. You’ve never given me any reason to doubt you, but that’s what I’ve done. I’ve doubted you and you didn’t deserve it.” Saying it makes me realize how true it’s been. I haven’t trusted Ed. I’ve been waiting for him to fail. When your own father lets you down, you expect the rest of the world to as well.
“I don’t know what to say,” Ed says.
“There’s nothing you need to say. I’m sorry. I want to tell you that I do trust you. With my life.”
Ed nods. “That’s how I feel about you. That’s why I asked you to go into business with me. I knew I could trust you with my life.”
I take a sip of coffee, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“You can trust me,” I say. “I want to embrace our partnership. I trust it—trust us.” It’s not just Ed I’ve put my faith in. After this weekend, I finally trust myself too.
We smile at each other, and Ed nods. “It’s really good to see you,” he says. “Katherine’s going to be excited too.”
I wince. “Actually, I’m booked on a flight back to New York this afternoon. I have some stuff to do in the city.”
“Stuff?That sounds ominous.”
“Yeah. I got pretty stressed when you went on your honeymoon.” I didn’t see my stress for what it was until the conversation with my father. I didn’t see that it wasn’t Ed I didn’t trust. It was myself. “I don’t think I trusted that I could run the business for two weeks without you so I ... I pushed Lucy away.” My heart aches at the thought of hurting Lucy. I’ve taken my self-doubt out on those who mean the most to me. Ed. Lucy. Neither of them have deserved the way I treated them.
“Ahh,” Ed says sagely.
“Ahh?”
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. You’re going to try and get her back?”
“I don’t know if she’ll have me.”
“The Jones sisters are pretty stubborn,” Ed says.
I know that about Lucy. She’s so strong and resilient. It’s part of what makes me ...loveher.
I exhale at the realization of how strong my feelings really are.
“How long had you and Katherine been dating before you knew it was serious?” I ask. Lucy and I haven’t really been dating at all, but I know I can’t walk away from her. Maybe the thought of losing her was what gave me the courage to say what I needed to say to my dad. I knew if I kept going the way I had been, I’d never be able to be with her. I thought I had to give everything I had to the job.
A grin unfurls on Ed’s face. “Pretty early. Like maybe even our first date. I knew she wasn’t just some girl I just wanted to take home once and never see again. She was so kind and so fucking sweet. I could imagine what our lives would be like. I had this super clear vision of how it would be in our future.”
I nod. I can see my future with Lucy. We’ll live in New York our entire lives. There’ll be no moving out to the suburbs. We’ll get brunch every Sunday and meet for lunch every weekday. She’ll kick ass at law school and be a baller at a white-shoe firm. We’ll double date whenever Ed and Katherine are in town, and we’ll argue about whether Katherine is perfect. I’ll tell her that it’s always been Lucy who’s perfect. For me. She’ll lift me up when I doubt myself, and I’ll try to do the same for her. And eventually, she’ll look stunning pregnant, in a white dress, standing underneath the AC, wondering whether we should move to Boston. I’ll know she won’t mean it, but I’ll tell her we can move if that’s what she wants—because I’d follow her anywhere.
“Yeah,” I say. “I see it too.”
I just hope she does.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Hunter
I’ve been standing outside Stranger than Fiction since eleven forty-five. Normally, Lucy gets her lunch around twelve thirty. But it’s nearly two now, and she definitely hasn’t left her building. I’m really tempted to grab her some lunch and take it up to her building, but I don’t want to get her in trouble. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to make things better between us. Not worse.
And then I spot her. She’s wearing that navy dress I last saw her in, but her hair is down. Her hair is never down for work. I stand at the edge of the plaza, watching as she crosses the street and heads toward me.
When she’s about fifteen yards away, she spots me. She smiles, then draws her eyebrows together, like she doesn’t know why I’m standing in the middle of the street watching her.
It probably looks a little creepy.
