“It’s what my mom wore. Wears.” She runs her hand down the pieces like a waterfall. I watch them throw light across her face. “You swear you didn’t know?”
“No idea,” I insist, laughing, “but that’s amazing. I just thought you’d like the color.”
“I do. It’s my favorite.” She wraps it back up before smiling at me again, tears still falling. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.” I pause. “Guess now you just need a place to hang it, huh?”
Mara pops a square of the bubble wrap between her fingers, silent.
“Like...my house.”
Her amusement is hard to read. Part genuine, part sarcastic. “That so?”
“Yeah. And my next one.” I stare at her eyes until they come back to mine. “I think a downsize is way overdue. The HOA is getting old.”
“That house was all you ever wanted,” she says. “You’d really give it up, just like that?”
I’m about to tell her I never actually wanted the house to begin with. What I wanted was that dream somebody sold me: that I wasn’t successful unless I had the biggest and best I could get. That work came first, every single day of my adult life. And I honestly believed that—until just a few minutes ago, when I turned down my biggest job in months, because “work first” suddenly didn’t make sense. Because I was staring right at something that did.
I don’t tell her any of this, though. There’s only one way to really answer her, and it works best without a single word.
When I hold her face and kiss her, my hand pushes her hair away from her scar. I feel it on my fingertips and know it’s there, but it’s the last thing in the world I’m thinking about.
Instead, I focus on the way she kisses me back—winding her fingers into the hair at the base of my neck, pulling me close as she leans in. Like she needs me, just as much as I need her.
Epilogue
One Year Later
“I love this.”
“Knew you would.” Levi smirks and holds the door for me. “And you said we couldn’t find clean snow anywhere in the city.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call this ‘clean,’” I quip, scooping a handful of snow from the Acre’s rooftop, “but ‘clean-ish’ and undisturbed, sure. You win.” He turns when I fling it at him, letting it rain down the back of his coat.
“First things first.” With enough flair for Broadway, he wedges a loose pipe into the doorway. “And,” he adds, “my phone is fully charged. No way we’re climbing down that fire escape again.”
I bump his hip. “Scared?”
“Please. You’d hyperventilate twice as hard as last time, doing that when everything’s iced over.” He takes my hand, squeezing through our gloves, and leads me to the same spot we sat during Cohen’s wedding. We lay out an old rain poncho from his truck and sit.
“How much longer?”
“Ten minutes. We’ll have to stand to see it, though.”
“So much work.” I lie back and shut my eyes. Immediately, he nudges me until I open them again.
“Don’t fall asleep. You’ll miss it.”
“Fatigue,” I yawn. “This is me in nicotine withdrawal. I hope you’re happy, Mr. Emphysema. All your stupid pamphlets on my pillow weren’t exactly foreplay.”
“I am happy.” Levi pats my coat pockets, tickling me until he finds my electronic cigarette. “And don’t give me that nicotine withdrawal bit. I got you the best mod out there and the highest nicotine liquid I could find.”
I fish through my other pocket and produce the liquid. “Yeah: pumpkin spice flavor. It’s like you customized it just for me.”
His smile shifts to one side. “All right, so I dropped the ball a little, there. But it still tastes better than cigarettes, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah.” My breath blasts out in a cloud between us. The poncho crinkles while he lies beside me.
I think of Cohen’s wedding again, a year and some change ago. It was a night of firsts: the first time I climbed down a fire escape, or down anything, and didn’t let dizzying heights get the better of me. The first time someone knew exactly how to touch me, without one word of direction.
Waking up next to a guy and not wanting to leave right away, even though I still did.
Lying on a rooftop with a stranger, surrounded by city lights, somehow warm while a breeze tore through the space above.
“Hey.” Levi kisses my ear, the heat of his lips stinging on my wind-burned skin. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” I shrug, smiling when he takes off my glove, then his own, to entwine our fingers. I don’t even feel the cold. “Just...how something so good the first time can be even better the second.”
