Page 66 of It's a Love Story

“I can see why your mom would want you to just think they were happy and he died.”

“Yeah. Even before that day when I found out, I always felt like I was missing something, being the kid without a dad. But at least that just felt like tragic bad luck. Something that wasn’t my fault. When I found out he actually decided to go—like he was my dad for five years, he knew me really well, and then decidedno, thanksand took off? It messed with me. I mean, I’ve known Ruby for a week and I’m going to have a hard time saying goodbye.”I was his daughter,I don’t say. It’s a sentence I said out loud over and over again that night.I was his daughter.

Dan wipes a tear from my cheek. I never planned to tell this story, and here I am telling it to Dan, who I love. Every impossible thing is in this bed right now. He says, “I can’t imagine leaving a kid. I can’t imagine leaving you, actually.” He’s made me smile and I see the gratification in his eyes. “How does your mom not know you know?”

“I never said anything. I put the stuff away and pretended I’d never found it. She kept telling me the Disney version of their love story and I kept pretending I believed it. We are so close, really, but when it comes to this, it’s like we live inside a lie. We’re protecting each other, I think, but maybe holding each other back?”

“So why don’t you stop?”

“Clem wants me to, but I don’t know how. I don’t want to call her out.”

“For lying?”

“For lying about her own reality and mine. She wants me to feel like I matter.” My voice cracks, a betrayal that comes from deep inside of me. That was too far, way more than I meant to say. I put my head down on Dan’s chest so I can listen to his heart. “That’s what’s wrong with me, I guess.”

“That you don’t matter?” I don’t want to look at him and I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t do the thing where he minimizes it and tells me that’s silly. He just waits. I don’t tell him how much I longed for a dad who would show up at a recital, give me a nickname, and worry about me when I was out late. But I’ve exposed the hole in me. The tiny paper cut in my heart that I keep trying to fill.

I keep my cheek on his chest and feel the rhythm of his breath. “It’s not a logical thing, but that’s basically it. So maybe, according to Clem, I obsess about my job and what people think of me so that they’ll think I matter. I think I’d like to be worth sticking around for.”

“Of course you are,” Dan says. “I bet if he lived he would have looked for you when he got older. And he would have been so proud of the way you grew up—funny and beautiful with a gorgeous singing voice. I bet he would have loved you.”

“I don’t think so,” I whisper. I feel a single tear overflow and roll down my cheek onto his chest.

“I find you exceptionally lovable.”

I don’t know what to say to this. My heart is wide open at this point, and Dan’s just placed a gift inside. I roll off of him and onto my side, and he turns onto his so that we can be two heads on a single pillow. Those are beautiful words, I think: “exceptionally lovable.” And also: “two heads on a single pillow.”

“Why?” I ask. “Like, tell me three things that are lovable.”

“The way you ball up your hands when you’re mad. The way you want to protect me from seeming like a loser in front of my friends, which is a thing I don’t care enough to do myself.”

The smile that is about to overtake my face makes me want to cover it with my hands. “One more,” I say, because the cracked-open version of me is greedy.

“I like how I can look at you and see a whole world inside your eyes, smart things and funny things that I’ll get to hear if I’m lucky. I feel really lucky being here with you like this.”

I don’t know if there’s room in my heart to take that in. I worry that those words will spill like water sloppily poured and seep into the earth where I can never get them back. I am not smiling now because I am so afraid of losing a single drop.

Dan takes my hand in his and moves them both up to his heart. “So. Now you know. You’re lovable.”

I smile. “Okay.”

Dan wipes a tear from my cheek and says, “I’d like to be the person who could take all of your sad things and make them happy. Like I’d hunt down each one and turn it over.”

“I don’t think anyone is that person for anyone,” I say. “I don’t think so either. But I’d like to be that person for you.”

CHAPTER 29

IT’S THREE O’CLOCK WHEN I SNEAK FROM OUR ROOMinto the shower. I turn on the water and catch myself in the mirror. I am different. I am beautiful in a way I never thought possible, like all the way through. My hair is wild, and it looks like it was meant to be like that. I am the star of my very own love story, and the entire hair and makeup team has conspired to make me glow. I dress in jeans and a black top, sandals with a little heel to give me a boost. I rest my hands on the sink and lean in toward the mirror. I am having a moment; I feel happy. I push down the automatic fear that this will be pulled from me, that I’ll be happy and the world will take it back. I can see myself just under the surface, this whole version of Jane who can be strong and funny at the same time. This version who can be completely herself and still be called lovable. I remember what Dan said about his budding sense of self being like a lit match on the beach; mine feels precarious too, and I want to protect it.

I need to bring my strongest, best self if I’m going to ask Jack for a favor. This loose, open version feels like my best self. I smile at her in the mirror. “Nice sideburns, Elvis,” I practice. It actually feels good.

I text Clem: Okay this is it. Tonight we actually see Jack, pep talk?

Clem doesn’t reply.

Aidan and Paula drive us to the Owl Barn. Dan is holding my hand in the back seat, and I am trying to imagine the warmth of him coating my body like armor. I turn to him and he’s already watching me.

“You ready?” he asks.

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