Page 2 of A Novel Love Story

So, in the summer of my thirty-second year, with no money and no prospects and one too many AI-generated papers waiting for me to grade for my college English 101 class, I set off on a sixteen-hour road trip alone.

Ineededto get lost in a book.

More than I needed anything else.

Besides, it was the ten-year anniversary of the publication ofDaffodil Daydreamsby Rachel Flowers, and that was something that I wanted to celebrate. The author had passed away a few years ago, and her books had brought the book club together.

And, I think, deep down I just wanted to get away—no matter what.

On the sixteen-hour drive, I listened toDaffodil Daydreams. The audiobook narrator was in the middle of my favorite scene. I fished out a stale fry from the fast-food bag in the seat beside me and turned up the volume.

“Junie crossed the rickety bridge to the waterfall, searching the plush greenery for any sign of Will, but she felt her heart beginning to break a little with each beat. He wasn’t here.”

“Just wait,” I told her. “Love is neither late nor early, you know.” Then I frowned at my half-eaten fry, and dropped it back in the bag. I was so sick of fast food and gas station bathrooms. Almost twenty-four hours of it could do that to a person.

My puke-green hatchback, lovingly nicknamed Sweetpea, had started making this sort of high-pitched whining noise somewhere back in DC, but I’d elected to ignore it. After all, Sweetpeawasa 1979 Ford Pinto, the kind that had a penchant for exploding gas tanks. So I was just betting that it’d want to go out in style rather than by a faulty gasket or an oil leak.

I probably should have turned around, because I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being stranded in a no-name town, but I was a part-time English professor who filed her own taxes and knew how to change her own tires, goddamn it.

Nothing would stop me. Well.Almostnothing.

A fat rain droplet splatted on my windshield. Then another as, in the audiobook, Junie worked up the courage to leave the waterfall, succumbing to the awful nightmare she’d been afraid of all along—that Will didn’t love her. Not in the way she did him.

I knew these words like Holy Scriptures. I could recite them, I’d read them so many times.

In just a few paragraphs, Will would come running up the trail to the waterfall, out of breath and exhausted. He’d pull her into his arms and propose that they fix up the Daffodil Inn together—make it their home. Their happy ending.

I knew what she’d say, but my heart fluttered anxiously anyway.

I knew her voice would be soft, and it would be sure as she took him by the hands, and squeezed them tightly, under the glittering spray of the waterfall. And there would be magic there, in that moment. The heart-squeezing, tongue-tying, breathless, edge-of-your-seat magic of Quixotic Falls. Of true love.

What did it feel like to love someone so much you ached?

I thought I’d known once.

If life were like a storybook, I would be a premier scholar on the material.Most of the year, I taught English classes at my local university. I waxed poetic about history’s greatest romantics. I taught at length about Mary Shelley’s devotion to her husband, and Lord Byron’s … promiscuity. I handed out the letters Keats wrote, and challenged students to see the world through rose-tinted glasses.

I graded papers onThe Vampyreand Lord Byron, and I taught that Mary Shelley kept Percy’s calcified heart in her desk drawer because that was the closest thing to romance as real life could get.

I didn’tneedlove. I didn’t need to fall into it. I didn’t need to find it at all. Not again. Never again.

Because love stories were enough. They were safe. They would never fail me.

The rain came down harder, and my hands grew clammy with nerves. I hated driving in the rain. Pru always drove whenever we went anywhere. I rubbed my hands on my jean shorts, muttering to myself that I should’ve planned out another day and booked a hotel for the night. Maybe I still could, because I didn’t know where the hell I was.

Shit.

I gave up on trying to fix Google Maps and returned my eyes to the road.

Somehow, the rainstorm seemed to getcomicallyworse, until I found myself driving through a complete washout. I think I passed a town sign, but I couldn’t make out what it read. The rain on the roof of my car was so loud, I couldn’t hear the audiobook anymore.

“Will pressed … kiss … whispered … ‘It sounds … lo … dream … forever?’”

“Damn, that’s my favorite part,” I muttered, turning up the volume, but it was already as loud as it could go.

Then—the road seemed to veer off ahead. Thank god, maybe I could find some civilization and wait out the storm.

Putting my blinker on, I turned off onto the exit. There was an old barnlike covered bridge ahead, crossing a small river that overflowed and frothed with white water. I slowed down to putter over it. I was sure in the sunlight this drive was gorgeous, but right now I felt like I could go hydroplaning off into the wilderness at any moment and never return. The road beyond the bridge turned around a steep embankment of pines and wound down between more tall firs, plush and verdant with summer. I thought I’d made a mistake, because the road didn’t seem to end, until through the haze of gray rain a tall clock tower appeared, and with it came the soft lines of buildings and light posts and cars—a small town.

---