“Will you kiss me?” I ask, looking up at him through my wet eyelashes.
“I have just one more thing to say, and then I promise I will kiss you as much as you would like.”
“Deal.”
“You’re it for me, Abby. That’s why I’m willing to wait as long as it takes because I want a lifetime with you, and so what’s a few months or years? You said it that night on the boat—that you didn’t want to be my girlfriend if you weren’t going to be my wife—and I’m telling you right now that when I ask you to be my girlfriend, you’re the last girlfriend I’ll ever have. I’m not saying I’ll propose right away, but I’m telling you my intentions up front so you have all the information.”
“Wasn’t I your first girlfriend, too?”
“The first one that mattered, yes.” He cradles my face with both hands and looks at me like maybe I’m the only person that’s ever mattered to him. “It’s my intention to ruin you for any other man, Abby.”
“You already have, Miles.” I dig my fingers into his waist, pulling him against me.
“Abby, I?—”
“Shut up and kiss me already.”
He doesn’t waste another second and claims my mouth with his. He doesn’t just kiss me; he consumes me, crushing me against him in a kiss that tells me he meant every word he just said to me.
His kiss is all the promises he just made. It’s the yes I don’t have to say. It’s the two of us giving us a second chance.
EPILOGUE
ABBY
11 months later
June the following year
“I’m so excited you’re finally letting me see the place,” I say for the millionth time on our way to see Miles’s most recently finished project.
He’s been working on the Rhode Island beach house all year, coming out at least once a month since he left Mexico to check on the progress. It’s a six-hour drive from my apartment, and usually we spend it on the phone, so today already feels like an adventure.
We left my place at five in the morning, and it’s nearly eleven o’clock, so we must be close.
“I wanted you to see it before it went on the market. You should get to see the fruits of your labor,” he says, looking over at me from the driver’s side of the car. He reaches over to my lap and takes my hand in his.
As soon as the house was in good enough shape, I got to start the fun part of remodeling—well, what I call the fun part.Electrical and foundational things are boring to me, but picking out paint, hardwood, appliances, all of that was really fun. And Miles is terrible at it, so it took absolutely zero begging for him to agree to let me be the designer. It was a fun side project for me.
The transition going back to school was as hard as I thought it would be, but now that I’m more settled, I have more space in my life than teaching allowed for, and my migraines are under control in a way they haven’t been in years, so getting to work on Miles’s flip project, even from a distance, has been a welcome change of pace.
The scenery around us shifts from residential small town to more coastal, and by the time we park in the driveway of the massive house, my jaw is nearly on the ground.
“Oh, Miles. This is…”
Beach houseis a generous term given that the house is on a cliffside facing the Atlantic Ocean. It’s massive, two stories at least, maybe three if the top turrets aren’t just a windowed attic. There’s a two-car garage with black doors, and the house is painted white. I recognize them as suggestions I made and feel secretly pleased with myself for the choice. The landscaping is neat and gives the house a more finished look.
“I love surprising you,” he says with a smile. He comes around to my side of the truck and opens my door, helping me out with a steady hand.
It took four months for me to beg Miles to be my boyfriend, but I only had to ask once. From the time he left Mexico and moved back into his mom’s house in Pittsburgh, about three hours away from me, Miles was just alwaysthere. Like he never left my life eleven years ago. The distance was never an issue for us. He came to see me every weekend that he wasn’t in Rhode Island, took me on dates, and, true to his word, earned my trust.
Therapy was a big part of that. He started going weekly when he got back, and we talked a lot about what he was learningabout anxiety and how to manage it. We talked more about his dad.
“How much did you pay for this house?” I ask.
“It’s not polite to talk about money,” he says and leads me up the driveway to the house.
I stop short when the front door comes into view.
