Page 124 of The Cupid Chronicles

And I erased all of it with a broad brush.

“We had some good times, didn’t we?” My eyes sting with hot tears. I don’t want to say what I’m saying, but I think I need to.Haveto.

“Aria, I think . . . I think I have to get back to the land of the living.” I screw my eyes shut, and the tears fall. “But that might mean letting you go.”

I have a hard time getting the words out, but once I do, I close my eyes and think of Aria’s smile. “Man, I miss your smile.”

I open my eyes. “I miss you. And I will always love you, you know that. But . . .” I tap a fist on the top of the gravestone. “I met someone. She’s sort of great. She’s making me remember to love things again, bringing me back to life, I guess?”

I think of Iris, struck by how deep my feelings for her are and how strange it is that those feelings and my deep love for Aria can co-exist.

“You’d like her,” I say. “You’d probably get along really well. She’s funny, and she loves to laugh.” I kick at a rock. “I know you’re gone, and you’ve been gone. But part of me still feels like—” I kneel down and clear away a few more dead leaves. “Like I was always supposed to be yours. Like it’s wrong for me to imagine a life with someone else.”

There’s a chilly breeze, and I inhale the cool late-winter air.

“I guess I just needed to come here and tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t let myself think about you so much anymore. It hurts to imagine where our life would be if this hadn’t happened.” I shake my head. “I get so mad at how unfair this is, and I want to know why. If you’d left an hour earlier, or if I’d come and picked you up or . . .”

I go still.

“It’s stupid to ask questions I know don’t have answers.”

I force myself to feel everything I’m feeling right now. I’ve been hiding from my emotions long enough, and I’m finally starting to realize all the ways it’s been bad for me.

I kiss my fingers, then press them to the headstone.

“So, I’m going to live. And I’m going to do my best to be happy.” I stumble a little over the words, wanting them to be true but knowing it’s going to be a while before they are.

Not knowing what else to say, I turn to go. I start to walk, aware that my cheeks are wet, and when I’m almost back at the car, I whisper, “I’ll never forget you.”

I’m about to get in, to drive off and figure out a way to keep my new promise to live my life when, without warning, the sky opens up and it begins to snow. Big, fat flakes that instantly stick to the ground.

With one hand on the door handle, I turn back and look at the headstone, and I have to wonder if Aria would’ve believed in magic.

I drive back to my apartment, wishing I felt lighter having unloaded so much of the burden I’ve been carrying, but mostly I feel heavy from the sadness of letting myself feel things again.

I park in the garage and walk inside The Serendipity. Iris will be at work for a few more hours, but when she getshome, I’ll be waiting. It’s about time I’m the one to sit outside her door and put it all on the line.

While I still need to work through some things, I’m certain of her.

Of us.

I walk up the stairs and through the door to the third floor. I’m only a few steps in when I see something on the floor in front of my apartment.

There’s a rolled-up newspaper on my welcome mat.

I glance at the mat in front of Iris’s apartment—no newspaper.

Curiosity and worry simultaneously land in my stomach.

What is going on?

Why now, after all this time, would the newspaper land back at my door?

I pick up the paper, confused by the change and hoping for some logical explanation.

Yeah, I think,because this newspaper is alwayssological.

I walk inside, drop my keys in the bowl on the table near the door, hang up my coat and take the paper into the kitchen. I turn it over and see that this newspaper, like all the others, is addressed to me.

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