Chapter 36
Present Day
In the end, we eat our celebratory dinner at the studio, takeout from the best Thai place in town. I don’t want anything fancy—probably
because it’d just remind me of Magnolia, the very person this accomplishment sets me apart from. Plus, Hallie crashes dramatically
once the sugar wears off, and even a jaunt to the restaurant threatens to undo her entirely.
I manage to forget about Lincoln for a while, but as Hallie and I drive across the bridge toward home, across the water speckled
in gold from the setting sun, I can’t help but remember. I glance in the rearview and see that Hallie’s asleep in her booster
seat.
I pull into our neighborhood and through the winding streets to our house. It really wasn’t fair of Fitz to put Lincoln on
the spot like that, demanding answers for why he broke up with me a decade and a half ago. It’s especially grating considering
how generous Lincoln has been, letting Hallie tag along with her new buddy, saving me from a couple of sticky spots.
Once I get Hallie tucked in and know she’s good and asleep, I slip into my flip-flops at the front door. I skip across my
driveway and over the green space to the house next door. I knock.
There’s no answer.
I wait and knock gently again. I hear rustling from the yard and walk around to the side of the house, following a path of solar lights. The grass is still warm as it reaches up and over the base of my flip-flops, and soon I’m at the waist-high picket fence.
Lincoln stands in the backyard, leaning to pull and tinker with plants, some sort of light contraption attached to his head.
I knock on the fence, looking right at him. I prepare to smile and wave when he looks up. But when he does, he nearly blinds
me with the light.
“Sorry!” He fumbles to shut the light off and ambles over to the gate. He smiles and pops it open. “You’ve caught me doing
my night gardening.”
My heart squeezes. “Night gardening? Tell me more.”
He chuckles. “It’s a necessity for this climate. All you need is a headlamp, and weeding works just as well in the dark. Not
to mention, the water won’t disappear under the sun.” He waves me through the gate.
“I won’t keep you from your duties,” I say. “Plus, I’ve got Hal asleep at home.” I glance back at the house.
Lincoln points. “You can still see your house from our back patio, if you want to sit.”
I don’t think twice before I follow him there. The nighttime bugs chirp enthusiastically in the warm air, our Southern symphony.
I’ll only be a few minutes, and it’ll be nice to relax for a moment after this long day. I settle into an old wrought iron
patio chair. It grates against the concrete as I shift it. I cringe.
“He’d sleep through a hurricane,” Lincoln says, apparently reading my thoughts.
“Thank goodness.” I plant myself. “Hallie can hear a pin fall clear across the water.”
Lincoln flips on the string lights and at once we’re in our own fairy garden, flanked by potted plants, a well-loved grill, and a healthy stash of kids’ yard toys.
“I wanted to come apologize for earlier,” I say. “I didn’t realize you lost your dad recently, and so I wanted to say I’m
sorry about that too.”
Lincoln shrugs. “You know things weren’t great between us. He took off for the West Coast not long after I went to New York,
and we sort of lost touch. I tell myself it was for the best; he didn’t seem to want to be a dad. But it showed me how important
the rest of my family is—my mom and sister.”
I nod. “Happily-ever-afters in the dad category aren’t always on offer.”
He squeezes a brief smile in understanding.
I pull in a quick breath. “Also, Fitz shouldn’t have cornered you like that today, and I hope you know I didn’t put him up
to it.”
Lincoln laughs. “From first impressions, Fitz doesn’t seem like one to be put up to things by anyone.”
“Quite the valid point,” I say.
“And it wasn’t a big deal,” Lincoln says. “Honestly, it’s not like we can ignore what happened forever, what with us living
next door and the kids being friends.”
I feel a tingle run through me, but I can’t quite decide if it’s excitement or fear.
“I guess you’re right,” I say.
We both stop and let the singing bugs fill the silence. There’s a longing for Lincoln that has never quite left me, and looking
at him here, in the most darling garden this side of the bridge, makes me feel years younger. Careless and swept up in how
easy it is to delight in him.
Still, he might have quite opposite feelings, harboring resentment over the cold way I cut him off. Maybe he’s nothing but relieved to have avoided getting caught up in my family politics. Maybe he’s even seeing someone else. I feel jealousy prickle at the mere thought of it. There are so many reasons my relentless fondness is a recipe for hurt, but I’d be a liar if I said a little part of me didn’t hope he wished things had turned out differently too.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Lincoln says eventually.
I glance down. “I blocked your number.” I sigh regretfully. “If it helps, I did it to protect myself more than to hurt you.”
“I probably deserved it,” he says. “Back then I thought I knew everything.”
I smile. “That was me too. All-knowing expert on life. I mean, I led you right into the lion’s den to a dinner with Magnolia
Senior and didn’t even stop to wonder if that was a terrible, awful idea. Easy breezy , if I remember right.” I flop my palm across my face.
We laugh.
