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“Hey sugar—What was that?”
“Shit! Nothing!” she shouted, swiping her phone up from where she’d dropped it on the floor, because hearing him call her sugar again fried every single pathway between her brain and her muscles. “Hi, hello. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi.” This was going very well. “How are you?”
“I’m good,” he said. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m good.”Just keep talking. Don’t hang up. Don’t leave.
“I was thinking,” he said while Christopher Cross serenaded her, “about what I told you before I left.” He must have been outside, walking somewhere, the sound of his feet crunching over gravel tickling her ears.
“You were?” She tried to swallow, but only produced a dry gulp.
“I meant what I said, when I told you I loved you. Because it’s true. I am so madly in love with you it’s almost embarrassing. And I never get embarrassed.”
She stopped breathing.
“But I forgot to tell you a few other things too,” he went on, oblivious to her current state of suspended animation. “I forgot to tell you how much I loved your bakery, your family, your town, being so close to Madigan.”Crunch, crunch, crunchwent his feet.“I forgot to tell you how much the traffic in Seattle had started to bug me, how much the rain had been getting me down, how I was starting to find more and more excuses not to go into the studio, how ready I was for a change. I forgot to tell you how excited I was about this idea I had. I should have told you these things.”
Reaching inside her bra, she pulled out her wish, unfolded it, reread it to herself, listened to the words“Just a dream and the wind to carry me. Soon I will be free.”
“It wasn’t fair of me to expect you to just know what was going on in my head,” Cole told her while a car drove by.“It wasn’t fair to expect you to ask me to leave everything behind to be with you, when I hadn’t let you know that my life, my future, my home, was already here.”Crunch, crunch.“Right here, right across the street, right down this alley.”Crunch. “Right next to these lilac bushes. Right under this window.”
She held her hand over her mouth, and when her phone fell to the floor this time, she didn’t bother picking it back up. She didn’t need to, because he was there, right there, standing in her alley, just below her window.
“Mira? Are you still there?” he said into the phone. He must have ended the call and tried her again, because “I Will Always Love You” blared from her floor.
“Do you have that set as my ringtone?” he called up to her when she shoved her head out her window. His smile was so wide and beautiful and messy and perfect it made her sob through her fingers.
“How?” she managed through a ragged breath, and then, “Wait, was this you?” She pointed at the sky, like the musical notes were something tangible they both could see and hear and touch.
“I was hoping to use Madigan’s boombox, but he didn’t have this tape, and his tape guy was out of town. So I asked Jimmy. He actually started playing it on repeat ten minutes ago. But I couldn’t hear it. I had to double my bribe to get him to turn it up.”
“I’ll send him some cookies,” she said, her eyes misting over until his beautiful face blurred.
He responded with only two words, two words with an entire lifetime of hope behind them. “Come down.”
“I’m coming,” she said, briefly considering climbing out her window and down the rickety fire escape just to get there faster. She raised her hand, palm out. “Wait for me. Don’t leave. Don’t leave again.”
He raised a hand too, using it to cover his heart. “Mira, I’m not going anywhere.”
Racing down the stairs, missing the last two and landing so hard her mom shouted “What on earth!” from the kitchen, Mira threw the door open—the poor bell didn’t stand a chance—and gasped at Cole’s Volvo parked across the street, a moving trailer hitched behind it.
She looked around, spun in a circle, her heart racing, his wish still clutched between her fingers. And then he was there, walking out of her alley, his hand still over his chest. “Hi, Mira.”
Swiping her tears away, she replied, “Hi, Cole.”
They stood apart, at least a few feet separating them, but it felt more like a mile. She hated the distance. She hated the part she’d played in putting it there. “I was about to call you,” she said in a rush. “When you called me, I was just about to call you.”
“You were?” His hand fell to his side. “What were you going to say?”
“I—”It’s now or never, Mira.“I was going to tell you that I was scared. When you came back, when you said you wanted to stay here for me, I was so scared. But I never wanted you to leave. I should have tried harder to make you stay. I should have told you exactly how I felt.” She blinked, and a tear tracked down her cheek. “I don’t want to be scared anymore. I want you, Cole. I want you here, with me, always. I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up with you in the morning. I want you to tuck me in. I want you to play cards with my family. I want to bake for you every day.”
“No cupcakes,” he said, and she laughed, like really laughed.
“You are the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. You’re selfless and generous and kind. You remember things nobody else would. You give everything you have to the people you love. You put yourself out there with your arms open wide over and over again, even when you’ve been hurt, and I don’t know if you realize how rare that is, how much your refusal to let the world get you down spreads like sunlight to everyone around you.” She took a step toward him, pulled by that magnetic force that drew her inexorably in one direction, her favorite direction: due Cole. “I am so sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t enough for me. You were. Youare. I just didn’t think that I would be enough for you. I didn’t think I deserved someone like you. But I don’t care if I deserve you or not. I want you. I need you. I love you.” She watched his fingers flex, his jaw muscles tick. “You said you keep falling in love with people who don’t love you back.”
