“Okay,” he says.
I stare at him.“Okay?”
He nods. “Yeah. Okay. Okay, I’m a character, and nothing from before really happened, and this is the realest part of my life. On a certain level, it’s almost a relief.”
“Arelief?” He’s reduced me to a disbelieving parrot.He’s not real.Nothing from before—not his job, not his family, not his damn cat—actually exists. It’s all just details, woven into the fibers of his fabricated being, and that’s arelief? “Grant, I just told you your entire life is fiction. How are you not freaking out right now?”
His expression is clouded, as if he’s trying to figure that out too. But his stillness seems less like frozen short-circuiting and more like a genuine calm.
“It’s like … somehow, I already knew,” he says. Clarity fills his gaze as he looks at me. “That night at the beach house, I triedto escape. I made a break for it as soon as you went upstairs. I got as far as the kitchen, and when I opened the front door, I froze. I started thinking about what I had to go back to, and it was just … nothing. Even with family and friends and a good job, my life felt empty. Like I was just sleepwalking through it.
“But when you jumped into my car, I swear, this voice in my head went, ‘Oh, thankGod, finally, something’s happening.’ And every day since, I’ve felt more awake, morealive, than I can ever remember. So, yeah. It comes as a relief to find out I’m where I’m meant to be—with you.
“But let me ask you this,” he says, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re saying everything between us boils down to tropes and genre conventions?”
“Yes,” I say.
“And it’s just because it’s written that way. Because that’s the way the story’s supposed to go.”
I nod.
“So you don’t actually have the feelings. Right?”
Right, I should say.I do not have the feelings. Astute observation, Grant, you spectacular rain-soaked man who does nothing for me.
But I don’t. I don’t say any of that. I do try to say something, I think, but my mouth just hangs open with no words to form as I look at him.
His eyes narrow just a bit, burning through the freezing rain.
“Right?” he asks again.
And then it doesn’t even matter that I can’t think of what to say, because it’s too late. I see the moment he understands.
He takes a slow but decisive step toward me, and instinctively I take one back.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I say. “I don’t need a love interest. I don’t want one.”
“That’s not what it sounded like at the inn,” he says softly. “When you told me what you really wished for.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I shouldn’t have made that wish. I didn’t know it would be like this, and I just … I can’t. This can’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“Whynot?Grant, you don’t exist.”
“Idoexist.” He says it with such clear-eyed certainty, I can’t help but envy him. I don’t feel certain of anything right now. “Maybe not the same way you do, fine. But I’m here in front of you, aren’t I?”
I watch his breath fog in the air, rain slipping down the slope of his neck as he stands in sharp relief under the streetlights. That’s the thing. Heishere. More palpably, undeniablyherethan anyone I’ve ever met. It’s like his presence is the keystone that holds my reality together. And when he goes—which he will—there will be nothing left but rubble.
He comes closer.
“Maybe I’m a secondary character in your story,” he says, “but in my own, I’m just a person. A person with memories, thoughts, feelings, everything. And lately, those feelings—when they’re not abject panic and dread—are all for you.”
“That’s only because you’re written that way!”
“So?” He has the gall to look exasperated. “Is that really so different from real life? I mean, some people believe in fate or destiny.”
“Some people believe in the capybara, too, Grant. That doesn’t make it real.”
