Chapter 11 #2
I held her gaze while I took in the careful, deliberate way she'd framed it — giving me every possible exit, making absolutely sure I knew the door was open.
It was so completely her — this woman who'd spent six years building something that didn't need anyone else to hold it up, who had never once asked for more than what was freely given.
"Jess." I leaned forward. "I need you to hear me. The idea of you moving to St. Louis doesn't change something for me. It changes everything for me. In the way that I wake up in the morning and think about what it's going to be like to not have to get on a plane to see you.
"In the way that I've already driven past three neighborhoods thinking she'd like that block.
In the way that Justin asking when are you coming back is the question I think about the most, and I want the answer to be I don't have to come back because I'm already here.
" I paused. "I'm not feeling trapped. I'm feeling — for the first time in my life — like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be — with the people I want to be with. "
She was quiet for a moment. Something moved across her face that she didn't try to hide.
"You have to understand the impact of what you're saying to me," she said finally, and her voice wasn't quite steady.
"I stopped waiting to hear something like that a long time ago.
I decided I'd had enough good things — Justin, my work, the life I made — and that wanting more than that was just asking to be disappointed.
I was so sure about that, Carter. I built my whole life around being sure about that.
" She reached across and took my hand. "And then you drove past three neighborhoods thinking about which block I'd like. "
"Jess—"
"I'm coming to St. Louis," she said. "Not for the job. I mean — yes, for the job. But that's not the reason and we both know it." Her eyes were bright. "I'm coming because for the first time in six years, I want something I didn't already have. And it's you."
For a woman who'd just handed me her whole carefully guarded heart, she looked remarkably calm about it. I was the one who couldn't speak. I crossed the kitchen, took her face in my hands, and kissed her — and felt her exhale against my mouth like she'd been holding that breath for six years.
"Say it again sometime," I said against her lips. "When I'm ready for it. Which is going to be never, because I'm never going to be ready to hear you say you want me."
She laughed, a little wet. "Get used to it, hot shot."
We stayed like that a while, foreheads together, both of us grinning like idiots. Then she pulled back, wiped under her eyes, and visibly gathered herself.
"There's one more thing," she said. "I talked to Anne today. I haven't even officially decided yet, and she's already planning a party."
"A party."
"A welcome to St. Louis party. Once Justin and I are moved in, she wants to have people over to their place — not a big thing, just the handful of couples we're closest to and all their kids, so Justin walks into a room where he already belongs.
Pizza and a backyard and the boys running feral until dark.
" Her voice caught a little. "She said she's going to get us properly folded into this city before I can change my mind.
She wants us there so badly, Carter. She keeps talking like it's already decided. "
"Of course she does." And there it was — the warmth of all of us quietly leaning the same way, like the decision had been making itself for weeks while I pretended it was still a question.
"Okay," I said. "Then call them. Barnett and your hospital. Right now, while we're sitting here."
She looked up. "Now?"
"Now." I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. "You've been ready since the second Dr. Howe said teaching hospital and you leaned forward. Make the calls, Jess."
She held my eyes a second longer. Then she picked up her phone and pulled up Dr. Howe's direct line — the one she'd been given the day the offer came, with instructions to call the moment she decided, any day, any hour.
If I'm not at my desk, it forwards straight to my cell, Dr. Howe had told her. I mean it. Any hour.
It was Friday afternoon. Some small, superstitious part of me thought, please be at your desk, please pick up, like the whole thing might evaporate if it had to wait until Monday. Then Dr. Howe answered on the second ring, and I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
I sat across from her and listened to Jess's voice go calm and certain as she told Dr. Howe she was accepting the offer.
She didn't call her own hospital — that one, she said, she owed them in person, after all the years she'd given them; she'd resign face to face on Monday, the way you did it when the people mattered.
When she put the phone down she sat very still for a second, both hands flat on the table.
"It's real now," she said, a little stunned, staring at the phone like it might undo itself.
"No takebacks," I said. "You're stuck with me and a whole city that's about to be very glad you showed up."
She came around the table and I pulled her into me and held on, and she pressed her face to my neck and exhaled like she'd been holding that breath for weeks.
"I'm moving to St. Louis," she said, like she was still getting used to the shape of it.
I kissed the top of her head. "And I happen to know a great neighborhood."
She laughed against my shoulder. "I know you do. You already confessed — three neighborhoods, thinking about which block I'd like."
"I did say that, didn't I."
"You did. And Anne's been driving past houses for me too, so brace yourself.
Between the two of you, I won't have to lift a finger.
" She pulled back and looked at me with that expression — the warm, slightly terrifying one — and I kissed her again, and this time neither of us was in any hurry to stop.
Rosa came back with Justin from camp that afternoon, which meant the rest of the day was Justin narrating everything that had happened at camp in chronological order while I helped him practice the Flip in the backyard with a plastic stick and a tennis ball.
He had the motion almost right. The wrist snap was there. The shift of weight wasn't quite yet — he was still thinking about it instead of just doing it — but he was six, and I'd been fifteen when Mark had first put it in my hands, and I figured he had time.
"Again," he said, for approximately the fourteenth time.
"You got it, bud." I set the ball and watched him try.
From the porch, Jess watched us with her coffee and said nothing. But when I looked up and caught her eye, she was smiling the way she sometimes did when she thought I wasn't looking — like something had turned out exactly the way she'd hoped, and she was quietly, privately glad about it.
I looked back at Justin. Set the ball again.
Two months. I couldn't wait.