Page 27 of A Novel Love Story

I glanced up, and there was the bartender I’d sat beside all night, watching him dole out drinks and charm pretty girls. He had a rugged look about him, his brown hair cut short and his blue eyes sharp, his tan finally fading from a long summer in the sun. He sat down beside me, taking a long drag from a vape pen. It smelled like strawberries, mixed with the lingering sharp scent of vodka on his fingers. He looked disarmingly debonair in a white shirt and charcoal vest to match his trousers, and shined loafers.

“It’s a lovely party,” I replied. “I just …”

“It’s the kiss, isn’t it?” he guessed.

My mouth dropped open.“What?”

He took another hit off his vape pen, and blew it out. “You know, the cliché?”

I glanced down at my app. Why was my Uber driver still sitting exactly where he’d been five minutes ago? “And what if it is?”

“I’d say it’s a pity, then.”

“That I’m leaving?”

He leaned closer. “That you’ve got no one to kiss.” His gaze flickered down to my mouth.

My heart started to race. Was he—flirting? I swallowed the knot rising in my throat. “Do you?”

A smile curled across his mouth. “Sure, if she’d like.”

Then one of his coworkers called him back in from his smoke break, and I handed him back his jacket. He seemed surprised that I did, but I wasn’t accustomed to keeping what I wanted. He pulled his jacket back on as he climbed the steps to the building, and left me alone to wait for my Uber, whichstillhadn’t moved.

I shivered again. And the time climbed and climbed toward midnight.

And then—

Cheers.

Calls of “Happy New Year!”

“Auld Lang Syne” played from the speakers inside, accompanied by a drunken sing-along by half the firm.

InDaffodil Daydreams, Junie kissed Will for the first time on New Year’s, on the rooftop of the Roost, under a meteor shower. There wasn’t a meteor shower tonight. And there wasn’t snow. And I had no one to kiss but—

I shoved myself to my feet. Climbed the steps into the house. The large clock in the main room chimedthree, four, five—

The room was full of people kissing, and laughing, sharing each other’s space and time, and I wanted that. I wanted that so badly that my body was moving before my brain caught up with me.

It was like that moment in a love song, when the bridge changes key. He glanced up from a mixed drink, and locked eyes with me, and the crowd parted as I crossed the room.

The clock chimedeight, nine, ten—

I took his face in my hands, and pulled him down toward me.

Eleven, twelve—

I crushed my lips against his. He wasn’t even surprised, as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. He kissed like he talked—sharp and bold, with the slightest aftertaste of strawberry nicotine. “Auld Lang Syne” sang loud in our ears, about old acquaintances being forgotten, though I’d never forget the way he looked at me as we finally broke apart, like he wanted to devour me—body and soul.

“I’m Liam, by the way,” he said, breathless, tracing my lips with his thumb.

“Eileen,” I replied, and I fell.

One kiss turned into two, turned into a night together, and then brunch, and then he was taking me home and asking me what my dinner plans were—and that was it. I didn’t think I’d look into his eyes and fall so hard and so suddenly that when I woke up four years later, it would all feel like a dream.

But I did.

Liam Henry Black became my entire life, like how a bold wallpaper overtakes a room and all you want to do is find pieces to complement it. As it turned out, he was an architect between jobs, which was why he’d taken the gig at the New Year’s party. His father owned a firm on the other side of town, but he wanted to make his own way, and the second he set those disarmingly beautiful blue eyes on me, he made me feel like I was that cool, go-getter girl who’d kissed him on New Year’s.

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