Chapter Fifty-Three
We stay wrapped up together, kissing softly on the couch, afterward. George’s fingers trail down my spine, and then I sit up suddenly, remembering what I came for. “I want to read the rest of your letters.”
“Not now,” George says, tilting his head up for another kiss. “Let’s save that humiliation for another time.”
I shake my head. “I’m utterly desperate to open that box.”
We get dressed and curl up on the sofa with the chest between us, and George watches me, flushed, as I flick the latch and open the lid.
It’s stuffed with scraps of paper, postcards, letters, and ephemera from our friendship.
A blue jay feather. A sketch of a labyrinth.
The menu from my final presentation at culinary school.
Some of the letters are in my handwriting.
Some of them are in George’s. I pull out one of mine.
It’s a homemade card with a drawing of George and me playing in the field on the front and a message written in blue marker inside.
To George,
Happy 9th birthday! I hope you like your present.
From your best friend,
Frankie
“Do you remember what you got me?” George asks.
I shake my head.
“You’d captured a toad and put it in a shoebox with holes in the top.”
“And you let it go!” I say as it comes back to me.
“It was cruel to keep it.”
I take out another, written in purple pen. I can tell from the handwriting that I would have been a teenager.
It’ll never happen again. I promise.
“This must have been when I tried to seduce you.”
He laughs. “That green bra was torture.”
Next, I take out a Post-it note from when we were roommates:
I can’t believe I’m living with the EDITOR IN CHIEF of The Eyeopener!!!! So proud of you. Invite the staff for dinner next Monday???
I shake my head. “It’s all here.”
“Not everything. I kept the ones that made me smile or laugh.”
Before I can say anything, George gives me another piece of paper. “I like this one, too. I found it when I came home last month.” It’s what I left for him in the mailbox back in June.
I see you everywhere. And it only makes me miss you more.
I shake my head, marveling. “I wish I’d known sooner.”
“Known what?”
“That I could fall in love with you so easily if I let myself.” Then again, maybe I’ve always known that. Maybe that’s what I was afraid of.
He brushes my hair back. “You have no idea how much I hoped you would.”
Mindlessly, I reach for his glasses and start cleaning them.
“I love it when you do that,” he says.
“Really? It doesn’t annoy you that I’m always stealing them away?”
He shakes his head. “It’s this little way you take care of me. It’s nice.”
I will take care of him. I will take care of George the way I’ve always tried to, and I will take care of him in ways I’ve never been able to before.
I will give him all the love he’s always deserved.
And he will love me in the way only George can.
Relentlessly. It feels so obvious to me now.
An answer to a question I didn’t know how to ask.
“Then I will clean your dirty, sexy glasses whenever I feel like it,” I say.
His brows pop. “Sexy?”
“Oh yeah,” I tell him. “These are very good.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I read the rest of your letters now?” I ask.
His reply is a kiss to my temple.
I pull one out, a postcard from Vancouver, and start reading. My eyes blur with tears as I devour it, and another, and another. George moves next to me, wrapping his arm around me, and I set my head on his shoulder.
When we were kids, we used to imagine that we were a king and queen and the Big House was our castle. But now I think we could make castles anywhere. I sit in planes and on buses, and I picture you beside me, and the world feels like our kingdom.
In a letter written when he was twenty-five:
I reread Little Women this week. In it, Marmee tells Jo that she and Laurie are too alike to be a good match.
They have “hot tempers” and “strong wills” and are “too fond of freedom.” But I think that’s what would have made them great together.
I think they would have had a big, loud, epic life together. I think we would, too.
A postcard from S?o Paulo:
Do you know how many words there are to describe the color purple? I’ve come up with ten, but none of them seems to capture the shade of your eyes, so I’m settling for violet. Frankie, you have the most beautiful violet eyes.
I look up at George. And then I close the distance between us. Suddenly, I feel starved for him again. His body. His skin. His soul inside mine. I climb onto his lap and lower my mouth to his, and he lets out a breath.
“Are you okay?”
He brushes his nose against mine, smiling. “I still can’t believe it,” he says. “It’s going to take a while for it to sink in.”
My words from earlier.
“I love you,” I tell him.
George shuts his eyes, soaking it in, and then his lips find mine. His eyes open with a familiar spark.
He flips me onto my back and hovers over me.
“I love you more,” he says.
I laugh. “So it’s a competition?”
“No,” George says as he lowers his forehead to mine. “I love you more. It’s canon.”
“We’ll see about that.” I run my hands over his chest, tracing his tattoo. “You know how competitive I am, and I think I can prove otherwise.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might take a while,” he says, his tongue skimming over my bottom lip. “Might take all night.”
“Might take forever,” I tell him as his mouth finds my throat.
Until the end of time.
George lifts his head, eyes darting between mine.
“Think you can handle me?” I ask.
“No.” He grins. “There’s no handling you, and I wouldn’t want to try. I love that about you. You’re never too much—I always want more.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“I’ve been careful long enough.”
I’m surprised when a tear blinks out of my eye.
George kisses it away. “I promise to love you always.”
“I promise to love you back.”
“A promise for a promise,” George says.
Our best one yet.