I feel myself loosen with relief, my shoulders dropping, as I admit my part in things. I wasn’t as blameless as I told myself
I was back then. But still, the catch in my chest happens, the one that’s reflex by now when I remember how he left. That
moment when all I wanted was for him to admit that I was important to him too. I wanted him to want me at the same time.
But he didn’t.
I’ve never been able to shake that.
I shrug. “But it seems to have worked out all right. I mean it when I say it this time: I’m happy for you. Your work is incredible,
and you made it. You got what you wanted.”
He reaches out a hand that lands on my arm. His eyes meet mine and don’t make any move to leave, and I wonder if he agrees. I think about all the magazine articles, the exhibitions I saw online, the artsy parties at which I’m sure he was fawned over. He didn’t just make it work ; he made it big . There isn’t a way he could have that and carry any regrets.
But then I think about that comment earlier at the studio. Maybe I’m making something out of nothing.
Maybe not.
All I want is for him to tell me what he meant.
“I did want the career, but I also wasn’t looking at the whole picture,” Lincoln says. “I’m sorry about how I hurt you. I
didn’t handle it well. Not only was I blinded by the need for financial security, but I thought I was the only one with real
feelings. I thought I’d be an idiot if I made a big deal of me leaving after you told me you didn’t want more than a summer
thing. I imagined you pouting for a second, then giving me a peck and telling me to give you a call when I was next in town.
Until you said it, I had no idea you had real feelings. I felt the same, Mack. I loved you too.”
My chest lights up like a star exploding in space, and it feels like it could shatter me. Like it’s been waiting for this.
I look at him, and I believe him. We were young and dumb, both of us; I made my fair share of mistakes too. Maybe that’s why
I never could make him out to be the big bad guy I thought he should’ve been for leaving. Why no matter how hard I tried,
I couldn’t hate him because he didn’t deserve it, and even if he’d done worse, I simply wasn’t built to hate him.
I was built to hold quite opposite feelings for him.
And now, years later, and even if his words don’t match the exact script I wanted all those years ago, what he said sounds
an awful lot like, I wanted you too.
“I should’ve quit calling it a summer thing,” I say. “It was far more, and I was just too proud to say it first.”
Lincoln catches my eyes in a way I haven’t seen—no, felt —in a decade and a half, and it turns my limbs to butterflies, my brain to pulp. I don’t look away. I don’t because I don’t want to. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. And I’ve been chasing this feeling for all these years in between.
His hand on my arm squeezes gently, and I can feel the electricity running between us, not a day aged in fifteen years. My
skin shivers, despite the muggy night air. I should be sensible; I should be an adult , but my attempts are shoddy at best. I let myself feel every memory of him, and I let myself revel in it.
I float toward him.
Lincoln meets me, knowing just where, like a preplanned spot. We came to this place so many times. And when we’re together,
the space around the edge of it is so narrow, it’s almost impossible not to fall in and down into the depths.
Lincoln’s hand creeps up and wraps around my neck. He pulls me in gently and all at once, and our lips meet. It’s like unlocking
a part of myself that’s been sleeping all these years. He stands and lifts me with him, and I wrap my arms up and around him
like he might escape me again. He’s the same, but firmer and wider, and as I run my fingers over the folds of his skin, envy
burns at the way they remind me he’s lived years without me.
I pull back for breath.
“Years later and still ... ,” he says.
“No matter how hard I tried to forget,” I say.
He pulls my face back to his, and my mouth parts to meet his once more. I squeeze my body against his. I wasn’t wrong about
him when I fell for him all those years ago; I wasn’t only young and naive. I wasn’t wrong when I thought Lincoln was good
and lovable and every drop of magic I remember.
“Finally.” The word escapes his lips.
I pull in a breath to reply but stop as the lid of a trash can slams at the fence.
We freeze.
Whip our heads to look.
I hang on his neck, and we stare silently at Mrs. Andrews’s side of the fence, checking for the shadow of a figure spying
over the shrubs. I look back to him, and the laughter spills from us.
“Damn it, Mrs. Andrews,” Lincoln whispers.
I release myself from his front, surely red-faced and disheveled. “You think she saw us?”
Lincoln rubs at his chin, framing his grin, the same way he always has. “Who knows. She’s harmless anyhow.”
I nod, looking at him. My racing heart echoes in my chest. “But I definitely should get going. Before we find ourselves too
far down memory lane.”
Lincoln chuckles, letting his hands drop from around me. “If you must.”
I sneak back over to my house, tiptoeing across the grass as if Magnolia Senior will be standing and waiting, tapping her
watch as I, once again, return after curfew.
I swing my door shut gingerly behind me and slide down it, giggling. Maybe I can still be alluring, even after all the mom
stuff I’ve been through. I’ve never felt more like the twenty-year-old version of myself since the first time around, and
it’s a rush that’s still hammering in my chest.
Lincoln, Lincoln Kelly , is back.
And maybe some lost little bits of me too.