Chapter XXVI
XXVI
Teddy
Marin’s body softens against mine in a pile of scratchy sheets and sweat. The morning light illuminates the room, covering our naked bodies. “Why did we go three years without that?” I mutter, tracing my fingers across her back, taking in every detail of her form.
She rolls over and takes my face in her hands. “That’s on me.” Marin wraps the top sheet around herself and walks to the window, pulling back the curtain tentatively.
“My love,” I say, the words comforting in my mouth. “This is the Midwest. I promise you, they’re not going to let snow sit on the interstate overnight. The roads will be fine.”
She scampers across the room like it’s Christmas morning, tripping over her makeshift sheet dress, and kisses me on the cheek.
Every second we spend like this feels dreamlike, nearly inconceivable.
I can’t help but romanticize the winter storm that landed us here as I listen to the plow trucks back out of the parking lot.
“I’m going to try to channel cold-plunge energy in this shower,” she says, then pauses, puts her hand up. “But not, like, in a wellness way. In a we-have-no-other-option way.”
At that, she drops the sheet and crosses into the bathroom. My eyes trace down her neck, her back, her legs. These parts of her I’ll get to see and touch and kiss again and again. A marvel.
I check my phone. Two texts from Carter.
A few from my parents, and a message from Violet.
“Sorry if it’s weird I’m texting you, but Mar’s location is somewhere in Illinois, and she won’t call me back.
I think she’s with you, which makes me feel better.
Will you just let me know when you can?” I smile at the screen.
I assure everyone that we’re in one piece and on our way to Iowa City. “More soon,” I type.
Marin dresses in silence. I let myself obsess over the way she wraps her bra around her rib cage, feel the way my heart drops when she asks me to button the back of her shirt.
I don’t have to collect these moments like they’re scraps.
I’m so used to being starved of them that I don’t know how to respond to the abundance.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I say as I repack the trunk of our rental that seems somehow even more yellow in the light of day. “We’ll stick to the interstate, take it slow, and focus on finding a real espresso option as soon as possible.”
Marin laughs, leaning in to kiss my cheek, her giant sunglasses pressed against my face. “I love letting you make the plan.”
On the road, snow mirrors the late-morning sun back at us. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young plays on the radio. A little Stevie Wonder. It takes herculean focus to steer the hatchback within the plowed lines and not reach over to hold her hand.
“Being in the car with you still makes me nervous,” she jokes. The GPS says we’re an hour and a half out.
Marin
Sitting in the passenger seat just a few miles into Iowa, I wait for my chest to clench the way it always does when I enter this fraught territory.
But as we pass the signs to Davenport, my breathing stays steady, my shoulders are relaxed, and I still have a smile on my face that I don’t hold back.
It’s like I’ve broken a spell, and there’s nothing left to feel but hope.
Teddy reaches for my hand, pulling it in for a kiss, his eyes never leaving the road. “You’re it, Marin Voss—worth every single night I fell asleep missing you.” We grip each other’s fingers too tightly, a physical expression of the emotions we’ve been clinging to separately for too long.
Snow starts falling, but not like before. Instead, it’s a dusting of individual snowflakes spinning before they land.
I owe it to Teddy to prove what I wrote in my notebook is real, to show him that it’s not a diary: It’s a record of my real feelings and real intentions, ones meant for him to hear.
I need to say the words I wrote to him out loud while he’s actually here in front of me, where he can hold me accountable.
I press my back against the door and turn my body to face him, pulling my leg onto the seat. “Teddy, I could be in Iowa with you.”
He grins. “Well, good thing, because you are in Iowa with me. Right now.”
“No, Teddy.” I reach across the console and rest my fingers on his sleeve. “I could live in Iowa with you.”
He glances over at me just long enough to gauge that I’m serious, then puts on his turn signal.
He pulls over to the shoulder of the road, puts the car in park, and unbuckles his seat belt at the same time. He twists toward me and presses his mouth against mine, a perfect fit of two uncontrollable smiles.
And then he laughs against my lips. “Marin,” he says, holding my face in his hands, cold from the steering wheel. “You are not moving to Iowa. That coat,” he gestures at the plush fabric draped over my shoulders, “does not translate in Iowa.”
My smile falls, and he kisses my forehead, then my brow.
“But I’m not moving to Iowa either. It turns out, against all odds, and maybe even against my will, I am a New Yorker.
Or at least I am for now.” He runs a hand through his hair, coppery in the sun.
“That thing you wrote in your notebook about Sloane and Cart’s wedding, about connecting the different parts of yourself.
.. you changed me too. In order to make it through the last few years, I had to orient myself toward the future—fearlessly—and I learned that from you. ”
I hold his wool lapels and kiss the tiredness under his eyes. I look up at him. “So no Fifty-First Street, then?”
He laughs. “Not anytime soon.”
“Would you accept, at the very least, me moving back to this continent? To be with you?”
He’s silent for a beat.
“I would love that.” He tucks my hair behind my ear and leans into me so our foreheads are touching and our eyes are locked. “I want you to do that.”
When he pulls away, I can see our breath in the cold. He turns back to the wheel and starts the engine, then rests his hand on my thigh. “Ready?” he asks, and I nod.
I lean toward him to put my head against his shoulder, and we pull onto the highway. I check my map. “Fifty miles from where it all started.”
“Yes,” he says with a smirk. “Fifty miles and eight years.”