Chapter 32 Madison
Chapter thirty-two
Madison
ME
G’day, mate.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
Wrong country, love.
ME
Well howdy, partner.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
Wrong state. Did you dip into Hamlet’s catnip or something?
ME
Nope. This is just the mental state of me without you now.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
That went downhill quickly.
ME
You have no idea.
For serious, though, how is it going with your family?
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
It’s been great. I had a good talk with my mom on the flight over that gave me a better understanding of a lot of things. I can tell you more about it when I’m back.
ME
Adding to my list of personal questions.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
Do you actually have a list??
Who am I kidding - of course you have a list.
ME
What have you done today?
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
Big Chuseok dinner is tomorrow, so we did some preparations today. I was in the middle of rolling kimbap with my halmeoni when you texted.
ME
Hold on, I’m catching a flight over. I want that food. Hamlet can fend for himself.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
This is the kimchi fridge.
ME
The kimchi gets its own fridge?!?!
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
Of course, it does. The garlic flavor would permeate all the other food if it was in the regular fridge. There’s traditional napa cabbage kimchi, but also cucumber, Korean radish, and green onion kimchis.
ME
I’m totally jealous.
Okay, but after you finish the whole kimbap thing, could you go walk around the Oxford campus for the rest of the afternoon? I’m really hoping that posh accent will seep its way back into your brain.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
No, Oxford isn’t in London. It’s an hour train ride away.
ME
How disappointing.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
ME
YOU GOT ONE FOR ME?!
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
ME
God save the king. Now, hurry back because I miss my sparring partner. Life is so boring without you.
Also, I miss you kissing me. And holding me in that tight Liam hug.
And making pour over coffee. And attempting to circumvent my personal questions with your flirty distractions. And exasperatedly scowling at the heavens every time I call Hamlet “Hammie.”
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
I miss you too. Give HAMLET a belly rub from me.
ME
Will do. You may never get your sleeping buddy back. I kinda like having him curled above my head on the pillow every night. I’m keeping him.
HOT brITISH BOYFRIEND
No way. I’ll reclaim his loyalties as soon as I’m home.
My phone suddenly rings with a video call from Liam, which I answer immediately. Instead of Liam’s dreamy eyes staring back at me, I’m met with very similar but much more feminine eyes.
“Hana stole my phone!” Liam’s voice yells from the background of the call. “Because she is a child.”
“Hiiii, Madison!” Hana says, grinning at the screen. I can hear Liam talking in the disappointed parent tone of voice he uses with Hamlet, but he’s speaking Korean, so I can’t understand him. I might need to add speaking in Korean to our list of rules in addition to the British accent.
I laugh as I greet Hana back. “I can’t wait until we can meet in person! I’m about ready to hop on a plane and fly over right now.”
“I wish you would!” Hana says. “I’ve been dying to meet you ever since Liam first mentioned his intriguing neighbor. I totally called this relationship from the start, for the record.”
We chat for several more minutes until I realize it’s past 8:30 a.m. “Hey, I’ve got to run—can you tell Liam ‘bye’ from me?”
“I suppose I could hand the phone over so you can tell him yourself,” Hana replies with a playful smirk. “Can’t wait to talk again, Madison!”
Liam’s face fills the screen, and gosh dang it, I miss that handsome face so much.
“You working a shift at Becky’s today or something?” Liam asks.
I try to ignore the shiver chilling my veins as I half lie. “Yeah, she needed a shift covered, so I told her I could. Since you’re not around I can work on editing late into the evening.”
It’s sort of true. I am going into Becky’s later for an hour while she has a doctor’s appointment. But the more time sensitive issue is that I have a video interview at nine to get ready for.
The interview is for a copywriting job creating social media content.
It is absolutely not my ideal job by any stretch of the imagination.
But it’s a company in Kansas City that I’m familiar with, and it might be time to get my foot back in the door for future job opportunities.
And who knows—maybe they would be open to remote work.
I don’t like withholding information from Liam. But I’m only testing the waters. I’m figuring out if it’s time for me to face reality and let go of the MJE experiment. I will tell him once I know for sure what I’m going to do.
I will.
Besides, the likelihood of this company even wanting to hire me seems slim. I’m the failure who couldn’t keep her last steady job and couldn’t make her independent venture succeed. Who wants to hire someone with that kind of lackluster performance?
“I’ll text you tonight, okay?” Liam says. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I respond before hanging up. Before banging my phone against my forehead.
When I see Liam walk through the automatic doors of the airport exit, I run over to him. Pausing to place the cat carrier gently on the ground, I leap into the air and latch my arms around Liam’s neck.
“You’re back!” I exclaim.
