Page 183 of Love Felt Like This

I believe you.

Suddenly, all the nerves that were shivering inside Bernie Bird are now settling in my chest, evaporating, melting under Griffin’s gaze.

Someone clears their throat on the opposite side of the table.

“All right, then. Well, how about you tell me a bit about Birds on the Block, Miss Lark?”

I blink back to the here and now, swallow down my nerves, and smile.

Then I speak. And for the next hour I pitch every idea I’ve jotted down over the past two months. I dive into education research, childhood-development milestones, and all the characters—returning and new—that will represent each child’s need. I let Bernie pitch part of it, too, which instantly has them grinning. Finch is a perfect right hand, gesturing to match my inflections. It’s like he can read my mind before I’ve even finished planning the movement myself.

And then there’s Griffin.

He plays our E song, and it’s funnier than it’s ever been. Bernie Bird chimes in with words that absolutely do not start with E but sound close enough, and it’s absolutely, delightfully, perfectly seamless. Griffin dramatically stops playing when Bernie gets insistent and then starts back up when he’s nicer. It’s something we wrote before, but it’s also improvisation that comes so easily to Griffin. Bernie and Griffin are a duo that feels made for each other.

And suddenly it feels less like Bernie and Griffin and more like us.

We’re conversing.

We’re playing.

We’re laughing.

And the room is journeying into our imaginations with us.

The room feels like winter and quilts again. Like family dinners, Greg’s strawberry cakes, Ava’s giggles, and puffs of cool air. It feels like me in a too-fancy dress and him in a baby blue suit. It’s laughter and banter and that crooning voice of his, singing beautiful notes that are far too professional for our silly show. But it’s perfect. All of it is perfect.

By the time we finish, everyone on the opposite side of the table is laughing so hard they’re wiping away tears from their eyes. Griffin’s palm lands on the body of his guitar with that sliver of satisfaction across his face. The type with the white teeth showing halfway up his mouth and the giddiness of the man who secretly loves this.

I love that he loves it.

I love every piece of Griffin that he doesn’t show to others—the Griffin behind closed doors, who now strokes the outside of Bernie’s left hand—my left hand—with his pinkie. I don’t have the dexterity to stroke back. Bernie has only three fingers, after all. But I look at Griffin, and his eyes lock on to mine, and the room feels so silent, like maybe it’s just us here. Just us in the apartment again. Just us cuddling on the den’s foldout couch.

I startle as all three executives rise in unison, like the three heads of Cerberus. Finch removes his hand from inside Bernie, and the three of us—Finch, Griffin, and I—rise to our feet too.

Handshakes are exchanged, along with pleasantries of the day or the weather or Connection’s current programming. It’s small talk that feels so distant because I’m too busy walking on clouds, basking in the sunshine.

We did it.

And it was perfect.

A suit shakes Finch’s hand. “Great to see you again.”

“Likewise.”

I lay Bernie gingerly over the crook of my arm. I look at Griffin. He’s already watching me back.

We did it.

Us.

“Oh, how’s retirement?” someone asks.

“Clearly not going well,” Finch jokes, gesturing to me. “Happy to get back to work. Hopefully.” I smile, but then they joke about whether he tried enjoying bingo night and maybe he was just doing retirement wrong.

I laugh, but Griffin looks uneasy next to me. He throws a thumb over his shoulder, mouthing, I should go.

All the perfectly puffy clouds poof away.