Josh grimaced. “Hmm, okay. How much of this menu have you tried?”
“A lot. They have another location near my apartment.”
“Okay. I guess I’m just going to have to sample some things.”
Choosing an ice cream flavor was an important task, and Josh tried half the flavors before settling on the Fluffernutter. Paige ordered what she said was her favorite, a blue cotton candy ice cream. The ice cream parlor had a crowded seating area inside, but their backyard was nearly empty, probably because it was so hot. But this moment seemed to call for quiet more than air conditioning, and there was a breeze that made the heat tolerable.
Once they were seated, Paige said, “See, I know the way to your heart is through your stomach.”
Josh ate a heaping spoonful of ice cream and nodded. “This is so good.”
“So, I brought you here because I wanted to tell you that we should be doingthisa lot more.”
“I agree. You want to take me to eat my way across Brooklyn, I’m on board.”
Paige laughed. “I meant, we should go out with each other.”
Josh paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve been miserable these last few weeks. But I knew that what you needed, what you deserved, was to have someone in your life who was all in. You need someone who wants to be by your side, who is willing to fight for you. After Lauren told me about Megan, I couldn’t get out of my head that you needed a girlfriend who wouldn’t bail at the first sign of difficulty. But then that’s exactly what I did. So I get if you don’t trust me.”
Josh was having trouble parsing what he was hearing. His heart started to pound. He’d been missing Paige something awful, and he’d almost gone over to her place a dozen times to ask for forgiveness. But he’d also known that he couldn’t put himself through what happened with Megan again. Being with Paige was magic in a way being with Megan never quite had been, so he’d been willing to give her a chance to prove that she wasn’t Megan, but then she’d bailed.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I made a mistake in letting you go. I’m all in now, if you still are.”
And there it was. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve thought about it almost nonstop for three weeks. If you’re still in, I am. And I knew I had to come up with a way to show you that I was. So I took a risk. I told Lauren to tell you the party started an hour earlier than it did. You are surprisingly punctual, you know that?”
Josh shook his head and laughed. “What?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d talk to me if it was just me, so this was a little bit of an ambush, but I wanted to show you I was for real. I mean, it’s just been me in charge of my life for such a long time, and I didn’t realize how much I’ve been guarding that space. You coming into my life shook up all of my ideas of what I wanted and how I lived. I thought that I could go back to how things were before I met you, but I couldn’t. You were too much a part of my life. So I’m telling you, I am here for you 100 percent, if you’ll still have me.”
Was this what Josh wanted? Yes, if he was honest. He’d wanted her to come to him and tell him that it had all been a mistake. And he needed Paige to tell him that whatever hang-ups she had were behind her. They’d probably have issues and struggles in the future, but if she was willing to fight for and with him, they could get through them.
“Are you sure?” Josh asked.
“Yes, absolutely. I was trying to come up with some big romantic gesture to convince you I was being honest and this was what I wanted, but all I could think of was food and Brooklyn and… I don’t know. Am I screwing this up?”
Josh smiled. “No.”
She smiled back. “Oh. Okay.”
“All I ever wanted, Paige, was for you to be honest about how you felt. I wanted you to push past all those excuses and dig into what you really wanted. If you want to be with me, then that’s great. I still want to be with you. But only if you’re all in.”
“I am. I’m all in. And you? Are you still all in?”
Josh grinned. “I am still all in.”
Paige smiled and then surprised the hell out of him by leaning across the table and planting a kiss on his lips. He loved that she was sometimes shy and unsure of herself when it came to physical affection, but there was no hesitation now. They kissed, and Josh reached up to cup her cheek.
And it was like coming home.
“If you think about it,” Paige said after they parted, “you and I did break up. That was pretty much the worst thing that could have happened. And everything else in my life survived. I still have a job. Lauren and I are closer than ever. But I don’t have you. That’s really the greatest loss in all this. And you know what? That’s the part I may not survive. I mean, I’ll live, obviously, but my life has a lot less…joy in it, if you’re not a part of it.”
Josh reached across the table with his free hand and grabbed hers. “I mean, as love confessions go, I give that a B minus.”
