Chapter 90
Tyler
“Tyler,” Katie said once we were standing on the sidewalk. Strangers brushed past us. She was weeping, but in a good way,
and swallowed whole by the emerald gauze of her gown. The skirt was massive, and the neckline low. “What’s going on? What
happened? What changed?”
I was pacing. I couldn’t stand still. Couldn’t stop moving my hands. “I’m so in love with you! I’m so in love with you, and
I can’t think straight, and I don’t want to love-bomb you, and . . .”
She grinned. “No, it’s fine. I would love that. Please feel free.”
I grinned back, then dropped my hands to her waist and pulled her right into my arms. “I love you so much I don’t know where
to put it. I loved you at the beach, in the hospital, at the pharmacy. I loved you all the years we were apart, and all the
years I pushed you away. I want to love you on Thanksgiving, on Valentine’s Day, on New Year’s Eve. I want to love you at
IKEA. I want to love you in my shithole apartment that you’re going to hate so, so much. I want to watch you wreak absolute
havoc on our Christmas tree. I want to love you on the worst day of your life. I think I want to marry you. Am I allowed to
say that? Is that too much? I don’t know how to grovel, I—”
“Um, it’s not too much for me? Because I’m obsessed with you? And sort of insane? But generally speaking, yes, that’s too
much. But noted. And agreed.”
The muscles around my mouth ached. “You are the best thing in my life. I can’t believe I got another chance to love you.
I can’t believe I almost threw it away. I am so in love with the way you see the world—the way you see the best in people.
I think you’re really hot and smart and cool, and I think you talk too much, but in a good way.
If we have a daughter, I hope she’s—Wait, do you want kids?
Sorry, I told you I’m terrible at this. I just . . .”
Her eyes were crinkling. My whole world was spinning.
“I’m going to get back on track here, okay?” I said. She laughed, and I pulled her even closer. “I want to cheer you on when
you spend the entirety of your paycheck on Taylor Swift tickets. I want you to come meet Arthur and his wife. I want to love
you so much you tell me to leave you alone. I want to love you here—in the city. I want us to have a bagel place and a favorite
stoop, and I want to make fun of each and every one of your absurd winter coats.
“I want to be there when you decide what’s next for you and your parents. I want to follow your lead on that. I want to talk
about everything. I don’t want to keep a secret from you ever again. I want you to come to the Greek festival at my school.
All the dads are going to hit on you—it’s going to be such a disaster. I want you to meet my students and see my classroom.
I want you to be the last thing I see when I fall asleep . . .”
I took a deep breath and dropped to my knees, right there on Forty-Seventh Street. “I want to love you, Katie, for as long
as you’ll let me. And I’m really hoping that might be forever.”
She plopped down on the sidewalk right across from me.
“What are you doing?” I said. “You’re going to screw up your dress. Which is so pretty, by the way. I love you in green. I—”
A man in an Avenger costume screamed to get the fuck out of his way. We both laughed.
“I didn’t want you to be alone down here!” she said.
I cupped her face and kissed her. “God, do I love you. You are so, so bright.”
She pulled back, straightening my bow tie, then tracing the silk with her fingertips. She dropped her hands to the lapels
and tested the fabric. “Where on earth did you get this thing, by the way? This is, like, really nice. Is this Hugo Boss?
Is it custom? The stitching is incredible.”
We were still kneeling on the sidewalk, the city swarming around us. It was hot out. Gross, even. A little water dripped on
my head. I assumed it was from an air conditioner, but I couldn’t say for sure. Katie was still kissing me, touching me, talking
about my tuxedo.
“Did Meredith dress you too? She did, didn’t she? She is such a fairy godmother. She is such a hopeless romantic. She’s even
worse than me. Oh my god—we have to go see her! She’s going to absolutely die over this! Is the tunnel open yet? Do you know
how to call Maurice? How do we still not have his fucking number? Should we just get an Uber? It’s going to be, like, five
hundred dollars. But we have to go. We . . .”
A black Range Rover pulled up to the curb, hazards on. Maurice rolled down the window and looked at me. I gulped and then,
with my hands fixed on the small of Katie’s back, helped her into the car.
She was buckling her seat belt, her heart beaming out of her body, bumbling on about how excited she was to tell Meredith about our night and our arcs, and how we were just like characters in a romance novel, down to the very last scene, and I was just nodding. I was just holding her hand.
“Katie,” I said as the car approached First Avenue, as we headed farther and farther east, as the Midtown Tunnel turned to
stripes of light—to whirling urban black. “I need to talk to you about Meredith, okay?”
She looked at me with those green eyes and those glossed lips. There was glitter on the bridge of her nose. I breathed in.
I breathed out.
