Chapter 39
Harper
I’ve been sitting on this bench for twenty minutes and I still haven’t figured out what to do.
Which tracks, honestly. Sitting on a cold park bench crying has solved exactly zero of my problems historically, but here I am, doing it again, because apparently I am a woman who learns nothing.
The park is quiet for a Saturday morning.
There’s a kid near the pond throwing bread at pigeons with the focused intensity of someone conducting a very important experiment.
A couple with a stroller. An old man with a newspaper he’s not reading.
The whole thing is peaceful and pretty and I am ruining it by crying into my scarf.
I don’t even know why I’m here, exactly. I left my apartment to clear my head, started walking, and somehow ended up on this bench because apparently my feet made a decision my brain wasn’t consulted about.
The girls tried to help. I’ll give them that.
I’d called Ivy on Thursday, mostly incoherent, trying to explain that whatever I’d been chasing for the last several weeks wasn’t even important anymore.
That I’d finally gone to meet Collin, told him I didn’t want him back, that I was not interested, that he should please move on with his life and leave me alone, and it had taken eleven minutes, I timed it.
And then I’d made the mistake of saying Micah’s name out loud, just once, and Ivy had gotten very quiet.
“So tell him,” she’d said.
Which is easy for Ivy to say. Ivy, who got dared to hold a stranger’s hand in New Orleans and somehow ended up married to him. Some people just trip and fall directly into their happy ending.
I’d called Olivia too, because I wanted a second opinion, which was possibly a mistake because Olivia’s second opinion was identical.
“Communication,” she’d said, in the calm, infuriating voice she uses when she knows she’s right and is being patient about it. “That’s it. That’s all you have to do.”
“And if he doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Then you’ll know. And you’ll survive knowing.”
Which is objectively true and also completely unhelpful to me right now, sitting here on a park bench in a scarf I didn’t need, spiraling with slightly better scenery than my apartment.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and stare at the pigeon nearest to me. It stares back, unimpressed.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell it.
It walks away.
I drop my head back and close my eyes.
Lord, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve tried the lists and the plans and the color-coded strategy, and none of it helped. I keep running from the thing right in front of me, and I’m tired. If You could send me something. A sign, a clue, anything—now would be a great time.
I sit in the quiet. The wind picks up off the water and cuts right through my jacket, and somewhere nearby a bird calls once and goes still.
Then I hear footsteps on the path.
Breathing harder than the pace warrants, getting closer, and there’s something about the rhythm of it that moves through me before my brain catches up. I open my eyes.
Micah.
Running clothes, slightly out of breath, his glasses catching the morning light as his pace slows—because he’s seen me. He stops about ten feet away, chest still rising and falling, and for one suspended second we just look at each other across the quiet Saturday park.
He is so unfairly, inconveniently, completely him.
I asked for a sign, and God sent me a man who has been standing right in front of me for two years while I looked absolutely everywhere else.
I stand up.
I don’t plan to. My body just does it, the same way my feet brought me to this park this morning—some part of me making a decision before the rest catches up. I’m on my feet, and now we’re facing each other, and there’s nowhere to hide behind the scarf and the bench and the pigeon.
He takes a few steps forward. His eyes move over my face and something shifts in his expression, careful and quiet.
“Harper,” his voice drops. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
He gives me a look.
“I was crying. Past tense. I’m done now.”
He tilts his head, something caught between concern and the very specific expression he gets when he finds me funny and is trying not to show it. “You’re sure about that?”
“I’m completely fine.”
“You’ve got—” He gestures vaguely at his own cheek.
I wipe my face. My hand comes away damp. “That’s just the wind.”
“It’s not that windy.”
“Well, my eyes are very sensitive.”
“To what?”
“Micah.”
“I’m just asking.”
“To emotions,” I say, which I did not intend to say, and he bites down on a smile, and there, in the corner of his mouth, the dimple appears, and I feel my entire argument evaporate.
This is exactly the problem.
“Okay,” he says, and his voice has shifted into that unhurried, low register he uses when he’s actually paying attention to something. Not teasing anymore. “What happened?”
I look at him. He’s close enough now that I can see the morning light catching in his glasses, the slight flush from the run still in his face.
He’s not moving. Not checking his phone, not scanning the park, not doing anything except standing here like he has exactly as much time as I need and the rest of the world can work itself out.
It is extremely inconvenient to be known by someone.
“I went to meet Collin,” I say.
He goes still.
“I told him I didn’t want him back. That I wasn’t interested. That he should move on.” I press my lips together. “It took eleven minutes. I timed it.”
A pause. Something in his expression I can’t quite read.
“You timed it?”
“I was very efficient.”
He exhales, slow, and looks out over the pond. Then back at me. “And you’re crying because—”
“Because I’m an idiot.” The words come out before I can stop them.
“I made everything so complicated when it didn’t have to be complicated.
I had Ivy telling me to communicate and Olivia telling me to communicate and apparently the entire population of people who know me have been watching me avoid the obvious thing, and I walked out here to clear my head and instead I’ve just been sitting on that bench being an idiot with better scenery. ”
He’s quiet for a moment.
“You’re not an idiot.”
“Micah—”
“You’re complicated,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
I look at him. He says it so simply, like it’s not even a compliment, just a fact he’s catalogued alongside everything else he knows about me.
I have been running from this man for months.
“What’s the obvious thing?” he asks. Quiet. Careful. His eyes steady on mine, his lips forming into a knowing smile.
And there it is again. In the corner of his mouth. The faintest pull.
The dimple.
Something in me completely snaps.
“Because I love you!” The words come out entirely too loud and I immediately want to walk into the duck pond. “And those stupid dimples of yours.”
Micah goes very still.
“I meant…” I backtrack immediately, feeling my face go hot.
“I meant the dimples. Specifically. The dimples are the problem. Whenever I’m mad at you one of them just appears in the corner of your mouth and it completely derails me and I forget what I was saying.
It’s been happening for months and it’s very distracting and I resent it. ”
“You said you loved me.”
“I said I loved the dimples.”
“Harper,” his voice is quiet. Careful. “You said you loved me.”