Sylvie waves off my apology with an easy laugh and a smile. “No worries. Life is full of plot twists.”
“You’re telling me,” I deadpan, earning a laugh.
Sylvie’s smile widens. “Which brings me right back to the question I know everyone listening wants to know the answer to, Margot.” She pauses for effect. “Is it safe to assume that, after your trip to Alaska and incredibly hopeful letter, you believe in the possibility of Happily Ever After once again?”
Despite the feeling of my heart being torn open like an overripe peach, I smile. Despite the pulpy, dripping mess in my chest, the answer to her question is easy. My voice hitches. “Absolutely,” I say.
Sylvie rests her chin in her hands and sighs. “And what changed your mind?”
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like an interview for untold thousands but like I’m sharing secrets at a sleepover. “I think,” I begin hesitantly, “what I didn’t understand about Happily Ever After is that there are some people who come into your life—even for just a moment—who have the power to fundamentally change you forever. They’re the people who see right through all your masks, and all your bullshit, and love you anyway. And not justdespiteall your wounds but because of them too. You’re safe in their hands for as long as you can hold on to each other, but even when it’s time to part ways, you leave knowing you’ve been truly seen.” I pause, carefully wiping beneath my eyes, and take a breath. “You leave knowing you’ll spend the rest of your life looking back on the time you had together with sadness, yes, but joy and thankfulness too.”
“And so for you, Happily Ever After is a state of gratitude for the love you’ve received—no matter if the relationship has long since faded,” Sylvie says far more succinctly than I did. Her voice is tender, and below her face is an endless stream of heart emojis floating upward in a rainbow of color.
I nod. “Yes, that’s what I believe.”
“But what if it didn’t have to end?”
At this, I look to my left, because it wasn’t Sylvie who asked the question. It was a far deeper voice. A voice I haven’t heard in months, though it’s flickered in and out of my thoughts and memories every hour since I left him.
“Forrest,” I whisper, hardly daring to believe he’s really here.
I feel the vibration of the floor as he begins striding toward me, Savannah following in his enormous wake, and I stand up to face him, my heart going wild. All thoughts of the interview disappear when he comes to stand in front of me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him and felt his presence that I’m overwhelmed by the details of him. The high cut of his cheekbones and the dip of his throat. The breadth of his shoulders and the coarse cowlicks of his dark hair. He looks as tired as I was after coming back to L.A., but somehow all the more beautiful for it.
Without thinking, I step closer, tilting my face up like an offering, and his hand lifts to cradle my jaw. My eyes flutter shut at his calloused touch—so familiar, so missed—and my entire body calms at once.
“Aaand that’s about all for now, folks!”
Forrest and I turn our heads sharply in unison at my sister’s voice. Savannah is standing on the other side of my desk, holding up my computer and apparently live streamingeverything. My face promptly turns into a surface hotter than the sun’s core as the realization hits me that I’m having the most profoundly personal moment of my life in front of thousands of people, in myunderwear. And not just any underwear butthoseunderwear.
Savannah mercifully turns my computer around to face herself, grinning ear to ear. “Apologies to cut things short, Sylvie, but my sister has an HEA to get to. Totally unavoidable, I’m sure you understand.”
“But is that—” sputters Sylvie. “Oh my God, is thatMr. Hot Tub?”
Savannah winks into the camera, clicks a button, and closes my computer on the desk. “Sorry, but I had to give themsomething,” she says, walking over to us. “Forrest, we can officially meet later. And Margot, I was wrong—that was even better without your pants.” She gives us one more dazzling smile and practically skips out of my office, closing the door behind her.
And then we’re alone for the first time in months, the aching chasm between us narrowed to a single foot of empty space.
“I’m so sorry” is the first thing he says, his voice like broken granite. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”
“We both knew it wasn’t going to last,” I say, ready to make his excuses for him. “I understand.”
“No, Margot,” he tells me. “I thought we understood. I thought we were being selfless. But I was so fucking wrong.” He shakes his head. “I’ve got nothing to give anyone else if you’re not with me.”
He’s looking at me like every wet curve of my eyelashes and crease of my lips are small miracles. I know because I’m staring at him the same way.
“But your dad—” I start, even though I don’t want to say it. Even though I want to avoid any topic that might steal him away from me again.
“Fired me,” he says with an incredulous laugh. “Hired a live-in nurse and evicted my ass.” A stunned laugh gusts out of me. Forrest steps in closer until that foot of space becomes mere inches. “He never wanted me to sacrifice everything for him. The more dedicated I was, the worse he felt for keeping me from living my own life. For keeping me from you.”
I shake my head, wondering how it would be possible to relate harder to something. “Savannah gave me the same wake-up call,” I tell him. “After you left to take your dad to Anchorage, I read her last letter and learned she’d moved out of my house.”
Forrest’s eyes widen, and I know he understands how difficult that particular revelation must have been for me. “Christ, are you okay? I had no idea—”
I nod, taking a breath. “I’m okay. And so is she, despite all my paranoia. We’re still adjusting, but it’s getting a little easier not to send constant text reminders for her to take her supplements.” I pause, biting my lip and dropping my gaze from his. “It has been a little lonely, though,” I say in a choked voice, and I can’t stop the tears from welling up.
“Fuck, Margot. I’ve been so lonely, too, sweetheart.” One of his hands rises to gently tilt my chin up. “Every day since you left has felt like a goddamn tally on a prison wall. And then my dad showed me your book dedication, and it made me hope I could try and make things right.”
“Does that mean…” I say uncertainly, hardly daring to ask the question that’s been burning inside me since he appeared. “Do you mean you’re moving back to L.A.?”
