Page 167 of The Difference Between

“Eh.” We walk to the roof’s edge and look out over the city. “Not so bad.”

“How long you been doing this?”

“Whole life,” he says around his first sip. “My old man did it too.”

“You have a son following suit?”

“Who knows.” He pulls out a phone and shows me a picture of a teenage boy. “He wants to be a video gamer.”

He gives me a look like whatever that means and I laugh, briefly thinking of Holden.

“You like what you do?”

“Hell yeah.” He stretches his arm out over the city like he owns it before cupping a hand to his ear. “Hear that?” A medley of wind and traffic fill his pause. “I’m serenaded every day and get a perspective most people don’t. Makes the big things seem small.” He takes a quick sip of his coffee. “Even the fall ain’t so bad.”

I peer over the edge. Fifty stories in the air. “Looks like a pretty shitty fall,” I say.

He laughs around the rim of the cup. “This coffee’s shitty.”

Now I laugh. It kind of is.

“I’ll tell ya this,” he continues. “The difference between here and the ground reminds me that we only get one shot at life. Sometimes the windows are cracked or sometimes it rains—” He points a finger at me. “Now that’s shitty.”

Again, I laugh.

“Either way. I get to come up here and make the city shine. If the wind blows and the cable breaks—” He shrugs. “Probably ain’t the worst way to go.”

Jeremy takes his final sip of coffee then crushes the cup. “I gotta clean up,” he says, gesturing to buckets, squeegees, and ropes. “But I’m guessing you came up here for a reason.”

I’m up here because I miss Gavin. Because I can’t have a baby. Because I wonder how Addie’s doing. Because I make more money than this man and he’s happier than I can ever be.

“I guess I just wanted to see why you’re so happy.” My eyes skim the skyline of a city filled with people I don’t know.

“Easy,” he says. “I choose it.”

“My dad always said to choose excellence.”

“Same damn thing if you do it right,” he counters. “I love my job, but the happy is mostly about everything else. The people. My wife deserves better, but she sticks around anyway.” He lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. “Hell, maybe that’s all happiness really comes down to—choosing someone and letting them choose you back, even if you don’t deserve it. Maybe that’s the real choice, you know? Can’t control much else.”

As he coils a rope, I ruminate in the simplistic irony of his words.

Gavin chose me against my wishes, and he kept choosing me until I made the choice for him. He chose me when I berated him in Mom’s yard and through my antics with the donors—including assault. Maybe he would have chosen me if he knew that I was damaged goods, even if I think he deserves better.

Though, according to Jeremy, so does his wife, and he seems like a great man.

Ultimately, I was, like I always am, trying to minimize the fallout by controlling the situation. And while my goal was making things better for Gavin, it’s been hell on me. Days and days of my body being empty and missing his touch like a dying plant misses water.

I’m at the door when Jeremy calls my name.

“Life’s shitty,” he says. “But not always.”

He dumps a bucket of water down a drain and turns on a spigot. He’s a window washer who genuinely loves his life. I got a lot wrong about who I thought he was. “You a Bears fan, Jeremy?”

“Da Bears,” he says the way only someone from Chicago can. “Hell yeah. Ben Johnson’s takin’ ’em all the way this year. Mark my words.”

I smile to myself—I didn’t get everything wrong.

I take the stairwell down to the elevator, pushing the button and blowing out a breath as I check my phone; it’s four thirty in North Carolina. Addie will be finishing play practice, and Nancy will be picking her up. My sisters will be heading home or wrangling kids. Mom will be doing God knows what. And Gavin . . . and Gavin.