Twenty-four
The crowd swallowed her without a second thought.
London pressed through bodies, noise escalating around her—music and chatter and laughter—the kind of noise that came from people who’d been drinking since afternoon and had no plans of stopping until the new year. She kept track of that carpenter jacket, afraid if she looked away, she’d lose it.
Harper hadn’t seen her yet.
There was still time to turn around. Time to swim back against the current of bodies, head back to the inn, and finish folding the towels. She could decide that tonight wasn’t the night, that she’d tried—and trying counted. She could put a pin in it and come back later, when conditions were better.
But would conditions ever be better?
She kept moving.
She was maybe ten feet away when something one of Harper’s friends said got her laughing, full and unguarded.
Her head tilted back the way it did when something really tickled her, her hand covered her mouth like she could stop it, but the joy had already escaped.
Harper’s laugh—her real, unfiltered laugh—was infectious.
Making her laugh—getting her to truly let go—used to be one of London's favorite things.
Past tense.
Five feet.
Harper turned, as if she sensed something changing in the air around her. She found London’s eyes immediately, like she’d known.
The laugh disappeared, and Harper’s face did that thing that London couldn’t read, the thing that was neither glad nor mad, neither open nor closed.
London immediately understood—no one was going to rescue her from this.
She'd started it and it was time to finish.
Whatever happened next was entirely up to her.
Harper leaned into the guy next to her and said something directly into his ear, putting a hand on his arm. Then she looked back to London and tilted her head. Follow me.
It could’ve been worse.
Harper pushed through a heavy door into the alley, and they were back in the cold London had just come from.
It was immediate and biting, like a wall that separated her from comfort and consistency.
When the door slammed behind them, the noise dropped to a low irritation.
Still there, just no longer their problem.
The alley was narrow and dark and smelled like the space behind a brewery would smell.
A stack of pallets leaned against the wall to her left, a dumpster full of things contributing to the aroma sat slightly open behind them.
Overhead, the stars presided. Not as bright as at the Sleeping Lady. Still impressive.
Harper turned to her, arms crossed, collar on her coat already turned up.
“Hi,” London said.
Harper waited.
“I had a whole speech,” London said. “It was . . . better than this.” She had things to say in the car. On the walk over. Now her mind had gone completely, uselessly quiet.
Harper stood, the dark of the alley helping hide her expression.
“I’ve been—” London started, then stopped. “I owe you an apology. A real one.”
“Okay,” Harper said. Not warmly.
“I was wrong. About the inn. About—” London gestured between them, looking at the stain-splotched snow beneath her feet. “About everything. I was scared, and I kept choosing control over you.”
Harper looked beyond her. Past the pallets. Past the dumpster. To a place London wasn’t. Her jaw tightened.
How many times had they had this talk? They were dangerously close to a pattern London couldn't talk her way out of.
“And I’m sorry. Sorry in a way I didn’t even know was possible. I wish I could just go back and—”
“Don’t.”
“Can I just—”
“Just don’t, London. You’re a smart person. You’ve always been able to figure out what went wrong. That’s not the problem,” Harper said, turning back toward the back door, ready to take a step.
That was the problem with history. Harper had twenty years of evidence to back up her claims, and London couldn’t dispute them.
“The problem is,” Harper said slowly. “I’ve been here before.
I’ve been—I keep ending up in the same place with you.
Where it almost happens and then it doesn’t and you have ‘good reasons’,” Harper made air quotes around good reasons with her gloved hands.
“And then I’m a second or third choice and I’m standing somewhere by myself hurt and trying to figure out how I got there again. ”
The words landed somewhere deep, somewhere London couldn’t pinpoint. They found the place where things went when they were terrible and true at the same time.
“I can’t be the thing you almost choose again. I cannot do it.”
Harper said it the way London feared most. Not with anger. With the resolve of someone who’d come to terms with how things were.
She opened her mouth and what came out was, “I can see how you’d feel that way.”
Harper’s expression shifted and London heard it. I can see how you’d feel that way. Wrong voice. Entirely wrong voice. She sounded like someone running a meeting, not someone standing in the freezing cold in the back alley of a brewery trying to save the most important thing in her life.
Harper uncrossed her arms, stepped toward the door. “Okay.” Her tone was unemotional. Like London had just asked if she’d mind vacuuming the hallway or carrying a load of firewood in.
“Wait—” London said. “Wait, that came out wrong. I’m doing this all wrong. I had a whole thing and it’s just—I can’t—”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Harper. I know it’s not fine. Please—let me finish?”
Harper’s hand was on the door now, but she went still. Not staying. Not leaving.
London stopped trying to find the right thing to say.
“I love that you warm your milk before the coffee, so it doesn’t go cold,” London said. “I love that you’ve been calling my mother once a week—even though you don’t have to, and she certainly wouldn’t know if you didn’t.”
