Page 48 of The Good Boy

“Such a great team.” I nod, offering him a fist to bump.

“’Night then, Eugenie,” he says.

I hear the click of his front door shutting, and it’s only then that I close my front door. Lean my forehead against it. It’s crazy to think that the me and Miles that might have been, back when we were kids, would still be together now. Fifteen years later and we would definitely have grown apart; that’s the accepted wisdom on childhood sweethearts, right? And anyway, I’m not even certain if we would have been might-have-beens, if you get me. There was chemistry and flirting. If you call some kid bringing you prettyrocks flirting, which I do. And there was one moment. One moment when our lives might have taken a different path.

I’d been going out with Aiden for three months when I asked him to come with me to my college Christmas dance. Everything had been so perfect up until then that when he laughed in my face over the dress designs I showed him, and said that pretentious bollocks like the dance wasn’t his scene, I brushed it off. I thought he was just a bit shy, not the kind of guy to step outside his comfort zone. That I was wrong to even ask him. So, I asked Miles instead, because even though he wasn’t the kind of guy to step out of his comfort zone either, I knew he would, for me—he was that kind of friend. I was too young to see that meant that Aiden wasn’t the right guy for me. Too stupid to realize who was.

I was standing right here on the night of the Christmas dance, waiting for Miles, and I felt so good. If I concentrate really hard, I can just about remember that sense of confidence and certainty. To experience even a fraction of that again is all kinds of wonderful. I knew my designs were good, I knew I looked great, I feltfantastic.

Mum and Dad are standing on the stairs with a camera when Miles knocks at the door.

The flash goes off as he gives me flowers, pink roses tied with a pink bow and, threaded onto the ribbon, a pink quartz bead; Mile’s love language, I know that now. At the sight of him I feel the familiar bubble of happiness that his smile always set off in my chest. The simple joy of knowing that he is part of my life, and that he always will be.

His mouth falls open when he sees me, his eyes wide with wonder. There’s hardly any space in our little hallways, so he leads me out onto the street and twirls and twirls me until my skirts flareout; our laughter echoes off the rows of houses and I’m so dizzy that for a moment it feels like I’m floating.

In that moment anything was possible. Now, all these years later it feels like hardly anything is.

When Miles said we made good parents, I caught a glimpse of a different future for a different me. Nothing concrete, nothing certain, but a sharp sense of possibility. And in that different future from the one I’ve been so certain of for so long, all the things that my friends and family have kept telling me about myself for so long were true. And right at the heart of that was something else that is certain, that is constant, no matter what version of my life I’m living.

I am so in love with Miles. I always have been.

“Hey,” I call to Rory as I walk into the living room. “Do we have any more ice cream?”

Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and lean in for a closer look. It looks like... no, it can’t be, it’s August. Yet, it looks like there are a handful ofsnowflakesmelting in my hair.

Chapter Eighteen

“What’s got your goat?” Nanna Maria asks me as I lay out a new tablecloth, ready for her first client of the day. “You’ve got a face like thunder and your aura is all muddy and sickly looking.”

“Oh, let me see,” I say, tipping up the battery-powered tea lights so they begin to flicker and glow. “Could it be because my beloved grandmother neglected to tell me that the wish she granted me on my birthday would actually ruin my life?”

Obviously I plan to blame her for all the feelings that caught up with me yesterday. At least for a little while.

“Ruinmylife, you mean,” mutters Rory, who is in as bad a mood as me. I don’t know what happened. He was in high spirits after the party and talked about his new friends nonstop. I was starting to think that maybe he would be okay with the change in his circumstances and that, somehow, we would all just muddle through. I had visions of my dog moving out, getting his own place, developing an amazing career as an animal psychologist and eventually getting his own TV show. I thought, yep, my actual dog having a more fulfilling existence than me would accurately reflect my life. And then on the way to work this morning, it was like someone just switched a light off in him. The bounce wentfrom his step, the glint went out of his eye. Normally I’d have put it down to worms, but in this instance I doubt it. All he’s been doing since we arrived at the shop is leaning on the door and gazing moodily out the window. I have yet to get to the bottom of what’s upsetting him, mostly because I am too busy wallowing in my own self-inflicted misery. Or I would be if Rory wasn’t so keen on being super-specific about it.

“Are you really still trying to blame me for that?” Nan asks, with a huff.

“It’s not your fault, Nanna,” Rory tells her. “Genie is in a mood because she finally realized she is in love with Miles and has decided to be all complicated about it.”

“That is... fairly accurate,” I admit.

“Ah.” Nanna Maria comes to scrutinize me under the mirror ball, taking hold of my chin and twisting my face this way and that, as if she can see my existential crisis imprinted on my face. Who knows, maybe she can.

“Well, this is a good sign,” she says with a nod. “Rory, can you turn theOpensign toClosed, please?”

“Wait.” I motion to Rory to stop. “What do you mean, this is a good sign? How can years of nameless yearning and unrequited love be a good sign?”

“Depends how you look at it, darling,” Nanna Maria says. “You could look at it that way, or you could decide it’s better to feelanythingrather than nothing.”

“Not this again.” I sigh. “Rory, open the shop.”

“Wait,” Nanna Maria instructs Rory.

“You have hidden yourself away from hope and love and—”

“Misery,” I add.

“For far too long. It’s time to start living again, my darling girl.Even if that means you are rejected and your heart is broken. It’s a start, a step to discovering your true purpose.”

---