Chapter Forty-Four
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The unsettled feeling slithered back into me—winding around the ache of missing Macon, winding around my fears about the bookstore and my bank accounts—as the car twisted down the mountains and away from Ridgetop.
I had thought I was finally standing on bedrock, but what if this was just a layer of strata—as sparkly as mica but also as thin and brittle?
What if my life crumbled again? What if I fell through?
No . I loved him, and he loved me. Bedrock.
But what if he never wanted to get married? Would I be okay with that?
What if he did want to marry me? Would I be okay with that ?
Oh God.
I did.
I wanted to marry him.
It wasn’t a question like it had been with Cory. It was an answer.
I wanted to marry Macon and live in his stone cottage forever and help take care of his mother and watch his garden bloom and see my bookstore thrive and bring him to Disney World with my family and then delight in his exasperated reactions to the corporate monoculture.
I wanted to grow old with him and raise a series of dignified cats.
I wanted to kiss him when our hair thinned and our skin sagged and our knees stopped working and we both forgot the word for “blue.” I wanted to die beside him in bed someday, many decades from now, holding hands in our sleep.
I wanted to be buried beside him and have our names carved on a joint tombstone so that everyone who ever stumbled across it for the rest of eternity would know that we belonged to each other.