Chapter 26 #2
Paris had been incredible, but it was Christmas Eve that replayed in her mind most when she missed Maddy over these past few months.
They’d been curled up on Aspen’s sofa, her fake tree up that they had decorated together a few days earlier, and they’d been arguing for ten minutes about which movie to put on.
“The Holiday,” Aspen said, holding the remote hostage above her head.
“Absolutely not. That movie is so cheesy.” Maddy had gotten up on her knees on the couch. “The ending is completely unrealistic, two strangers do not restructure their entire lives across an international time zone in eleven days, and frankly it barely qualifies as a Christmas movie.”
Aspen pointed at the TV. “It is called The Holiday. The word is right there in the title.”
Maddy waved a hand. “That’s just marketing.”
Aspen arched a brow. “Oh, and what’s your alternative?”
“Home Alone.” Maddy shrugged, like it was obvious.
Aspen gaped at her. “Home Alone? A child sets up lethal booby traps that would, in real life, kill two grown men several times over, and you’re lecturing me about realism—”
“That’s slapstick, it operates under different rules. Home Alone is a masterpiece. You can’t—” Maddy lunged for the remote.
Aspen jerked it out of reach, and it dissolved into a full wrestling match, both of them laughing too hard to fight effectively.
Maddy climbed half over her and Aspen twisted away, until they both lost their balance and went straight off the edge of the couch and onto the rug in a tangle of limbs and throw pillows.
They lay there wheezing and Maddy got an arm braced on either side of Aspen’s head and pinned her to the floor, her hair hanging down around them like a curtain, and Aspen looked up at her, helpless and laughing and so in love she could barely stand it.
And then Maddy’s laughter faded and she looked down at Aspen for a long second. And then she finally said: “I love you.”
And Aspen forgot how to breathe.
She had said it five months earlier, the night before Maddy first left Coronado, when she’d had nothing left to lose and had laid herself bare and told Maddy I have been in love with you since I was fourteen.
And then they’d broken up. And the next ten days had been ten of the worst days of Aspen’s life until Maddy showed up at her door at eleven at night with some grand romantic speech asking for another chance.
She’d left the next morning to get back to LA in time for a meeting, and Aspen had nearly convinced herself that she had hallucinated the whole thing.
She’d texted Maddy every day for the next several weeks, asking for verbal confirmation that it had actually happened and that Maddy was, in fact, her girlfriend.
And Maddy’s response was always some variation of yes, dork.
And she hadn’t told Maddy she loved her again, not once in the five months since they’d made their relationship official.
Because Maddy had told her that she wasn’t ready to say it back yet, and Aspen had understood.
She had been carrying her feelings for Maddy for the better part of two decades.
For Maddy it was new. So she’d let Maddy set the pace.
And then Maddy had gone and said it, while pinning Aspen to a rug on Christmas Eve, and Aspen’s chest had seized so hard it ached, and her eyes flooded fast and hot, and her laugh came out shredded.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that,” Aspen had said, and lifted her head off the floor to kiss her.
Maddy reared back just out of reach, one eyebrow climbing in warning. “Then you better fucking say it back.”
Aspen burst out laughing. She got both hands free, grabbed Maddy’s face, and dragged her down into the kiss. Maddy went willingly that time, grinning against her mouth.
And when she pulled back, she opened her eyes and made sure Maddy was looking right at her. “I love you, Maddy Sterling. I’ve loved you since the first day I watched you tear Connor O’Neil to shreds at the debate podium.”
Maddy huffed a laugh. “Fucking Connor O’Neil. He was such a douche.”
“He really was.” Aspen laughed.
Maddy leaned in again and brushed her nose against Aspen’s. “So, do I live up to the hype of fourteen-year-old Aspen’s fantasies?”
Aspen made a show of considering it, shrugging against the rug. “Aside from your atrocious taste in movies, yes.” She tipped her chin up. “I will convert you into a romantic, Maddy Sterling.”
Maddy scoffed. “Good luck with that.”
By the time they resettled on the couch and fixed the throw pillows, Maddy had caved and they watched The Holiday.
And somewhere around the Mr. Napkinhead scene, when Aspen got a little handsy and started kissing a slow line up the side of Maddy’s neck, Maddy swatted her off without looking away from the screen and informed her she was trying to watch a movie.
