by Jo Watson
“I’m totally and utterly in love with you, too,” he said, with his lips pressed into mine. We stayed there like that for a while, lips touching, not kissing, breathing into each other’s mouths as if we were giving each other life-saving air.
“Say it again,” I whispered.
“I love you,” he said, and kissed me again, and then started walking me back towards the bed . . .
There are a few things you need to know about me before we end this story. I think these things are important in order for you to understand why . . . why I landed up where I did.
I once wrote a book about having my heart broken. But, now, I’ve written a totally different book. I wrote a book about how my heart was mended.
It’s strange. I set out thinking I was going to write a different story, a story about two other people’s hearts, but somewhere along the way, this story became about my heart. My heart and his heart. A man named Mike, who loves me just the way I am. Not prettier, not richer, not more famous, not anything else, but me: Pebecca. The girl with the sloping line that disappeared all those years ago, along with the father I never knew—two events that set my strange life in motion. But the thing that I’d once seen as a curse, I now see as a blessing. Otherwise, my life wouldn’t have played out in the way it did, and I wouldn’t have landed up right here. Right here, in this moment.
And this moment is where I’m meant to be. I know that with every cell in my body. Because I’ve finally found a place where I belong. I’ve finally found my tribe. My family. My home, the place I’ve been searching for all my life. And, I suppose, I’ve found myself, too. I found myself somewhere in a strange town, filled with strange people, that sits on the back of an indecisive turtle, which, if you think about it, is really a rather perfect place to find yourself. And I didn’t need to buy another rose quartz table and practice chakra breathing to do that, either; it just sort of happened, without me even noticing it was happening. Perhaps that’s how it’s meant to be. Perhaps, when you put too much effort into something, you try too damn hard to be something and think too much about it, it doesn’t happen. It’s when you let go of the reins that things seem to fall into place.
I’m still a highly flawed person, though—let’s just get that straight. I still jump before I think, I still probably care a little too much about what others think about me, but I’m working on that. But those flaws also led me down this particular fork in the road, and, this time, it was the right fork to choose. Because it led me to find love.
Do you believe in love at first sight? That strange concept, where two people who know nothing about each other just fall. How can they just walk off the edge of the cliff like that, without knowing if there will be anyone there to catch them?
But I think the answer is simple: you cannot help but fall. Jump. Sail down the other side of the cliff into the unknown. Because, when you meet that person, you have no choice but to fall. Close your eyes and let it happen. Don’t fight it. Because what is waiting on the other side might be better and greater and bigger than anything you’ve ever known before.
The book I wrote is about that fall. This story is about how I fell down a fence and fell in love with a man named Mike. This is my story. This story belongs to me and me alone, and I know that telling it is the right thing to do . . . And that story I told is the story that you’ve just read. The story of how I fell in love with the last man I expected to fall in love with. And how it all started one day, in an elevator . . .
YOU, ME, FOREVER
Pebecca Thorne
One year later
I hadn’t seen these women since that day in the elevator. Since that day that changed absolutely everything. I sat at the coffee shop and waited for them. I wondered if their lives had changed as much as mine had in this year. So many things had happened to me, so many magical, wonderful things.
I was living with Mike and Ash and Emelia now, in that big old house with all the memories. Mike and I are still so in love and I’m enjoying every second of it. Ash and Emelia have gotten married. A small, beautiful wedding in the old stables, which Mike and Ash have converted into a wedding venue. (Techno Tannie now DJs the receptions there, and always manages to slip in one of her new tracks.)
Can there be a more perfect place to get married to someone, though? A place that held a lifetime of love stories in its walls. We have the photo of Abe and Edith up there, in a frame. Abe died a few months after reading those letters, and his granddaughter posted them all back to us, along with the photo of the two of them during that hot, sticky summer. She thought they should all come home, to the place they belonged. Abe came home, too. His ashes arrived in an urn. It was his dying wish that his final resting place be under the willow tree where he and Edith had carved their promise to each other. Mike and I had to pull some serious criminal maneuvers to get him there. The painting of Abe is now also hanging in the town hall, for all to see. It hangs tall and proud over the stage, so that the story of Abe and Edith is not forgotten. So that their story is now officially a part of this town’s history.
The library is still full of porn. I’ve joined the ladies’ weekly book club and, let me tell you . . . I am getting such an education there. I am learning about things I never knew existed.
But some sad things happened this year, too. Petra passed away, and her son never reached out to her. We buried her in the graveyard on the hill and the whole town came to her funeral. She was very loved and cared for. She might not have had the love she wanted, but it was always all around her. I just hope she knew and felt it when she was alive . . .
I decided to phone my mother, after that funeral. I didn’t want things to be left between us like Pierre and Petra had left things. She’s fine. She’s married to a man that she loves and she’s happy. I’m happy, too. The call was short; I think too much has passed between us to have a typical mother–daughter relationship. But I do forgive her. I forgive her for what she did, because I think I understand it a little more now than I did as a child. After seeing what losing the love of your life can do to someone, I think I finally understand her pain and struggle. But it’s okay if I don’t have the family I was meant to have, a mother and a father, because I’ve found my own family—a perfect, unconventional one that I can call my own.
I looked up as I heard the door to the coffee shop open. I was expecting to hear that urgent click of heels, expecting to see that scraped-back hair and those puckered matt lips. But I didn’t.
She had changed. Everything about her was totally different. She walked over to my table and sat down. We looked at each other for the longest time without saying a word. And then we smiled. The door made another sound and we both looked up at the same time again as the third person from the elevator walked through the door.
I looked at her forehead and the red scar by her hairline. She wore it like a badge of honor. And she also looked different. We all sat down at the table and looked at each other. They were both so changed. Altered in the most profound way, the kind of way that changes who you are, right down to the lines in your face and the look in your eyes. A change so deep that it’s seeped into your blood and your flesh and your soul . . .
But, then again, I was completely changed, too.
“So?” I finally spoke, looking from one to the other.
Frankie leaned forward. She was the one that had walked into the elevator first, the one whose shoe had smacked me between the shoulder blades.
“Well,” she said, smiling at me, “I don’t know about you guys, but that day in the elevator changed my whole life . . .” And, then, she started telling us her story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Zoe for being an amazing assistant, supportive reader and for giving feedback on this book! Again, as always, to my husband for helping me with it! Natasha, for encouraging me to write this story.
Don’t miss Jo’s glorious, laugh-out-loud
standalone office rom-coms!
For laugh-out-loud, swoon
-worthy hijinks,
don’t miss Jo’s Destination Love series!
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