Because whether Jess Greene knows it or not yet, whether she trusts it or not yet—it’s the same answer I already know I’ll be giving her for the rest of my life.
Epilogue
Jess
Eighteen months later
Tegan should be here any minute now.
Ineedher to be here any minute now.
Because I can’t keep this ruse up for much longer, not on my own.
I need a partner in this project of distraction.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Adam asks as he comes back into the kitchen, a concerned wrinkle in his brow. He’s just out of the shower, changed into his oldest pair of jeans and a soft gray sweatshirt he only ever wears here at home. It’s always the first thing he does, when he gets back after traveling for work.
“Oh yeah,” I say, hoping he can’t hear how forced my casual tone sounds.
I keep my eyes determinedly down on the bowl of cookie batter I’m mixing, which is certainly yet another clue that something is amiss. The truth is I’ve never made cookie batter from scratch. I’ve only ever bought it in those weird little tubes from the grocery. You don’t even have to add eggs to those.
“Just concentrating on getting these right. So Tegan will have something homemade when she gets here, you know?”
“Hmm,” is his only response, because I know he’s suspicious. He’s only been home for an hour and I’m blowing it. I practically jumped out of my skin when he hugged and kissed me hello—I think I stayed as stiff as a board, when usually I simply sink into him, into the relief that he’s back.
I’m sobadat this.
“She’s on her way?” he says, as he passes behind me to grab a glass from the cabinet. He sets a hand low on my back and bends his head, pressing his mouth against my neck, inhaling deeply. He’s been gone for four whole days, wrapping up some loose ends before the holiday break, and all I want is to turn around and take a deep, calming breath of him, too. I want to slide my hands beneath his sweatshirt and feel his bare skin, and then he’ll do the same back to me, and . . .
No, I tell myself firmly, probably stiffening again.Hecan’tdo the same back to you, not yet.
Not until Christmas.
Adam clears his throat softly and steps away. The next thing I hear is the quiet stream of the water dispenser inside the fridge as he fills his glass.
“So how was it?” I say, so he won’t fixate on it, so he won’t worry about it. “Salem’s good?”
He moves to the other side of the counter, bends his big body to set his elbows on it. I have a feeling he’s watching me close. But I am concentrating on this cookie batter.
I amonewith the cookie batter. I’m practically becoming it.
“She’s good. We got a lot done this round. After the new year, we’ll bring it all to Emma. And then . . .”
He trails off, as though he can’t quite believe that it’s real, that it’s finished, and now I can’t help but look up at him. All my fixation on my probably doomed project of distraction dissipates, and Adam and I share a speaking gaze—nerves and anticipation and relief.
It’s finally ready, his story. Cope and football and sport and mental health. It’s earnest and complicated and sensitive.
It’s exactly like the man who inspired it, and also exactly like the man who made it for him.
I’m so proud of Adam I could burst. He’s been working so hard. HeandSalem have been working so hard. Even in this new remote-collaboration setup, they’ve stayed so focused, so dedicated, even as they’ve filled their time with other, smaller stories, too.
In August—almost a year to the day that I showed up to Adam’s apartment in Boston to tell him I loved him—Adam officially made the move here, to Columbus. To the house I raised Tegan in, to the house that feels more like home to me now than it ever did.
If I’m honest, I don’t know if Adam and I will stay here for good, or even for all that long after Tegan graduates college. But after a year of doing long-distance—two weekends a month at first, gradually becoming more frequent as we grew closer in new ways, as I grew more confident and more open—we’d both wanted more time together.
We both want forever together.
My relocating to Boston had been part of the conversation we had about moving in together during one long weekend we spent away—in Rhode Island, at a seaside cottage, because Salem insisted. But honestly, it was never all that big of a part, and the conversation hadn’t been all that long. Some of that was my reluctance—and Tegan’s reluctance, too—to sell this house, to move away from the place Tegan had always known as her home while she was still away at college. I still wanted her to have a familiar place to be on her breaks, during her summers, for as long as that felt important to her.
