As if on cue, everyone except for Luke set down their controllers and stood up. “Uh…we’re going to go…uh…drink,” someone muttered. Then they all filed out of the room. Not a single one of them looked at me as they passed. So I guess that they’re all mad at me too. Sounds about right.
Even after the door clicked shut behind me, Luke and I continued to stare at each other in silence. The only sound in the room was the faux-cheering from what I was sure was Madden something or other on the Xbox.
Finally, he turned his head, shut off the game, and came to stand a few feet away from me. This close to him, I could see all the details of his face – his perfect face – that I hadn’t truly realized how much I’d missed until this moment. His eyes that were just the right shade of blue. His beard stubble that was always just a bit too long. His lips. God, those lips. I wanted them pressed against mine right now.
But instead they opened and said coldly, “You look like someone I used to know. A long time ago.” Ouch. But what had I been expecting? A hug? “What brings you to the great state of New Hampshire, Ms. Lyons?” Luke asked.
“You,” I replied. Simple, yet sincere. In my mind, I blew off the barrel of my gun. Way to shoot from the hip.
He folded his arms across his chest. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this ought to be good,” he said. “Alright, let’s hear it.”
His invitation threw me off. “Uhh…”
“Come on, Lyss. You must have something on your mind if you came all the way up here to see me. What’s so important that you couldn’t just put it in a note?”
His use of that word made me cringe. I knew that I was going to pay dearly for the cardinal breakup sin I’d committed, and apparently that retribution was starting right now.
Alright, Lyss, you knew that he was going to be pissed, but just tell him how you feel. “Umm,” I started out clumsily. My heart was hammering in my chest again and my mouth was dry. I could feel myself getting flustered. “Right, so…uh…what I came here to say was…I guess…uh…and I realized…or…I mean…I think it’s important for me to…” I let out a frustrated growl. “I fucking love you, okay?” I looked down and dropped my arms to my sides in a gesture of defeat. Well that was eloquent. On second thought, maybe I should have planned out what I was going to say just a little bit. Some bullet points would have come in handy right about now.
When Luke didn’t reply, I timidly glanced back up at him. He still had his arms folded across his chest, but the look of derision he’d been wearing when I’d started talking had now been replaced with…was that a smirk? It was. Luke was clearly taking great pleasure in my discomfort. “Wow, Lyss. Are you sure journalism’s the right career for you? Because that was seriously beautiful. You should write poetry,” he said sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes. Smug bastard. If I hadn’t been trying so hard to grovel, I would have hit him. “Hey, I’m trying my best here. Look,” I said, more composed than I’d been a minute ago. Just take a breath and start from the beginning. “What I’m trying to say is, back in May, when I decided to leave, it wasn’t because I didn’t love you. I did. I left because I thought that it was the right thing to do at the time. For me. I was given this amazing opportunity. The type of opportunity that people in my line of work dream about. And I didn’t feel like I could pass it up. I didn’t want to pass it up.”
“Yeah, you made that pretty clear,” he said. His continued spitefulness was like a knife to my chest. It was becoming evident that this interaction wasn’t going to go the way that I’d hoped it would. I suddenly felt like crying.
“Maybe this was a mistake. Coming here. I should go,” I said. Then I turned and made a move for the door.
“Oh no you don’t.” Luke grabbed me around the waist and hauled me back toward the center of the room. “You’re not getting away that easily. Now, by all means, say what you came here to say.”
I looked him up and down, trying to decide if I still wanted to go through with this. Oh what the hell. He was right, I hadn’t driven all the way up here just to leave if he gave me a hard time. Plus, even that brief moment of physical contact was making my heart go all crazy. I launched into my explanation. “The thing was that when we were in Chicago, you sort of just slotted into my life. Like, we were together, but I still got to go to my job and have the career that I chose and support myself. The only thing that really changed was where I was sleeping at night. And even with that, I still had an apartment that I could have gone back to if I’d wanted to. I mean, I loved you, but in a lot of ways you were just, like, icing on my cake.” I could tell that Luke wanted to say something flippant, but thankfully he kept his mouth shut so I could soldier on. “But then you wanted me to go on tour and pass up my job offer and give up my apartment and suddenly I was going to have to make some real, actual changes to be with you. And I felt like if I made them, and then something happened to us, where would that leave me?”
“Lyss, nothing was going to hap –” Luke started, but I cut him off.
