CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Istop dead, gripping the door handle, facing the passersby on the street outside. The story is over, and my life is my own again, and yet time doesn’t seem to be moving. My heart feels like it’s in a slingshot, bracing to be flung out of my body.
I turn to face Anna, who’s watching me in distant confusion.
“Grant,” I say again.
Her face remains blank.
“Grant Hoffman.”
She frowns and shakes her head like I am ringing zero bells here.
“The love interest,” I finally say, though it feels so wrong reducing him to that title now.
She gives a confounded chortle, only now looking at me like I’m crazy. “There was no love interest,” she says. “That was the point. It was my cynical postdivorce book; I just wanted to write this girl who got burned by romance and took her sweet revenge.”
Everything is whirring around me. I shake my head. “No, Grant,” I say, as if maybe she didn’t hear me properly the first two or three or four times. “He was in the Uber I stole.”
“The driver?”
“No!” I say, frustration clawing at me. “The passenger. I took him to Steph’s beach house. He killed Jack!”
“There was no passenger,” she says. “And you killed Jack.”
My mind cannonballs back to the Gifter. One hundred percent adherence to the plot is unlikely. I feel dizzy, struggling to make sense of this. Fighting the urge to hope.
No. Grant was too big a part of this story to be in it by accident. In many ways he was the story, for me.
“But all the tropes were there,” I argue. “What about Lovers’ Weekend at the inn? There was only one bed!”
She’s looking at me now the way Grant and I looked at Raj as he spewed addled nonsense. “Singles’ Weekend,” she corrects gently. “And there was only one bed … because you are only one person.”
“But the rain,” I plead.
“It’s London,” she says.
“Well, how did it end?” I demand. “In your version, as you wrote it. How did it end?”
She shrugs. “That’s part of why I gave up on it, actually. Lissa cornered you and revealed herself as the villain, with a proposition that you join forces with her. And that’s what I wanted you to do, originally. You were going to be a good girl gone bad, all heart-hardened and out for blood.”
She cracks a smile, leaning back in her chair.
“Thing is, you wouldn’t cooperate. Characters are funny like that sometimes.
They have minds of their own. And when it finally came down to it, you wouldn’t let the bitterness win.
Crushed and alone as you were, you still had hope.
” She waves a dismissive hand. “Wasn’t the most exciting to read.
But it made me realize maybe romance isn’t done with me yet, after all. ”
I stare at her, dumbfounded.
“I have to go,” I sputter out, tripping as I back away. “Oh my God, I have to go.” I nearly knock over a book display as I run for the exit. And then I halt again at the door. One last chance for answers before I go.
“Wait,” I say, out of breath as I spin back. “I know you probably didn’t write this or maybe even think of it, but … what happened to Raj?”
Anna breaks into a glowing, magnanimous smile, her hands folded on the table.
“Thanks to your help, Raj made a full recovery and gained a new lease on life. He proposed to his longtime love, Hugh, and finally tried out for The Great British Bake Off. Which he won.”
I nod casually, in the manner of a person who cares a normal amount about a minor fictional character.
And I almost pull it off, until the frog-size lump in my throat wins and I choke out a half-sobbed “That’s really nice.” Dammit. Good old Raj.
I sniff, collecting myself, and give her one last look. “Thank you,” I say, and finally turn to go.
“You’re welcome,” she calls after me. “And you’re welcome to Grant, whoever he is!”
· · ·
AT FIRST, I can’t get out of the store fast enough. But the moment my feet hit the pavement, I’m paralyzed.
All those things I imagined with Grant, all the things I said I wanted—real life, the ups and the downs and the in-betweens—they’re possible. They’re about twenty minutes away, if I sprint. But there’s a difference between wanting something and going after it.
Saying goodbye to Grant was among the most painful experiences of my life.
But if that wasn’t goodbye, then the pain has just slithered off into the future instead.
It’s hiding, coiled up and waiting to strike on some unknown date.
The day I lose him, or the day he breaks my heart.
Or maybe that pain will dissipate and settle into a long stretch of days in which we find ourselves stuck—not right enough to work, but not wrong enough to leave.
You could go home, that old voice whispers in my head. Go home and return to what you know and put this away on your bookshelf. Just another romance story. Beginning, middle, end. Nothing more.
I start to run.
· · ·
I TRIP UP the town house steps, fumbling for the key as I reach the door—only to come up empty. I ransack every pocket, peering into the windows for any sign of Grant.
But, of course, there isn’t one. There’s no sign of anything familiar, in fact, because this is the real house that Lesley’s was based on. Through the windows I glimpse swaths of beige and neutral linens, not a trace of the worn-in jewel tones that were Lesley’s signature.
There’s a pang in my chest at the change, but I don’t let it reach my resolve. Grant’s not here? Fine. If I need to scour the city for him, I will.
I turn around and freeze. Across the street, on our bench in the garden—there he is.
He doesn’t see me. He’s deep in thought, a portrait framed by ivy-wrapped wrought iron and sprays of new greenery.
I hesitate for a moment. There’s no more story structure to hide behind. No plot clues to lean on. Just our own fumbling decisions and all their dangerous potential. One more step and it all changes.
But, looking at him, something tightly wound inside me releases just a little.
So I run down the steps. Even though there’s still a voice in my head hissing at me to change direction, I keep a path straight toward him, sprinting for the gate. And it won’t budge, because of course it won’t. This is a private garden, and I no longer have the key.
