Page 67 of What's in a Kiss?

“Huge.”

What loan is Jake talking about? In my real life, there had been no loan to pay back, because there had been no Juilliard. Only a hard conversation with Lorena at the kitchen table two weeks after my dad died. I closed the door on my plans, and that was that. I try to imagine what I’d done differently here.

“So when Amy made you theZombie Hospitaloffer,” Jake continues, “we chucked it all, flew out to LA, and six years later, here we are.”

“Butwhy?” I blurt out.

“Why... what?”

“Why did you just... give up your dream? You had a great job—”

“I’d always wanted to learn to surf—”

“Jake. I’m serious.”

“You know the answer, Liv,” he says and puts a hand on my knee. “I didn’t think of it as giving up my dream. I thought of it as an adventure. I told you, on the very first night we got together, that I believe when a person finds something they love this much, they should shape their life around it.”

Jake did tell me that, but in the version I remember, he was speaking about my acting.

“I found you,” he says today. “I’mgladI was naive about journalism out here, about the jobs I’d be able to get. Remember those two weeks when I was a paparazzo?” The squeeze of his hand sends heat up my thigh.

I laugh, but only because I know it’s my cue to laugh. Jake worked for the paparazzi? That sounds awful. Completely dispiriting. How could he not resent me, after going from theNew York TimestoTMZ? The irony that this man, object of the paparazzi’s gaze in my real life,workedas one, however briefly, here... it’s too much.

“I knew then what I know now,” he’s saying. “That I’d found the most important thing. The rest of it I’d figure out, as long as I had you.”

“You don’t regret—”

“A thing,” he says without a moment’s hesitation.

It makes me think of how, just a few days ago, in my mother’s garage, I’d used the same words about not going to Juilliard. I didn’t regret it. Can it really be that Jake doesn’t regret this life either? Can it be that when you love someone, no matter what life deals you, you still win?

“Besides,” Jake says, “if I’d stayed a staff writer in New York, the podcasting world would have been deprived of all this.” He spreads his arms and laughs.

I take him in, gorgeous in his robe and ridiculous briefs. I can’t tell how deep his joke runs at his own expense. I wish that he knew what I knew, about the life he could have had if things had gone just slightly differently.

If he’d sat in Seat 9 at the Yankees game that day.

“Olivia,” he says, almost but not quite reading my mind. “Ifyou’dpassed onZombie Hospital, if we’d never come out to LA, you always would have wondered: What if I’d taken my big shot?”

I’m holding my breath because the parallels and missed connections are too insane to process. In this life, I pulled him away from the career he’d originally wanted. Now he’s trying to find the job he’s meant to have—and judging from last night, he’s every bit as good at connecting with people as he is in Real Life—only somehow, he hasn’t caught his break.

I can’t help feeling this is all my fault. I can’t help wanting to fix it. In this realm, I’m the only person who appreciates Jake’s potential. And that feels criminal.

“I think this podcast is going to be good for me,” Jake says. “I know you weren’t wild about it at first, for obvious reasons...”

He nods, and I nod back, like I have a clue what he’s talking about. What reasons would I have for not wanting him to do a podcast?

I feel unmoored by all that I don’t know about our recent past. I feel surprised by how much Iwantto know it, sad that I don’t think I ever will.

“You have a gift, Jake,” I say. “You know that, right? You have this way of connecting with people, of lighting up a crowd. Last night—”

“That was nothing.”

“I’m serious.”

“Thanks, Liv. You always see the best in me.” He meets my eyes. He’s not placating me, but also, he doesn’t know the things I know. He hasn’t seen the Jake I’ve seen.

He looks out across the canyon. “Maybe by the time our firstborn can talk, they won’t have to say, ‘Daddy’s a bum.’ They can proclaim, ‘Daddy only has ten subscribers, but he’s sure proud of that podcast.’ ”

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