Page 85 of A Novel Love Story

And he didn’t even exist. He came from the mind of an author I’d admired so much—who had changed my life with her books, so of course I would fall for a man she created. His backstory, his witty banter, his minty eyes, even the way hesmelled.

I laid my head on his shoulder, and it was so comfortable. As rain began to patter on the windows, we talked about being a book critic, and how it was similar to being an English professor. We argued over the definition of literary classics, and the best condiment, and whether books were more aesthetically pleasing arranged bycoloror by title. Butterscotch found us halfway through and joined us, and by then Anders’s body had settled into the weight of mine, as if welcoming it. He was warm, and we breathed in tandem, and it all felt so natural, so much so that I didn’t realize I’d dozed off until I blinked awake again what felt like only a few minutes later.

We were still on the couch, but I was curled against his side, my head on his chest, while he was propped up against the arm of the couch, one arm behind me, the other holding open a book as he read. The lamplight was low, the fire out, and from the heaviness around my eyes, I knew I’d dozed off for longer than a few minutes.

Mortified, I started to sit up, but he gently tugged me back down.

“Go back to sleep,” he said, and turned the page.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to doze off,” I quickly said. “I’ll go to bed—”

“You’re fine,” he interrupted gently, quieting my worry. Then he added, “You haven’t started drooling yet.”

“Oh, so I’m just free to sleep here until I start slobbering over your shirt?”

“Shh,” he said, and guided my head back onto his chest. “Stop talking. I’m at a good part.”

I glanced at the book, and by just a paragraph I knew what it was. “The dragon’s about to find him.”

He scowled down at me. “I let you sleep on me andthatis how you repay me? With a spoiler forThe Hobbit?”

“It’s not a spoiler if you’ve read it before,” I admonished.

“Semantics.” He licked his thumb, and turned the page again. “Though, if I were Bilbo, I would’ve never gone on this awful trip.”

“He didn’t know how bad it’d be.” I sank back against his chest. “Though, arguably, it turned out to be worth it in the end.”

“Did it?”

I thought about my trip, driving out of Atlanta in agonizing slowness, hoping that Pru would call and tell me that she’d canceled her trip to Iceland, but by then she and Jasper were already halfway to the airport, bound for Reykjavík. I thought about all the miles up to the Hudson Valley when I wished the car would spring a leak, or lose a tire, excusing me from having to do this alone. All alone.

I wanted adventure, like my mom, but I always found excuses not to take them because I was afraid of getting hurt. Like Bilbo inThe Hobbit, safe in the burrow of my home where no one but bookish villains and paper cuts could hurt me.

But I’d made it, and I’d gone on an adventure, and now I was here on the couch with a stranger,and my heart was fizzing in a way it hadn’t in a long time. And while I didn’t need to … I think Iwantedto fall in love. Madly, truly, deeply. And that scared me the most because, like Bilbo discovered, the heartache was worth the adventure.

“I think so,” I whispered into his shirt.

26

Pineapple

THE GOOD NEWS WASmy thirty-two-year-old body could absolutely still function after two nights (not in a row) of heavy drinking. Thebadnews was that my thirty-two-year-old body could not functionwell. Where I’d had a hangover the first time, this time I justhurt. Everywhere. As soon as the starlings started to sing their maiden call at the most god-awful hour on Wednesday morning, I wanted to find their nest and punt it across town. This morning they did, in fact, sound like chain saws, grating against my migraine like a serrated knife. At this point, I hated whatever tune they sang. It was incessant. Eternal.Awful. When I couldn’t take it anymore around 10:00 a.m., I rolled out of bed and dragged myself into the tub for a quick shower. I thought it’d help.

It did not.

I didn’t even remember how I got to bed. The last thing I remembered was … a lemon drop? No, the bookstore. Chatting with Anders. Falling asleep on his shoulder—oh mygod. I wanted to die.

After I pulled my unruly hair into a bun and changed into a T-shirt and frayed shorts, I wandered down into the bookshop. There, Anders was dusting the shelves with eagle-eyed precision. He worked so hard to keep this place looking lovely, but there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic, and most of the series didn’t revolve around this store at all. It was just a footnote in most of the novels, a fun date place, a scene with some key dialogue and nothing more, but he kept it clean and tidy like it was his own even though it wasn’t. There was something endearing about that, the way he was just so meticulous and caring. Every detail seen, every corner known.

It was so foreign to me, because I could barely recall the color of my desk in my office, or the color of pen I used to mark up essays. My head was full of useless things—the books I read, characters’ favorite colors, lines that felt lyrical and significant and slid off my tongue like honey. I could recall my favorite page inThe Song of Achillesby Madeline Miller, I could remember my favorite rhyme in Percy Shelley’s catalog, my favorite thoughtful mediation in any bell hooks text. They were things that were selfish and insular. I cared for words with a reverence I rarely shared with anyone—how could you share them, anyway, when words were imagined things?

Perhaps that was why I never really thought to share any of it with Liam. Maybe if I had, we’d still be kissing each other good night, and sleeping with our backs turned, and waking up tangled in the sheets, but I was being too generous, and clinging to the parts of him I still loved. Which were getting smaller by the day. And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that eventually, as I tried to keep being the girl who had kissed him at midnight, I lost myself in the process. And lost what I really wanted—a partner, not someone I had to take care of. Liam was kind,but he rarely asked how I was. He gave great gifts, but never personal ones. We hiked together, and when I fell behind, he kept marching on. I used to think it was because he knew I’d catch up eventually, so he wasn’t worried, but maybe it was because he didn’t want to be bothered to slow down and take in the scenery together.

It was the first sign, or maybe the fifth, but I hadn’t seen any of them.

The bell above the front door jingled, and the tall and scrawny outline of Thomas came in. He changed out his sunglasses for his regular ones, and waved to Anders.

“Thomas, this is a bit of a surprise,” Anders greeted, retracting his duster and stashing it behind the counter. “What can I help with?”

---