Twenty-One
Elle
“So, you’ve officially gone from enemies-to-lovers to only one bed? What’s next?”
I can hear the disbelief in Lucy’s voice.
She pokes her head out of the dressing room and wags her eyebrows at me.
“And I thought a small-town trope was pushing it for me,” she adds, conducting this conversation with a casual tone, as if we’re not standing in the middle of a dress store with customers and employees all around us.
“Lucy, can we maybe discuss this later?” I ask in a rushed whisper. In a moment, she will emerge all pinned up and white and I’ll stand here and “ooh” and “ahh” and then we’ll get lunch. Hopefully. There definitely should be food involved in this deal.
Lucy’s head pops out from behind the curtain again. Her long brown locks are tied up in a tight bun on top of her head, stray hairs falling on her cheeks. I can see the outline of the dress around her neck, but am quickly redirected to her face as she scowls at me.
“No, we cannot discuss this later. You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you don’t have feelings for this man. And him for you.”
“Trust me, if I can believe it, you can too,” I mutter, crossing my legs in an attempt to make the velvet pedestal I’m sitting on more comfortable.
Lucy is not one for big and flashy, so she chose to buy her dress from a mom-and-pop shop on the Upper East Side.
I honestly don’t know how she found it, but it’s adorable.
It’s two floors of racks on racks of dresses, piled on top of each other so tightly that I could get lost in between them, and no one would find me for weeks.
May is almost upon us, as the warm weather suggests, and it is stuffy in here.
As in, hair-sticking-to-the back-of-my-neck stuffy.
I’ve already tried on my dress and gotten the all clear, so I shoved myself back into my jeans to sit here and wait for Lucy.
I wonder if I can DoorDash some Mister Softie up here.
“Do I sense some bitterness in your tone?” Lucy’s voice sings from behind the curtain.
“I don’t know if I’d call it bitter. It’s just—I don’t know. I thought maybe things had changed for him.”
“In regards to?” she calls from behind the curtain.
“The possibility of a relationship, I guess,” I reply with a huff.
“And you definitely don’t see a friends-with-benefits thing happening?” Lucy asks, again too loudly for our current setting.
I shake my head, even though she can’t see.
“No. That’s just not what I want. I feel like with Oliver—” My voice trails off.
“It would have to be all or nothing.” My mind wanders, imagining the possibility.
What would all look like with Oliver? I think about the small things he’s been doing for me since my apartment flooded, and even before then.
Pulling me out of harm’s way when we’re walking down the street, opening doors for me, folding the blanket on the couch, rushing downstairs after hearing me scream…
If he let himself, Oliver would probably be a romance-book-level boyfriend.
Sure, he can be stubborn at times, if our first meetings were any indication, but he’s protective, and smart, and loving. Or he could be.
“Some might say you’re never happy.”
“Ugh, I hate that about myself right now,” I groan, rubbing my temples. I hate how whiney I am. I can’t expect Oliver to read my mind. I’m more rational than that.
But romance books aren’t. And romance books are my daily life.
I believe that every story needs an HEA, otherwise it’s not worth my time.
But what if, with Oliver, getting to know him, exploring, actually is worth my time?
I haven’t had a partner in so long, I forget what it feels like.
What if Oliver could be that someone for me, even if it’s not forever?
I feel such a strong connection to him, and given what almost happened in the kitchen last week, he must be attracted to me.
All this time, I thought he was pushing me towards Henry because he wasn’t interested, but now I know there’s something between us.
That night in his apartment proves it. I just don’t know if either of us will ever compromise on what we want.
I hear Lucy scoff. “You’ve seen him almost every day for the past three months. You’ve been sleeping on his couch for two weeks.” When I don’t respond, she continues, “I remember having a discussion a lot like this last year, and our roles were reversed.”
“My situation is very different,” I say, remembering how I encouraged Lucy to be honest about her feelings for Liam. “And I want things that you didn’t.”
I want a connection. I want epic love that consumes me. I want a person, an everything, a universe.
And a part of me wants it to be with Oliver.
I just don’t know whether he can give it to me.
“There’s one thing that’s the same.” I can practically hear Lucy waving her hands around as she speaks. “You need to decide what you want. You need to stop believing that happy endings or romance are never going to happen for you. You need to get yourself out of a book and into real life.”
I rest my head on the heels of my palms. “I don’t remember my speech being so harsh.”
“Love is harsh sometimes, babe,” Lucy’s voice says, closer this time.
“I’m not in love—” I look up, stopping mid-sentence as Lucy emerges from the fitting room, seamstress in tow, beaming.
Long strands of hair that didn’t make it into the bun cascade down her neck, falling on a high white neckline made of intricate lace.
The rest of her bodice is solid, fitted to her curves, and falling away from her into a short train, lined with lace. She looks beautiful.
“Wow,” I whisper, standing to meet her. “This dress is so… you.” And it is—simple, elegant, and stunning.
Lucy looks up at me and smiles. Other women might cry right now, but we giggle softly at each other, relishing the ridiculousness of this moment.
All the nights we spent on our couch, talking about becoming hermits in a tiny house and owning seven dogs, or becoming rich on a Shark Tank idea and buying a mansion on the beach.
Never did we think they would lead to this.
The moment when one of us gets our happily ever after.
70 percent happy, 30 percent jealous, I swear.
*
“Where do you want this, Elle?” Liam asks, holding my green armchair like it’s a paperweight.
Mikey finally let me back in the apartment today, and I conveniently have two non-volunteer movers to help me get the place in order.
Liam and Lucy are staying at a hotel for their one-night visit.
