Chapter 39 Moving to Bolivia with my corneas #2
“You’ve given me more in the past few weeks than any goal I’ve ever accomplished. To me, that’s worth pursuing. I’m falling for you, Zoey. Stop shaking your head.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, still shaking her head. “You want a family here. I want…I’m not sure what I want anymore.”
“There’s more than one way to have a family, but that’s a conversation for another day when it’s not almost four o’clock in the fucking morning. Right now, I just want to know, do you have feelings for me? Do you think we could have a future together?”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “I…I don’t know if I can give you what you want.”
I drew her into my arms. “It’s more important that you tell me what you want, not what you think you can give me.”
“Ugh. Why are you so smart and logical in the middle of the night?” she complained to my neck.
“Tell me what you want, Zoey.”
“You know what I want,” she scoffed, clearly buying time. “I want to make Hazel’s book a huge success. I want to land Opal a deal that will knock her compression socks off. And I want to rub my victory in the faces of everyone who doubted me.”
“All admirable goals,” I agreed. “But what about after literary agent domination?”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m scared that you can’t handle me.
Not all of me,” she confessed. “This is pretty mild. But my life is… It’s like life is soup and I’m a fork.
Wait until I screw up something big like a mortgage payment or I forget about someone’s father dying and then I’m all like ‘Hey, how’s your dad doing?
’ even though I went to the funeral and sent flowers.
That’s my life. I don’t know how to settle down and not be a disaster. ”
“Okay,” I said. “And I don’t know how to breathe life into every room I enter. I don’t know how to make every person I meet feel important. I have no fucking clue how to make a memory out of the most mundane day. That’s why we work. We bring different things to the table.”
“And then we have sex on it.” She clapped a hand to her forehead.
“Do you see what you’d be dealing with? Things just fly out of my mouth sometimes.
Like the fact that I want so badly to be good enough to deserve you.
But, Gage, I’m a fucking mess. You can’t trust me to be a good partner.
I’ll let you down. I’ll disappoint you. I’ll need you too much and won’t be able to give enough back.
You deserve more. You deserve better than me. ”
“There is no better than you.”
“Oh please,” she harrumphed, then softened against me. “You deserve what your parents have.”
“Zoey, honey, my parents have a partnership that plays to both their strengths. That’s all I’m asking for here.”
“I am freaking the fuck out right now,” she admitted.
“Yeah, but you haven’t kicked me out yet, so I’m feeling pretty confident I’m going to get what I want.”
“Shut up,” she huffed.
“What are you afraid of?” I pressed.
She sat up and looked me in the eye. “That I’ll go all in with you and show you my whole hot mess of a self, and you’ll try to hang in there because you’re a good guy, but I’ll disappoint you and inconvenience you over and over again until you have no choice but to leave me because I’m too much or not enough and it would all be so much easier with someone else.
Which will destroy me, because I’ll have finally let myself believe that I could be loved.
Which means I’ll have no secret hope left that somewhere out there is a man who could actually really love me for me.
And I don’t know how to live without that secret hope. ”
“There’s only one way through this,” I told her.
“I should leave Story Lake under the cover of night, never to return?” she suggested.
I laughed. “No. Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Show me what I’m getting into,” I insisted. “Drop the masks. Stop editing what you’re thinking and feeling. Stop hiding your mistakes and trying to fix them alone. Show me everything you’re so sure will scare me off.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Right. You say that now, but you’re expecting the reveal to be like when the librarian takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and she’s ten times hotter. I’m just ten times more dumpster fiery.”
“Show. Me. Let me handle you.”
“Gage! Yesterday, I showed up two days early for a Zoom call that I put in my calendar app wrong. I ate crackers and old cheese that I had to scrape the mold off for dinner two nights in a row because I forgot to get groceries again. I walked everywhere yesterday and told everyone it was because I wanted to ‘enjoy the spring weather’ but really it was because I lost my keys and didn’t find them until this morning on top of the aforementioned moldy cheese in the refrigerator, which I still haven’t thrown out.
There’s no sexy librarian waiting to be revealed here. There’s just profound disaster.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
She snorted. “That’s not even scratching the surface.”
“Zoey, partners aren’t two people who are good at the same things. Real partners are two people who bring their own strengths and weaknesses to a common goal.”
“Yeah, well, my goal every morning is to not completely fail at adulting. Spoiler alert: I go to bed every time thinking about all the ways I failed. You don’t want me. You want someone with loftier goals than ‘finally schedule overdue gynecologist appointment.’”
“You about done with the chickenshit excuses?”
“Moldy cheese, Gage,” she emphasized.
I shook my head. “Not falling for the adorable charming distraction. I want a chance to make this thing real. You have a way of connecting with people that makes them feel really seen. You’re fiercely loyal.
You’re a shark in negotiations. You’re funny as hell.
You’re the steadiest shoulder to lean on in a crisis.
You pay such close attention to the people around you that you can predict what they’re going to do next.
And when I’m lucky enough to get this close to you, you make me feel like I’m some kind of goddamn hero.
I don’t give a fuck if you don’t know where the car keys are or if you forgot your cousin’s kid’s birthday, because you make the time we’re together so fucking magical that the mundane shit doesn’t matter. ”
“But the mundane shit is actual life. It’s paying bills and going to meetings and deciding what’s for dinner every stupid night of the week. I don’t wanna decide every night for the rest of my life.”
I stroked a hand down her back. “I know I’m asking for a lot. I know it’s scary as hell. But let me show you how much I want this. How much I want you.”
She covered her face with her hands. “This is gonna end so badly, Gage.”
I pulled her back into me. “You keep saying that, and I just keep falling harder for you.”
She groaned. “I really hate how much I love your cardigans.”
“Look. It’s late. Reader Weekend is this week. All I’m asking is that you think about it. Okay?”
She took a deep breath. “Fine. But just remember. You asked for this,” she said grumpily.
I cupped her face gently. “And while you’re doing your thinking, just remember that I could spend the rest of my life with your ‘too much’ and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
“Stop being so good at words.”