They say beginnings sometimes feel like endings. That the hardest part of starting over...is just getting started at all.
Can confirm.
“Do you even know what’s in here?” Mara huffed. It was early March, the day before our giant yard sale. We’d already spent days culling my possessions to an amount that would actually fit in the new house, one-third the size of this one, and we were nowhere near done.
“Of course I do.”
“What?” She slapped her palm on the closet door. “Tell me exactly what’s in here.”
Mom and Patch were in town for the week to help. I could hear them downstairs in the kitchen, mixing up some vegetarian soup to ward off the last bit of winter. We listened a moment: Mara, out of sheer love for Mom and Patch’s banter; me, strictly to stall. I didn’t want to admit that I had no idea what was in that closet.
“Towels,” I said.
Mara blinked at me, hands planted on her hips. “And?”
“Just because I can’t remember what’s in there doesn’t mean I don’t know.” I swatted her hand off the knob. “And you’re not going to automatically sale-tag everything in there because I can’t list each item from memory, okay? Give me a break, I haven’t been in there in years.”
“My point exactly.” She folded her arms now, the masking tape dangling on her wrist like a bracelet. “If you haven’t opened this closet once in all that time, clearly you don’t need anything in there.”
I narrowed my eyes at her logic as, downstairs, Patch told Mom a one-armed man could dice onions faster than she was doing.
My hand twisted the knob.
The closet was packed, like every other closet, nook, shelf, and storage container in the house. “Towels,” I said smugly, motioning to the one section I’d been correct in guessing.
“We already have six. Yard sale or Goodwill, your call.”
“We kept our towels. These are guest towels.”
Mara drew her lips between her teeth, patience clearly wearing thin. No, forget thin: it was long gone. Probably happened somewhere between me refusing to narrow my suit collection down to anything fewer than ten (I’d argued the need for a two-week rotation, at the very least), and a heated discussion on the merits of the cat bed, when my cat only slept in patches of sunlight, on top of vents, or wedged into the spaces on my bookshelf.
“Two guest towels,” she offered.
“Deal.” I set the rest inside the donation bag at her feet.
“Vacuum?”
“Yard sale.”
Finally pleased with my progress, she nodded and tore off a square of tape for the vacuum before setting it aside.
We worked slowly, but steadily. If I got stuck on an item, Mara helped me realize (or hounded me into believing) all the reasons it wasn’t worth keeping. Some were easy, like an abundance of emergency flashlights without batteries. Others were much harder.
“What if we go camping, though? You can’t expect me to get rid of a perfectly good tent.”
“That sleeps fifteen people?” Mara hefted the box the rest of the way out of the closet. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were so tight with Jesus and the disciples.”
“It’s got three rooms,” I explained, “so, look, you put a camping heater in this one, the c
amping toilet can go here—”
“The toilet,” she said firmly, “is the entire woods. I mean, God, Levi: it’s still got tape on it. You’ve never even opened this thing.”
“Exactly! Why would I get rid of something I never got the chance to use? I didn’t have time for camping, before.” I paused, short of breath from arguing. And, truthfully, realizing how bad I was at it. “I have time, now.”
This turned out to be the right thing to say. Ever since I decided to downsize my house, I’d worked on downsizing the business, too. A smaller warehouse, no more office, only one van. Andres and Cohen were my only employees, year-round.
Sometimes I missed the hustle of big charity galas and wild 400-guest parties, but never for very long. Downsizing, according to Mom and Patch, was all about minimizing stress. Events like those were my tipping point.
Now, Fairfield Party Suppliers specialized in small to mid-sized affairs. Profits weren’t as high, but neither were expenses—or hours. A nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday workweek would soon be plenty for us to live on, once I got rid of this mortgage.
Best of all: I suddenly had time again, for family, friends, and all the things I’d given up or postponed. I could practice the guitar I hadn’t played since high school, or catch up on the foreign films I used to devour like candy. I could go camping.
