She did, moving past us back toward their bedroom.
Once she was gone, he met my eyes.
“How ya holding up, kiddo?” my dad asked, squatting down in front of me.
I looked at my dad’s duffel bag. “You’re heading out?”
He gave a nod. “I hope that’s okay.”
“I get it,” I said. “I do.”
“I just need a few days. Clear my head.”
Of course. That didn’t surprise me.
But pretty much everything else about that day did surprise me. How much I missed Kitty already, how strange it felt to be “on the outside” again, how simultaneously comforting and terrifying it was to hear the front door close behind me.
My childhood bedroom was a surprise, too. After my dad left, my mom wheeled me right to it, as if to move on to brighter topics. She had redecorated. She pushed open the door and voiced a quiet “Surprise!”
She’d replaced truly everything—my trundle bed with the pink dust ruffle, my floral upholstered chair, my curtains, my rug. Everything old was gone—stuffed animals, photo albums, books, clutter, posters.
“Where is everything?” I asked.
“In storage tubs,” she answered. “All the keepsakes, anyway. The furniture I set out on the curb—and it was gone in two days.”
It was good and bad—both at the same time. She’d taken away the comfort of all those old familiar things, but she’d also taken away their ability to remind me of my old life. This new room was like a hotel. Roman shades in linen, a chaise longue by the window, a hundred pillows on the bed. A mirrored chandelier. Spare, and done in tones of her favorite color, “greige,” a cross between gray and beige. It was tranquil and sophisticated and utterly unfamiliar. It looked like a magazine.
“A new room for a new start,” she said.
I had to hand it to her. She had great taste. “Well, this is definitely a best-case scenario.”
“And Dad can bring all your old junk in for you to sort through whenever you like,” my mom said. Then she remembered and took a shaky breath. “If he comes back.”
“He will,” I said. “He just needs some time.” Then, because it made it seem like we were almost doing him a kindness, I said, “We can give him that, right?”
She nodded. “We can give him that.”
My mom lingered at my bedroom door for a good while then, unsure if she should leave me alone. “Well,” she said, after a long silence. “I guess I’ll let you get settled.”
I sat very still for a long time. Twenty minutes? An hour? Maybe I was in shock. All I know is, I couldn’t grasp how on earth my life’s path had led me back here. I couldn’t think about the past, but I couldn’t see a future, either.
When the doorbell rang, I wondered if it was my dad.
But a few minutes later, my mom clicked down the hallway, swung open my door (without knocking), and presented—of all people—Ian.
I think she said something prim, like “You have a visitor.” I feel like she might also have offered Ian a wine spritzer, which he declined. All I remember was the sight of him.
Because as soon as I looked up, I was alive again.
Ian Moffat was in my bedroom. In a blue T-shirt and button-fly jeans.
“Hello,” he said, after my mother left, hooking his thumbs in his pockets and looking around. “Nice place.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea why he was here.
“I’ve come to apologize,” he said then, shifting his weight. “I think I’ve made your life harder, not easier—though that was never my intention.”
I waited.
“I just wanted to help you get better—as much as you could.”
Okay.
“I should never have let myself care for you the way I did.”
I looked up. “You let yourself care for me?”
But I suddenly felt like I’d focused on the wrong part of that statement. Ian didn’t answer. He studied the rug.
Right then, a foolish little hope lit up somewhere in my heart. Maybe that’s why he’d come. Maybe now that I wasn’t his patient anymore, we could—what? Hang out? Kiss again? Date? Be together?
“I’m also here,” Ian added, “to share the news that I’m officially fired. Myles submitted it yesterday.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Both.”
I smiled.
He went on, “I will miss it, though.”
“Are they going to take away your license?”
“Yes.”
If he lost his license, he lost his visa. “Does that mean you have to leave the country?”
He paused a second on this one, walking over to sit down on the bed beside me. “I think so. Yes.”
I blinked. “They’re making you leave? The government is going after you?”
He shook his head. “Myles is going after me. And he’ll win, too.”
“You’re not going to fight him?”
“There’s nothing to fight. It’s over. Your sister posted it on Instagram.”
“Oh, my God.” I put my hand over my eyes. “Kit.”
“It’s not her fault,” he said. “I kissed you in front of a hundred people in that room. It was hardly a private moment.”
“But it wasn’t your fault! It was the mistletoe!”
Ian shook his head.
“It was a pity kiss!” I went on. “You were just being nice! I’ll testify!”
Now he smiled at me like I was deluded—but in a cute way.
“You weren’t even technically my PT anymore!”
“Doesn’t matter. I worked there. You were a patient.”
It seemed insane. “That’s it? One kiss, and you’re exiled?”
Ian gave a half-smile. “Apparently.”
Ian suddenly seemed very close. Just inches away, really. Having him right here—so near—made the idea of his leaving feel excruciating. “You can’t go,” I said.
He gave a shrug. “I can’t stay. My visa was for a particular job that requires a particular license.”
“What will you do?”
