His fingers run through his wet hair, brushing it back and out of his face. “However you count it, it was only over the last four days that I realized I love you.”
I laugh at the way he says it as if it’s a huge inconvenience. “You don’t have to sound so annoyed about it.”
“I am annoyed about it, though. Because if you love me back, my life is going to be awful. You’re going to drag me to record stores on the weekends, and I’m going to have to keep pretending I only kind of like Hall & Oates even though I’m secretlyextremelyinto Hall & Oates. Like I already bought tickets for us to see them in concert later this summer, and I’m going to have to act like I’m not looking forward to dancing beside you in the arena like a total dork—”
My lips skate across the smile that’s slowly fighting its way through his frown. His mouth is salty from the sea.
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” I say. “But your future looks pretty bleak.”
“Oh no,” he says, his beautiful, rare, genuine smile winning out. “I’m going to have to watch so many more ’80s comedies, aren’t I?”
“Have you seenGhostbusters? If not, that’s definitely next on the list.”
I know that I don’t have to say that I love him too. He understands without the words, because he understandsme. But I still wrap my arms around his neck and whisper into his ear all of the things I’ve been holding inside since this morning: I love yous, I need yous, I want you forevers that he eats up with littlemmsounds like they’re ooey gooey airport cinnamon rolls.
When I pull away, he brings me right back. His voice is low and mischievous. “Say, Millicent Watts-Cohen. What are you up to for the rest of the night? I have a box of chocolates back at the hotel, and I’ve been dying to share them with someone before they melt.”
Wow, he was right; thatisa great line. But before I can respond, a wave crashes something into my hip. “Ow, what the hell?”
Then I see what it is. Hollis’s red notebook. It starts to float away, but Hollis grabs it by its metal spiral binding just in time. We look at each other as if both wondering if Mrs. Nash and Elsie had something to do with this immense stroke of luck. I flip it open and, well, if Mrs. Nash and Elsie did somehow summon this back to us, they did it for laughs because it’s absolutely soaked through and the ink has bled so much that the words are illegible.
“I knew that was too good to be true.” I sigh. “And I barely even got to read any of it.”
He kisses a drop of water off my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll write it again for you,” he says. “You’ll have to be patient, though. It might take a while.”
Oh, right. Hollis is no closer to a finished manuscript for his second book than he was when we ran into each other at the airport. “I guess you need to get working on something new now that this turned out to be a bust, huh?”
“Well, yeah. But I mostly meant that I don’t foresee our story ending anytime soon.”
The sweetness is almost too much to bear. So I kiss him on the tip of his nose, which I can tell he secretly loves, and say, “I know you are, but what am I?”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” he says.
“I know you are, but what am I?”
He growls in that way that makes me feel like my body is made up of butterflies. “Millicent, if you’re going to quote Pee-wee, it should at least—”
I stare into those mismatched eyes and give him a daring smile. “I know you are. But. What. Am. I?”
“Getting thrown into the ocean like that damn notebook,” he says, lifting me high against him.
My laughter turns to an embarrassing screech as he moves like he might actually toss me into the waves. But instead I’m held tighter, and kissed everywhere that isn’t currently underwater, and I know, I already know: Annoying him forever is going to be so much fun.
Washington, District of Columbia
January 2021
The song drifting into Rose’s living room brought her back to 1973. When she heard the first few lines of Hall & Oates’s “She’s Gone,” the memory was so strong she had to stop herself from going into the boys’ bedroom to plead with Walter to please, for god’s sake, listen to something else already. Of course, Walter wasn’t in the apartment, freshly returned from Vietnam and mourning the recent marriage of his high school sweetheart to another man; Rose’s youngest had long since married a different girl, moved to the suburbs, and had children—and now grandchildren—of his own. The old song must be coming from next door.
How odd, thought Rose. The small glimpse of her new neighbors she had caught as they moved in yesterday revealed a couple—a stiff-moving young man with Buddy Holly glasses who was in dire need of a haircut in her opinion, and a petite redhead with a luminous smile and an intriguing aura of chaotic energy about her. Rose estimated them to be in their mid-twenties perhaps. Certainly not old enough to have been alive when this music was popular.
As another track came through the wall—something by Elton John (and, oh, she had always enjoyed that man and his flamboyant glasses)—Rose began to wonder if she had a time traveler living next to her.
And it turned out that, in a way, shedid.
