She knew what she wanted. She understood what she could do. And Cosima believed that she, Edie Ashlynn Whitelock, was singular. The one for her.
Now that Edie had all of the pieces to make her legacy, she wanted it to start. She felt like she hadn’t kissed Cosima in a thousand years. She hadn’t shown Cosima even a fraction of the ways she could love her. She wanted to tell her that she was having new mantles, sills, and corbels made for the lounge. Pink marble, in homage to Phoebe. She wanted to show her the replacement shepherdess she’d ordered on eBay.
She wanted Cosima.
The train sped down the tracks, and Edie looked across to the other side of the platform, defeated, watching the passengers make their way over the track bridge to the car park, going home.
A family with a set of double strollers moved down the platform, revealing a woman who had just picked up her bag. A tall woman.
A tall woman with messy, curly hair in a big bun, and tweed slacks with red-bottomed heels and a silky pink shirt.
Edie’s heartflew.
“Cosima!” she shouted with everything she’d ever learned about projection in the stands of a Packers game. “Cosima Frank!”
Her group turned to look, and then they were yelling Cosima’s name, and Cosima looked up and saw Edie.
The biggest, most beautiful smile lit up her face—at theexact same moment the Grantham-to-London train barreled into the station, on time after all, hiding the other platform, and Edie’s beloved, from view.
“Jesus HC on the mount!” Edie shouted. “Comeon!”
“Go over the bridge to the other side!” Tam shouted. “Go!”
Edie shoved her bag at Tam and ran, dodging and weaving between a full crowd’s worth of Grantham passengers jockeying to board the express to London, then stomping up the stairs around the people coming down from the train Cosima had been on. She made it to the part of the pedestrian bridge suspended over the tracks, and there she was, right in the middle.
Her princess.
“Cosima!” Edie tripped over her Converse and practically fell into Cosima’s arms. She smelled deep-vanilla hair wash. Edie buried her face into her neck, inhaling, kissing, and grinning.
“Oh my god, Edie. Were you about to get on a train?” Cosima pulled back, her glorious eyebrows very stern. “I was coming! I told you to stay put! Why were you going to take a train?”
“To go to Los Angeles!”
“What for?”
Edie bent backward to emphasize her full-body eye roll. “To be with you! To support you! Because I love you!”
“I know that you love me, but I was always coming back to you. I said so. Did you know that I loveyou?”
“Yes.” Edie narrowed her eyes at Cosima. “Of course I do.”
“For how long, Edie, have you known that?” Cosima crossed her arms. “You have not heard even a single word from me for two weeks.”
“One week and six days since your text that your mother’s company was burning down. So not really two whole weeks to get worried or wallow or anything like that.”
“Hmpf.” Cosima raised an eyebrow. “And I thought I was cominghereto grovel. To apologize for how much you must have worried and wallowed. How much faith you might have lost, given the tender newness of our relationship. But nothing like that went on. Turns out, according to you, you’re brimming over with confidence.”
Edie’s heart leapt. “We’re in a relationship?”
Cosima fisted Edie’s jacket lapels and yanked her toward her. “Yes, of course we’re in a relationship!”
The pedestrian bridge had emptied, and the train to London let out a hydraulic brake noise and began to slowly move away from the station beneath them. Edie noticed a teeny-tiny tendril of desire growing to test Cosima. A little. With full knowledge shewouldpass Edie’s tests, but also would have to take them. “But you live in Los Angeles. And I live here.”
“Oh.” Cosima bit down on her excited grin to keep up their pretense of an argument. “So you live here now, do you? In England. That is very far from Los Angeles. A whole oceananda continent away.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t really do long-distance relationships.” Edie ran her hands up the arms of Cosima’s silky pink blouse. To help her. She wasn’t dressed for England. It was breezy. She had to be cold.
“Tell me about your other long-distance relationships.” Cosima kissed Edie’s temple.
