Page 76 of Ten Years and Then…
He needed a second to catch his breath before he could speak. “Nora. I—I needed to see you tonight. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other—I’ve got a job. In Chicago. I start week after next. But I wanted to—I have something for you.”
It was hardly eloquent, but she seemed to follow it well enough. “You have something?”
He pulled back from her far enough that he could show her the little box. “I know we’re not together. I know we’ll be a thousand miles apart. Maybe two thousand, I don’t know. I know it won’t work—we both already knew that. But I want you to remember me. To remember us. I want you to know, wherever you are, I’ll always be hoping for the best for you.”
He handed it to her. She turned it over, examining it from every angle. Then she noticed the Mont Blanc label on the box, and she smiled—the smile he had never forgotten. “You gave me a pen? Does that make me John Cusack in this scenario?”
He laughed. “Believe it or not, I never thought of that. And I have seen Say Anything. Twice, actually.” How was this possible? Joking with her, laughing with her, just being with her as though they’d never broken up, as though the last two years hadn’t happened at all.
She opened the box, and gasped when she saw the pen. “Oh, my God, Daniel! That’s real gold. And—you had it engraved, too?”
She held it up to him, read the words aloud:
To N with love - D
He shrugged. “It was the best I could do with less than 20 characters.”
She kissed him again, and when she finally pulled back, she said, almost whispering, “It’s the best thing anybody could ever do, Daniel.”
Nora, a minute later
The shock of the gift had worn off. But the shock of his presence hadn’t.
Daniel was here.
Here, with her!
Alone with her.
“How did this happen? How are we here now?” he asked as though he couldn’t believe it.
“You came over here, Daniel,” she said. “If you don’t know, nobody does.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
She knew exactly what he meant. But joking was safer than crying over everything they’d lost—everything they’d thrown away—two years ago.
“Yeah,” she muttered. “I guess I wasn’t very funny just now, was I?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew what his silence meant. She’d always known—almost always—when he agreed with something self-deprecating she said but didn’t want to say so aloud. That was one of the many things she’d loved about him.
Still loved. Present tense.
Future tense, too.
“Nora,” he said, reaching over and gently taking the pen from her hands, then squeezing them. “I don’t know if anything’s really changed. I’m going to be in Chicago, and you’ll still be here next year, and then—who knows? You could be anywhere. You can write your own ticket. You’ll have your pick of jobs. But we’ll be far apart. And all the stuff I was afraid of, all the things I didn’t understand back then … they’re still there.”
He was right. Every word of it.
“I hate this,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him. “Why can’t we be smarter? Or braver? Or more—whatever the hell it is we’re supposed to be?”
There were tears in his pretty—so pretty—eyes.
“I wish I knew,” he said. “God, I hate this as much as you. But we—” His voice broke. He steadied it. “We survived. I’m graduating. I’ve got a great job. You’re going to be editor of the paper next year. You’re a star. Let’s just—let’s never forget each other.”
He didn’t believe it. She hadn’t heard his voice in two years, but she still knew how it quavered when he was trying so damn hard to convince himself of something. And she knew—if she tried to answer—he’d hear the same tremble in hers.
“I’m never going to forget, Daniel.”
