Chapter 17
Sarah
It’s well after ten p.m. by the time I make it back to my house that night. It’s been a long day of job training with several residents participating in the Workability Program that Simon created to provide career outlets for adults with developmental disabilities.
It’s rewarding work, but exhausting.
Or maybe that’s not it. I’ve been wiped out all week, and I suspect work has little to do with it.
I trudge from the street up the path to my doorstep, imagining myself in a hot bath with a glass of wine. My mind adds Ian to the picture, positioning him behind me with my spine cradled against his chest and his hand cupped possessively over my breast.
“Knock it off,” I snarl out loud to my brain, and the image goes away.
If only it were that easy to switch off all my other achy thoughts. The ones where I remind myself what an idiot I am for falling in love with Ian Nolan. Or what an idiot he is for thinking we could ever forge a marriage out of legal forms and handshakes. Like that’s even possible.
A bath. A bath by myself with a big glass of wine and my favorite lavender essential oil. That’s all I need.
I shove my key in the door, then freeze.
Is that music?
It is music. And it’s coming from inside my house.
I frown at the door, trying to place it. The notes are familiar and the beat—
“It’s the fucking soundtrack from Music and Lyrics.”
Just what I need. Something else to remind me of Ian.
Fumbling with my key, I try to remember if I left my stereo running. It’s been ages since I listened to this, but my my phone must’ve connected to the speakers and found it on random search.
It figures. Even my playlists are out to torture me.
I finally get my key in the lock and turn it the right direction. As I push through the door, I’m greeted by a mouthwatering smell that hits me with an unexpected wave of nostalgia.
“Picante Chicken Top Ramen.”
The familiar voice is followed by Ian stepping out of my kitchen. He’s wearing bright red oven mitts and holding a steaming pot. The rest of him is clad in jeans and a white T-shirt.
No, wait.
A white T-shirt with a cartoon print of a tuxedo shirt and jacket on the front. There’s even a jaunty little bowtie printed under the collar, and what in God’s name is happening here?
As I stare with my jaw on the floor, Ian strides toward my dining room table.
Make that the spot where my dining room table used to be.
I stand there with my hand on the door and my jaw on the floor, wondering what on earth I’ve just walked into. “Where is my—what is all this—”
“I did some redecorating.” Ian reaches past me to push the door closed like it’s the most normal thing in the world to enter a woman’s home and rearrange her furniture.
And replace some of it with—oh my God, is that a beanbag chair?
The brown lump sits where my dining room chairs used to be, big enough for two butts nestled close together. My knotty pine table is gone, too, replaced by an upside-down milk crate that holds two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
“Lisa helped me,” Ian supplies as he sets the pot of ramen on the milk crate before standing upright again and shoving his hands in his pockets. “We can take the covers off your pillows when we’re done, and I promise to put everything back where it was before, but—”
“Chewbacca throw pillows,” I say, too dumbfounded to care that I’m stating the obvious as my gaze sweeps my living room and I realize what this is. “You’ve recreated your dorm room.”
I scan the rest of the space, cataloging the changes. Red chili pepper lights frame my window, and my sofa has been shoved to the opposite wall and adorned with a bedspread that looks like a slice of pepperoni pizza.
I have no idea what to say or how to respond when Ian grabs a vase of daisies off my end table and sets them on the side table next to me.
“These are for you,” he says. “I wanted to pick them myself, but the security guard at the college said—” He stops and shakes his head, endearingly nervous. “Never mind. They came from a florist. I’m sorry.”
I’m not sure whether he’s apologizing for the flowers or for rearranging my house. Neither of those things upsets me in the least, so I suspect it’s not that at all.
I study him for confirmation. He takes a step closer, green eyes shimmering as he reaches for my hands. “Sarah, I want a do-over,” he says. “A second chance to make things right with you.”
It takes me several breaths to find the ability to speak. My senses are flooded with the smell of Picante Chicken Top Ramen and the hum of my favorite soundtrack and the realization that Ian Nolan is standing in my living room asking for another shot.
I swallow hard and gaze into those familiar green eyes. “You think redecorating my house and cooking noodles is going to make everything okay?”
He shakes his head, a determined expression on his face. “Not even close,” he says. “I just wanted to render you speechless long enough to deliver my apology.”
Mission accomplished. I don’t say this out loud, but he must sense it anyway. Good Lord, he’s even tacked up a poster of dogs playing poker. How did he find all this?
“I used sticky strips so there won’t be holes in your walls,” he says, shaking me from my thoughts with this very Ian-like bit of information. “The only thing permanent is the way I feel for you.” He grimaces and shakes his head. “Fuck, that sounded cheesy.”
A stupid wave of tears rushes to my eyes, but I blink hard so he won’t see. “It didn’t. Keep going.”
