Chapter 52 Eight Years in One Day #2
I touch one earring gently. “They’re not very me.”
“You’re allowed to be more than one thing,” he says softly. “Pink and silver. Bold and delicate. You don’t have to choose.”
Luna’s knowing smile widens. “Silver’s good for new beginnings. Helps you let go of old patterns.”
I give her a big hug and promise to visit more often.
As we walk back to Kade’s bike, I catch my reflection in store windows. The moons sway with each step. Maybe becoming real doesn’t require shedding everything I was before. Maybe it just means adding new pieces. Soft edges alongside sharp ones. Silver moons dancing next to hot-pink armor.
YEAR SEVEN
Midtown brings our first letdown. The address Kade leads me to is now a generic chain restaurant with plastic plants and laminated menus.
“This used to be Marcello’s,” I say, staring at the lipstick-red awning gone sun pink at the folds.
“I know.”
“Izzy and I came here every month for two years. They had this piano player, Giuseppe, who looked exactly like her grandfather and knew every song from the forties.” I press my hand against the window.
“He’d play ‘Moon River’ whenever we walked in, and he always kept a picture of his late wife next to his sheet music. ”
“Tell me more.”
So I do. I tell him about the checkered tablecloths and the way Giuseppe would wink at us when he played our song. About the time we stayed until closing, talking about our dreams over cheap wine.
“The pasta was terrible,” I admit. “But the atmosphere was perfect.”
Kade steers me toward his bike. “Come on. I know another place.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re standing outside a small trattoria in Little Italy. Through the windows, I can see white tablecloths and exposed brick walls. Real candles flicker on every table.
“This looks expensive,” I warn.
“It’s worth it.”
The moment we step inside, piano music drifts through the air. Familiar notes that make my heart skip. And then I see him.
Giuseppe. Same silver hair, same gentle smile, same weathered hands dancing across keys like he was born to play. He looks up when we enter, and his face breaks into a grin. Without missing a beat, he transitions into “Moon River.”
My hand flies to my mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Surprise,” Kade murmurs.
Giuseppe finishes the song with a flourish before walking over. “Amanda, bella! Your husband is very persuasive man,” he says with a thick Italian accent.
“My husband?”
“He convinced me to play the piano again.” Giuseppe shrugs. “He promised I could play for your anniversary dinner someday.”
Heat floods my cheeks, and I turn to look at Kade, who has a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
“Our anniversary dinner, huh?”
“I like to plan ahead.”
Giuseppe laughs and claps Kade on the shoulder. “I like him already. Come, I save you the best table.”
He leads us to a corner spot with a perfect view of the piano. It’s the only one with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth, just like at Marcello’s. Giuseppe’s wife smiles back at me in black and white from her perch on the music stand.
“How?” I whisper once Giuseppe returns to his bench.
“He told you. I’m very persuasive.” Kade’s smile turns wicked. “Plus, I may have mentioned that the woman I love misses hearing her favorite song. Not sure if you could tell this, but he’s a hopeless romantic.”
Giuseppe launches into another song, and I feel tears prick my eyes. Not just because he’s here but because Kade understood what this place meant. What Giuseppe meant. What it would mean to have this piece of my past restored instead of just remembered.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I whisper, my voice catching slightly.
“Worth it to see that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“Like maybe you’re starting to believe in the magic again.”
I shake my head and try to dry out the tears that are threatening to fall. “The pasta better be good this time.”
“It will be. I checked.”
YEAR SIX
“Oh my God.” I stop dead on the sidewalk outside the Strand. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
The massive bookstore spreads before us like a literary cathedral. Eighteen miles of books stacked floor to ceiling where readers browse in reverent silence.
“You have a spot,” Kade says.
“Third floor, poetry section. There’s a chair by the window—”
“Where you read every Sunday for six months after David.”
“His name was Derek.”
“I remember everything about that year. It was the worst one for me.” He says it flatly, like it’s just a fact.
“Not because of him. Because I could see how hard you were trying to move on. To be happy with someone who could actually give you a normal life. Every Sunday, I’d watch you come here.
You’d bring coffee in a travel mug and read until your eyes burned.
Sometimes you’d cry.” His voice is rough.
