Page 13 of Happy After All

All the air leaves my body, and I am left with the crushing sense that I was just the victim of my own overactive imagination.

He starts to walk away, but he stops for a moment and turns just halfway. “I didn’t choose it.”

I’m left to wonder what that means.

It’s the last thing he says to me all summer.

Chapter Four

One Year Later

Matchmaker, Matchmaker—when the community members in a romance band together to try to create a love match between the protagonists by meddling in their lives.

It’s 123 degrees. The kind of record-breaking heat wheredrywon’t save you. Where the idea of your AC going out is terrifying because it could actually be fatal.

I didn’t choose it.

I keep remembering what Nathan told me last summer. He didn’t choose this. So why is he here? In the dead armpit of July.

I chose this. I chose this life and I like it. I like it, dammit, even while sweltering.

That’s one reason I decide not to continue keeping his secret. Well, I tell Elise, which isn’t reallynotkeeping the secret. In the last eighteen months she has gone from a new friend to mybestfriend. It just doesn’t feel right to not share with her that Nathan is in fact a famous bestselling author.

“No way,” she says, staring at me from behind the reception desk.

I’m leaning over it, procrastinating, because I should be making use of the free afternoon to hide away in my place and do some realediting. I can peck away at a draft while I’m working. I need some actual uninterrupted time for revisions.

“Yes,” I say. “Plus, he’s a snob. I had a fight with him about romance. He said it wasn’trealistic.”

I feel a little bit guilty about that because the conversation did have more nuance than that. Though I found it annoying, and I’m still ... A whole year later, I’m still off-kilter. With the wholedid-we-almost-kissthing.

He certainly didn’t acknowledge it after it happened. He hasn’t acknowledgedanythingsince he came back.

“What a dick,” she says.

“Yes. But I knew that. I don’t know why I expected anything different from him.”

“He’s nice to me,” she says.

I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered by that. I must be projecting that conflicting feeling, because Elise gives me a strange look.

“I’m trying to figure out why he’s mean to me,” I say.

She shrugs. “I can’t help you with that. Unless he’s attracted to you.”

That was kind of what I was hoping she would say. Though, also, it’s not great.

“I don’t have any space in my life for that kind of thing,” I say.

“No,” Elise says. “Idon’t have any space in my life for that kind of thing. I share a one-room unit with an eight-year-old.”

I refuse to accept this from her. “You can’t make it work? You, who always manages to have your nails done, have your daughter’s homework finished, work your shifts, and make the best baked goods on earth? You could squeeze it in if you wanted. No pun intended. Or maybe pun intended.”

Elise shakes her head, her gold hoop earrings chiming in time with the movements. “Ugh. Do you want to know a secret, Amelia?”

“You’re always angry?” I ask, tongue in cheek.

“No, I’m always exhausted,” Elise replies. I look at my friend and her perfectly done makeup, her hair in a neat ponytail. “I feel like I haveto be everything. I don’t ever want Emma to struggle, you know? Just because I chose to be an idiot who had unprotected sex with a loser, that’s not her fault. It’s not her fault her dad sucks.”

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