Page 1 of A Novel Love Story

An Ending

THERE ONCE WAS A TOWN.

It was a quaint little town, in a quiet valley, where life moved at the pace of snails and the only road in was the only way out, too. There was a candy store that sold the sweetest honey taffy you ever tasted, and a garden store that grew exotic, beautiful blooms year-round. The local café was named after a possum that tormented its owner for years, and the chef there made the best honey French toast in the Northeast. There was a bar where the bartender always knew your name, and always served your burgers slightly burnt, though the local hot sauce always disguised the taste. If you wanted to stay the weekend, you could check-in at the new bed-and-breakfast in town—just as soon as its renovations were finished, and just a pleasant hike up Honeybee Trail was a waterfall where, rumor had it, if you made a wish underneath it, the wish would come true. There was a drugstore, a grocer, a jewelry store that was open only when Mercury was in of retrograde—

And, oh, there was a bookstore.

It was tucked into an unassuming corner of an old brick building fitted with a labyrinthine maze of shelves stocked with hundreds of books. In the back corner was a reading space with a fireplace, and chairs so cozy you could sink into them for hours while you read. The rafters were filled with glass chimes that, when the sunlight came in through the top windows, would send dapples of colors flooding across the stacks of books, painting them in rainbows. A family of starlings roosted in the eaves, and sang different songs every morning, in time with the tolls of the clock tower.

The town was quiet in that cozy, sleepy way that if you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the valley breathe as wind crept through it, between the buildings, and was sighed out again.

There once was a town, and I was so certain that it would feel like home if I ever made it there.

There once was a town, and it didn’t exist.

1

Country Roads

IWAS LOST.

Not metaphorically—at least, I didn’t think so—but physically lost, hundreds of miles from home, in the middle of nowhere.

No cell service. An outdated map. A gas tank running on empty.

Oh, and I was alone.

When I started this road trip yesterday, before eight hours on the interstate and a pit stop at a dinosaur-themed hotel, and eight more hours today, I didn’t think I’d lose my way on the last leg of the journey. I was so close—the cabin where I’d be staying for the next week was within reach—but Google Maps kept glitching as I drove my way through Rip Van Winkle country, until my phone screen was nothing more than beige land and my little blue dot roamed, without a road, in the middle of nowhere.

I’d taken the same road trip with my best friend for the last two years to the same cabin in Rhinebeck, New York, to meet the same people in our Super Smutty Book Club. Ishouldn’thave gotten lost.

But this was a year of firsts.

Overhead, angry-looking clouds rumbled with thunder, dark purple with the coming night and heavy with rain. I hoped the weather held up until I found the cabin, unearthed a bottle of wine from my back seat, and settled down in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch with a romance book in my hands.

The promise of a week of wine and happily ever afters had kept me sane all year, through boring English 101 classes with half-asleep students and AI-generated papers on Chaucer and colleagues who swore thatWar and Peacewas a riveting read. The English department was rife with people who would love to talk to you for hours aboutBeowulfor modern literary theory or the intersectionality of postmodern texts. But for one week out of the year, I looked forward to shucking off my professorial robes and disappearing into the twisting roads that hugged the soft hills of the Catskills, and reading about impossible meet-cutes and grand romantic gestures, and no one would judge me for it.

And when everyone else pulled out because life got in the way, it was just going to be my best friend, Pru, and me—and that was perfect, too. Ineededthis. Pru didn’t understand how much. No one did. So when she told me last week that she couldn’t go, either, it surprised me. No, that was the wrong word—itdisappointedme—but I didn’t want it to show. I sat on the couch opposite her,The Great British Baking Showin the background, digging my fingers into the comforter I’d pulled over my legs because she always kept her and Jasper’s apartment freezing.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said, twisting the rings on her fingers nervously. Her dirty blond hair was done up in a sloppy ponytail, and she was already in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers. She was petite and perpetually sunburnt in the summers, with wide brown eyes and a scar on her chin where my teeth went into her face when we were twelve and trying to do backflips on a trampoline.Through the crack in her open bedroom door, I could see her suitcase half-packed already with warm sweaters and cute knit hats. Definitely not summer apparel. “Jasper surprised me with a trip to Iceland, and this is the only time we can go because of, you know, his job,” she gushed quickly, like saying it faster would make it hurt less—ripping a proverbial Band-Aid off a very hairy leg. “I know it’s not ideal but hejusttold me. Wejustfound out. And … we can all go to the cabin again next year?” The question dipped up, hopeful.

No, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t quite muster up the word.No, we can’t. I needed this. Istillneed this.

But if I said that, then what would happen? Nothing good. She would still go off to Iceland, and I’d be stuck exactly where I was. Besides, we both knew what Iceland meant: a proposal.Finally.

It was something she’d been waiting for for years.

So, what did it matter if she couldn’t come to the cabin this year? It was nothing, really, in the face of what she had to look forward to. So I put on a smile and said, “Obviously. Next year we’ll be back to normal.”

“Absolutely,” she promised, and she didn’t suspect a thing. “Oh, and maybe this year we can all get on a video call together instead?”

“C’mon, Pru. You know if Jasper’s taking you to Iceland, you won’t have time to video call with anyone.” Then I held up my hand and wiggled my bare wedding ring finger. “You know what he’s gonna do.”

My best friend squirmed anxiously. “He might not, and I know how much this trip means to you …”

“Go, have fun, don’t think twice about it,” I urged, draining my glass of wine as I stood to leave, because I didn’t want her to see how upset I really was. Jasper was a pretty low-level attorney at his law firm,so he only had certain days off once in a blue moon, and this was a last-minute trip that he’d managed to snatch up for them. I would be a monster to be mad at that.

Prudence might’ve been able to sacrifice this trip, but I certainly couldn’t. I was desperate for it—I needed to get drunk on cheap wine and cry over happily ever afters, even if I’d be the only one in the cabin this year.

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