My eyes swim with tears. He’s talking about so much more than just the house.
“And since she’s your house now, I think it’s fitting you complete the final item on her to-do list.”
I stare at him in wonder, heart swelling, as he pulls out a pad of paper from the drawer behind him and hands it to me.
Repair List
Gut House and Rebuild
Build Getty a Studio
Keep the Ugly Pink Handrail
Have Sex with Kiss the Repair Guy
MARRY the REPAIR GUY
My breath hitches when I read the last item on the list. My eyes flash up to meet Zander’s. And every single thing I want to say fades at the look of absolute love on the face of the man in front of me.
“You don’t have to run anymore, Getty. Not from me. Not from your past. But I understand you need to have a place of your own. A safe haven you can run to if needed. And like you, I know what I need. And I need you with me. Not just to move in. Not on a part-time basis. But in my life permanently. I want to make a life with you. Not because I want to control you or have you decorate my arm, but because you brought me back to life, Getty. You make me live. You make me feel. You make me laugh. You make me want tomorrows and sunsets and forevers when I never even thought twice about any of them before. And I only want them with you. I want to come back here often. In the off-season. On vacations. Bring our kids here someday—show them that god-awful pink railing and tell them about how sometimes you need to give someone a second chance because they are worth it. I want to sit on that deck and listen to the ocean while telling them the PG story of how you and I met. And someday I want to grow old here with you.”
The sob catches in my throat. How can it not when he’s creating memories so real I can feel them? So clear I can see them.
“You see, for so long I’ve feared the damn white squall. Being pulled under by its water . . . and then I realized how stupid I was, because you’re my water. The one thing I can’t live without. I want to marry you, Getty. I want years filled with kisses and memories and laughter and love and patience like only you can give me. And I want to give the same to you. You are my truth now. So just jump with me, Socks. Leap without looking, because I promise I’ll be there to catch you no matter how far the fall.”
I look at him—this incredible man, inside and out—and am reminded of my motto from what feels like forever ago: Carpe diem. Hell yes, I’m seizing the moment, so long as I can seize the man.
I laugh out loud. Grab his neck and pull him toward me so I can pour everything I feel and can’t express into the kiss. Show him with actions.
“Is that a yes?” he asks, eyes hopeful as he pulls out a box from his back pocket and opens it. Inside rests a diamond infinity band. It’s simple and subtle and exactly what I’d pick for myself.
And the sight of the ring makes this real. Makes his words and his intent and everything he just said hit home in an even bigger way.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
His eyes widen in shock. Just for a moment. But my smile tells him the real answer. “Cute. Very cute, but this time you only get to pick one answer.”
“Only one?”
“And here starts the questions to the questions,” he says, laughing and shaking his head.
My heart bursts with love for this man standing before me. With belonging, with everything I’ve never had, and I wonder how all this happened. How this scared, gun-shy woman fell in love with this incredible, generous man.
And the answer’s simple.
His love roared loader than my demons.
And he made me want to be found again.
I lean in and press a kiss to his lips.
And whisper.
“Yes.”
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The door is stuck.
A part of me likes that fact because it means that possibly no one has been up here, and another part of me appreciates the physicality it takes to get it open when I put my shoulder into it.
The metal door slams back and clanks against the concrete wall behind it. The sound cuts into the silence of the night as I stand there, momentarily cautious for some reason, even though in this place I’ve found more peace than anywhere else in the strife-torn country.
I was worried how I’d feel coming up here—wasn’t sure I’d be able to face this the first night back—but standing here, I know it’s for the best to face the memories head-on. To fight the ghost of her that’s been haunting my dreams with reliving the memory of her in “our” place.
The noise from the city streets below is faint and comforting, but I don’t notice much beyond the dust particles floating in the stream of light from the open door. I have to talk myself into stepping over the threshold. After making sure the door is secured so I don’t get locked out, I make my way across the rooftop to a little section on the far end. I walk around the stem walls erected in the shape of a plus sign that protect some air-conditioning units on three of the four sections to see if it’s still here after almost five months.
When I turn the corner to see the tarp folded beside the covered mattress and the sign—a piece of paper taped to the wall bordering it that says WELCOME BACK, TANNER—I laugh aloud. At first the sound is one of amusement, and then it slowly fades off in relief when it hits me that the guys downstairs still drinking kept this up here for me. They preserved my little place of solitude in this crazy-ass world because they knew how much I needed it. And how much it meant to me.
Dropping to my knees on the mattress, I sit with my back against the wall so that the sign is beside my head. Once I’ve gotten comfortable, I look out at the lights of the city beyond, which calls to me like a curse and a blessing. A necessity to make my blood hum with that adrenaline I thrive on and a damnation for the dreams it suppresses for so many others. Lights twinkle in the distance, beacons of life in a minefield of hopelessness and destitution.
When I bring the bottle of Fireball up to my lips, the burn feels good, reminds me that I’m still here, still alive. And that Stella isn’t.