Harper’s hand found her pockets. She’d stopped looking past her. She was looking at her now, directly, the way she had in the kitchen that first week back—like she was deciding how much of this to let in.
“I love that you complain about hiking, every single time, and then beat me to the top. I love that you put everyone else first and somehow still manage to respect yourself at the same time. I’ve never understood how you do that and I’ve been watching for twenty years.”
Was she getting through?
“And I’ve watched you do that over and over for a month. With me, the inn. You’ve been kind and patient and somehow haven’t punched me yet, though let’s be honest, you’ve earned at least one.”
A burst of sound erupted from inside—cheering, counting.
“The truth is, I’ve missed you. More than I’ve admitted to myself. And I keep fucking it up. I got lost in my grief and my needs and I completely abandoned your grief and your needs.”
Somewhere beyond the cold, beyond the bricks and the pallets and the dumpster, a cheer rose, distant and collective—the sound of a year ending. A new beginning. The promise of tomorrow, today. Neither looked, neither moved. The new year arrived without them noticing, which felt about right.
“And goddammit, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. I realized this about you twenty years ago, and I never stopped wanting that, darling. I never stopped wanting you. I just—”
“Did you just When Harry Met Sally me?”
“What?”
“The whole, ‘when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone’ bit. That’s from When Harry Met Sally.”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t care—but I guarantee Harry didn’t know about the milk.”
“Fucking London Mercer. You’re like—you’re like a fucking wall I can see and still walk into. I’m a cartoon comedy.”
London let herself relax; a tiny huff of a laugh came out. “You’re not a cartoon.”
“I walked into a door this week because I was thinking about you. An actual, physical door.”
London winced. “Was it bad?”
“For my ego, yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m actually not.” So, Harper had been thinking about her.
After a long, silent stare—there it was—that almost smile London had been waiting for. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But the first evidence that the Harper she still knew was in there, underneath all the resolve and crossed arms and monosyllables. Underneath the protective shell, Harper was there.
It faded just as quickly as it’d appeared.
“What happens next time you get scared?” Harper asked. Her voice had gone quiet again, like she was weighing the twenty years of good reasons to walk back through the door, to the brewery, to her friends. To those who weren’t scared.
London sat with the question, watching as people filed out of the Festhalle, the ambient noise of celebration still charging the air.
“I’ll get scared again. I can’t promise I won’t.” She let that sit.
“But I can promise I won’t disappear. I know the difference now. Between scared and gone. I spent a year treating them like they’re the same, and they’re not. Scared means I need you. Gone means I was too afraid to let you know.”
“I’m still angry.”
Anger was good. Anger meant she was still invested. London resisted the inner voice that told her to keep explaining. Explain it away. If she could only see—
“And hurt. I want you to know how much you hurt me.” Harper dug her boot into the snow. “Not so you feel bad. Just so you know.”
“I do know,” London said. “I hurt you in a way I don’t know if I can forgive myself for.”
She meant that.
The version of herself who ran instead of facing things was still a work in progress. But she knew the difference now.
“I was folding a mountain of towels tonight, and I realized, all this time, it’s been me. It’s been my shit getting in the way.”
“It’s not all you,” Harper said. “Nothing is all you or all me. And that’s the whole point.”
“But still—”
London stopped. She’d done all she could do. Continuing to press wouldn’t change anything—and if the past was any indicator, it would only make it worse. The rest belonged to Harper.
Harper closed the distance between them—not rushing; also, not hesitating.
Just moving, like she did everything. Calm, collected.
Like she’d decided, and the deciding was the hard part—the rest was just motion.
Both hands found London’s jaw; the leather of her gloves was cold and oddly comforting.
She looked at her, searching for something true.
Like London’s eyes would reveal what words couldn’t.
They did.
Harper kissed her.
Not the way London had imagined when she was waiting at the corner.
Not the movie version with the big speech and the cheers and the sweet relief of forgiveness.
Just Harper’s cold hands and London’s cold face in an alley that smelled like hops and stale French fries, and the stars overhead doing their reasonable best, and the irreplaceable feeling of something that had been wrong for a long time starting to go right.
This kiss wasn’t like the first time, with the electricity and na?veté and potential. It wasn’t two thirty-year-olds having fun. This was mature and deep and knowing—and fleeting.
When Harper pulled back, she didn’t go far. She stood, facing London, holding both her hands.
“Okay,” she said, quieter now. It wasn’t everything fixed. It wasn’t a clean slate. It wasn’t a guarantee with a bow on top, or anything more than okay.
London knew that. She knew it wasn’t the end of the hard part, like the movies wanted her to believe. She knew what okay meant, and she’d take it.
It was Harper choosing. Eyes open. Hurt still present. Choosing anyway.
“Okay,” London said back.