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She lets out a long, tortured breath. “Dear God, Paige.”
“I know.I know.I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” There’s a bite in her voice now that the shock is waning.
“Are you okay?”
“I… I gotta tell you, it’s really unnerving to get a call in the middle of the night from a friend you thought was dead.”
I can only imagine how I would have felt if I’d gotten a call from Clara out of the blue. “I know. My timing is terrible.”
“Your timing is the least of it,” Rowan says. “In my head, you’ve literally risen from the dead.”
“Are you mad?”
There’s a long silence from the other end of the line. Then I hear her breathe out slowly. “I’m just… shaken. I really thought you were gone, Paige. I was grieving like you were.”
“I know.”
“And the thing is… we haven’t been friends for that long,” she says. “But you are the first person I’ve connected with in a long time. Losing you hurt a lot. More than I thought it would.”
A tear slips down my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
She sighs again. “They don’t prepare you for this in school.”
I bark out a strange, strangled laugh. “No. No, they do not. Or if they do, I missed that day in class.” I twist my hair around my fingers. “Can you just… tell me how you’ve been? Tell me what you’ve been doing. And I mean all of it. The mundane stuff. The stuff you think is too boring to share. I heard they closed the coffee shop for renovations. Did they fix the copier at the office? Seen any good movies lately?”
There’s another tense silence, and I wonder if maybe there’s no coming back from this. Maybe some pains are too much to recover from.
But then Rowan exhales and I hear a little more life return to her voice. “Who takes six months to renovate a goddamn coffee shop? I’ve beendyingwithout my pastry fix—not in a sort-of-literal way like you, you bitch—but I’m an absolute fiend to everyone in the office; they all think I’m nuts…”
I laugh and we settle in and it feels… normal.
My husband back in my bed.
My friend back in my life.
Maybe the future I hoped for isn’t out of reach after all.
31
MISHA
Two weeks of waking up next to Paige, and the euphoria hasn’t faded.
The pleasure at seeing her sleep creased face. The reassuring warmth of her body next to mine.
You’ll get it one day,Maksim told me not long before he died.When you wake up next to a woman and realize that your sole purpose in life is to make her happy and keep her safe. That the quiet moments are the ones you’re living for.
He was right, of course. It just took me a little while to catch up to his way of thinking.
Paige stirs next to me. I’m startled out of my thoughts. I thought she was asleep, but her eyes are wide open and clear.
“How long have you been up?” I ask.
“An hour or so,” she says. “But you were sleeping so peacefully. I couldn’t wake you.”
I lean down and kiss her cheek. “Is there a reason you seem wired this morning?”
