“The office poll?”
“Of when you were going to get together.”
This is too much information, too much to process. I groan and rub a hand over my face. “Greer probably hates me right now. I just took a job a million miles away.”
“Yeah. That’s a serious fuckup, my friend.” Eden grins. “The good news is you’re a smart man. I’m sure you can figure out a way to fix it.”
I’ve messed up so royally I don’t know if I can come back from it. “Even if I told Mary I changed my mind, I don’t know if my current job will still be here for me.” Or if Greer can forgive me.
Eden nods sympathetically. “I hear you. But there’s no time like the present to find out. I mean, if you still want her.”
God, I want her. Was there ever any question? Every ounce of every moment of every day since that party has felt like the bruising weight of the world. I want Greer and a lifetime of making stupid memories with her, of sharing secret glances and inside jokes. I want more chances to love her, to laugh with her.
I want my best friend back. However I can get her.
A few months ago, Greer and I stayed late in the office to finish up a project, and somehow our conversation turned to our biggest fears.
Heights, she said, and I admitted karaoke. And while those things still terrify me, I was so naive. So wrong.
My biggest fear isn’t singing in public.
It’s a life without Greer in it.
I study the confident smile on Eden’s face and feel a tug of hope in my chest. “Why do I feel like you have a plan?” I ask.
“Not a plan, per se.” She steeples her hands and taps her fingertips together. “What you need to do is grovel.”
“Sure,” I say. “But to who?”
27
Greer
This was a bad idea.
No one in their right mind would ever suggest sitting alone in a bathtub with lit candles on Christmas Eve, drinking rosé and listening to their ex-fake-boyfriend-slash-ex-best-friend reading them love poems. And yet, for the life of me, I can’t stop.
Earlier, I pulled a cassette player from the dusty box under my bed from that time in college when I’d sometimes voice record notes to myself on cassette tapes, and then I popped in Locke’s cassette. Even the sight of his familiar handwriting on the label made my heart squeeze in my chest.
Warning number one that it was going to be bad.
The cassette player balances on the edge of my sink now as I wallow in hot water, and I tell myself that my soapy hands are what’s preventing me from turning the damn machine off. But it’s Locke’s smooth voice—taunting me and torturing me, telling me that he loves me in someone else’s words—that keeps me trapped in place.“Greer, if you believe in a world with nonlinear time, then I was always supposed to love you.”
His voice is warm and kind, and on the tape, he laughs and says, “I’m adding a side note here. Do you remember when we talked about nonlinear time? The way everything that’s possible has already happened? That all the moments that make up everything are kind of stacked together, and we don’t move through them in a stream, but rather we exist in them. This is about inevitability. About living right here in this moment. I saved an article for you about this, so remind me to send it.”
Tears stream out of my eyes, and I pull my knees up against my chest. The water ripples around me, and everything feels so soggy and sullen. So hopeless.
“Oh, look,” Locke continues on the tape. “Another one about time.
That is the thing—
we are born to love across lifetimes,
across the universe and back,
on gray days just as surely as under the aching sun.
I was born to find you,
to know you.
To discover your heart,
like a ship sinking into the sea.”
Is he going to move on and discover someone else’s heart? Someone who doesn’t know him half as well or love him half as much?
I don’t want anyone else to get to kiss him.
The thought sneaks into my mind, unbidden, and my whole body aches at even the idea. In the past, I never cared about what happened to my exes after we broke up. Not like this.
That’s because he’s Locke, whispers a tiny voice inside my head.
Of course he’s different. He’s had part of me all along.
“Greer, I want to be the light shining out of your eyes.”
Everything crushing, dissolving into dust.
I sit in the bath until my fingers go pruny and the water cools and the tape runs out. Locke’s Secret Santa gift is the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me, and he did it without expectations. Simply because he wanted to.
My heart has never felt more seen or more cherished or more broken.
A sharp alert from my phone shatters the silence.
It’s too far away for me to reach it, so I slide out of the tub and twist a towel around myself. I accept the FaceTime call, still dripping onto the bathmat.
“Molly?” My voice comes out thick and nasal, choked out around the lump in my throat. I didn’t know how much I missed her, too, until she was smiling back at me.
“Ooh, la la. Look at you looking all seductive in your holiday finest.”
A strangled sound bubbles up from the back of my throat. “Not quite.”
“You have a pretty dress for Locke’s family thing tonight?”
A pit grows in my stomach. “I’m not going,” I whisper.
“What?”
“We imploded.”
She shakes her head in confusion. “I thought things were good. Weren’t you going to tell him how you feel?”
I groan. “I didn’t get that far.” I catch her up on the details, and her face transforms with sympathy.
“Oh, babe, I’m so sorry I’m not there with you. What are you doing tonight?”
I shrug, unable to fathom the next few hours. “Rosé? Pajamas and bed at six o’clock?”
“Unacceptable.”
