Page 135 of Happy After All

“It’s like I was frozen,” I say. “For all these years, because it was just too painful. The problem was, I was stuck in a thought that I had to heal from everything or heal from nothing. Where I thought I had to sort of deny everything that I had been through, or I was going to have to do this incredibly impossible work. But I don’t have to get over it. I don’t have to get over the pain. It’s there. It’s part of everything. It’s part of love, it’s part of life. It’s part of being happy. When I look at the faces of all my darling old ladies, I see the lines. From happiness, from anger, from sadness. It’s all there, and it’s all part of them. We don’t get out of life without it.”

I take a jagged breath. “You have to do the work of healing. You just do. Because if you don’t ... then all you have is the pain. It’s there, beneath the surface, whether you want it to be or not. I thought I had come here and run away from it all, and then all it took was me beinghanded a baby to dissolve. All it took was hearing that my ex was going to come and speak at this event, and I felt broken.

“It comes for you eventually. Even if you don’t want it to. It can be a fire in your safe haven, or your ex invading your new life, but it will come. I wasn’t building to a confrontation with Christopher. I was building to this moment where I could stand in front ofyouand say that I want more.”

He freezes, the expression on his face one of near terror. “Amelia ...”

“I don’t want you to leave and never come back. I don’t want to never see you again.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can. You aren’t dead. And neither am I. We’re alive, and that means not having to face the great and terrible truth that we can never see each other again. It is our choice. Because this is our world. It’s the one we have.”

“I can’t give you anything,” he says.

“You just bid ten thousand dollars on my Christmas tree.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m broken. I can’t fix myself for you. I can’t do it for anybody.”

“Maybe I don’t care if you’re broken. Because I’m not. I’ve decided. It’s bullshit. I didn’t choose to have the parents I had. I didn’t choose for my mother to be a narcissist. I didn’t choose for my dad to move away. I didn’t choose to invest years in a man who was just a bait and switch, one who never loved me the way I did him. And I didn’t choose to lose my baby. I didn’t choose it. So I will be damned if I won’t take a chance and choose good things when I have the opportunity to do it. I am not choosing broken. Not when I can choose whole.”

I shake my head. “Nathan, we’re not writing this, and I know ... I know why you don’t want to drain all the poison out at once. I know. Please do it. For us. Because I think you can be the hero that I’d write. I think you ... I mean, you’re real. We’re real. I think we can have a happy ending, but it’s up to us to make it happen.” I take a deep, gasping breath. I need him to understand. “It is real, Nathan. It’s realistic.I’ve written it over and over again. People have to fight for it. They have to heal for it. But it’s real.”

My heart is pounding so hard it hurts, and my throat aches. I want to beg him, because I care that much. Because I want this for us that much.

“Amelia,” he says. “You are extraordinary. I don’t ever want you to doubt that. I’m not like you. I’ve been through loss one time, and it’s enough times for me. I can’t find that hope again. I can’t even write a romance—how am I supposed to live it?” He takes a jagged breath. “I don’t think you get to do this twice. I lived my whole life feeling like the odd one out. Feeling like I was speaking a different language to the people around me, and then I met someone who was fine with it. That is something you don’t get to do twice.”

“If you don’t care about me enough, you can say that.”

He looks wounded. Maybe he needs to be. For me, and not for anyone else.

“I can’t take a breath deep enough, not anymore. I can’t have a feeling that goes that far. I can’t ...”

I see the fear. Real, deep fear. He is terrified. At this moment, of me. Of himself. He is terrified, because his world ended. And to dream, to hope, to wish, to build something new is extraordinarily terrible, and I know it. It’s also the only way. The only way to find a life that isn’t shrouded in darkness, that isn’t defined by loss.

“I’m glad you had that,” I say. “Nathan, the most beautiful thing about your love story is that she had you. You wereherhappy ending, Nathan. She had you until her end.” Tears make my words sharp. Short. “I am so glad. But you didn’t end when she did. So you have to decide what your life looks like. You have to decide what else there is. I don’t really want to be second best to someone who isn’t here anymore. Who does? I’m not asking you to promise me forever. I’m not asking you to promise me everything. I’m just asking you not to end it entirely. Not to cut us off. I’m asking you to leave the door open.”

He moves toward me, his eyes desperate, his hold on me rough. “When you leave the door open, there are too many things that can get through it. I can’t do it.”

He is desperate now. I think I’m even more desperate, though.

“I love you. I love you. I’m very clear on what that means. I’m very clear on what it could cost. I am very clear on how badly this could hurt me, but I am strong enough to handle it.”

This is my third world, really. There was Bakersfield, the one where my parents broke my heart. There was LA.

Now there’s Rancho Encanto, and I’m on the cusp of being shattered again. I already know I’m not going to run away afterward. I already know that whatever happens after this moment, I’m not going to burn myself to the ground and start over.

This place nearly burned to the ground. It survived. It will thrive because of all the love and care we’ve poured into the community.

So will I.

I love this place, because my family is here. My residence, my motel. My life.

It really is mine. That was why those other lives were so easy to leave—they mostly belonged to the other people in them.

But not this one.

“I’m telling you this, as a woman who really knows who she is now. I’m telling you this, and I’m scared. I am scared, because it’s going to break me if you leave. I’m still going to keep breathing. I already know what we can survive.”

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