Page 111 of A Novel Love Story

“My mistake, they all look the same.”

I sighed. “Well, that’s a pity.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to leave. The door’s there, if you’ve forgotten.”

He chuckled nervously. “I didn’t … You’re kidding.”

“No. I didn’t judge you when you said you collectedswords. You don’t put them away when company comes over, do you? Besides, romance outsells every other genre—by alot, and it’s still growing even when sales in every other genre are declining. In the US alone, romance sells about nineteen billion units a year.” I plucked the paperback from his hand. “You can take that to your next fight club. Now there’s the door.”

The next time I saw him in the hallway, he didn’t even look me in the eyes. That might’ve been for the best, anyway.

That could’ve been chalked up to a one-off, but then I told my department head that I wasn’t taking that 8:00 a.m. English 101 class that she always sloughed off onto me. I told her to let one of the newer adjuncts teach it and she seemed positively gobsmacked.

And so did Pru when I told her.

So she knew something was up. She told me that, finally, when we’d met for dinner the next week—book club week—and shared a large Nacho Supreme together before our Zoom meeting. She was still hunting for a job—again. It felt like an eternal, cursed task for her.

“Eloraton changed you,” she commented, scooping up a lot of cheese on a chip, and shoving it in her mouth. “Academia better watch out.”

“I’m just tired of sacrificing myself all the time,” I replied. “I sort of felt like the Giving Tree, chopping myself smaller and smaller, and I guess I finally realized, if I kept this up, I’d be nothing but a stump by the end.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I think you’d at least fashion yourself into a comfortablechair.”

I gave her a look.

“Straight mahogany. Vintage. You’d be a classic.”

“Aw, thanks,” I said, batting my eyelashes.

“Only the best for my best friend,” she said, and leaned her head on my shoulder. “It’s nice to see you’re back. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve been right here.”

She shook her head. “No, you haven’t. Not since Liam.”

It still hurt, sometimes, to think about him, but not in a way that made me freeze anymore. I had buried my head in stories so long that I’d forgotten to live the real thing. I fell in love with the Liam in my head, the story of who we could be together, the possibility of it. I had ignored the rest.

Until I no longer could.

I shrugged. “I think I just finally figured out what love actually looks like.”

Love looked like a man who had coffee ready for me in the mornings even though he preferred tea, and remembered exactly how I took it. Love ate my sugary spaghetti, and held an umbrella over my head when it rained, and apologized when he knew he was wrong. Love was inquisitive, and mindful, and—somewhere beneath the grumpy exterior—sweet. Love was tricking yourself into doing something you didn’t want to do, because you loved the person who did.

Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things.

Love was feeling valued. And accepted.

Just the way you were.

It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, butbecauseof it.

Prudence studied me for a long moment, and finally said, “I’m so mad you let him go. I mean, he could open up a bookstore in Decatur. There’s already a thousand of them—but he could open up one more.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Maybe he could’ve hired me,” she added with a sigh. “I’d be a cute bookseller. Are you done?” she added, getting up off the couch and motioning to her to-go container. I handed it to her and went to go put the rest in the fridge for breakfast, while I grabbed my computer. We had a Zoom meeting in five minutes, and I was determinednotto be the late one for once.

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