“And I’d be in whatever shithole I was stuck in, watching you through a phone screen and wanting to put my fist through walls. ”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you asked me to be real with you. This is real.” He takes my hand. “I hated that you were hurting. But I was also relieved when it ended with him. I’m not proud of that. I wanted you to be happy, but I also wanted you to wait for me. Even though I had no right to ask.”
“I couldn’t move on,” I admit quietly, letting my fingers feel surrounded by his own. “I tried. But I always felt like I was cheating on a ghost.”
“I’m not a ghost anymore.”
“No. You’re not.”
My usual chair is occupied by a teenager with electric-blue hair, so we wander the main floor instead. I run my fingers along spine after spine while Kade watches me with that intensity that makes me feel like I’m the most interesting thing in the room.
“I have something for you,” he says eventually.
“Here?”
He leads me to the register, where a clerk with horn-rimmed glasses looks up expectantly.
“The Bennett order,” Kade says.
The clerk disappears into the back and returns with a small wrapped package. My name is written across the brown paper in careful script.
“You planned this?”
“I plan everything when it comes to you.”
I peel back the paper slightly to find a very well-loved copy of The Velveteen Rabbit.
The cover is the unmistakable yellow dust jacket with the drawing of the little bunny, worn but still perfect.
The pages smell like vanilla and old libraries.
It’s the one I saw in the case when I was here with Izzy.
“Kade, this is—” I check the bookplate, and my breath catches. “This is from 1922.”
“First edition, first printing.”
“I can’t accept this.”
“You’re not accepting it. I’m buying it for myself, and I’m letting you hold it.” His smile turns wicked. “Forever, if you want.”
The price tag is tucked inside the front cover. The number makes me dizzy, but he’s already handed over his credit card like it means nothing compared with the look on my face.
YEAR FIVE
“I took exactly one dance lesson,” I tell him as we stand outside a studio back in Chelsea. “And I stepped on the instructor’s feet more than the actual floor.”
“Come on,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I’ll show you.” He tugs me inside and nods at the instructor in the back of the studio.
“Show me what, exactly?” I narrow my eyes at him.
“How to waltz. When you took that lesson, I just so happened to be in Vienna. I spent three weeks learning the basics from a seventy-year-old Austrian woman who hit me with her cane every time I messed up the footwork.”
I freeze as the music starts, but Kade’s already sweeping me into his arms, and somehow he’s guiding me across the floor. My footsteps fall into rhythm with his, and as we glide through the room, I almost feel like I’m flying.
“Show-off,” I mutter when we finally take a pause.
“You’re beautiful when you’re concentrating,” he whispers against my ear before finally pulling back.
I look up to find him watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you love me.”
The words slip out before I can stop them.
“But I do love you. I never stopped,” he says simply, and before I can reply, he’s pulling me back into another waltz. I catch our reflection in the mirrors and for a moment think that we look like a real couple.
YEAR FOUR
The SoHo gallery features emerging artists whose work I pretended to understand while drinking wine and feeling sophisticated.
“You came to an opening by yourself,” Kade says as we study colorful canvases that could mean anything or nothing.
“I did. Spent two hours nodding thoughtfully at paint splatters and using words like ‘evocative’ and ‘transformative.’ ”
“You bought something, too.”
“I bought a very expensive coaster that happened to have paint on it.” I gesture at a wall of abstract pieces. “Convinced myself I was supporting local artists instead of admitting I had no clue what I was looking at.”
He stops in front of a canvas covered in angry red slashes. “What do you think this one means?”
“Rage? Passion? Someone’s really bad day with a paintbrush?”
“The placard says it represents the artist’s struggle with modern dating.”
I snort. “Of course it does. Everything’s about dating when you’re twenty-three and pretentious.”
“What about that one?” He points to swirls of blue and green.
“Obviously it’s about… climate change. Or maybe the artist’s relationship with their mother. Could be both.”
“Very insightful.”
“I’m practically an art critic.” I move to the next piece, geometric shapes in muddy brown. “This one’s definitely about capitalism crushing the human spirit.”
“That or the artist ran out of better colors.”
His dry delivery makes me laugh louder than I should in the hushed gallery space. A woman in all black gives us a disapproving look.
“You’re corrupting my sophisticated art appreciation,” I whisper.
“Your sophisticated art appreciation involves making up meanings and drinking free wine.”
“Don’t forget the cheese cubes. Very important for the full gallery experience.”