Page 148 of The Wedding Forecast

The next morning, I wake up to see Mac reading my book. He’s almost finished.

He turns to me, smiling.

‘You gave him my line,’ he says.

‘What line?’ I say, pretending innocence.

‘You know what line.’ He puts his hand on my cheek, and kisses my forehead, then the bridge of my nose, then my shoulder. ‘I love the way your skin tastes,’ he murmurs.

‘It was a good line,’ I say, moving closer to him.

‘I’m proud it has been immortalised in print. But I can’t handle the suspense. Please tell me they get together in the end.’ He pushes my singlet up and runs his fingertips across my skin, and then his lips, and I close my eyes.

‘You have to keep reading.’

‘Tell me,’ he says, lifting his head away right when he knows I want him to keep going. ‘Tell me they get together.’

‘Fine, fine, they get together,’ I say, folding easily, because I don’t care, I would trade anything for him to keep going. The sex has got better over the past four days, which feels impossible somehow, because the thrill of the sex in New York felt like something that couldn’t be topped. The sex we’ve been having here is slower, lingering, playful, and so deeply pleasurable I can hardly bear it sometimes. He only needs to touch me for a moment, and I can feel it: my body springing to life, ready.

But it’s bittersweet, because all I want is more, more, more, and it’s all about to be taken from me.

Afterwards, his phone rings, and he answers, and I know immediately from his voice and the way he sits up straight that it’s his agent. With good news. I get up and go to the bathroom to give him privacy, but also, to prepare myself. I walk back in after a few minutes and he looks at me.

‘So,’ he says.

‘So?’ I’m bracing.

‘I got the part. In that small-town witch drama.’

‘Oh, wow. Congrats.’ Despite my bathroom preparation, my voice isn’t really hitting the right tone.

‘You don’t sound happy.’

‘I am happy. I’m just processing. Let me say that again. Oh, wow! Congrats! Mac, that’s great.’ I hug him.

‘It starts filming next year, in North Carolina.’

‘That sounds cool.’

‘Yeah. I guess I’ll be in North Carolina for a while.’ His eyes are watching me, his body tense. He thinks I’m going to ask him not to go.

‘I guess you will.’ I nuzzle his shoulder, and hug him until he relaxes.

And there it is. The whispered idea of him staying was just that, a whisper, a single note drifting away on the breeze. Ideas are easy, but reality is this. We have separate lives. Right people, wrong time. We will love each other in the best ways we can, while each following our own dreams. It’s messy, it’s painful, but that’s what we have.

And I can be happy with that.

45

MAC HAS TO leave early the next day for his flight, and it’s my first day as manager at the new bookshop so I can’t drive him to the airport. Our goodbye is rushed and haphazard and not romantic or special in any sense.

It feels like the world should be tilting on its axis, or something should be different, but nothing is. Until I see you again, I think as I watch him go. I don’t have time to cry into my pillow, and I refuse to start my first day in the new shop with red-rimmed eyes. My chest feels heavy, like my heart has turned to stone and grown fifteen sizes and I’m stuck dragging it around, but the rest of me is going to be energetic and positive, damn it.

The new shop is roughly the same size as the original, painted the same blue on the outside, with slightly darker wood shelving on the inside, and the trademark blue velvet chair. Bobbi and I spent hours the day before my launch shelving all the stock, and everything is perfectly clean and organised and just right, in a way it might never be again. I’ve brought my own shop cardigan to keep here, a long grey knit which is frumpy and ugly because I feel like that’s an important tradition to uphold, and we bought another typewriter to continue the typed recommendation cards. This one is orange, and when I run my hands over the keys, I get a little thrill. All the words I can write on it, all the books I can recommend.

There’s still a lot to do. I need to hire a part-timer, order some more signage, get a bin and a better broom, figure out a system for storing the boxes, and that’s just off the top of my head.

My first customer walks in right after I open, a young cheerful woman in her twenties with a nose ring and pink hair, and she asks me to recommend a great love story, which feels rather symbolic.