Chapter Twenty-Two
Drew
Four days of phone calls can feel like four years if you time them wrong.
We’d started strong—night one on the dot, both of us pretending we weren’t counting seconds before picking up.
Night two, I closed early and ducked into the office, only for a delivery truck to back into the Stag’s loading dock and set off a chain reaction of righteous chaos.
I called late. She answered anyway. Night three, PTA ran late.
We made it happen, but the edges were frayed. Night four, I missed her call by ten minutes and she missed mine by twelve and the texts that followed felt like two ships tapping Morse code through fog:
You okay?
All good. You?
Fine. Sorry.
Me too.
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow.
We were trying. That mattered. It just didn’t always feel like enough. Somewhere between our voices and our calendars, something slipped. Not bad faith. Gravity. The kind that pulls you back into your own life whether you meant to or not.
Which is how I found myself pulling into a downtown parking garage in Seattle with a to-go box of gingerbread pancakes on the passenger seat, a paper bag from Riley in the back with two scones labeled brAVE IDIOT in Sharpie, and a stomach making unhelpful choices about whether to be excited, nauseous, or both.
The garage was concrete and echo and the smell of metal. And something else. I stepped out and was hit by a scent that can only be described as Not Christmas. There was hot rubber, old coffee, and a sour smell.
Great.
“Jingle hell,” I muttered, slamming the door with my hip and grabbing the box and the bag. The elevator was an industrial steel box with a flickering overhead light and a floor that had seen things.
I hit “L” and it creaked into motion like it resented the request.
In Reckless River, I could’ve walked into anyone’s lobby with a nod and a “how’s your mom.”
Seattle had rules.
And attendants. And an intercom system that took one look at a guy in flannel and flagged me as someone who might ask where to tie his horse or pitch a tent.
The lobby was glass and marble, tasteful wreath, poinsettias lined up like soldiers.
The attendant behind the desk wore a suit so sharp it should’ve come with a warning.
He clocked me, the bag, the box, the flannel, and arranged his face into the kind of professional neutrality that says please be brief.
“Afternoon,” I said, turning on the version of me that calms holiday drunks and wedding parties with competing toasts. “I’m here to see Melanie Sauser. Apartment—”
“I’m afraid I can’t let visitors up without confirmation,” he said, pleasant in the way of people who enjoy rules the way I enjoy a perfectly poured pint.
His nametag said Tad. Of course it did.
“Totally get it,” I said. “I texted her, but she’s probably in the middle of an email. Any chance I could leave these at the desk?”
He eyed the box like it might contain anthrax pancakes. “Per policy, we can’t accept perishables.”
“They’re gingerbread. Practically immortal.”
“Perishables,” he repeated gently.
“Right,” I said, because being charming only gets you so far when a man has a manual. I pulled out my phone.
Surprise. I typed. In your lobby. Surprise element is gone, but I’m being held hostage. –D
The message hung there unsent because my thumb decided to sit in the space between nerve and nerve. You can talk a big game about brave. Sometimes brave looks like pressing a blue arrow on a screen.
Before I could commit, the lobby doors whispered open behind me on a gust of damp December, and her voice rode in with it.
“I swear, if one more person bumps me with a stroller, I’m moving to…the Alps.” Shopping bags rustled; heels clicked. “Or a monastery.”
Melanie walked in carrying the city like a coat she couldn’t decide whether to keep.
Two bags hit one hip, another dangled off her elbow like it had opinions.
Her hair was up in a high, slightly defeated bun, which somehow made her cheekbones criminal.
The cold had painted her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, the kind of pink you only get from weather you survive.
She was mid-conversation when she saw me. The sentence snapped clean in half.
For a second, the whole lobby went quiet.
Or maybe it didn’t; maybe the traffic kept doing what traffic does, and the elevator kept protesting, and Tad kept auditing my soul.
But her face did a thing—tight to bright, cautious to lit—and I felt something in my chest answer like a dog hearing its name.
“Drew?” she said, careful and warm in the same breath.
“It’s me.”
She’d finally given herself permission to feel what her eyes had already done. “Drew.”
“Hey, Babe,” I said.
The bags slid out of her hands. One tipped, disgorging tissue paper and a sweater the exact shade of December cheer.
She didn’t glance down. She just crossed the distance between us in five of the fastest steps I’ve ever seen anyone take in heels and launched herself into my space like she’d been practicing in her head for days.
