Happy After All

Chapter Thirty

“You’re going to come to the parade,” I say. I don’t mean it to come out as a command, more as a question, but I’m not successful. I’ve had too much coffee, and I’m feeling emotional after coming back from our camping site and returning to reality.

After the night spent holding him and baring our souls and feeling understood in a way I never have.

Can’t imagine why.

I’m also feeling ... heightened in every way. It’s like I have a running list of all the things I need to take care of in my mind. Seeing Christopher, talking to him, that’s the first thing.

Talking to Nathan is another one.

Telling him what I want. Telling him I want him in my life. In this life.

This world.

That’s important, and it’s eating me alive from the inside out. It’s all I can do not to turn to him and say something about it now. I’m trying to stick to the PEMDAS of emotions. Order of operations has to be observed.

I have to let go. Really let go. I have to close the door.

Christopher is something I don’t need to make room for. It’s not a pain I need to carry around all the time. Truly, it’s not pain I feel. I’m angry. He isn’t my mother. He’s not a narcissist. He wasn’t great to me. Our relationship didn’t end well, and he handled all that badly. I think, though, that he isn’t a terrible person. He gave me a lot in our time together. More than just pain.

Some of what was wrong with us was me.

Me not knowing what I wanted. Me not knowing how to tell him what I wanted.

So yes, it’s worth it to have a conversation with him in a way it wasn’t worth it to try to have one with my mother.

There is no point banging your head against a brick wall.

I let our relationship crumble. I didn’t fight. There were so many reasons for that. I don’t necessarily want to fight today, but I do want to ...

I don’t want this part of the story to be blank anymore. I want to fill it. With whatever happens. Whatever he says. I want to finish it.

“Yes,” he says. “I’ll go to the parade. Though I do feel obligated to tell you that in general I would rather die than go to a parade.”

“You know, I get that feeling from you.”

“I don’t seem like a happy paradegoer?”

“You do not,” I say, chuckling.

We decide against driving. Parking is going to be a nightmare.

So we walk, holding hands, down the sidewalk that only a couple of weeks ago we walked down as relative strangers.

I still think ... maybe we were not so much strangers as I thought we were. We clearly recognized something in each other from the first moment.

I am bolstered by that as we continue on.

I smile when I see town. It is absolutely festive. There are lights wrapped around every lamppost. Tinsel intertwined with them.

There are cars parked up and down both sides of the street, and a section of it is blocked off for the parade. The smells of chestnuts, pecans cooked in sugar and cinnamon, churros, and popcorn are thick in the air. My stomach growls.

“Should I get you a treat before the parade starts?” He bumps my elbow, and my heart flutters. It’s a casually affectionate gesture.

Given that we tend to run on high intensity or sexual chemistry, it feels new.

“Of course I would like a treat,” I say. “Will you have one, or will your arteries seize up?”

He gives me side-eye. “It isn’t that I never eat sweets.”

That creates a slightly weird vibe between us, because I sat with him when he ate some cake when he happened to be drunk off his ass, so I’m not entirely sure if that is indicative of much of anything.

“Just very rarely,” I say. “I get it. I think maybe you deserve a treat.”

“Right. Because I’m your fake boyfriend for the afternoon?”

That hurts. It cuts a deep groove right into my heart, and I do my best to breathe past it. I do my best not to let it hurt me. After all, he’s operating on the rules that we established at the beginning of all this. We’re doing sex and friendship. At least officially. My feelings have changed, but we didn’t agree to that. I’m hoping ... I’m hoping he likes what we have enough to give me more.

To give me something more than just leaving and never coming back. I can’t bear that. I can’t face it.

“No,” I say. “You’re Nathan. And you’re with me. I think you should get a churro.”

He grimaces. “I can’t say no to a fresh churro.”

“I knew it. You’re not a monster. No matter how much you want everybody to believe that you are.”

“That’s evidence that I’m not a monster?”

“I mean, I have other evidence, but there are children present. So I can’t say it.”

Silence lapses between us as we walk to the churro stand.