“Oh, Stell,” I say into the night with a shake of my head. “This feels so weird sitting up here without you.”
The bittersweet memory of the last time I sat here comes back with a vengeance, and it blazes ten times stronger than the sting of the whiskey.
“Do you ever wonder if you’ve missed that once-in-a-lifetime, Tan?” Stella looks over to me, the smear of dirt from the day riding with the embed like a badge of honor across her cheek. She has that look in her eye, the one that makes every guy in existence roll his eyes because it means his woman is going to talk about shit he doesn’t want to address. But first off, she’s not my girl, and second, I kind of want to know what she’s talking about.
“You’re not going to get all sappy on me now, are you?” I pass the Styrofoam cup filled with Kahlúa and coffee her way. She rolls her eyes and takes a sip, hissing when it scalds her tongue.
“Zip it, Thomas. You’re stuck with me.”
“Explain, then.” I shake my head when she tries to pass back the coffee to me. It’s been a rough day; I need something stronger than a keoke coffee, but I’ll meet up with Pauly later for that. Right now I just need our routine, our wind down after a fucked-up day out beyond the city’s walls of misconceived protection.
Stella’s sigh pulls me from the images of blood-soaked camouflage and the sound of gunfire. I know she hates when I get all lawyer-ish on her, as she calls it, and so that’s why I phrased my comment that way, needing to get us back to what has been our norm over the past decade.
“Never mind. You, Mr. I-fall-in-love-with-everyone, would not understand what I’m talking about,” she says with a roll of her eyes, but
I can tell something’s bothering her.
“I don’t fall in love with everyone. I prefer to call it infatuation.” I try to lighten the mood by bringing up one of our long-standing conversations.
“Ah.” She laughs aloud. “But it’s such a short, slippery slope for you . . . one that lasts a whole two dates before you hit the barrel of love.”
“Barrel of love?” I can’t help but laugh at that, even though I don’t appreciate the comment. “Fuck. Am I really that pathetic of a sap?”
Stella stares through the darkness before turning her face to the city beyond us. “No. You’re not a sap. . . . You just have a good heart.”
“That’s what it’s called nowadays? I guess I’d better work on changing that.”
“No, it’s endearing. This big alpha male with a soft heart. You’d never guess it was there beneath all of that testosterone.” She falls quiet again, and I know whatever is bugging her is just beneath the surface, and yet here we are speaking about me. She reaches out and grabs my hand. “Don’t ever change that, Tanner. Someday someone is going to appreciate that in you. Your quick love and big heart.”
My mind immediately thinks to crack a joke about something else that I have that’s big, but when I recognize the conflicted sorrow in her eyes, it dies on my lips. “What’s going on with you, Stell? Talk to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
Fuck. The most dreaded words in all of existence for a man to hear other than “I’m fine.” “I’m not buying it. What did you mean about a once-in-a-lifetime?”
She refuses to look my way, so I poke her side until she starts talking. “I meant that one person that you’re supposed to be with forever. The person that you’re fated to love.” She falls silent as she peers over the steam of the coffee cup to the city down below. “What if you’ve met that person already and screwed it up somehow? Or even worse, what if you met that one person but just at the wrong time in your life?”
I stare at her profile for a bit while I ponder what she’s saying, taking in the slight upturn of her nose, and find comfort in the familiarity of her beside me. Is she right? It’s not like I’m old, but I’m not getting any younger either. My life is transient at best and a mind fuck at its worst . . . but is there really such a thing as a once-in-a-lifetime? “There has to be more than one person in the universe you’re fated to be with. That’s just cruel if the powers that be only give you one shot, you know?”
“Yeah. I guess.” She sounds less than convinced.
When I see the glimmer of tears welling in her eyes, I reach over and squeeze her hand. Who knows what’s going on in that mind of hers? After all this time, if I can’t figure it out, I know to stop trying. Her stubborn ass will tell me in her own time, when she wants to.
But when she doesn’t squeeze my hand back, I scoot next to her and put my arm around her, pulling her in tight to my side. “Well, we both know that I’m not your once-in-a-liftetime,” I tease with a laugh and press a soft kiss into the top of her head, but for some damn reason I question my own statement.
“We were a hot mess, weren’t we?” She laughs softly as my mind flickers to the year we dated only to find out we were miserable as a couple. Explosive tempers leading to hot sex may be memorable but definitely not sustainable. How we broke it off but then were forced together because of our careers and in the end found out we could be incredible friends to each other.
“The Dynamic Duo.” I reiterate Rafe’s nickname for us, photographer and reporter, best friends and confidants. She looks up to me and holds my gaze through the night’s darkness. “What?” I ask, trying to figure out what her expression is saying.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if my being here, living this life we lead . . . if I’ve ruined my chances for it, that’s all.”
“Stell.” I grab at straws to comfort her about a topic that makes me feel completely awkward. And even more disconcerting are the thoughts her damn question has stirred in my mind. She’s my best friend. After a decade she knows all of my quirks, my pet peeves, everything. . . . What would happen if we tried a relationship now?
