"I'm your boyfriend who is also a bodyguard. Both things are true."
She laughs, and the nervous energy she's been carrying dissolves by a degree. Her hands are cold in mine---she's terrified, I realize. Not of the crowd or the cameras. Of standing in front of people and owning the thing she created.
"Hey." I duck to meet her eyes. "You wrote the book. It's extraordinary. All you have to do is tell them why."
"What if I forget how to talk? What if I stand up there and the words just---"
"Then I'll start a security incident and evacuate the building. Everyone will be too distracted to notice."
"That's not helpful."
"It's a contingency plan. You love contingency plans."
Her smile breaks through the anxiety, and she squeezes my hands once before pulling away. "Okay. I can do this."
"You can do this."
The event begins. I position myself at the back of the room---standard protocol, clear sightline to exits and principal. Thecrowd fills every chair and spills along the walls. Diana Hartwell sits in the front row, regal and attentive. Tara---Kassidy's best friend, a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper mouth---sits beside her, already tearing up before anyone has spoken.
Kassidy takes the podium.
She grips the edges, and from my position I can see the tremor in her fingers. But when she speaks, her voice is steady. Clear. The voice of a woman who talks to invisible characters on beaches and makes them listen.
"Six months ago," she says, "I couldn't write a sentence. I'd lost something---not my talent, though it felt like that. I'd lost the belief that what I had to say mattered. That stories about love, about connection, about two imperfect people finding each other in the wreckage---that those stories were worth telling."
The room is silent. Two hundred people, not breathing.
"And then a hurricane happened. Which sounds like a metaphor, but it's not. An actual hurricane." Laughter, scattered and warm. "And in that hurricane, I found the story I didn't know I needed to write. Not just the one in this book---though I hope you'll read it and love it---but the one I was living. The one about a woman who thought she'd lost her voice, and the man who showed her she never had."
Her eyes find mine across the room. Two hundred people, and she looks at me. The connection is instantaneous---a current that bridges the distance and makes the crowd disappear.
"This book is dedicated to T.B.," she says. "He knows who he is. He's probably standing in the back of the room right now, pretending to do a security sweep."
Laughter. Heads turn. My ears burn, but I don't look away.
"T.B., you told me once that sometimes the bravest thing isn't proving you don't need anyone. Sometimes it's admitting you do." She pauses, and her voice softens. "I needed you. I needyou. And admitting that---living it---is the bravest thing I've ever done."
Applause. Not polite applause---the genuine, full-bodied kind that comes from a room full of people who believe in love stories. Tara is openly crying. Diana Hartwell is nodding with the satisfied expression of a woman who saw this coming. And I'm standing at the back of a community center in Tidehaven with my heart in my throat, wondering how a babysitting assignment turned into the most important thing that's ever happened to me.
The signing line wraps around the building. Kassidy sits behind the table for two hours, signing books, taking photos, connecting with readers who tell her that her stories changed their lives. She's radiant---not performing, not pretending. Just herself, in the fullness of who she is, and watching her is like watching the sun come up after a very long night.
Afterward, when the crowd has thinned and the volunteers are stacking chairs, I find her in the back room. She's sitting on a folding chair with her heels kicked off, champagne in hand, the dress slightly rumpled.
"How do you feel?"
"Like I just ran a marathon and won and also might throw up."
"All positive signs."
"Tucker." She sets down the champagne. "Take me home."
Home. She says it like she means Tidehaven. Like the word has shifted its definition in the last three months, expanding to include a small coastal town and a man who carries her books and reads Ishiguro.
Her place---a rental cottage she's been using as a writing retreat, the excuse she gave for spending most weekends in Tidehaven---is ten minutes from the community center. It's small and perfect, with a desk overlooking the harbor andbookshelves built into the walls and a bed that we've broken in thoroughly over the last two months.
Inside, she kicks off her shoes and turns to me with an expression that's half triumph and half desire and entirely devastating.
"You were proud of me," she says. Not a question.
