Chapter 41
When I awaken, it’s to the feeling of Reeve’s lips brushing softly against mine.
“Sorry,” he says when my eyes flutter open, sunlight pouring into my bedroom and the sheets tangled at our feet. “I just couldn’t wait….” His words fall away as he looks down at me in that way I’ve waited all my life to be looked at.
“Me neither.” I reach up and pull his head to mine. We kiss until he collapses down beside me and I pull the covers up and over our heads, creating a down-filled layer between us and the rest of the world.
We make love. A quickie before we indulge in a breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes and French press coffee, and then again after, where we take our time.
I want him close. Maybe to make up for the emotional distance of the last few days.
And Reeve—with his hands always reaching for my hips, and his lips always seeming to find that spot on my neck, just above my collarbone—seems very content with this plan.
Sometime just before noon, we crawl out of bed and get dressed.
Our romantic fantasy morning will meet a grim reality sometime later this afternoon when Reeve has to head back to the city to fulfill his two weeks’ notice, and I have an overnight shift at Sunnyvale, but until then, we enjoy our last few moments of domestic bliss, lazing around on my secondhand couch: Reeve on his phone sifting through the last of his work emails; me on my laptop, paying bills.
“That’s a very deep sigh.” Reeve leans over and kisses that spot before returning to his end of the couch.
“Sorry.” I’m staring at the only damper of the morning: my online banking site. All of my mother’s damage from the last two years is consolidated into one easy payment.
“Anything I can do?” Reeve asks. I shake my head, minimizing the screen, no longer wanting to look at my sizable hill of debt, although it’s considerably smaller than the mountain it was a year ago.
Reeve flips his phone around so his screen is facing me. “Check this out.” He hands me his phone. On it is a photo of the two of us from his parents’ party this weekend. We’re talking. Not looking at the camera, instead gazing into each other’s eyes and very clearly looking like we are in love.
“Can you send that to me?” I hand his phone back.
Reeve clicks on something on his screen. “Looks like my mom already did. It should be in your inbox.”
I pull up my email to see the photo on a bigger screen and find it, just as Reeve said, sitting with my other unread messages. But before I can click it open, another email catches my attention, making me gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Reeve rubs the side of my arm with the back of his hand, and when my only answer is a strangled gurgling at the back of my throat, he scoots closer to see what’s on my screen.
“Are you going to open it?”
My eyes comb over the subject yet again. University Admissions: Update to Your Recent Application.
I consider my plan. Delete the email or banish it to some dark corner of the internet.
I could go on with my life as if it never existed.
Never having the hope that maybe some miracle could happen that would allow me to go.
It’s what I’ve always done. But it’s also the reason I wouldn’t let myself fall in love with Reeve.
Hope may be a dangerous thing, but living without it is…
I click on the email before I talk myself out of it. It takes me to a generic message that provides no further hints on my application status other than a direct link to the application portal, where my username and password auto-populate in their respective boxes.
“Here we go.” My mouse hovers over the submit button.
Reeve’s lips find my temple. He presses a kiss right as I click, and the screen becomes a blur in front of me until I hear his sharp intake of breath.
I read the word congratulations. Then the phrase welcome you to the class.
My eyeballs make it all the way to the end before the implications fully set in.
“I got in.” The words come out alongside a sob.
Reeve’s arms come around me as he whispers, “Congrats, Jules. You did it.”
I expect to be devastated. To be overwhelmed with the feeling of everything being within my grasp for a brief moment before it slipped through my fingers. But all I feel is proud.
“I did it.” The tears that cloud my eyes are happy ones.