Page 60 of Love By the Book
I pause pushing my chair under the table and look up at her. “Yeah, sure. See you at book club.”
Then I walk past customers laughing and chatting, the smell of espresso and sugar hanging in the air, the clink of spoons on ceramic, and the sound of someone sighing happily as they take a bite of the biscotti Alex bakes by hand in this cozy little haven she built after falling in love.
And I realize—no matter how much I want it, or how much the people who love me want it for me—this isn’t for me.
This isn’t my life.
I’m supposed to be the fun aunt for my friends’ kids. The one who travels and brings back weird souvenirs and stories about charming taxi drivers and mildly illegal adventures in distant cities. I’m the chaos. The glitter. The story starter, not the ending.
I’m not the person who gets the grand gesture.
I’m the one who plans the perfect party when it happens to someone else—and pretends that’s enough.
I let the door swing shut behind me, the sound final. Like a chapter closing. Like a heart trying to convince itself it hadn’t just missed the biggest chance of its life.
Eli
The ferry’s engine hums beneath my feet, a steady vibration that should be comforting in its reliability but somehow only heightens my awareness of everything I’m leaving behind. I stand at the railing, watching Magnolia Cove one last time. The late afternoon sun casts the town in golden light, making the white-painted buildings gleam like polished shells against the verdant backdrop of magnolia and live oak trees. Even from here, I can see the subtle shimmer of magic that hangs over the island like a delicate morning mist—visible to those of us with magic, invisible for everyone else.
Behind me, a young couple argues playfully over which restaurant had the best lobster rolls. An elderly woman clutches a paper bag from A Novel Idea, no doubt filled with beach reads for her trip back to the mainland. A child squeals with delight as he spots a dolphin in the ferry’s wake. Normal people. Not the kind of people who’ve had their heart dismantled and reassembled in the wrong order.
I adjust my glasses and try to focus on my mental checklist. I need to contact the department about resuming in-person lectures. I should email my landlord and see if they everfixed that broken window screen in the bedroom, and I still haven’t canceled the forwarding service at the post office. This is what I do. This is who I am. Dr. Eli Lancaster: organized, analytical, precise.
Except my mind keeps wandering to dark curls escaping from a messy bun. To fingers stained with ink and glitter. To wild, heartfelt laughter echoing through the stacks of the library.
To Rhianna.
A lump forms in my throat as I realize I now have a “before Rhianna” and an “after Rhianna” life. And I’m not sure how to navigate this “after” part where I know what it feels like to be completely, irrevocably alive, and then return to mere existence.
The thought brings an unexpected smile to my lips. In a strange way, this pain is a gift. Mark died without this. He never experienced the exhilarating terror of jumping out of an airplane or the transcendent joy of loving someone so completely that you’d happily rearrange your entire life just to be near them another day.
But I have. I’ve lived.
I’ve sung karaoke in a bar full of strangers. I’ve plunged into the ocean at midnight beneath the light of a full moon. I’ve fallen in love with a woman who contains more passion in her smallest finger than I’d previously believed possible in an entire person. And yes, I’ve had my heart broken so thoroughly that I’m not sure it will ever beat quite the same way again.
Isn’t that what I wanted, though? To experience life outside the careful boundaries I’d drawn for myself? To be bold? To take risks?
I’ll take this back with me, I decide. I’ll carry Rhianna’s gift—her insistence on experiencing everything fully, her refusal to playit safe—back to my old life and make it new. I’ll try dishes I can’t pronounce at restaurants I’ve never visited. I’ll attend a concert alone just to feel the music vibrate through my bones. I’ll listen to Fleetwood Mac and never, ever call them a soft rock band again.
The thought draws a soft chuckle from me that quickly dissolves into another wave of a heartache.
“ELI! WAIT!”
The shout cuts through the ambient noise of the ferry, and I spin around, scanning the dock. Alex Sinclair is running full-tilt toward the ferry, waving her arms frantically above her head. My heart lurches.
“IS EVERYTHING OKAY?” I cup my hands around my mouth to project my voice over the distance.
“NO!” she shouts back. “YOU CAN’T LEAVE! RHIANNA IS STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU!”
I freeze, suddenly aware of how public this exchange has become. Mrs. Delehay, who always carries her Pomeranian in a custom-made sling, has stopped mid-conversation with Grammie Rae to openly stare. Hazel—the owner ofTheHungry Gull, where Rhianna and I have eaten multiple times a week all summer—has abandoned any pretense of not eavesdropping. The entire town is witnessing this spectacle, witnessing me being?—
Human.
The realization washes over me like warm sunlight. That’s what I am. Human. In love. Messy and heartbroken and gloriously, painfully alive.
And suddenly, I don’t care who’s watching.
“I PROMISED HER I’D LET HER GO IF SHE ASKED!” I call back, my voice stronger than I expected. “AND SHE DID!”