“Hey,” I say. “If I ... If I did want to write a different kind of book, with my newfound creative itch ... could you help me figure out which agents I might want to query, and all of that?”

The truth is, I’m good at doing things myself. That doesn’t mean I want to do everything by myself. I don’t want my mother’s barren lawn. I want connection.

“Yes,” he says. “Sure.”

I realize that’s the test balloon. My first acknowledgment to him that I might want connection that extends beyond this week.

He doesn’t say no. So.

We wait in line, and he buys the treats, complete with the chocolate dipping sauce. This feels relevant. Sweet. Like this might actually be a date.

In spite of what he just said about being my fake boyfriend.

I look up at him and smile. His eyes are so green. They make me feel more than I thought possible.

I think that maybe I didn’t know love until he looked at me.

Maybe that’s dramatic, the most dramatic, jarring thought I’ve ever had, but I let myself have it. Right now, I let myself.

“We better get in our positions for the parade,” I say. “If I can’t see the bagpipe players, I will be distraught.”

“I didn’t know you had strong feelings about bagpipes.”

“Who doesn’t have strong feelings about bagpipes? Positive or negative, they don’t really lend themselves to neutral feelings.”

“I’m neutral on them,” he says.

“Literally impossible. They are the loudest instrument known to man.”

“No,” he says. “Decidedly neutral.”

I think he’s just being a contrarian. And I learn a new thing about him. He will not be told. Not about this, probably not about anything.

I tuck it away deep inside. I love that I learned something new about him.

In spite of the fact I’ve now seen him naked countless times.

The very sad thing is that I probably could count how many times I’ve seen him naked. It’s only been a couple of weeks.

I just want it to feel countless. I want it to feel like more. I want it to feel like forever.

This shift inside me doesn’t even surprise me anymore. I’ve accepted it.

I know what it’s like to let the same pain twist around inside you for three years. I know what it’s like to hold on to things.

I know what it’s like to marinate in something for so long that it becomes an integral part of who you are.

This certainty coming after such a short amount of time is one of the nicest feelings I’ve ever had. As a person who is a champion in rumination, it’s like the clear skies of Rancho Encanto. Wide open, bright. Nothing obscuring the truth.

“Okay. It really makes a person want to get a bagpipe player to come play ‘Amazing Grace’ in your personal bedroom,” I say.

“I have noise-canceling headphones.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Maybe.”

He smiles. It turns out, I’m wrong. Everything wasn’t bright and clear before. It is now. All the brighter for him smiling. Something has shifted inside me, and I know it’s never going to go back.

We take our positions, and Sylvia walks out to the middle of Main Street, a microphone in her hand. “Thank you,” she says, “for coming to the tenth annual A Very Desert Christmas!”

The crowd cheers uproariously.

“As you know, Rancho Encanto suffered a tragedy this year when a fire burned down our elementary school and left more than a thousand people without shelter. This event is raising money for the community, for those who lost their homes, their livelihoods, and their school. We want to extend a thank-you to those who have come, who are shopping in our community, staying here, and donating to the cause. The parade is about to begin, so, everybody, sit down and get ready for the show!”

“I’m expecting Disneyland levels of entertainment,” he says.

“Adjust your expectations,” I say.

It turns out I didn’t really need to say that, because the parade begins, and the first entry that comes into sight is the banner that says A Very Desert Christmas , carried by four little girls dressed as cacti.

Music starts to play loudly, elevator Christmas music, but I love it all the same.

“Obviously I meant you needed to adjust them and make them higher,” I say.

He laughs, but that is quickly drowned out by the line of bagpipers who are playing “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” louder than I have ever heard it in my life, and this isn’t even the first time I’ve heard these particular bagpipers.

After that there’s a float, which is essentially the North Pole on a flatbed truck, sponsored by the hardware store. There is a homemade snow globe with people dressed like elves inside it, and an old farm dog dressed as Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

There is a section of old-fashioned cars, ballet folklórico, Irish step dancing. I polish off my churro, and Nathan gives me half of his. I want to call him a quitter, but I also want his churro, so I decide against harassing him.

