I tap the side of my head. “I don’t need a schedule. It’s all up here.”
“It’s not up there,” he says matter-of-factly. “You had no idea when any of your articles were coming out. And let’s not get started on those email chains I asked you to forward to me before you left.”
“As I told you, my inbox must have swallowed them. There must have been a technical glitch,” I proclaim innocently.
He gives me a knowing look. “You couldn’t find them because you never file any of your emails into folders and your inbox is flooded with thousands of unread messages.”
“My inbox is organized in the way that I prefer it, Ryan. I know who I’m talking to and where I need to be at all times.”
“You forgot about the dinner with your parents, didn’t you? The night you had that awards ceremony that you’dalsoobviously forgotten about.”
“Maybe.” I eye him suspiciously. “How did you know?”
“Because,” he begins, a smile creeping across his lips, “Iknowyou.”
I swallow, melting under his doting gaze. “I guess you do.”
“I do. And I love everything about you.”
“You do?” I whisper, hardly daring to breathe.
“Yes,” he says softer, moving slowly toward me. “Everything. Even the things that drive me up the wall. Your messiness, your infuriating organizational style, your shocking timekeeping skills, your stubborn inability to back down whenever we argue.”
“You know me. I like to have the last word,” I say, as he stops right in front of me.
He pauses, waiting for me to lift my head and bring my eyesup to meet his. “Harper, I love you. And I’m never going to lose you again.”
Cupping my face in his soft, warm hands, he leans down and kisses me.
And as I kiss him back, pulling him closer toward me, I can’t help but smile against his mouth. Because at last we agree on something.
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Ryan is getting impatient.
He’s trying not to, but I know that I’m wearing him down because the lines on his forehead are getting deeper, and every time I fly past him in a whirlwind of stress, he watches me with narrowing eyes.
“Harper,” he growls, his phone vibrating in his hand, “the driver is going to cancel the trip unless we leave the housenow.”
“Just tell him we’ll be one more minute!”
“I already told him that three minutes ago.”
“Tell him again.”
He sighs, rubbing his forehead. “Is there anything I can do to help speed up this process?”
“Yes, you can leave me be and go tell the Uber driver we’ll be one more minute.”
Muttering something inaudible under his breath, he leaves the flat with his bag in tow and, while I locate my phone charger in a plug in the sitting room, I hear the muffled sound of their conversation through the windows. Darting into the bedroom, I throw my charger into the wheelie case that Ryan bought me a few months ago when the shoulder strap on my old weekend bag broke and he couldn’t handle the fact that I happily tied a knot in the strap and carried on using the bag.
I hear the front door open as Ryan returns, and I’m just about to zip up my bag when I remember I haven’t packed my wedges. I find one lurking at the bottom of my wardrobe, but the other one has somehow disappeared. Holding the one I have safely in my hand so I don’t lose that one, too, during the search—a pickle I’ve been known to get myself into before—I get on my knees and start tearing through the bottom of both sides of the wardrobe, sending shoes flying in all directions.
“Are you looking for this?” Ryan says behind me.
I turn round to see him standing by the bed, the missing shoe dangling from his forefinger by the ankle strap.