Liam laughs but drops his bag so he can return the embrace. After briefly kissing me, he says, “I was barely gone. You hardly had time to miss me.”
“It was forever,” I dramatically state.
Glancing down at our feet, he looks back at me with a question in his eyes. “You brought Hamlet? How did you even get him into the cat carrier? He hates traveling.”
“Of course, I brought Hammie! He deserved to be here for our family reunification. I used my powers of persuasion to convince him,” I say.
When Liam gives me a skeptical look, I amend, “Okay, I maybe have a couple of scratches to show for it. But I think he’ll forgive me now that he gets to see you. Because we both missed you.”
He meets my eyes again when he says, “I thought about you every second, love.”
Weak at the knees, I latch on to him more firmly as I murmur, “You brought back the accent I asked for.” Liam grins before kissing me more thoroughly.
As we drive the hour back to Noel, Liam tells me all about the time with his family, starting with his heart-to-heart with his mom on the flight over, and ending with the genuine joy and happiness of their Chuseok dinner with his grandparents and his uncle’s family.
“I’m really, really glad I decided to go back this year. Thanks for making it possible,” Liam says from the passenger seat.
I glance over to see Hamlet still plastered against Liam’s chest, paws draped on his shoulders as though he’ll never let go of Liam again.
The sight makes me melt and laugh at the same time.
“It’s not like Hamlet is hard to take care of.
At least, not once he accepts you into the pack and stops plotting to quietly murder you. ”
I don’t have to look at him to see the eye roll on Liam’s face.
“He was never going to murder you,” he says with an exaggerated sigh.
“But also, it was more than having Hamlet taken care of. If not for you, I don’t know that I would have been willing to face the complex feelings that resurface when I’m with my whole family.
If not for your persistent attempts to get me to peel back my protective layers. ”
“Aww, the ogre is an onion,” I joke, alluding to Shrek. Liam rewards my remark with a pinch to my side. “Hey! You’re going to make me swerve off the road with that behavior!”
Liam reaches over and curls his fingers into my hair, massaging the base of my neck. “Maybe you need to pull over for a minute. It’s been way too long since I’ve kissed you in private,” he says, voice thick.
My voice is breathy when I attempt to scold him. “Just be patient. We’ll be home in, like, ten minutes.”
“I’ve told you before that patience is not one of my virtues,” he murmurs, voice close, just before he skims a kiss where my jaw meets my ear.
The shiver that skips down my spine nearly does make me swerve off the road.
As we pass the nearly-finished apartment complex, Liam catches me completely off guard with a declaration. “I’m turning in an application for one of those apartments.”
Now, I literally do swerve off the road. At least small towns don’t have heavy traffic patterns.
“You what?” I ask in shock, putting the car into park.
“I’ve decided I want to stay in Noel. Or, rather, I think I decided that several weeks ago.
But I stopped fighting the decision,” Liam says matter-of-factly.
“I still need to figure out if I’m going to stay on permanently at Pure Fur All or look at other options, but I know that geographically, I want to be here in Noel. With you.”
My breath is stuttered, too short to take in enough oxygen.
On the upside, I turned down the copywriting job in KC.
The more they described exactly what I would be doing, the less I wanted to do it.
Although they were willing to take a chance on me given my past experience, I just couldn’t bring myself to write quippy hooks for Instagram ads.
So, I’m not imminently moving away from Noel.
On the downside, I still don’t know what my long-term, end-game plan is.
Every week, I look for job postings at publishing houses, hoping I’ll find a proofreader opening.
But the Christmas magic isn’t magicking.
Most of the remote contract positions I can find are more focused on copywriting, not copyediting and proofreading.
LinkedIn keeps feeding me suggestions of open positions at marketing firms in Kansas City, thanks to me applying to the last one.
I want to stay in Noel . . . but will I be able to make ends meet here?
Emily has offered me a temporary job helping to organize details for Christmas Fest, but after the holidays, I could be forced to make a hard decision about my living situation.
You’re a terrible person, Madison. You should be honest with Liam about your situation. You should be honest about MJE failing. Admit that you’re a failure.
But admitting to Liam that I’m a failure is the last thing I want to do. I’d rather undergo surgery sans anesthesia than admit to Liam that I screwed up on this whole self-rediscovery path. That I picked the wrong thing.
Plus, Liam’s love feels so right, like my path was always meant to lead to him. To our paths converging into one. I want to stay here in Noel with him. Surely, I can figure out a way to make it happen.
I think Liam misreads my shocked silence as nothing more than surprise and joy that he’s decided to stay. Because his smile grows wider the longer I’m speechless, until he pulls my mouth to his and gives me a different reason to not talk.
I have to find a way to make it work here. Force my path to lead here. Because I love this man too much to go somewhere without him.