Chapter 20
chapter
twenty
Payton
Kelsie's birthday lunch is loud, slightly chaotic, and operating on a schedule that exists mostly in theory.
Like most Blankenship gatherings. The back porch is full—my parents, Mimz and Pops, Henry and Gracie, Oliver and Cora, and the rest of my siblings and their spouses.
Someone has already knocked over a drink.
Kelsie is wearing a paper crown she made herself and does not appear to care about any of the surrounding chaos, which is peak Kelsie.
I've been fine all morning. Mostly fine. Fine enough to sit in a loud family gathering and not think about what I’m actually thinking about.
Cora slips inside at some point and then my mom follows suit. They’re probably getting the dessert ready or something. Kelsie bakes for a living since she co-owns the town bakery, Sugar Bakers, with her two best friends.
Though it would seem that would leave Gracie and Caroline to make the dessert. Both of them are just out here with the rest of us, though.
"Payton." My mom is half-standing in the porch doorway.
I look up.
"Someone's here for you."
I stand and walk towards her.
“At the front door," she says. "Take your time."
She steps back out onto the porch, and I numbly make my way to the front door.
Jules is standing in the front yard.
She's shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Wearing her regular weekend clothes of leggings and an oversized T-shirt. All of which have various paint smeared on the fabric. She told me once that for her, art is a full-contact sport.
Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail. She has something in her hand. A folded piece of paper.
Her brown eyes are wide with fear.
But she’s still here.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi." I step out into the yard with her. "How did you know I was here?"
"Cora." She glances down at what she's holding, then back up at me. "I hope that's okay. That I came here. I know this is Kelsie's—"
"It's okay," I say. I desperately want ot reach for her, but I keep my hands at my sides. “Jules. It's okay."
She nods, a small tight motion, and takes a breath.
"I wrote you something," she says. "Which I recognize is—" the corner of her mouth makes a brief, complicated shape, "—ironic, given the circumstances. But I thought you deserved one too. So."
She holds the letter out.
I take it. Our fingers don't quite touch.
"You can read it," she says. "I'll wait."
I unfold it.
Payton,
I've never written a letter before. I mean, I've written things—lesson plans, countless notes to parents, texts I've typed and deleted seventeen times. But not an actual letter. Not on purpose, to someone who matters.
You matter. I'm starting there because it took me too long to say it and I don't want to bury it.
You asked me once, early on, what I was looking for. I said I wasn't looking for anything, which was true and also completely beside the point, because looking has never been how I find things. I find things by accident. The job I love. The sisters who became my family. You.
Here is what I know:
I look for you. In the hallway at school before first period, in the parking lot at the end of the day.
I look for remnants of you in my house. Taking myself on daily scavenger hunts in hopes of finding a note from you.
I look for you, present in my life, and it took me a shamefully long time to recognize that.
When you’re not with me, I miss you. I hate even admitting that because I like to think I don’t actually need people. But there it is.
The truth is I love you. I have been in love with you. I have known this and have been actively running from it since about the third week.
I want tomorrow. I want the ordinary version of this, the one that doesn't have an arrangement or a category or a door that only opens out. I want the whole inconvenient, uncontainable thing. Even though it shares the living hell out of me. I’m terrified, Payton.
Terrified that I’ll hurt you. Terrified that you’ll come to your senses and leave me because I’m just not worth the trouble.
But in the midst of that fear I’m choosing you. The way you've been choosing me, quietly and steadily, this whole time.
I'm not going to run. But I might ask you to hold my hand every now and then when I feel like I should run.
I even love you despite your obvious flaw of not recognizing that the best Indiana Jones is Raiders of the Lost Ark.
XOXO, Yours (if you’ll have me)
Jules
I read it once. Then I go back to the beginning and read it again, slower. Somewhere around I look for you the second time through, an emotional lump forms in my throat.
I fold it back along its creases when I'm done.
Jules is watching me. She hasn't moved. Her arms are crossed over her chest, not closed off exactly—more like she's holding herself steady, the way you brace against something you're not sure you can hold.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?" Her voice is careful.
I clear my throat. “The letter. It's—yeah.
" I look at her. "There are things I want to say back, but I think I need a minute, because you just—" I stop.
Press the folded paper briefly against my chest, which makes something flicker across her face.
"This is a lot, Jules. In the best possible way. This is a lot."
"I know." She uncrosses her arms. "I have more. Things I need to say out loud. If that's—if you want to hear them."
"I definitely want to hear them."
She takes a breath that's slightly unsteady.
"I love you," she says. Out loud. To my face, in my family’s front yard, with my entire family forty feet away eating chips and arguing about something.
"I'm in love with you and I've known it for weeks and I kept telling myself I was protecting you from me, but really I was just protecting me from this.
From how much I want it." She pauses. "From how much I want you. "
"Jules—"
"I'm not finished." Her chin comes up slightly.
"I'm not going to be easy. I have a lot of habits that are going to be annoying, and some of them are pretty deeply ingrained.
I'm going to need you to be patient with me sometimes, and I'm going to need you to tell me when I'm retreating instead of just letting me do it, because left to my own devices, I will absolutely retreat.
" She looks at me steadily. "But I'm here.
I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you. And I'm not leaving. "
I have been in love with this woman for months and I have said it exactly once, in a letter, on a piece of paper left on a porch. I have been patient and steady, and I have not pushed, and I meant all of it, every day of it.
But now I am done waiting.
I close the three steps between us and I kiss her, my hands finding her face, and she makes a small sound against my mouth like relief. Her arms wrap around me, and she kisses me back.
“I love you, Jules. I’m not going anywhere. And as long as you’re in this, I will chase you every day if that’s what you need.”
When we finally pull back she's looking at me with her eyes a little bright. I realize that her armor is entirely off, she looks so different without it and so completely herself that it hits me—this is her. The real one. The one she doesn't show people until she decides they're worth the risk.
"I would like to formally note," she says, slightly breathless, "that I did not run."
"I noticed."
"That was very hard for me."
"I know." I brush my thumb across her cheekbone. "I'm proud of you."
She laughs, wet at the edges, and I pull her in and she tucks her face against my neck and we stand like that for a long moment.
From somewhere in the back of the house, there's a whoop—singular, loud, extremely Oliver—followed immediately by what sounds like Henry telling him to sit down. Then there are more cheers and some actual applause.
Jules pulls back slightly and looks at me. "Did they all know?"
"Almost certainly."
"How many of them?"
"Probably everyone."
She considers this. "Your family is big and invasive.”
"Yes," I agree. “All of that and more. They’re going to love you.”
“You think?”
“I know. You’re impossible not to love.”
“I think you might be getting lucky later today,” she whispers.
“I’m already lucky, Bossy.”