Page 102 of A Novel Love Story

“My favorite animal is a platypus. The only time I’ve ever ridden a horse, it bucked me off and I got a scar right here to prove it.” He pointed to the scar on his upper lip. “I went to NYU for undergrad,and then Columbia for grad school. I wanted to be as far away from my parents as possible.”

“Those are just facts,” I said. “I could probablygoogleyou for those.”

So he asked, imploringly, “Then what do you want to know?”

Everything, and that was dangerous because I was leaving, and the more I learned about him the harder it would be to let him go. But … I looked down at the book in my hands, and then back at him.

“Can you tell me about her?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of my judgment. The less I knew about her, the better, but I couldn’t shake her ghost from my thoughts. “I mean … I know her but … but I don’t.”

He nodded, closed his romance novel. “We were neighbors as kids. We went to the same middle school, the same high school. I started dating her two weeks before prom. I never imagined she’d say yes to a pimply, scrawny kid like me,” he began, and when he spoke about her, he put reverence in every word, like to savor her memory he also savored her words. “She made me feel like a better person by just being around her. Whenever she got angry, she got this little wrinkle between her brows, and her feet were ticklish, and she laughed at every dad joke.” The remnants of a smile crossed his mouth, and I didn’t think he noticed, too lost in his memories.

I studied that half-forgotten smile. It was bittersweet. Heartsick. “You miss her.”

And he would never stop missing her, because that was what loss was in the end—breaking of a piece off yourself that you’d never get back. There were people who tried to fill that hole with work, and there were people like me who tried to fill it with stories; people filled it with whatever could fit.

“Of course I do. Sometimes, here, I can almost trick myself into thinking she’s here, too.” He shook his head, at a loss for words. “But, none of it is any excuse, and I’m sorry.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. “I think I understand. You just wanted to live in her story.”

“Next best thing to making one with her, right?” he asked, and it was heartbreaking how his voice cracked at the end. I began to reach for him, but he stood from the counter. “I want to show you something. I should have shown it to you before,” he added, and motioned for me to follow him to the back of the bookstore. I wasn’t sure where he led, until he opened the door to the back office, and came back with a manila folder and a towel. I sat down on the couch, where I wrapped the towel around my shoulders, and he handed me the folder. “Here.”

Inside, there were printed computer pages. The pages were all curled and worn, marked up with tabs.

I frowned. “What’s this?”

He sat down beside me, and motioned for me to open it. “It’s Rachel’s last book. Or, at least, half of it.”

Curiously, I opened the folder. I didn’t know what I expected to find—but it wasn’t this.Maya Shah Gets the Girl by Rachel Flowers, the title page read. I turned to the first chapter.

Maya Shah never cried.

“This … this is the last story?” I asked, my voice sounding like it was a thousand miles away.

“Most of it,” he clarified, and I flipped to the last page, and quickly found out why. It was a book almost done—the story left on a sentence that wasn’t even completed.

A romance left without a happily ever after.

Looking at the pages, I remembered what Maya had said to me, about feeling stuck, like nothing ever moved, nothing ever changed. And then what Lyssa said, about feeling lost. They were the only ones,aside from Anders, who were cognizant of it, and I now realized why. Because this wastheirstory. Left off right at the worst part.

I’d been wrong this entire time. Anders had not been the love interest of this story—Maya was.

“Rachel never finished the book,” Anders said, watching me flip through the pages. “The town was, for a very long time, frozen exactly where she left it. Where …” He looked away, and the frown that tugged on his lips took on a bittersweet taste. “Where she leftme. Then you came along, and things began to move again.”

The bookstore was silent, as if the stacks were leaning in to listen.

“I ruined it for you,” I muttered.

“No,” he replied, and took my hands in his. I couldn’t look at him, still lost in the pages on my lap. He squeezed my hands tightly, finally dragging my attention to him. His eyes were kind, imploring me to listen. “If you read those pages, you’ll see that Ruby and Jake were already inching toward a breakup, and Gemma and Thomas were growing bored, and the Daffodil Inn was almost—almost—open again, and Maya and Lyssa were in the throes of … I think Rachel always called it the dark night of the soul? I remember that she was frustrated because she didn’t know how to pull them out of it. She tried everything, and she said nothing felt good.” He pursed his lips, because it was clearly uncomfortable for him to talk about this—about Rachel Flowers. His fiancée. His best friend. His …everything. “After, I didn’t know how to live in a world without her. I didn’t think I wanted to. And then I realized I no longer remembered her laugh. Her smile. I was losing her, one day at a time. So I drove back to where—to where the accident happened,” he said a little quieter, and swallowed thickly. “I don’t know why I did. I didn’t know where else to go. But, instead,I found Eloraton, and everything wasexactlywhere she left it. Everything—every little piece. Even the deleted drafts, the ideas that never happened—”

“The courtyard,” I realized.

He nodded. “Yes. It was all there, and I thought … I could just stay. For a little while. And a little while turned into months, then a year … then two. Every day was the same, where the burgers were always slightly burnt and the taffy was sweet and it rained in the afternoon. I knew it all, like clockwork.”

He ran his thumbs over my knuckles. “The evening you came in to town, I knew better than to get caught in the rain. But I did, anyway. Just for something different, I think. To remind myself of something new. Then you arrived, and everything began to change.”

“I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.” My voice shook.Thatwas why he didn’t want me to mess anything up, because this town was everything he ever loved about the love of his life. I closed the manila folder, feeling sick to my stomach. “I should’ve just left when you told me to. I should’ve—”

He leaned closer, imploring me to look at him, and only him. “You’re not listening, Eileen.”

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