Page 73 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
He shrugs. “Alaskans protect their own and those they love.”
Love. I don’t think he meant to let it slip, but now that it’s out there, I can feel what it would be like to have someone by your side all the time. I’d imagined it with Story Sebastien, but now I sense how powerfully love emanates from Real Sebastien. And that’s with him restraining his feelings.
Is that how you know you’ve found the right person? Merrick always assumed I could take care of myself, and because I could, he let me. It’s a strange but wonderful luxury to have Sebastien fighting my fightwithme.
I’m overwhelmed by the sudden desire to kiss him.
I put my hands on either side of his face and press my lips to his. For a brief moment, honey-tinted sparks light up where my lips touch his.
Then Sebastien jumps back and nearly falls off the bed. “I thought—”
“I know. I said I didn’t want us to get involved.” I shake my head. “But what if I was wrong?”
“What if you were right?”
I stare down at the plaid comforter and trace the lines.
“I know about Avery,” I say.
Sebastien freezes.
“She was really successful,” I say. “But she was also really unhappy. Do you think what happened to her is what would happen to all Juliets—to me—if we didn’t end up together?” I look at Sebastien.
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bouncing. “I don’t know,” he answers carefully. “I don’t think one case sets a rule.”
“And you’re willing to risk it again? Leave me and see what happens?”
“I…I was trying to save you,” he says quietly.
“You don’t have to save me,” I say. “I already saved myself.” Because I have. I extracted myself from that toxic relationship with Merrick, I severed the ties keeping me in L.A., and I mademy way here, to the middle of nowhere in Alaska. I gave myself permission to start over.
“Right, of course,” Sebastien says sheepishly. “You don’t need me riding in to rescue you. I just meant…What if we do this, and it ends badly? Again?”
“If you hadn’t left Avery, if you had stayed and given the relationship a chance, do you think you two would have been happy together?”
“Without a doubt,” he says, not even a beat of hesitation.
“That’s what I thought.”
Sebastien looks at me as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear right before his eyes. “So what does this mean?” he asks, barely audible.
“It means this.” I rise from the bed, take his hands in mine, and kiss him again.
This time, he stays and lets the sweet warmth of our mouths thaw what had been wedged between us.
I think I was aiming at the wrong target when I left Merrick. Maybe this new life I’m trying to build isn’t only about writing a novel or going to Europe with Katy. Maybe the purpose of all those crazy stories that have been struggling to get out for nearly two decades was to show me what it’s like to be loved. Both someone loving me, and me accepting and loving myself.
And that also means focusing not on “what if I die,” but on the more positive “what if I don’t give myself this chance?” Perhaps the unknown comes to an end within two years, but what if it also holds the sort of love I’ve always longed for, the kind I wrote about in story after story?
Sebastien pulls away from our kiss. “But the curse—”
“There’s no love worth having if it doesn’t break your heart when it’s over,” I say. “Besides, some of those journals…there were full lives in there.”
“A year or two doesn’t constitute a full life.”
“A life is what you make of it.” So I tell him about my dad. In high school, he did an exchange program to Mongolia because he wanted to study golden eagles. On the first day of college, he fell in love with Mom, who at that time was still just “Beth who livedacross the hall,” and told her right there on the spot that he was going to marry her. He learned to play the didgeridoo for the hell of it, and the same with whittling soapstone and playing badminton. And he died unexpectedly at thirty-eight.
The truth is, no one ever knows how much time they have on this planet, so you’d better make however long or short it is good. And my dad, despite the brief time he was with us—and the gulf he left in his wake—made all our lives richer and brighter.