I’m sure Lucy would like to stay longer, but she said she’s not sure which Liam is more anxious about—leaving his restaurant to his sous chef or his dog with his friend Brett.
And they’ll be back next week for her book launch party, so Liam had to choose his time away from the restaurant carefully.
“Um, Liam,” I say, my tone obvious. My eyes point to the one and only spot in front of the TV. “There’s kind of only one place it can go.”
“Just trying to help, geez,” Liam mumbles, placing the chair in front of the TV.
“Are you planning on feeding us dinner for all this unpaid labor?” Lucy calls from the bathroom, where she is sweeping the tile floor.
The bathroom made out the best in the Great Flood of Apartment 1A.
The wood floors, which probably haven’t been replaced since the Gilded Age, were not so lucky.
Mikey had to patch a few spots by the far wall, and sand them to match the rest. It’s a bit mismatched, but I’m not mad about it. It gives the place character.
“You literally carried one box,” I deadpan, eyeing Lucy from my spot atop my bed. I’m hanging up the photos that I had to take down so Mikey could spackle and paint around the window—the window that is literally the size of a shoebox—that caused all this chaos.
“It was a heavy box,” Lucy groans as she stows the Swiffer against the wall and plops onto my bed. “I got the one with all the yoga books in it. The ancient knowledge and wisdom really weighed it down.”
I chuckle. “What do you want to eat?”
“Let’s go to that bar down the street. I saw something about a cheeseburger on their sign,” Liam says, fussing around in the kitchen.
“Liam, I haven’t lived here for two weeks, bud. There’s no food in there,” I call, smacking the final picture on the wall and sitting down next to Lucy.
“Guy can’t even get a Cheerio around here,” Liam mutters. “Yeah, I’m going to need sustenance, like, soon.”
“Okay, let’s go before Liam turns into Marsha Brady from that Snickers commercial,” Lucy says, throwing her phone on the bed and heading for my closet.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching her rummage through my clothes.
“I just looked up the place. It says Saturdays are DJ nights. You can’t go looking like that.” She raises her brows at me, and I look down at my outfit. I’m wearing yoga pants, with a baggy t-shirt that says: Sorry I’m late, I saw a dog.
“What are you talking about? These are my nice yoga pants,” I say matter-of-factly. Lucy rolls her eyes and throws a sequined shirt at me.
“I’m not wearing this, it scratches my arms,” I say, throwing it back at her.
“Then why do you own it?”
“Because it was sparkly and I was having an off day.”
Having Lucy here makes me happy. Aside from the tall blonde man standing in the kitchen—the same one who waits for traffic lights to be red before crossing the street, and therefore could not look more out of place in Manhattan—it feels like old times.
Exchanging banter with Lucy, the comfort and familiarity of her presence brings a warmness into my chest. I miss her.
In the corner, a box of books falls off of the hall tree by the door.
“Lucy, that was literally the one place I told you not to put anything. The wall shakes when the neighbor slams their door.” I make my way over to the pile of books on the floor and start scooping them into my arms.
“I may or may not have been listening when you said that,” Lucy admits, a guilty look on her face. I fall to my knees to pick up the rest of the books. “Need help?” Lucy asks from the other side of the apartment.
“No, I got it—” My voice trails off as I pick up a journal I recognize from years ago.
It was the one I used when I was studying the yoga sutras.
I bullet-journaled my way through it. It’s a small red journal, one I’m sure I picked up as an impulse buy at a Barnes and Noble register.
The edges have faded with time, and the exterior of the pages have a yellow tint.
I can’t remember the last time I found this.
It must have been stuck at the back of my bookcase and was thrown in a box when I was saving my books from the water.
I turn the book over in my hands, feeling the soft faux leather crease in my fingers.
When I flip it over, I find an explosion of color on the pages.
Both pages are filled with a blend of colors—yellow, red, purple, and orange, vibrant streaks stretching towards the edge of the pages, centered around meticulously outlined words in the middle of the space.
“You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.” — Pema Chodron
The hair on my arms raises and goosebumps spread across my skin.
I get the exact same sensation every time I read that quote or hear it in a meditation.
I haven’t thought about those words in a while.
I try to pinpoint the moment when I created this entry—it must have been a few months after I moved to the city.
I had my first internship at a small press.
I missed home and I believed every intrusive thought that burrowed into my head—that I was a bad daughter and a selfish sister for moving away.
I remember the guilt, the pressure to be present for my mom and Nick, to do everything I could to make their lives easier.
I was cracking under it. I thought I was ridiculous for thinking I could live on my own and I blamed myself for every bad day Nick had and the toll it took on my mother.
It’s just the weather.
I close my eyes and picture an open sky, blue and cloudless, and try to remember what I felt the first time I read that quote. Understood. Heard. Comforted.
How different the weather in my life is now, compared to back then. I was so young, so optimistic. I still feel the same pressure I did when I first saw these words years ago. I’m still unsure of the future. I’m still alone. I’m older, but I’m still waiting for things to get better.
My thoughts drift to Oliver, and the way I feel…
lighter when I’m with him. My world is a little less lonely with him in it.
He thinks of things before I ask for them, or even know I need them myself.
I’ve never met someone who can read me like that, which is why I want him in my life, in whatever form he is willing to give me.
I don’t know what our future together looks like, or if there even is a “together” for us, but all I can say is that Oliver makes me feel good.
And it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that.
“You okay, Elle?” Lucy says as she takes a few steps towards me.
I turn around and snap the journal closed, taking a deep breath. “Yep. Let’s go.”