Book Lovers(98)

“It’s okay,” he whispers, rocking me back and forth. “You’re not alone,” he promises, and beneath it I hear the unsaid rest: I’m here.

For now, I think.

Because nothing—not the beautiful and not the terrible—lasts.





32





NOW I UNDERSTAND why I didn’t cry for all those years. I want it to stop. I want the pain tamped down, divided into manageable pockets.

All this time I thought being seen as monstrous was the worst thing that could happen to me.

Now I realize I’d rather be frigid than what I really am, deep down, every second of every day: weak, helpless, so fucking scared it’s going to come apart.

Scared of losing everything. Scared of crying. That once I start, I’ll never be able to stop, and everything I’ve built will crumble under the weight of my unruly emotions.

And for a long time, I don’t stop.

I cry until my throat hurts. Until my eyes hurt. Until there aren’t any tears left and my sobs settle into hiccups.

Until I’m numb and exhausted. By then, the office has gone dark except for the old banker-style lamp on the desk.

When I close my eyes, the roaring in my ears has faded, leaving behind the steady thud of Charlie’s heartbeat.

“She’s leaving,” I whisper, testing it out, practicing accepting it as truth.

“Did she say why?” he asks.

I shrug within his arms. “All the normal reasons people leave. I just—I always thought . . .”

His thumb hooks my jaw again and he angles my eyes to his.

“All my exes, all my friends—half the people I work with,” I say. “They’ve all moved on. And every time, it was okay, because I love the city, and my job, and because I had Libby.” My voice wobbles. “And now she’s moving on too.”

When Mom died and we lost the apartment, it was like our whole history got swallowed up. The city and each other, that’s all Libby and I have left of her.

Charlie gives one firm shake of his head. “She’s your sister, Nora. She’s never going to leave you behind.”

I’m not out of tears after all: my eyes flood again.

His hands run over my shoulders, squeezing the back of my neck. “It’s not you she doesn’t want, Nora.”

“It is,” I say. “It’s me, it’s our life. It’s everything I tried to build for her. It wasn’t enough.”

“Look,” he says, “whenever I’m here, it feels like the walls are closing in on me. I love my family, I do. But I’ve spent fifteen years coming home as rarely as possible because it’s fucking lonely to feel like you don’t fit somewhere. I never wanted to run this store. I never wanted this town. And whenever I’m here it’s all I think about. I get so fucking claustrophobic from it all.

“Not from them. But from feeling like I don’t know how to be myself here. From—getting in my head about who I’m supposed to be, or all the ways I haven’t turned out how they wanted me to. And then you showed up.”

His eyes flare, flashlights racing over the dark, searching. “And I could finally breathe.”

His voice trembles, skates down my backbone, and my heart flips like it’s inside a bingo cage. “There’s nothing wrong about you. I wouldn’t change anything.” It’s almost a whisper, and after a pause, he says, “You’ve never needed to. Not for your shithead exes and not for Blake Carlisle, and definitely not for your sister, who loves you more than fucking anything.”

Fresh tears sting my eyes. He just barely smiles. “I honestly think you’re perfect, Nora.”

“Even though I’m too tall,” I whisper tearily. “And I sleep with my phone volume all the way up?”

“Believe it or not,” he murmurs, “I didn’t mean perfect for Blake Carlisle. I meant, to me, you’re perfect.”

It feels like heavy machinery is excavating my chest. I knot my hands into his shirt and whisper, “Did you just quote Love, Actually?”

“Not intentionally.”

“You are too, you know.” I think about my dreamy apartment, sun pooling on the armchair under the window, the summer breeze wafting in with the smell of baking bread. I think about schlepping off the train, sticky with heat, paperbacks and towels tucked into a bag, or freshly printed manuscripts and brand-new Pilot G2s.

My city. My sister. My dream job. Charlie. All of it, exactly right. The life I would build if it was possible to have everything.

“Exactly right,” I tell him. “Perfect.”

His eyes are dark, sheening as he studies me.

My heart feels like a cracked egg, nothing to protect it or hold it in place. “I could stay.”

He looks away. “Nora,” he says quietly, apologetically.

Just like that, the tears are back. Charlie brushes the hair from my damp cheek. “You can’t make this decision for me, or for Libby,” he says, voice thick and rattling.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, “you’ve spent your life making sure she has everything she needs, and it’s time someone made sure you did. You want that job at Loggia. And you fucking love the city. And if you need to save money, take my apartment. It’s probably half the price of yours. If that’s what you want, that’s what you should have. Nothing less.”