Page 36 of When in December

“Please, don’t tell Mom.”

“Just get inside and go to bed.”

She moaned once more but did as asked. I was still standing with him. I should’ve probably left, but he chuckled, looking down at me, and shook his head.

“Thanks. I doubt that this is how you planned to spend your night.”

I shook my head, really looking at him now—from the way he grinned, a little crooked, to the way he looked me up and down like he, too, was just noticing me and he looked pretty pleased about it.

“My name is Poppy, by the way,” I told him.

“It’s good to meet you, Poppy. I’m Lincoln.” He smiled, and for the first time, it felt like someone was welcoming me in.

After safely seeing his sister back to her respective residence hall with her friend, Lincoln told me all about his sister and how she was usually good at keeping herself together—so he wouldn’t be telling their mom about this little incident—but had gone through a bit of a nasty breakup.

He then asked me if I’d had anything to eat tonight, and because I didn’t count the gross crackers and cheese from the alumni event, I told him no. We went to a small restaurant a few blocks away. He ordered me my own fries since he said he was a notorious hangry fry-eater and it was best to know this now about him.

I laughed and replied that I preferred my own fries anyway before I dipped them in mayo, which made him cringe.

It had been one of the best nights of my life, and it was so easy to fall into his hazel eyes that swirled with green-and-brown galaxies. I couldn’t imagine one where we wouldn’t end up together. I mean, he’d literally run into me. It was like all the romance stories said it should happen.

I should’ve known better. I should’ve made my usual contingency plans, like when I worked, in case something went wrong and I needed to take an escape route to make it all okay.

But I didn’t.

I let myself fall from the first time he smiled at me to the first time he kissed me. How he fit against me sent sparks through my stomach. It was the most perfect, simple kiss. I could imagine myself getting that sort of kiss every day for the rest of my life.

My mother, as imagined, was thrilled.

“Things are finally going right for you,” she’d said, squeezing my shoulders when I first told her that I had been on more than a single date with someone, and she learned that Lincoln lived on his own in the Finance District and worked as a contract analyst.

“Basically looking for typos,” he’d said, attempting to brush it off.

And for once, I wanted to agree with her.

Even better, my mom liked Lincoln. So did Simon, though they couldn’t find a lot to talk about together.

Finally, things were going exactly how I wanted them to and had imagined.

Lincoln told me how much he loved me first. I easily agreed that I loved him back. It was easy that way. Simple.

After that, I opened up to him more. Trusted more. I shared the highs of finding my passion at Home Haven to the low years of pain and confusion. I told him about the years I went through where one believed me and my body. They said the pain was in my head. They insisted that I had low tolerance, or I just had to get used to the monthly cycle every other woman when the pain struck worse than ever every month until, finally, I could no longer take the anxiety of going to university away from home.

I told him about how I’d been to just about every specialist. I’d taken every test. And then one day. It happened.

One doctor changed my life. He told me the chronic, debilitating pain and frustration wasn’t in my head. Endometriosis wasn’t in my head. The tissue constricting around my organs wasn’t normal, but it could be fixed—and for the most part, it was.

Though it was hard to let go that I was “fixed.” That technically, I could go on with my normal life. For the longest time, I panicked whenever I felt a minor stab of pain. I wasterrified that one day, the endometriosis would come back. That my life would pause again, right as I was finally getting it all together.

Even if, I also admitted quietly to Lincoln, things like children might not be as simple for me. At least not compared to others. It didn’t mean that having children couldn’t happen or that there weren’t still options.

Lincoln accepted me, and he said without a second of hesitation, “How could I not love every piece of you?”

My dream life had fallen right into sequence. My internship at Home Haven was ending, and Michelle Maven, my idol, called me into her office to offer me a full-time position, starting at the end of the summer.

By the following fall, Lincoln brought up moving in together when his lease was up. I was practically living there as it was. He gave me space in his wooden dresser that squeaked whenever you opened a drawer. He picked me up a pink toothbrush and put it in the bathroom. Slowly, Lincoln incorporated me into his every day as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

As if he couldn’t wait, however, Lincoln pulled out a ring on the corner of the street where he’d first run into me.

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