During the parade, I realize that he has moved behind me and I’m leaning against his chest. Leaning against him. He’s holding me up. I sigh and let myself melt against him. I’m not afraid of the other shoe dropping. I’m not afraid of anything, not just now.

The parade ends with an aqua-colored convertible with Sylvia sitting in the front, and ...

I blink. Christopher’s sitting in the back, waving.

He is dressed exactly like he would be for one of his movies. Flannel shirt, scarf, despite the fact it really isn’t that cold, and a stocking cap.

I fold myself just slightly against Nathan’s chest because I don’t want Christopher to see me. Not right now.

Nathan becomes an even more solid wall, and I know he understands who this is.

His hold on me tightens, and the beauty of being held by him, protected by him, surpasses the stress I feel in that moment.

He whispers in my ear. “Are you okay?”

“I am,” I say. “It’s actually the anticipation and awkwardness at this point. He’s tried to call me twice. I haven’t answered. Maybe that’s stupid. I don’t know.”

“None of it is stupid. I think you’re in one of the few unique situations that a person could have in the world.”

“My ex-long-term boyfriend becoming a made-for-TV movie actor and showing up at my new hometown? Fair.” I look up at him, and I know he knows this, but I want to say it anyway. “I don’t want him.”

He nods. “Good.”

I take that good , and I hold it close. I turn it over in my mind like it’s a particularly shiny rock I want to look at from every angle. We walk from there to the site for the Festival of Trees and move down the line of food trucks, where I order something from every one.

“There really is nothing like girl dinner,” I say.

He lifts his brow. “And that is?”

“Having little bits of everything you might want. A great, eclectic triumph. A symphony of taste. Girl dinner is art. Sometimes it’s Ritz crackers and cheese, but it’s actually one of my very favorite things about being single. The ability to just have a meal that’s pieces of everything.”

“You can’t do that when you’re with somebody?”

“When you’re with somebody, you have to consider them.”

“They could also consider you,” he says.

It’s a reminder of why I like him so much. Putting it mildly.

“When you write a hero,” he says, “does the heroine get to choose the food?”

I ponder this for a moment. “Yes,” I say. “She does.”

“Don’t accept less for yourself than what you’d write,” he says.

His words echo in my head until we filter down to the A Very Desert Christmas venue, where a crowd is already amassing.

We head over to the location for our event, and the line waiting for us is beyond what I’d imagined. I’m not sure what I did imagine, but it wasn’t this.

There’s a big sign outside the tent pavilion for Nathan’s event, and it has both our faces on it. I stand next to the sign and spread my arms out, smiling. “We should get a selfie.”

“I’ve never taken a selfie in my life, and I’m not going to start now.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

We move into the tent, and there are stacks of books in there. More of his, fair enough. He is Jacob Coulter, and I am not.

I take a deep breath, and I fully come to terms with the fact I’m not just going to see Christopher in a parade. I’m actually going to see him, talk to him, interact with him.

I feel so much more okay than I expected to. It’s still weird.

“Are you good?” he asks.

“I am,” I say. “I mean, nobody is totally good right before a socially awkward interaction, but that’s all it is. Genuinely.”

Nathan nods and goes up to the front, where all the chairs are facing. I see it again, his relative ease with this kind of thing.

“You’re a strange man,” I say, and I mean it in the nicest way.

“I am?”

“Yes. You are. Sometimes the least personable human being on the planet, but also the most. You are utterly insensitive. On the surface. Usually, if I get past my knee-jerk reaction to the things you say, I realize they aren’t clichés, they aren’t platitudes. You’re actually saying something important. You value your privacy, but I can see that you do well at things like this.”

“At something like this,” he says, “we’re talking about the books. I can do books, Amelia. Writing is the only way that I’ve ever found to make sense of anything. I’m not talking about myself when I’m talking about my stories.”

“You are, though,” I say. “They’re the deepest part of you. The part I think not even you see sometimes. I mean, that’s why we have to write, isn’t it? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I started writing romance after the biggest romantic implosion of my life. Helped me sort through everything. Everything.”

“Save it for the panel,” he says, giving me a slight smile.

