Chapter 35 Nico #2
There, maybe six rows back. Standing with her chin tilted up and murder in her kohl-rimmed eyes, is My Annie Li. Annie “Whom I Love” Li.
Wearing my hoodie.
I suddenly cannot breathe.
I look to her right and see my mother and sister sitting next to her, grinning like this is exactly what they came for.
To her left: Izzy, two older women, Charlie, and May, all in some kind of seated Avengers-style formation. Izzy’s already cracking her knuckles.
“Let me repeat the question,” Annie says, stepping out into the aisle and towards the dude, hair loose and flowing behind her.
Under my hoodie? She’s wearing the gold dress, a majestic punctuation of fire and splendor.
With combat boots. A glorious and resplendent angel of wrath, stepped out from a myth and ready for battle.
“Did you just come to an event hosted by an independent bookstore, where an author is promoting a deeply personal cookbook, to ask if he was sexually intimate with a pie?”
The guy starts to sputter, backpedaling with his phone half-raised. “No—I mean, I was just joking—”
“Oh, thank god you were only joking,” the old lady next to Charlie calls out sweetly, “because there’s a cast iron pan over there and I was about to show you what one feels like.”
“I call the butter knife,” May announces.
“Let’s caramelize him,” my sister declares, and I refrain from getting into the specifics of human flesh technically qualifying for the Maillard reaction.
The crowd loses it.
The guy mumbles something and quickly exits, chased out by raucous applause and my mom yelling, “That’s our chef, you crusty little meatball!”
I’m still in my chair, gaping like a fish, when Annie turns toward the crowd, serene and steady and strong.
“Hi, everyone. I’m Annie Li. I’m the one who wrote this illiterate gorilla’s cookbook.” she says. “Because he can’t write for shit.”
A beat. The bookstore falls silent again.
She turns to me. Our eyes lock. “But we can’t all be perfect,” she shrugs. “Otherwise, this illiterate gorilla is the bravest, most intelligent, beautiful por—adult content creator I’ve ever met.”
I look around and make sure this bookstore isn’t actually heaven. “Annie isn’t perfect either,” I manage to get out. “She thinks a cobbler is the same thing as a pie. Otherwise, she’s fuckin’ perfect.”
“I’m proud of this book,” she tells the crowd, but she says it directly to me. “And I’m proud of him.”
I don’t realize I’ve stood until I’m already walking toward her.
“She’s not just the writer,” I say, voice scratchy. “She’s the reason I had anything worth freakin’ saying.”
I think the bookstore owner is saying something into the mic, looking like he’s going to cry, but I’m not sure, because My Annie Li is where she belongs. Home. In my arms.
“Thank Jeebus,” I say into her hair.
“I know,” she says into my chest. “Let’s finish this together.”
Applause. Camera flashes. Someone yells, “KISS!” but we ignore it. For now.
She leans back and smiles at me, small and private, and I take her hand, brushing my thumb against the tattoos on her knuckles, love and a little bit of chaos, guiding her back and into the chair that’s appeared next to mine.
“We’re taking a few more questions,” I say, and this time, I’m not nervous at all.
The bookstore’s back room smells like cardboard and old paperbacks and hope.
A crooked folding chair slouches in the corner beside a plastic storage bin overflowing with buttons and bookmarks labeled Local Author Swag.
On the wall, a faded poster of a very famous fantasy author dons a Sharpie mustache.
I’m pacing like a lunatic.
The second the door clicks shut, I stop.
I don’t turn around right away, but I feel her behind me. Her heat. Her breath. The hush of something fragile and alive between us. I rest my hands on the back of a folding chair and close my eyes, just for a second.
“I, uh… thanks,” I say, throat dry. “For what you said. Out there.”
“You lost a lot of color pretty fast. You were turning the same shade as the bread,” she replies, and I can hear the grin in her voice.
I turn.
There she fuckin’ is.
Same gold dress, same mouth I can spot in a crowd of a hundred, same hands that rewrote my story and made it something I could stand behind.
The tattoos on her fingers peek out from under the sleeves of my sweatshirt, her gorgeous face soft and gentle and radiant.
The softest wrecking ball I’ve ever loved.
We crash into each other without even discussing it. She wraps around me like a little fuckin’ koala, and I bury my face in her hair and exhale for the first time in days.
“God, I missed you,” I say.
“So much,” she agrees, her little body trembling.
I cradle her head in both my hands, winding my fingers through the silk of her hair, tilting her face up to look at me. “I’m so sorry,” I say, with a soft kiss to her lips.
“I know,” she agrees quietly.
“I fucked up.”