“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m out of practice and self-conscious as hell, but I’m trying, Sarah. I’m trying to be the kind of guy you deserve.”
“What kind of guy is that?” My words come out a soft croak, but he’s prepared.
“A guy who knows how to express his feelings,” he says. “A guy who can admit that he has feelings and who doesn’t run away from them like a scared dickhead.”
“You’re not a scared dickhead.” I don’t know why I’m defending him. He did run away when things got scary. “You’re a guy who’s been through a lot.”
“That’s no excuse,” he says. “Letting myself experience love might have been what hurt me all those years ago, but not experiencing it is what’s holding me back.
What almost caused me to lose the most important person in my whole life.
Sarah, I love you. I love you more than anything and I almost goddamn missed that. ”
“You—what?” My heart starts to bang on my ribs like a chimpanzee stuck in a cage. “What did you say?”
“I love you,” he says, squeezing my hands so tightly I flinch. “Sorry,” he says, lacing his fingers more gently through mine. “It’s like I’m learning to be a fucking human again. This might take practice. And patience.”
I manage a weak smile. “Patience I’ve got.”
He takes a shaky breath, and the tenderness in his eyes floods my chest with feeling.
“I know I got caught up in facts and figures and started thinking of marriage as a logic-based proposition,” he says.
“But I didn’t understand that none of that is worth a damn without love and passion and romance. ”
Here come the tears again, and I’m having trouble fighting them back. “You can’t just turn it off and on like a spigot, Ian,” I tell him. “You can’t decide to feel love one minute and to shut it off the next. It doesn’t work that way.”
“I know that now,” he says. “I was afraid to feel grief and fear and loss, but I didn’t realize that cutting those things out meant I missed the other stuff, too. Joy and happiness and love—all the things I got to feel with you.”
“God, Ian—”
“Falling for you—losing you—that’s what it took for me to realize nothing else in my life means jack shit if you’re not with me,” he continues.
“You make me a better person, Sarah. The kind of guy who feels things. You’re the sweet to my sour.
The chili pepper lights in my darkness. The sriracha in my ramen.
” He winches and shakes his head. “This isn’t supposed to be coming out so cheesy. ”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I know it’s wrong to laugh at a guy who’s pouring his heart out to me, but this is all so surreal. The makeshift dorm bed, the noodles cooling on the milk crate table. I survey it all, then look at Ian again.
“What would you have said to me that night?” I ask. “That night all those years ago when you planned to finally ask me out.”
“I would have told you that I loved you,” he says. “But I wouldn’t have meant it.”
“What?” I stare at him, not sure how to take that.
“I didn’t understand love then,” he says.
“Love is daisies and mushy cards, sure, but it’s so much more than that.
It’s trusting another person to hold your heart in their hands without breaking it.
It’s camping trips and dance parties and fun times, but it’s also the sad stuff.
It’s the knowledge that sharing the heartache makes it easier to bear.
It’s knowing someone else has your back no matter what. In good times and bad times and—”
“—in sickness and health?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “This is sounding like marriage vows.”
“That’s what I want, Sarah.” His hand trembles around mine, or maybe that’s me. “I don’t want a marriage on paper. I don’t want legal contracts and handshake agreements. I want it all. I want the whole messy, heartbreaking, heartwarming ball of goop. And I want it with you.”
Fuck it. Now I’m crying.
I start to dash the tears from my face with the back of my hand, but Ian whips out a blue plaid handkerchief.
“What, you didn’t have Lisa make you replicas of those hideous paisley handkerchiefs you had in college?” I tease as I wipe the tears from my face.
He grins and squeezes my hands. “I’m okay with a fresh start on some things,” he says. “The way I love you now is better than the way I loved you then, so my handkerchiefs can improve, too.”
“That is quite possibly the weirdest way anyone has ever professed love,” I say. “But I love you, too, Ian. So much.”
A grin spreads across his face and he drops my hands to pull me into his arms. The hug is fierce and so exuberant he nearly squeezes the breath out of me. “I love you,” he says into my hair. “I love you, Sarah.”
The words themselves are nice, but it’s the emotion behind them that chokes me up again. It’s like someone pulled the cork out of Ian’s champagne bottle, and all this beautiful, fizzy emotion has come bubbling out.
I love it.
And I love him, in case that wasn’t obvious.
I wriggle free from the hug so I can look up at him. His green eyes glitter with emotion, and it’s like we’re finally on the same page after all these years.
“I’m ready, you’re ready,” I tell him, and I hope he understands I don’t mean dinner. “Let’s do this.”
He smiles and brushes the hair off my forehead. “Where should we start?”
I glance at the ramen on the milk crate and smile. “Dinner. More kissing. Marriage. Maybe a cat. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Sign me up for all of it,” he says, and lowers his mouth to mine.