“No, because I’m not talking about that in front of Christopher.” I take a fortifying breath. “Wow. This is going to be interesting.”

The tent begins to fill. Then Christopher comes in at the very last minute. I realize why. As soon as our eyes connect, I see his guilt. I see his fear. He has no idea what he’s walking into. He knew he was asked to moderate this panel, that I was on the panel—even if he didn’t know my pen name, he knows what I look like—and he’s been stressing about it. Of course he has. I wouldn’t pick up his phone calls. That kind of amuses me. I didn’t really mean to get revenge on him that way, but apparently I did.

Nathan steps forward and holds his hand out. Aggressively. Not in a friendly manner. “Jacob Coulter,” he says.

“Christopher Weaver,” Christopher says in response. Then he looks at me. “Amelia ...”

Nathan moves back to my side and puts his hand on my lower back in an extremely possessive gesture that can’t be misconstrued. Christopher’s eyes dart between us.

“We’ll talk after,” I say.

Because now there’s just the panel.

Christopher is, of course, charming as he introduces us to the crowd, introduces himself, and reads Nathan’s—Jacob’s—and my bios.

When we start talking, it’s like Christopher disappears. Nathan and I already know how to talk about writing. I ask him a hundred questions that I’ve already asked him. We go back and forth, talking about genre conventions and process, why I love a daily word count and why he would find it oppressive.

This is where his passion has always been, even when he can’t find it. He manages to talk about his feelings without sharing anything personal.

“Why do you write romance?” he asks me.

“Because no matter how terrible things have been in my own life, I wanted to believe there was hope. That’s what we all want to believe. Don’t we all want to learn how to write a happy ending in our own lives? That’s what I’ve been doing. Learning how to write one. Figuring out how people other than me, fictional people, find happiness after the darkness. What’s more important than that?”

“Nothing,” he says.

When we finish the panel, we’re both busy signing books. I’ve never done a book signing before. I enjoy it more than I thought I would, even if it takes a little bit to get used to signing a pseudonym.

It takes a few tries for Belle Adams to feel natural. I’ll have to ask Nathan for pointers later.

It hits me then that I’ve found something in him I never imagined was possible. I’ve found a man who learns about the world the way I do. Who processes his feelings using the same method I use. We might write differently—me with my word count, him with his brooding—but there is something so common between us that I’ve never found with another person.

Writing is how I learn about the world and myself. People who are like me and people who aren’t.

Very few people would ever understand that, but Nathan does. He had to write a whole book about his wife, about her life, in order to sort through everything he experienced. He writes books about the military that help him make the good guys better than they are. He worries about writing romance, because he’s scared it will hurt him, like the one in his real life.

I get it. We get each other.

Yes, we connect with our grief. We also connect with how we see the world. How we filter it. How we figure out everything we feel by writing it.

He’s also so good in bed it’s unreal. He makes all the other sex I’ve ever had seem like sad warm-ups, while he’s the main event.

With him, it’s like in my books.

Straight out of my fantasies, off the page and into my bed.

The next time someone tells me sex in romance is unrealistic, I’ll pity them.

When we finish the signing, Christopher is gone, and I realize he had to go do his reading.

Maybe we won’t get to have our conversation. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I thought it was important, but my big realization was just ... I’m glad I spent the day with Nathan. Talking about what we love, our books. Meeting readers and interacting with them.

Nathan is being occupied—against his will, maybe—by a pair of zealous women who are each holding a stack of his books and talking to him very intently.

“The thing is,” one of them says, “if you think about it, Tanner wouldn’t have done that.”

Nathan is nodding. “I did write it that way, though.”

I stand up from the table after everyone is gone, and I start moving some of my remaining books back into a box, when I see Christopher come into the side of the tent.

“Amelia, do you have a minute?”

“Oh. Yes.” I straighten. I glance over at Nathan, who is still getting a lecture on the mistakes he’s made in his own series. I got an email like that once, but he’s basically getting the full screed in person, and he’s handling it well.

“Is . . . Jacob Coulter your . . . fiancé? Husband?”

“No,” I say, and I don’t offer an explanation. “Congratulations. On the engagement.”

