This Is Not How It Ends(17)

“I know you’re an introverted, sexual strawberry lover, but I have no idea where you were supposed to be flying to that morning when you showed up at my apartment. Were you going home?”

“Home,” he shrugged, pulling me near to him as we walked toward the art museum. “I don’t have a place I call home. Not like you, Charley. Like what you have here with your mum.”

Mum had called me no less than one hundred times since receiving my cryptic text: I know what you wished for. I think it’s come true.

The bottom of the cone came into view, and this was where things got messy.

“I travel, Charley. A lot. I’m never tied to one place. With no family left in England, I move around quite a bit. Meghan’s the same. No roots. No ties. She has a girlfriend in Boston, so I expect that’s her home, as you like to call it. We have a business to maintain.”

If I were truly a mint–chocolate chip lover, I would have picked up on the foreseeable tarnish, but I didn’t. Besides, there was something familiar that reeled me in. I was in the bubble of early infatuation. Those afflicted only see what they want to see.

We continued down the crowded street. “You know I thought she was your lover.”

“Perhaps it’s why you stuffed your tongue down what’s-his-name’s throat.”

“Daniel,” I corrected him. “You knew?”

“Of course I knew, Charley.” He gripped me tighter. “She and Myka have been together for years, but that would have made for some brilliant telly.”

We laughed until he returned to his transience, explaining how his businesses are his brood. “Each location’s a child to tend to.”

“You really don’t have a home?” I asked again, my expression that of a question mark.

“No. I don’t.”

He waited for my response, but I was studying the different parts of him and wondering what to do with this piece. He wore a powder-blue shirt and a pair of white cotton slacks. His skin was pink from our days exploring the city and the afternoon we picnicked in the park. An ominous question rose in me. His eerie ubiquity was unsettling. “I don’t understand. Where do you keep your clothes? What state is your driver’s license issued in?”

He chuckled, and I already knew what was coming. He was going to tease me, and then he was going to introduce me to another magical side of him. “My Charley,” he’d say. “You said home. I have several homes.”

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A man as worldly and sophisticated as Philip was meant to have multiple homes. But I wondered where I’d fit. Where we’d fit.



I’d often wondered in those early weeks what it was that attracted Philip to someone like me. Though we came from opposite ends of the spectrum, our meeting fell somewhere in the middle. A man like him could have had any woman he wanted, and he chose me. In some way, I believed our histories bound us—protected us. Our past hurts became a source of strength, providing a safe and reasonable distance, the impervious shield from future pain. What burned bright and alive was the present, the now we effortlessly found ourselves in.

What at first was a glaring embarrassment—my shabby apartment, a dull childhood home, my quiet life outside the classroom—became something else. Witnessing my life through Philip’s eyes shined a light on our commonality. We were more similar than we were different. For all his success, he was just as content to sit upon my mother’s frumpy couch and praise her cooking. “Katherine,” he had said, “this is the best chicken teriyaki I’ve ever eaten. Trust me, I’ve eaten a lot of teriyaki in my life.” He was comfortable, at ease, and you’d never know he didn’t belong there. I think Philip could be himself without the glare that followed him around.

Mom was thrilled to see him again.

“I had a hand in this,” she whispered in my ear.

“Don’t.” I stopped her. “You can’t say it out loud.” But I knew, and so did she. She had wished for someone to love her daughter.

“Just don’t bring up Dad,” I said.



Philip and I sat in my old bedroom, where we pored over the artifacts of my adolescence. I felt young and childish around him, surrounded by Nancy Drew mysteries and oversize movie posters. He flipped through my yearbooks and faded photographs of awful hairstyles and pudgy cheeks.

Later, we explored the city, shopping at River Market, where he bought me my first snow globe, followed by a trip to the World War I museum. He walked me through the gallery of my beloved city in my beloved country and told me countless tales of war heroes. We walked hand in hand through Swope Park and took pictures of ourselves with the animals in the zoo. He threw an apple at my head. He did. Because he said in ancient Greece that’s how they declared their love. I sat on his lap on the sky tram and let him wrap me in his arms until it felt like we were one.

I remembered watching the film 9? Weeks, when Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke emerged from their marathon erotic sleepover and embarked on a journey through Chicago, their weekend highlighted by a musical backdrop. The romantic music and scenes were so artfully crafted, I’d wanted my own reel. Philip gave me that over four days in Kansas City, Missouri.

My 11:11 wish—crossed with my mother’s—had come true.





CHAPTER 9