I bite back the laugh at the thought. Stella is like my sister, Rylee, to me. Well, all except that Stella and I had sex way back when we were actually dating.
But the thought lingers in the back of my mind: What if we are right for each other but met at the wrong time? A backfire on the street down below has the both of us flinching, our instinctive training to duck at the sound of gunfire taking over.
We laugh at how ridiculous we look and how only here, only with us, would this be normal. “Look,” I tell her, “if in ten years we are still nomads, still single, then we’ll revisit this conversation.”
“What about it?” she asks, her eyebrows narrowing as she tries to figure out what I’m saying.
“If we are each other’s once-in-a-lifetime.”
Her sharp inhale makes me realize what I just said, the stupid inferences she could make from it. But at the same time, when she laughs, I hear her nervousness, and the look in her eyes is so real, so vulnerable, that when I glance down to her lips, I’m forced to swallow over the lump in my throat.
It has to be the moment, a simple slice of time when two friends who have lived a lifetime together as a result of their volatile careers fall into that trap of need mixed with comfort and a splash of loneliness. The minute I lean forward and brush my lips to hers, I hate myself for it, and yet at the same time, the immediate recoil I thought would happen on my part doesn’t happen. It’s just a whisper of a kiss, but my lack of reaction scares the fuck out of me.
I rest my forehead against hers. “Sorry,” I murmur, my hands threading through her hair.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the birthday present I was planning for you tomorrow, but . . . ” Her voice fades into a laugh.
“I told you I don’t want anything,” I say to squash that argument again, but then feel the need to repeat it. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. After ten years, that’s the only time we’ve ever crossed that line.” The heat of her breath hits my lips and tempts me when I’m never tempted by her.
“I guess we have ten more years to see if it happens again.” I can hear the smile on my lips in my tone, and even though we both are in agreement that what just happened shouldn’t have, we sit in the darkness for a minute—foreheads touching, lips so close—almost as if the both of us knew what was going to happen the next night.
How this moment was going to be the lasting memory I would use to get me through the darkness her death would bring.
“Here’s to you, Stell,” I say as I lift the bottle of whiskey up to the sky and take a long pull on it.
The circuit of thoughts that has etched a goddamn groove in my mind starts again. Hell yes, I loved her . . . in my own way. I just wonder if her absence has made me read more into that emotion than it really was. People place those who die on pedestals, forget their misgivings with a bat of an eyelash, and become more connected to them since they can no longer tell them what they feel. Is this what I’ve done to Stella and our friendship? Is this why I’ve held tight to this last kiss we shared even though it was a stupid move?
I’ve been through the seven stages of grief. You name each one of them, and I’ve fucking done them more times than I care to count. But when all is said and done, I’m here and she’s not. Guilt is a goddamn vise squeezing out of me every ounce of emotion I never wanted to feel.
Plain and simple, I miss her. The easy banter, how we could sit comfortably in silence, that I could predict her remarks before she made them. We were a team and now I feel lost, wondering why I pushed so hard to get back here. So focused on getting out of my house, I didn’t think about how many damn memories were here waiting to haunt me.
I just need to get back in the game. Meet my photographer tomorrow and get back in the swing of things, use the hunge
r I feel deep down to propel me through the flashes of sadness that still come. Then I’ll be better. Besides, it’s not like I have any other option.
Plug and chug.
The memories continue to come, the good, bad, and horrific, and who knows how long it’s been when I lift the bottle to find it empty? Suck it up, Thomas. This will be the only fucking rooftop pity party you’re allowed to have. You wanted back; now you’re here.
“Fuck,” I say into the emptiness around me as I rise on unsteady feet and let my buzz filter through my limbs. Once the mattress is covered up by the tarp to protect it from the dust that blankets everything like an irrevocable stain, I make my way back downstairs.
I smell her before I see her. That subtle scent of hers, which seems so out of place in the air heavy with spices, fills the stairwell when I hit the eighth floor. She’s coming up as I’m coming down. Our eyes meet and hold across the dimly lit concrete landing.
Anger fires within me. She’s stupid for being here alone. Does she know how much fucking danger there is in this country? The disrespect that’s shown to women simply because of their gender? Add to that, she’s American. I think of how many times Stella and I went round and round on this topic before she just gave in and allowed me to be at her side most of the time.
And I don’t want to care about this loose cannon of a woman, but my feet are glued to the floor as an indescribable current shoots through the empty space between us. I try to deny it, want to deflect it somehow, but we stand there, gazes held, and remain silent.
“Did you want something?” I ask, eyebrows raised, impatient.
“Hmm,” she murmurs. “No. I thought I did . . . but now? Not hardly.”
She starts to brush past me. Something about that haughty tone of hers with a subtle accent I can’t place pushes buttons I don’t want pushed, and I reach out and grab her upper arm. The force of my hold pulls her body into mine so that our chests touch, and the sharp inhale of her breath is unmistakable since it presses her breasts further against me.