Page 103 of Twice
“Do you have someplace in mind?”
He paused.
“How about Africa?”
Epilogue
August 1978
They were calling it “the storm of the year.” All along Market Street in the city of Philadelphia, the rain blew sideways and the wind gusted near hurricane force.
In the middle of this chaos, a woman suddenly appeared, young, not yet twenty years old. Her thick hair, the color of coal, blew wildly around her face, covering her eyes. She seemed confused, as if this storm were a surprise.
She clutched her handbag and quickly undid the clasp as the rain soaked her jeans and matted them against her legs.
Then Gianna Rule took out her wallet, flipped it open, and stared at the photo on her driver’s license. It was from Boston, where she’d lived when she was in college.
So this is what it’s like, she thought to herself.You relive everything. Just how Alfie described it.
Looking up, she spotted the front entrance of Gimbels department store. She narrowed her gaze at the sight of a revolving door, and Alfie at the window, waving his arms.
She was immediately struck at how youthful he looked, and she wondered if she looked the same. She squeezed herupper thigh. Thinner. She grabbed her waist. Smaller. She lifted her handbag over her head against the rain and hurried across the street with a surprising quickness, her sneakers splashing up rainwater.
And in those steps, Gianna’s fear turned to joy, and her regret to hope. When she pushed through the revolving doors, she knew they would jam. When she laughed and said, “Oh, God, Alfie, why do I hang out with you?” she knew he would say, “Because I’m fun!”
And when she slid close to the dirty glass that separated them, she knew that in this world, he would choose to keep his feelings hidden. Because he believed that she could never love him.
But this washerrewind. She could decide where her heart went. So she leaned in toward the man who had loved her like no other. And while she wasn’t sure how she had inherited his power, except to think his death had passed it on to her, it didn’t matter. If this was a dream, she knew what she wanted. And if this was reality, she wanted the same thing.
“What’s in the bag, Alfie?” she said.
“Nothing special.”
“You sure?”
“It was just an idea I had. It was probably stupid.”
Gianna took a long, deep breath, as if resetting every cell in her body.
“Try me,” she whispered.
She watched Alfie remove a small silver elephant on a chain. She felt tears welling in her eyes. She beckoned him closer. And as they kissed through the dirty glass, she felt something old yet new explode in her heart. Because The Truth About True Love is that it can wait a lifetime. Or two.
The End