Now, as I voiced all these thoughts in those four short words, Mara leaned the box upright and drooped against it. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll make you another deal. If you go camping within a year—doesn’t have to be you and me, or even close to fifteen people; it can be you and Cohen drinking beer in the backyard overnight, for all I care—and you can honestly tell me this tent was worth storing?” She studies me, then holds out her hand. “I’ll buy you a brand-new fishing boat to replace the one from the garage.”
“The fishing boat,” I sighed, pained. That had been a tough one, too.
“Come on. Deal or no deal.”
I shook her hand. “I’m going camping, and you’re going to feel very foolish.”
She smiled as the box dragged the floor behind her. “Hope I do.”
We saved the top shelf for last. Mara found a stepladder and felt blindly through the cobwebs, passing items to me one by one: another flashlight, two Zunes I’d meant to fix and never did, and about four board games, each box still in its shrink wrap.
“All yard sale, I hope,” she groaned, extending her arm up as far as she could. “Shit, there’s one more thing. Hang on.”
“Hey, don’t step on the shelf. You’ll break it.”
She stepped on the shelf, anyway. “Oh. It’s a coffee can.”
“What?” I steadied her waist as she climbed down and passed it to me. The plastic lid felt brittle when I pried it off.
“Receipts?” she asked, holding my shoulder as she looked inside.
“Nope.” I took out a handful, smiling at the little doodles and familiar handwriting. “Notes from my mom.”
For some reason, after we found the coffee can, getting rid of things felt all too easy. The thought of filling the new place to the brim made me kind of nauseous, actually: I wanted only the things I knew I’d use, or that meant something to me. And I wanted to be able to find them again, at any given moment.
The yard sale started bright and early. My HOA said we had to wrap up no later than noon, so I was glad to see customers pull up right away.
At least, I thought they were customers.
“We’re here for moral support only,” Viola explained, while Abigail, Juliet, and Cohen followed her from the car. “Marco will have a conniption if I bring home more stuff.” Already, her eyes were sliding to a table with no fewer than four French presses, two coffee grinders, and a dozen mugs.
“I just want to see what rich people throw out,” Abby teased, finally breaking the façade when she hugged me. Juliet followed suit, then started in on a table between her sisters.
I looked at Cohen. “And you?”
“Support,” he said quickly, feigning offense. After a beat, he added, “And, you know...maybe seeing what you’d take for the tent.”
“We don’t need a tent, Cohen,” Juliet called. “We don’t even go camping.”
“We would,” he countered, “if we had a tent!”
I laughed. “Well, good news for Juliet, bad for you: I’m keeping the tent.”
Cohen scoffed, turning two flashlights in his hands like batons. “You don’t even go camping.”
“I will.” I hit his shoulder. “We’ll all go. Trip out to the lake or something, it’ll be fun. And I have a bet to settle with Mara.”
“Say no more, I’m there.”
We slapped hands and laughed again. Eventually, even Cohen couldn’t resist picking through my belongings, and before long everyone blended right in amongst the actual customers and a few curious neighbors.
“Sad to see it all go?” Mara asked, when I joined her on the porch. From the cooler under her feet, she produced two hard lemonades and passed me both. “I thought you’d keel over when that guy bought your boat.”
“Not sad.” I twisted the caps off each, handed hers back, and held up my bottle for a toast. We clinked and sipped. “Disappointed, maybe? A lot of wasted money, for one thing.”
“You’ll make some back.”
“Yeah, right.” I told Mom she could handle the money; my business mindset was too engrained to allow for haggling. Since the goal was to sell as much stuff as possible—not to maximize profit—I’d be lucky if I made back the sales tax I’d paid on all this junk.
It was that word that stuck in my brain the longest: junk. Sure, a lot of things were hard to give up, and plenty still had sentimental value of some kind. But in the end, I wasn’t really selling my belongings, because they didn’t belong anymore. It was just stuff.
