Chapter Fifty-Two
Mimi is at the door, waiting for us. She’s dressed in a housecoat and her red wig, smoking a skinny, her free arm crossed over her stomach.
“Francesca, darling.” She nods at the chest I’ve tucked under my arm. “I’ve been telling him to give those to you for years. He kept saying he was waiting for the perfect time, and I kept telling him there is no such thing.”
I nod. “But I don’t know if I would have been ready for them before. I’m ready now.”
I feel the weight of George’s gaze on my face as Mimi considers what I’ve said. She waves her hand, dismissing the notion.
“Rubbish,” she says. “You’re just sticking up for him, like usual.”
I tilt my head. “Just like you’ve kept his secrets.”
“With great reluctance.” Mimi takes a drag of her cigarette, smiling. “But the cat’s out of the bag now. Et qu’est-ce que tu vas faire, ma chère?”
“Laisse-la,” George says, his voice stern.
I look to him to translate, but he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
Mimi clears her throat. “I asked what you were going to do about it.”
I don’t realize that I’ve slowly been inching toward George, leaning against his side, until he sets a hand on my back.
“We’ll let you know,” I tell her, kissing her good night. I move toward the library, George at my side. “But don’t wait up.”
George closes the door behind us, muffling Mimi’s laughter, and I look around.
This room used to seem so big, so imposing.
The leaded glass windows are hung with heavy brocade drapes, tasseled ropes cinched around their middles.
Persian carpets cover almost every inch of the wood floors.
There’s an enormous stone fireplace, two overstuffed wing chairs, and a tufted leather sofa.
And of course, the books. The walls are covered with shelves full of novels and biographies, and the room smells of their worn pages.
When we were very young, George and I made grand plans for how we’d improve the Big House if we were its owners.
We’d run a waterslide from his bedroom window down to the pool and plant a cedar hedge labyrinth and a pumpkin patch.
At Halloween, we’d host a haunted house so fabulous and frightening that parents would drive their kids all the way from Peterborough to see it.
I’d dress as a witch and George, a warlock.
Now everything looks a little faded and dusty, and I feel the call to take care of it. Fresh paint and elbow grease. Air the cigarette smoke out of the drapes.
I set down the box, squeeze behind the bookshelf, and push open the door to the cupboard. When I pull the chain on the light bulb, I’m shocked by how tiny it seems. We’re far too big.
“We won’t fit in there anymore,” I say, looking at George over my shoulder.
“We grew up.”
I stare at the bare bulb dangling over the four feet of floor that served as the headquarters to our friendship, where we hatched plans and wrote vows and argued about an imaginary labyrinth.
I don’t remember how old we were the final time we wedged our bodies into the cupboard’s embrace.
I wonder if we knew that we were outgrowing its confines.
Did our limbs get tangled? Were we at an age when being pressed together felt awkward?
We’ll never be those kids again, whispering schemes and telling tales.
“It’s so sad,” I say, returning to George. “Don’t you wish that we could curl up in there and debate what to put in the center of the labyrinth?”
“A secret garden,” he says.
“A fountain,” I insist.
An argument as old as our friendship.
“It is sad,” George says. “But I don’t want to go back.”
“No?”
George crosses the room to me. “But I promise I’ll treasure the memories, the arguments, and the dares. Every race, every game of Marco Polo. All the trees we climbed. All the mistakes we made.”
George raises his hand, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I feel caught between worlds, here in this library, remembering.
“I will treasure them, too,” I pledge. “All the nights we watched the stars. The dive bars. The piggyback rides. Every meal we ate together.”
“The messes I cleaned up.”
“Every morning when your voice was the first thing I heard,” I say.
“They are the best moments of my life,” George says.
And there could be so many more.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Nate,” he says. “I didn’t know how, and I didn’t want you to hate me. But I promise I would have.”
“I know.”
I know you.
George has spent years keeping his feelings inside that wooden chest. He’s still learning how to let them out. We both are.
“I was surprised and hurt,” I tell him. “I was scared, too. There was no room to see things from your perspective.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “You can’t imagine how sorry I am.”
“I think I can. I know I’ve hurt you, and I can’t stand myself for it.
Your letters…They broke my heart, George.
” I blink back tears. “You’ve always been the most important person in my life, but I never let myself imagine that you could be more than a friend.
Every time I found myself wondering if it could be more, I’d push it away, telling myself it didn’t mean anything.
When you moved out of our apartment, I didn’t let myself consider why it felt like you’d ripped out a piece of my heart and taken it with you.
At least you’ve been honest with yourself.
I was too stubborn to see what you could mean to me.
” My best friend. My lover. My soulmate.
“Frankie,” he says, taking my hand. “I adore how stubborn you are.”
I laugh. “That’s absurd. You are absurd. And I’m so in love with you.”
His lips are on mine before I finish saying the sentence. Another laugh bubbles up my throat. George is kissing me, and I’m kissing him. This, I think, is what’s at the center of the labyrinth. George and me, kissing each other for as long as possible.
I pull back, meeting those deep blue eyes.
“I love you, Frankie. My love for you is fundamental to who I am. It’s deep in my bones. A sonnet written in the marrow.”
“Absurd,” I say, my smile as wide as it’s ever been.
“Frankie.” My name rasps from his lips.
“George.”
He swallows his name with a greedy kiss. Then he hoists me off the floor and walks us over to the couch. He sits down, taking me with him, so that I’m straddling his lap. I rope my arms around his neck.
He flashes me a grin before stealing another kiss. “I can’t believe I get to do that.”
“You do that exceptionally well.”
He smiles. “I love you, Frankie. You are everything I know about love.”
We lose each other in our lips. In our whispered confessions. In our touch. It feels new, all over again. We tell each other secrets with only our hands. We make promises with our tongues. We undress each other with reverence, laying devotional kisses to jaws and shoulders and scars.
“You know what I’ve always wanted to do?” he asks, removing my underwear.
“Tell me,” I breathe.
He gives me a wicked grin and tilts his head in the direction of the cupboard.
“Think we can fit?”
He holds out his hand. “Only one way to find out.”
We barely squeeze inside, but there’s just enough room for George to back me against the wall and hook my leg around his hip. He fits himself inside me with one powerful thrust that has us both gasping. We stare into each other’s eyes, and it’s not the past that unfolds before me; it’s our future.
Endless possibilities. A lifetime of adventures. Laughter. Arguments. Dancing. Travel. Sex. Food. Friendship.
And one constant.
Us.