“I went to the carriage house this afternoon,” I said, my hand still clutching hers. I held on tight. “I’ll tell you everything,
from the very start, all right? But you need to believe me. She isn’t going to be there. I don’t think we’re going to see
her again.”
Katie’s startle flew through my fingertips. “What are you talking about? Why would you even joke about that? After everything
today? That’s not funny. That’s not . . .”
But then there was that look on her face. The kind she made when she was digging us out of a plot hole. When she was making
connections. When she was sifting through the breadcrumbs of a story and organizing them into an unmistakable, irrefutable
trail. In that look, I saw it all. I saw it despite what she said next.
“We should just call her. We should just ask Maurice to call her. You’re just being crazy, you’re . . .”
But we couldn’t call her, of course. We couldn’t call her because she only had a landline and refused to pick up the phone.
Because I’d already tried that—already called it a thousand times. The phone number you are trying to reach, said a robot operator, no longer exists.
I held on tight as reality coursed through her. As her brain made sense of the story Meredith had been hiding in plain sight.
No computer. No new technology. No books or movies or catalogs or magazines that had been published since we were in high
school. Every story she’d ever picked up, speculative or gothic or paranormal in some way. The fact that she’d never left
that property, that she did no press, no interviews, no signings. That her sprawling estate had been maintained only by Maurice
and an invisible hand. That her cat, somehow, was everywhere. That she cooked but never ate. That—despite how close the three
of us had become—she’d never touched us. Not even once had she reached out to touch us.
Not on that first day, when she should’ve shaken our hands. Not by accident, upon pouring us a cup of coffee. Not on purpose,
once we’d really gotten to know her.
And I knew all this. I’d known it for hours, but with Katie by my side, I was grappling with the proof again and aloud as
Queens turned into Nassau County, into Suffolk County, as we passed the exit sign for our old and nothing town. As the Montauk
Highway dissolved into this turn and that turn and then, finally, Fowler Street, and we began the crackling trek up Meredith
Bradford’s private drive for the final time.
But as we approached her estate, the leather of our back seat started to scuff. The paneling on the doors faded. The car itself
began to dissolve—began to slip away. Katie banged on what was left of the window, leaping out of her seat and running through
the wide-open and suddenly crooked, moss-covered gate.
The fountain in the car park was rung with algae.
The hydrangeas, shriveled and parched.
The shingles, loose.
The sconces, sideways.
The front door, ajar.
We stepped inside.
“Meredith!?” Katie screamed.
Nothing. The furniture was tattered. The art, destroyed. The windows in the great room were wide open, and the curtains flapped
and fluttered as if the howling summer wind had invited itself in.
“Meredith!?
“Pinot! Meredith!?
“Meredith! Pinot! Where are you!?”
Katie was everywhere, shouting their names, because she was a believer, because she didn’t give up. She was busting open doors,
tearing through cabinets, rifling through bookshelves, pulling sheets off beds, striking frames off walls, searching for something—for
some sign of Meredith—through the cobwebs and dust mites and creaking floorboards that remained.
I followed her as she raced through the garden and past the woods until we were in the carriage house—until we were upstairs
and standing in Meredith’s office.
All the evidence—the plot walls and photographs and press clippings—had been wiped away. There was nothing but a clean desk
with a typewriter atop it and a thick stack of paper beside it.
Katie lunged toward it.
Atop the manuscript was a piece of card stock—a note, crisp and ivory, and covered in that unmistakable navy ink.
Of all the love stories I’ve written, yours has been my absolute favorite. Now go. Live. You have so many chapters ahead of
you—and quite the happily ever after to finish.
Yours,
M.B.
Katie’s fingers flew over the manuscript’s cover page. Tropesick, by Meredith Bradford.
“This is the book?” she said. “Our book?”
I nodded.
She was shaking her head, and her eyes had welled, but she was smiling too. “Did you know about this? The title? Why didn’t
you mention it? It’s so good. It’s so absurd.”
“She must’ve just finished,” I said. “That wasn’t here today. It’s new.”
Katie’s smile broadened. Tears streamed, but they weren’t sad. They were just big. They were just bold. She started sifting
through the pages, pointing out little things she’d forgotten to me. Bits of banter. Tiny microtropes. Slivers of yearning
and lust and jealousy.
“I need to slow down.” She flopped onto the floor, her face buried in the pages. That ball gown, everywhere. “Come on, come
sit with me. Let’s read this thing.”
I laughed. And then I curled up beside her on the hardwood, and I pulled her into my arms, and we relived every word of every scene that’d brought her back to me.
The stars faded into the sky, and the sun rose over that sea, and our lives began all over again in a single, impossible summer, and I just held her.
I held her, and I held her, and I held her.
And this time, I never let her go.