Page 120 of Maybe in Another Life

“Did you get my letter?” he asks me when he’s done chewing.

I chew, closing my eyes and nodding. “Yeah,” I say finally. “I looked for you for a while. On street corners and in stores. I kept looking at men’s arms.”

“For the tattoo?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“And you never found me.”

“Until today,” I say.

He smiles.

“I’m sorry if I caused any problems for you at work,” I say.

He waves me off. “You didn’t. Hannah didn’t love the stunt you pulled after I left, though,” he says, laughing. “But she also said you seemed like a stalker. And that I was clearly not to blame.”

I blush so hard I have to put my head in my hands. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” I say. “I was on a lot of medication.”

He laughs. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he says. “It made my day when I found out about it.”

“It did?” I ask him.

“Are you kidding me? Prettiest girl you’ve ever seen rolls herself through a hospital desperately trying to find you? Made my week.”

“Well,” I say. “I... wanted to say a proper good-bye, I guess. I felt like we...”

Henry shakes his head. “You don’t need to explain anything to me. Are you free tonight for dinner? I want to take you on a date.”

“You do?” I say.

“Yes,” Henry says. “What do you say?”

I laugh. “I say yeah. That sounds lovely. Oh, but I can’t tonight. I have plans with Gabby. But tomorrow? Could you do tomorrow?”

“Yep,” he says. “I can do whenever you can do. What about now? What are you doing now?”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing.”

“Will you go for a walk with me?”

“I would love that,” I tell him. I wipe the sugar off my hands and grab my cane. “I hope you don’t mind that I have to use my cane.”

“Are you kidding me?” he says. “I’ve been going to bakeries for months hoping to find you. Something as small as a cane isn’t going to put me off.”

I smile. “Plus, if I didn’t need this cane, I probably would never have met you. Although, who knows, maybe we could have met another way.”

“As a man who has been trying to run into you for months, let me assure you how rare it is that two specific people’s paths will cross.”

He takes my hand in his, and I have waited for it for so long, have believed so strongly that it may never happen, that it proves as intimate a gesture as any I have ever experienced.

“To car accidents, then,” I say.

He laughs. “To car accidents. And to everything that has led up to this.”

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