So I think, fine. If a fictional story can hold a real-life romance, then real life can manage a bit of rom-com.
In the spirit of Notting Hill, I scale the fence, braving the iron and snarled branches in pursuit of what awaits on the other side. And in the spirit of Hugh Grant, I fumble awkwardly on the way and fall into the garden with an elegant whoopsie-daisies, except that I pronounce it “OW, MOTHERFUCK.”
An elderly woman out for a stroll has witnessed my unlawful entry and is loudly reprimanding me from the other side of the gate, but her complaints fade away as I dust myself off and look up to lock eyes with Grant.
He’s on his feet in front of the bench looking a little stunned, watching me with that perfect crease between his brows.
I start speed-limping toward him, and he rushes to meet me. We stop right in front of each other.
It’s the first time we’ve been face-to-face outside of a book. I search my mind for the right first words.
“You’re a real person,” I blurt.
“I know,” he says. “I knew the moment it ended. I opened the gate and then the key just disappeared from my hand. Right out of my damn hand.” He shows me his empty palm as if to display the disturbing evidence.
“Yeah. Wow,” I say dumbly, still trying to catch my breath. My heartbeat shows no sign of calming, and it occurs to me that it won’t until I say what I really came here to say.
I’ve never said these words to anyone, barely let myself think them.
And yet they’ve been forming on my tongue for some time, creeping forward despite my attempts to swallow them down.
Now that I’m here with him again, looking up into his expectant and vaguely concerned eyes, I have to tell him. Out loud. For real.
“I’m scared,” I say.
My heart is hammering and my throat might be closing up. “I’m really scared. But I’m here,” I say. “And I think that might be the whole point.”
He gives me that knowing half smile of his, then reaches up and pulls a twig out of my hair. “I think you might be right.”
In the midst of this dramatic, heart-stopping moment of confession, the lady on the street has marched up to the fence to shout at us.
“Get out of there! This garden is for residents only!”
Ignoring her, the fears start tumbling out of me, tears pricking my eyes.
“I’m not going to know what I’m doing,” I say.
“Me neither,” he says. “When has that stopped us before?”
The lump in my throat is slowly easing, melting like a swallowed ice cube, but the ache is still there. The old woman at the gate screeches on, chastising us about the height of rudeness.
“What if we mess this up?”
“Have you met us?” he asks. “Of course we will. Then we’ll figure it out, because that’s what we do.”
“But what if you only like me because you’ve only seen me at my best?”
He narrows his eyes quizzically. “When I first met you, you tried to throw up in a city trash can, missed, and then stole a car.”
“Stolen car!” hoots the woman from the street. “Did he say stolen car?! Next thing you know, they light the whole park on fire!”
“Look,” says Grant, stepping closer. “I know we met under extreme circumstances.”
“I AM CALLING THE AUTHORITIES,” shrieks the woman.
“And it was horrifying, and bizarre, and incredible,” Grant continues. “And I’m not going to stand here and pretend that watching you punch a guy in the face wasn’t unbelievably sexy.”
I sniffle. “Right?”
“Oh my God, yes. But this?” He lays his hand flat on my chest, right over my heart, warm and grounding. “This is you. That’s all I want. Who you are, whether you’re throwing punches or doing terrible accents or folding laundry. I want real life with you.”
Standing there, my heart almost literally in his hands, I begin to be aware of how steady I feel.
How that voice urging me to run away has fallen to a hush.
It’s not that the fear is gone, but it’s melting down into something I can carry.
And if it never goes away completely? Somehow, I think I’d rather be afraid with Grant by my side than fearless alone.
“I want that too,” I whisper.
I finally let myself sink into him, pressing myself to his real, live heartbeat.
His arms come around me, rubbing my back, his chin resting on my head.
I can’t think of a single thing better than this, until he threads a hand into my hair, tipping my head up until our noses brush, bringing his mouth to mine.
“Thank HEAVENS,” cries the old lady. “Constable, these scallywags are trespassing in a private garden.”
Grant freezes and then pulls back, his eyes meeting mine under a furrow of confusion.
“I’m sorry, did she just call us scallywags?”
“Unbelievable,” I say. “We’re clearly rapscallions.”
“—get those rapscallions OUT OF HERE!”
“See, now I feel seen.”
He smiles, and then he kisses me so passionately that the squawking of the old lady beyond the gate fades away to background noise and I wonder if my knees will buckle. But they don’t. It’s not weakness I feel now, but strength. Like I could do anything. Like we could do anything.
We break apart only when an unenthused police officer clears his throat right behind us.
“Right, you two,” he says. “Show’s over. Time to get a move on.”
We walk arm in arm as he escorts us from the premises, biting back smiles like teenagers who’ve been caught behind the bleachers.
“Somehow,” I say to Grant, “when I imagined us running afoul of the law, I didn’t think it would be a matter of garden trespassing.”
“Oh, I absolutely did,” says Grant. “You’ve got garden trespasser written all over you, Mitchell.”
“Says the guy who went in there first!”
He grins at me. “Well, I guess that makes us partners in crime.”
“Yeah,” I say, a smile radiating through my whole body. “I guess it does.”
Through the gates and back on the street, we wave goodbye to the old woman, who shakes her head in stern disapproval, and then continue on down the sidewalk with no idea where we’re going or how we’re going to get there.
No map, no outline, no clues. Just our hands linked together and our footsteps side by side. Just him, just me. Just us.