“Go home. To Edinburgh.”
I felt a cramp in my chest.
He went on, “I’ve got four brothers there. Two of them are doctors. One’s already found me an interview at a hospital.”
I tried to keep my voice steady, like we were just chatting. “That’s good.”
But he didn’t answer. He just reached out and took my hand. At the touch, I drew in a shaky breath. Then he let it go.
“The interview’s on Monday,” he said.
I blinked. “This Monday?”
He nodded.
“So that means you’re going—when?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Panic. I genuinely could not imagine my postcrash life without Ian in it. It was too pathetic to say out loud, but he was just about the only thing in the world that made me anything even close to happy. My whole life was in black-and-white until he walked into the room—and then everything bloomed into color.
Losing Chip? I had barely blinked. Losing Ian right now? I could barely breathe.
“You’re going to be all right, you know. You’re a lot stronger than you think—”
But before he could finish, I did something that shocked the hell out of both of us.
I said, “Marry me.”
His mouth opened, but no words came out.
It was kind of a great idea. “Marry me,” I said again, “and then you can stay.”
“You want me to marry you?”
I nodded.
“For a green card?”
“You want to stay, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s sunny here, and the people are friendly, and we have tacos. Do they have tacos in Scotland?”
“They do have tacos in Scotland,” he said, “but they’re not the same.”
Why were we talking about tacos?
I went on. “I had this great idea a fe
w weeks ago about opening a summer camp for kids in wheelchairs.” I was thinking fast now. It was all coming together in my head. “Maybe we could do it together—build it and run it, I mean. We could be partners. You could mastermind all the PT stuff and do your thing and get all outside-the-box, and I could do all the fund-raising, and we could create, like, just, a utopia for kids who’ve seen so much pain—with a garden, and a wheelchair racecourse, and a splash park, and movie nights, and popcorn, and juggling classes, and cookie baking, and Pop-A-Shot, and therapeutic horseback. And a choir!”
I was on fire now. I went on, “We could have classes for adults, too, in the winter, and hold retreats, and sponsor art fairs and teach adults crafty things, like how to knit slugs, and help create a source of light and hope and connection for people who really, really need it. I know you kind of lost interest in your other business, but this would be different.”
I had some momentum now. I could see this idea really working.
Plus, and this is not a minor point, I was utterly, breath-stealingly in love with him. It suddenly seemed like I needed to tell him that. Whether I was ready to or not. If he was leaving the country in the morning—if I was truly never going to see him again—how could I let him go without stepping up and speaking the truth?
I’d done a hundred brave things since the crash, but I swear, not one of them was as scary as this.
“Ian,” I said then, my breath swirling cold in my lungs like water. “The thing is, I’m in love with you.”
Ian held very still.
I watched his face for some kind of response. Was this good news to him or bad? Was it something he’d been hoping to hear—or hoping not to hear? Most likely, of course, I was just a sad, shriveled client to him. But those kisses—those heartbreaking kisses of his—had given me a spark of hope I couldn’t ignore. I had no idea how he really felt, but there was no time to guess. He was too good at being unreadable.
Without a response, I just pushed on. “Like crazily, swooningly, heart-burstingly in love. Like the kind of in love I didn’t even know was possible. The kind of in love that makes every other emotion look tiny and dollhouse sized. The kind that feels like sunshine and fills you up with excitement somehow—even when there’s nothing to be excited about. The kind that makes everything better—no matter how bad it is—and even utterly ordinary things like brushing your teeth feel tinged with magic.”
It was hard to know how strongly to state my case. I could also have said, I think about you at night when I can’t sleep. Or, What I felt for Chip never even came close to what I feel for you. Or, You are the best thing in my life.
The longer he didn’t respond, the more I felt like I should push even harder. The more I felt like begging. I came very close to saying, Please, please marry me. It wouldn’t have to be love! I’d take him for less than that. I’d take him for friendship. I take him for anything—just to keep him close.
But I never said any of that, and later, I was glad. As the expression on his face finally came into focus, I stopped. If any part of me had been hoping for a yes, that was the moment when it disappeared.
He was holding his breath. He let it out, and stood, turned away, and shoved a hand into his hair, all at once.
“I didn’t ‘kind of lose interest’ in my business,” he said.
A huge confession of love from me, and that’s his talking point?
He went on. “The business was great. It was working out—growing, even. It was one of those impossible moments in life when everybody got to win. I was happy, my employees were happy, our clients were happy. Kayla was happy. We had moved in together. We were talking about getting married.” He took a shaky breath. “Then, one night—it was actually the night the Oscars were on—Kayla stopped by the store on her way home to pick up a box of microwave popcorn, because she had this rule that you couldn’t watch the Oscars without popcorn.” Ian paused. “And a boy—a teenage boy—walked into the grocery store with an assault rifle and opened fire. For no reason. Nobody ever figured out why—why that store, why that day, why that moment. He shot a security guard, two checkers, and two people standing in line. And the last person he shot, before he shot himself, was Kayla.”