“You did.”
“God, there’s so much I want to say to you,” I go on. “That day, I made one bad call. A small one. I didn’t say anything when I should’ve. I didn’t shut it down.”
She blinks, slow and careful. “And you think that’s small?”
“No,” I admit. “I just mean—it was a small moment. Barely a quarter of an hour. But the pain it caused you—us—was… massive. And that was terrifying. How one lapse, one second of fear, could break something like that.”
When she exhales, it sounds like it’s been sitting in her chest for weeks. “You didn’t break it.”
“Felt like I did,” I say. “And I deserved that feeling. I didn’t have your back when it counted.”
Annie nuzzles into my chest.
“But the second I thought I’d ruined it? It gutted me. Because loving you has made me feel more like myself than I ever have before. And losing you didn’t just hurt—it made everything else meaningless,” I tell her.
There’s a pause.
She says quietly, “You made me feel foolish. For believing you could be the one who didn’t let me down.”
“I know,” I say, and I really do, “and I hate that. Because you’ve always been the brave one. You let yourself believe in something. In me. And I failed you.”
“You didn’t fail me.” She shakes her head, almost amused. “You hesitated. You got scared. And yeah, that hurt—but I’ve had time to think. And… I think I’ve figured out the difference between someone who gives up and someone who fights to fix it.”
I look at her. “And which am I?”
“The second one,” she says. “God, Nico, you illiterate gorilla.”
We’re quiet for a beat. I let her look at me.
“You make me brave,” I say. “You make me want to be better—not just for you, but for myself. I didn’t know I could love someone like this and still feel like me.”
She’s quiet for a second. Then, “You make me gentler.”
That’s a surprise.
“You make me less reactive,” she continues.
“Not softer—just more deliberate. Being around you makes me…” She clears her throat.
“Makes me want to slow down enough to care about things I usually bulldoze through. You make me want things. Real things. Not just goals or grudges or proving everyone wrong. And you make me feel like it’s okay for me to want things. ”
I swallow, hard.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever trusted to give all of me. Even the parts Sister Annie tries to keep in a locked box labeled ‘Too Much.’ And somehow, you look at all of it and say, more, please.”
“I mean it,” I say, taking her hand, rubbing my thumb across the tattoos on her knuckles. Kissing every single one of them. “Every time.”
She nods. “I forgave you the second I saw your name on the title page.”
That hits me like a freight train of relief. “I realized that was the only thing holding me back from being able to be your safe place. I had to make it so I was impenetrable.”
Her expression softens. “And you told your mom.”
“She was proud of me.”
She smirks. “Told you.”
I give her a giant squeeze, feeling her ribs flex under my arms. “You’re always right.”
“So what are we saying here? We’re both complicated, kind of dramatic, definitely chaotic, but we still choose each other?”
“I’m saying you make me stronger. And smarter. And honestly, probably way more tolerable to be around.”
“That’s debatable,” she grins.
I pause. “I want to be the man you saw in me before I even saw him myself.”
Her brow raises, and I trace the perfect arch of it with my thumb. “Good,” she says. “Because I love him. A lot.”
My ribcage expands, then explodes into confetti. I can’t stand it anymore. I grip her chin and pull.
It's not some perfect movie-screen kiss. It’s messy and desperate.
Lips and tongue and tangling, pulling, loving.
My nose bumps hers, and her hand knocks into my hip awkwardly before curling in my shirt.
But her mouth moves like it remembers me, and I groan into it, cupping the back of her head like I could keep us here forever.
It’s soft. Then it’s sharp. It’s just us, our own messy little symphony of hunger and home.
I love everything about it—the whimper that leaves her throat and the moan of relief that leaves mine.
When we finally break apart, she rests her forehead against mine.
“You make me more myself,” she murmurs. “Not better or shinier or different. Just more.”
“Same,” I whisper. “You make me want things, too. And how to be proud of that wanting.”
Another pause.
“Safe,” we both murmur at the same time, and I stare down at the love glowing in her eyes and reflecting my own.
She wipes her mouth with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “So. You gonna kiss me again, or was that just an amuse-bouche?”
I laugh, loud and surprised. “You’re still a pain in my ass.”
“A gorgeous pain in your ass,” she corrects, wiggling her eyebrows. “And that’s not a no.”
So I kiss her again. Because of course I do. This time longer. Deeper. No more fear, just fire.
And when we finally pull apart, she tips her head, eyes bright and steady. Steady, safe, secure.
“You ready?” I ask.
“For what?”
“For seconds.”
My Perfect Annie Li grins. “I’m fuckin’ starving, honey.”