“I think the hardest part,” I added, and felt Mara stare at me, “is letting go of the reasons I bought it all to begin with.” I stretched my legs out on the porch planks, creaking in the cold. “Like the extra office furniture. I was going to renovate my entire home office at some point, but I never got around to it. Or those vintage beer ads. I bought them because I thought I wanted a home bar.”
“Everyone has a few things like that. Times where intention outweighed motivation,” she said. “Would it help if I told you I lost an obscene amount of soap-making supplies in my apartment fire? Two years, never made a single bar.”
I smiled. “Guess you’re right.” My eyes followed a man to his car, one of my sound bars tucked under his arm.
“Uh-oh.” Mara took another swig and nodded across the street, where a car was crawling to a stop.
It was Lindsay’s.
“Shit.” I dragged my hand down my face as I stood.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she whispered, following closely behind across the lawn. “We talked about this, remember? There was a good possibility she’d show up today. But you own this stuff, not her. She can’t take any of it if you don’t want her to.”
“I know.” When we were dividing our possessions, Lindsay stuck to big-ticket items like the television and her favorite furniture. Most of it, she chose to leave behind—especially anything in the packed closets, garage, and attic, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. As a result, all of this really was mine, down to her pink tool set and every last throw pillow.
“Hi,” she smiled cautiously, stopping at the edge of the property when I approached. “Heard you were having a yard sale.”
“Heard right.” I offered my own quasi-smile: civil, but not exactly welcoming.
Behind her sunglasses, I caught her eyes flickering to Mara beside me. “Hi,” she told her, finally, and stuck out her hand. They shook. “Mary, right?”
“Close—Mara.”
“Mara,” she repeated, nodding. “Sorry.”
The three of us stood there a while, patrons shuffling past on the damp grass, the chitchat from Mom’s cash table making our silence all the more awkward.
&nb
sp; “I, uh....” Lindsay slipped her sunglasses off and tucked them into her collar. “I was wondering if you were getting rid of the tent?”
My laugh seemed to startle her. “Nope. I couldn’t bear it.”
After a painful lag, she laughed, too. “Should have guessed as much, huh?” She scanned the tables again. “Actually, the only things I really wanted are that, uh...the metal shoe thing we got in Williamsburg?”
“The boot scraper,” I prompted.
“Right, that. And the sugar bowl.”
Beside me, I could feel Mara’s shoulder shake as she bit back her laughter. Mine managed to compress itself into nothing but a smile.
“Just missed it,” I told Lindsay, throwing in a “what can you do” kind of shrug.
“Oh.” She slipped her hands in her back pockets. “Serves me right, I guess. Changing my mind at the last second.”
It almost got awkward again, until Mara snapped her fingers and said, “The shoe thing, though—that’s still here. Silver lining.”
I think I watched Mara go get the boot scraper with as much confusion as Lindsay, and even more when she brought it to her with a smile. Not a forced one, or some mock-preppy reflection: an honest, relaxed grin.
“On the house,” she said, handing it over.
“Wow.” Lindsay looked at me. “You sure?”
Gradually, I felt my smile relax, too. “Yeah,” I told her. “All yours.”
Mara squeezed my arm. “I’m going to see if your mom needs more change.” To Lindsay, she said, “Nice to see you again.”
“You, too.”
We watched her go. Something like tension hung between us now that we were alone, but not quite that torturous.
“Can’t believe you’re selling the house.” Lindsay set the boot scraper on the asphalt behind her and swept her gaze over the porch, the garage, and the boxwood shrubs along the driveway. “I mean, I think it’s great. Just…shocking. I thought you’d live here forever.”
“So did I.” I turned to look at it with her. “It’s a great house. But it’s not what I want, anymore.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of how I felt about it from the start.” She paused. “We had some good times here, though.”
Honey, When It Ends: The Fairfields | Book Two Page 21