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“I’m staying in the city. I’ve found a way to keep working and the Courier is going to defend me from Keepsafe.”
“I’m glad,” and she didn’t disguise it, letting him see her smile. “But I didn’t love you for the work you did or your face on the TV, or the money you have in the bank.”
“I didn’t understand that. No one has ever loved me for being me. I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I wanted you to shine. I didn’t want you to be a footnote in anyone’s life.”
She put her hand to the collar of Jack’s coat. If he was wearing a tag she’d check it. She’d want to read on it that his name was Jackson Haley and his home was with Derelie Honeywell and anyone who found him should return him to her immediately. There’d be a reward.
“Ask your question.” She already had her answer. Yes, she loved him. Yes, she’d come back to him. Yes, to Ernest and Martha, and working life out together.
“Will you do a new experiment with me?”
She tugged on his collar till he brought his face close, and he pulled her into his body heat. Their eyes locked. His said he missed her, he needed her, he loved her and her answer terrified him.
“On one condition.”
“Name it.” He kissed those words against her temple and it would be too easy to forget what she had to say, except they’d be nothing together without it.
“Trust me to love you.”
He let go a long-held sigh. Held for minutes, days, weeks, years. “My most perfect day is the one where Derelie Honeywell agrees to be with me while I work out who Jackson Haley is when he’s in love, where we never stop asking questions and giving answers, where we disagree as thoroughly as we make up.” He put a hand to her hair and smoothed it. “Derelie Honeywell, will you do the love experiment with me for the rest of our lives?”
A lifetime of investigating each other, a lifetime of moments too good to look away from, too interesting not to share, repeat and share again. Every metric through the roof and no b
uyouts. A lifetime of cats and dogs and hugs and kisses and making each other laugh and cry, no matter where they lived or worked. This was Jack embracing his whole life. This was Derelie’s big adventure, her new place in the wider world.
“Yes. Yes.” Front page exclusive, hold the presses, add the visuals, assign a URL, load the page. “Yes.”
Stars in each other’s skies, sunlight on each other’s hopes and dreams, passion pure like birdsong, love as clean as fresh air and laughter like an overexcited hound.
Who knew you could get to love in thirty-six questions and grab it forever with one more?
You’ll never believe what happens when two estranged lovers meet in the park, but it was swoon-worthy clickbait and hard news wrapped together, and they lived happily ever after.
* * * * *
About the Thirty-Six Questions
The thirty-six questions that can make you fall in love with anyone (according to the New York Times) began life as an appendix in an academic paper by psychologist Arthur Aron and others in 1997 called The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.
Participants were told to work their way through the questions in order, each answering all thirty-six questions, over a period of an hour. Six months later, two of the original participants were married to each other.
Others who’ve recorded their experiences with the thirty-six questions included a four-minute session of staring into their partner’s eyes without speaking. It’s colloquially known as a stare off.
The original paper included the following instruction from the authors:
“This is a study of interpersonal closeness, and your task, which we think will be quite enjoyable, is to simply get close to your partner.”
If you’re brave enough to try it—good luck.
It might not lead to love, but there are worse ways to get to know someone.
Set One
Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
Would you like to be famous? In what way?
Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