We collided with the kind of relief that rearranges posture. I got an arm around her without dropping the pancakes, pulled her in, and breathed. She smelled like rain and peppermint and a department store candle that swore it was a fir tree. Her laugh landed somewhere near my heart.
I remembered Tad and turned my head just enough to say, “See? I’m not a bad guy.”
Tad’s mouth twitched. “I never said you were.”
“You implied it with your eyes, Tad,” I chuckled.
He coughed into his tie and found something urgent to look at on his screen.
Mel pulled back enough to look me over, hands staying at my sides like she didn’t entirely trust I was real. “You drove? Or did you…teleport?”
“I drove.”
“You absolute maniac,” she said, and then softer, like an apology for every ship that had passed in fog this week, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I said. I lifted the bag and the box. “Brought provisions. Pancakes. And, uh, scones.”
Her eyes went soft. “Riley?”
“Label says ‘For Brave Idiots.’ I think she meant both of us.”
“I’ll thank her when I visit,” she said, giggling.
Good sign, right?
A giggle.
We stood there grinning like actual idiots until the elevator chimed and a small parade of humanity flowed around us, an elderly woman with a dog in a sweater, a guy balancing six boxes like a circus act, and a teenager wearing headphones the size of planets.
Mel noticed me noticing. Her smile twitched at the edges, a little fond and a little sad. I could see the thought moving through her. City magic. City noise. City everything.
Reckless River couldn’t compete with this kind of constant.
Before melancholy could assign seats, I tipped my head toward the desk.
“Ready to be underwhelmed by my apartment?”
“If you live there, I’ll love every inch of it.”
She studied me for a second, and a smile touched her lips.
The elevator smelled like wet umbrellas and a hint of somebody’s lunch.
Definitely not pine.
“Not very holiday-ish,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“You get used to it,” she said. “Like jazz on hold and sirens at two a.m.”
“Romantic.”
“City poetry,” she said, and gave me a quick sideways look, and I couldn’t help grinning.
The elevator doors opened to a hallway that looked like a nice hotel.
She led me down it with quick, sure steps, and I followed like a man who’d been trying not to want to be here for months and had failed beautifully.
Inside her apartment, Seattle wrapped around us again—the rain-slicked view, the whisper of traffic, lights she’d strung around the windows that made the glass look like it was wearing jewelry.
A wreath hung a little crooked on the inside of the door, and a snow globe sat on the coffee table like a dare.
Reckless River etched on the base.
She clocked me clocking it. “Don’t get weird.”
“I won’t,” I said, already weird.
We stood in the living room, and for a heartbeat, I wanted to kiss her, sure. I also wanted to sit on her couch, hear about her day, and find out which drawer the spoons live in.
I set the food on the counter like it was an offering to whatever gods oversee idiots who try.
“Hungry?” I asked.
“Always,” she said, then slanted me a look. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Believe it,” I said. “I wanted to make sure you remembered Reckless River.” I tapped the snow globe. “And me.”
Her expression moved through a handful of things—surprise, joy, the flicker of panic that’s just caution wearing a mask, and something else I didn’t deserve but wanted anyway.
“I’m not likely to forget either.”
“Good,” I said, because articulate speech had left the building. I cleared my throat. “It’s not to see where you live.”
She laughed, the sound loosening my spine. “There’s not much to see. Couch. Desk. Window that leaks on days it rains sideways.”
“Desk,” I repeated, eyeing the little work nook arranged like a tiny command center—the laptop, the pens in a mug, the paper stacked neatly. “This is where you turn chaos into learning?”
“Among other heroics,” she said, chin up.
I let myself stand there and take the place in.
Not to judge it. It wasn’t big. It was tidy.
It smelled like the candle on the counter.
The heater hummed a city-song you don’t get in our old buildings by the river.
If Reckless River was wood and wool and the sound of snow, this was glass and hum and the soft percussion of rain.
It didn’t make me want to run. It made me want to say something dumb like I could be here.
“Want coffee?” she asked, moving to the machine with the confidence of someone who has absolutely given a lecture on proper bean storage at a party.
“I’d love some. It was a long drive.” I smiled and shrugged. “But worth it.”
She shook her head and busied herself with the ritual, and I let myself watch without turning it into a thing. This was the part I’d wanted to see: her in her habitat, sleeves pushed to her elbows, the city reflected in the window behind her like a silent chorus. Not fantasy. Fact.