I knew the rest without his even saying it.
I remembered that shooting. It had dominated the local news for days. I knew that nobody in that store had survived.
But even if I hadn’t remembered, I’d have known from the look on lan’s face—so indelible and so undeniable. The woman he loved—wanted to marry—had gone to the store for popcorn, and she had never come home.
There are facial expressions you can fake. You can fake a smile, for instance, or a frown. You can even fake tears. But certain expressions are so true and so directly connected to the heart that they are beyond description. That’s what I saw in Ian then. The most desperate, unspeakable, agonizing, indescribable despair.
I held still and quiet. What could I say? How on earth could I respond? It was beyond anything I had words for. At last, grasping for something—some acknowledgment of what he was telling me—I whispered, “I am so sorry.”
He nodded, staring at the floor like he was seeing something else.
After a while, quiet as I could, I said, “I remember it. Something like three years ago, right?”
He didn’t look up, but he said, “Three years, almost exactly.”
I suddenly understood lots of things. “That’s why you lost interest in the business,” I said.
He nodded, lost in the memory. “She died at the scene. She never had a chance. He got her twice—one bullet through her right breast and lung, and one through her ear and out the back of her head. Only one person survived. The store was closed during the investigation, but then they reopened. Mopped away all the blood and opened the doors within two weeks. I’ve never gone back. I can’t even drive down that street. It’s so strange to me that people shop there now. They don’t even know. They buy their Doritos and their beer and stand in line on the very spot where she took her last breath. She died alone on a cold industrial floor. It all ended right there. Everything she’d ever worked toward, or hoped for, or loved.”
I watched his chest rise and fall. At last, I understood his silences. How words must truly fail him in the face of it all. My mind skipped backward to all the times he stood at the gym, holding so still, seeming like it took every ounce of his will to tolerate the world and everyone in it. I guess it really had.
I didn’t push against the quiet, or try to fix it, or try to fill it with noise. I just let it surround us, and I stayed right there.
After a while, he looked up, seeming to remember I was there.
“I want to thank you,” he said then, meeting my eyes. “You are the only good thing that’s happened to me since that day.”
Context changes everything. My green card idea seemed so foolish now, knowing everything. I had the idea to grab on to that foolishness and make a little joke. “My offer of a sham wedding is still open,” I said.
I’d hoped for a smile, and I got one, just for a second. “I can’t marry you for a green card.”
I watched his profile at the window, and I felt the most acute longing. Knowing what he’d been through made my problems seem small in comparison. It forced me to step back and see my own situation in a broader context. It forced me to notice that I was, if nothing else, still alive. Witnessing even a glimpse of what he’d lost made me feel both embarrassed by my declaration of love for him—and a thousand times more committed to it.
He must have sensed what I was feeling. “And you’re not actually in love with me, by the way.”
With that shift in topic, the light in the room seemed to change—just barely—as if somewhere not too far away the sun had come out from the clouds.
“Um,” I said, “I think I would know.”
“We talked about this already,” he said. “It’s not real.”
I tilted my head. “Feels pretty real.”
“L
isten,” he said, “you know how kidnapping victims can fall in love with their captors? That’s what this is.”
“You’re saying I have Stockholm syndrome?”
“I’m saying you have a version of something like it.”
“Are you saying you kidnapped me?”
He turned back. “I didn’t kidnap you, but I have been one of your captors. You have been held hostage—robbed of your old life, isolated from your old friends, and at the mercy of others. You have faced adversity that most people never see. In response, you’ve created an imaginary bond with one of your captors—to feel safe, and to create hope, and to feel less alone. It’s a classic form of self-preservation.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought about this.”
“Am I wrong?”
Actually, I didn’t know. I guess that was one way of reading the situation. “Is the bond imaginary?” I asked.
Ian didn’t answer.
“Do you feel it, too?” I pressed. “Or did I just make it up?” My brain could list a hundred reasons why a guy like him would not even remotely be interested in someone like me. Of course! It defied all logic to think that he might. And yet—I didn’t think it. I felt it. I felt it over and over.
“I am fond of you,” Ian said then.
“How fond?”
Ian didn’t answer again.
“Because, honestly,” I finally said, cracking the silence, “if you don’t also feel what I’m feeling, then it doesn’t matter if what I feel is real or imaginary, does it? If you have no interest in me—and I have no idea: sometimes I feel like you really do, and sometimes I feel like you absolutely don’t—then this conversation is pointless. We don’t have to talk about kidnapping, or theories of psychology. You just say you’re not interested, and we’re done here.”
Ian didn’t speak.
“Just say you’re not interested, and you go home to Scotland, and I stay here with my mother and eat spaghetti for dinner, and we’ll never see each other again. Easy.”
Ian stared at the floor.
“Just say you’re not interested,” I whispered then, hoping with every cell in my body that he would say the opposite.
Finally, he turned to me, and something had shifted in his eyes. There was no softness there anymore. “I’m not interested,” he said.
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