The last two months before Fiji were when it got hard.
Maddy’s schedule turned brutal as filming closed in. She was needed in LA more and more, and made it down to Coronado less and less, and the easy rhythm of the fall went out the window.
So they adapted.
Aspen would make the drive up on a Saturday, let herself into Maddy’s house with the key Maddy had cut for her, and wait for Maddy to come dragging in close to midnight, completely exhausted.
And Maddy would force herself to stay awake just to spend a few hours with Aspen, despite Aspen telling her she should get some sleep.
Then Maddy was gone again before the sun rose and Aspen drove back to Coronado.
It was not ideal, but they made it work.
And Maddy met her in the middle, every time.
More than once she’d shown up unannounced at Offshore in the middle of a workday, leaning in the doorway of Treatment Room Two with a smug little smirk, because a meeting had canceled and she’d gotten a twelve-hour window to sneak away.
Also more than once, Aspen had woken around one in the morning to Maddy crawling into her bed and wrapping around her back.
She’d kiss Aspen’s neck and whisper something like “Go back to sleep, baby. I love you.”
And Aspen could not think of anything more romantic than Maddy Sterling turning up unannounced at the end of a hundred-mile drive in the dark, just to spend a few hours horizontal with Aspen in her arms before she had to turn around and drive back.
It was more than she could have ever bargained for.
The woman who had once chosen to leave, was choosing, again and again, to show up. For Aspen. And Aspen would never be over it.
Then, right before Fiji, they’d stolen four days together.
Maddy had negotiated it with Margaret months in advance, and Aspen had cleared her whole calendar.
They’d driven up into the mountains to a cabin in Pine Valley and disappeared.
No family. No phones. Just the two of them and one bed, reliving the night Aspen’s life was forever changed, repeatedly, for four straight days.
It had been the best four days of her life.
Which was a thing she found herself thinking a lot with Maddy—every stretch of time with her somehow better than the one before.
And then, the day after they got back, Maddy was on a plane to Fiji and the three months that followed were some of the hardest months of Aspen’s life.
She’d assumed, in her infinite optimism, that it would be easier than four years of wanting Maddy in high school and never once getting to have her. That three months of being apart from Maddy when she was her girlfriend, who loved her, would be easy by comparison.
She’d been catastrophically wrong.
In the months before, even at Maddy’s busiest, they had never stopped talking—good morning texts, messages throughout the day, missing you selfies, FaceTimes at night while Maddy drove home exhausted and did her whole bedtime routine and inevitably passed out mid-sentence with the phone propped on the pillow.
Fiji took all of that. They got one scheduled FaceTime a week for thirty minutes, and replies to Aspen’s texts came twelve to eighteen hours later, which meant Aspen spent three months staring at her phone, terrified of missing even one tiny, infrequent window when Maddy might try to reach her.
The only thing that got her through was knowing Maddy hated it just as much.
She knew because Maddy said so, every single time they talked—that even when she was buried in work and putting out two dozen metaphorical fires at once, Aspen was always on her mind.
That she missed her. That she loved her.
That she was counting down the days until she was back in Coronado with her. And Aspen had counted them right back.
All ninety-three of them. And now, finally, they were zero.
“Babe.” Maddy’s voice came from the kitchen, bringing Aspen back. She was standing at the window over the sink, looking out at the lemon tree, and she turned around with her whole face open. “Come look at this.”
Aspen pushed off the doorframe and went to her. She wrapped her arms around Maddy’s waist from behind and kissed her neck—one of the things she missed doing most over the past three months—and then rested her chin on Maddy’s shoulder and followed her gaze out the window.
There, sitting in their lemon tree, was a red cardinal.
Red cardinals were extremely rare in Southern California, and Maddy had once told her a story about how she and her dad had spotted one together when she was young, while they were visiting Maddy’s grandmother at the cemetery a year after her passing.
It had landed on her grandmother’s headstone and her father had told Maddy how rare they were and that they were messengers of hope, new beginnings, and departed loved ones letting you know they were still with you.
Aspen smiled against Maddy’s shoulder. “I think it’s a sign your dad approves of our new home.”