I don’t know if I mean it, but I’m glad I can say it.

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s not how I would’ve chosen for you to find out about that.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Who could have predicted we would end up in the same place at the same time quite like this?”

“Yeah, that’s ... My agent used to know Reigna? I guess she taught him how to do the soft-shoe.”

I nod. “That sounds about right.”

Silence lapses between us for a moment. “Congratulations on the books. You always kind of wanted to do that.”

“Thank you.”

It’s desperately awkward for a second. I start trying to grab words and piece them together. I start trying to figure out what I should say to him. What monologue will fit just right. The triumphant scene where I make him grovel for all he’s done wrong.

Then he takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Whatever I was going to say is just ... gone. I didn’t expect that.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I handled everything with us in a way that was just ... There wasn’t a worse way. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” I don’t know what else to say.

I forgive you seems ... well, not true. I’m angry. He wronged me at a time when I needed him to do right by me more than I had ever needed anything. Whether it makes sense or not, I never felt like he was failing only me. He was failing our daughter too. Maybe that part isn’t fair, but it hurt me then, so badly. Forgiveness is too simple for what I feel.

Still, I can appreciate the apology.

“I didn’t treat you well enough,” he says. “I couldn’t understand what you were going through because I didn’t want to. It hurt too much. I was in denial. Of everything. And you weren’t. You deserved better.”

I did.

I did deserve better, though I don’t need him to tell me that.

I never expected to get an apology from Christopher Weaver even once in my whole life, and I like it.

But I don’t need it.

The simple truth is, he’s not my problem. He’s not going to be in my life. I feel completely fine wishing him well and never having anything to do with him ever again. Not in a hateful way.

I just ... I don’t need him.

I don’t want him.

He’s not the thing that still hurts. He’s not the great loss.

He’s not the love of my life.

“I didn’t really break up with you,” I say. “I ran away. I regret running away. Though, I don’t regret where I ended up. I’m really happy. I hope you’re really happy.”

“I am,” he says.

“Good. I don’t think we ever could have made each other happy.”

“That’s probably true.” Though he looks confused by that. I realize it’s the confusion of the partner who was getting more than he was giving.

I’m not even that mad about it.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say. “Because I think not having closure on it, not even ... an apology, or just getting to stand in front of you when I don’t feel like I’m falling apart, was keeping me stuck. I just feel like I can let it go now.”

I can let him go. I can let that life go.

It doesn’t mean letting go of Emma. It doesn’t have to.

“This place is pretty amazing,” he says, looking around.

“Oh, I love it,” I say. “I love it here.”

I love my life. That’s the bottom line. I realize he didn’t ask me if I was behind him getting hired. I don’t feel the need to tell him that I wasn’t. It just doesn’t matter.

“Well. I ... Take care,” I say.

There’s a song about this. About the strangeness of when a person you used to be intimate with becomes somebody that you used to know. When it doesn’t even feel intense enough for anger.

For longing.

Whatever was left of my feelings for him blows away on the wind.

I turn, and I see Nathan.

He’s the only thing that matters.

I don’t need to put him and Christopher side by side to know who I have stronger feelings for. I don’t need to do a pros and cons list. I don’t need to do a list about what love is, and how Nathan is different from Christopher.

If I did, though, the winner would be clear. It’s too obvious for anything quite that literal.

“How did that go?” he asks, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“It was fine. It was fine. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t painful. He apologized to me.” We’re walking away from the tent, and it’s dark out now, crowds of people still milling around, laughing, drinking cider. “I don’t know what I expected. I let my grief over the baby turn into this thing that was tangled up in him. I was angry at him. For a very long time. I mean, if I sat down and thought about it, I probably still would be, but not enough to yell at him. Not enough to let him have any more of my energy. I just ... I don’t want to be with him. I don’t want that life. I don’t ... I just don’t.”

I laugh, and it comes out half a sob. “I have to do an auction!” I say. “In front of people.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

I know he just means the auction, but it feels like a bigger question. I’m glad I can answer it honestly. “Yes,” I say. “I’m going to be just fine.”