“I know. I know that now. Because I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m not afraid of this falling apart. I was in New York and I heard one of your songs and all of a sudden it just clicked. This, you and me, we’re forever. I love you. So much. And I want to be with you Luke. Every minute of every day,” I used his words from the night he’d asked me to go on tour. “So I quit my job and I came here. Not because you asked me to, but because I wanted to. And now I’m here. And I don’t just mean I’m here. I mean, I’m here. And I want to stay. You know, if that’s still an option.”
I’d been unable to meet Luke’s eyes while I was talking. Instead I’d opted to aim most of my stream-of-consciousness soliloquy at the TV set across the room. But now that I’d finished, I looked up at him again. I was dying for him to say something, anything. I was pretty sure he knew it too, which was why he waited one excruciatingly long beat before he responded. But finally he sighed and said, “Jesus, L.L, I love you too. You know I do.”
More beautiful words had never been spoken. He wasn’t throwing me out of here or telling me that he never wanted to see me again. Tears immediately filled my eyes. “Really?” I asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “And I’m not mad at you.”
This was too good to be true. “You’re not?”
“No, I definitely am.”
“Oh,” I said disappointedly. So it actually was too good to be true.
“Lyss, when you left, I thought I was going to die. And I’ve thought it every day since then. And every night, I’ve had to get on stage and sing about how in love with you I am. Even though you weren’t with me. It’s been like its own unique form of cruel and unusual punishment,” he said. “And the way you left. I mean, a note, Lyssa? I come home to find all of your stuff gone from my apartment and that you’ve broken up with me in a note? That was shitty,” he said.
I closed my eyes, trying to steel myself against the lump forming in my throat, but it was no use. I burst into tears. “I know. I knew it was terrible when I did it and I felt like the worst person in the world. I know that doesn’t excuse anything, but I am sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. For all of it,” I sobbed, knowing that I deserved every ounce of his anger and then some.
My tears must have startled Luke, because before I could even lift my hands to wipe them away, he grabbed my shoulders and pulled me against him, enveloping me in his warm embrace. “Whoa. Okay. Shhh. Stop, Lyss. Don’t cry,” he cooed. “You’re breaking my heart.”
It felt so good to be in his arms again. I’d forgotten how amazing he smelled, how solid he was. I wrapped myself around his waist and held on tight.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said against the top of my head. “I just wanted you to know how awful it’s been for me to be without you.”
I pulled back and looked at him. “I’m so sorry. I just need you to know that I didn’t leave the way I did for the purpose of hurting you. That was just a
byproduct of my flight response.”
He surprised me by smiling before he gently wiped the moisture from my cheeks. “I get it. Now come on. Let’s sit down,” he said as he took me by the hand and led me over to the couch.
We both plopped down. Then Luke turned to me. “It’s, whatever, it’s fine,” he said. He still hadn’t let go of my hand. Instead he started playing with my fingers while he talked. “I kind of understand why you did it. Why you ran, I mean. Because it sounds like it was for the same reason that I left back in February. I’d been afraid of this ending too. But I guess that you leaving was just hard for me to accept because I’d been telling you since we got back together that you are it for me. You still are. There’s never going to be anyone else, L.L. Just you.”
“I know. I know Luke,” I admitted. “But I just wasn’t there yet. I am now, though. You’re it for me too. Luke Davies, you are my person. And I’m yours. You just knew it for about six months before I did.”
He looked at me and grinned. “Well, I am older,” he said. “And wiser.”
I squinted at him. “You know, this smug thing that you’re doing right now is not a good color on you. But I suppose that you’ve earned the right to act a little bit superior so, in this particular instance, I’ll stipulate to that.”
“Damn right,” he nodded. “But really,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe we both just had to, you know, leave on our own terms in order to realize that what we had was worth coming back to.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But coming back was the right choice. I know that now.” I nodded my head definitively.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that,” Luke said as he reclined more deeply into the couch. “Mostly because, to be honest, if I hadn’t heard from you by the time I got back from the U.K., I was going to put my place in Chicago on the market and move to New York to track you down.”
I just stared at him, stunned. “What? But what about your record label?”
“I already talked to the execs,” he said. “It took some convincing, but they’re fine with me living someplace else as long as I go back to Chicago for meetings and stuff.”
My eyes went wide. “You mean to tell me that if I would have stuck it out for a few more months, I wouldn’t have had to drive all the way to New Hampshire to deliver that stunning piece of oratory that you heard a few minutes ago?”
He laughed. “Yes, but don’t you feel better now that you said it?”
“No,” I lied.
“Well I do.”
We were both quiet for a minute, just content to be back in each other’s company again. Luke moved his hand that wasn’t threaded with my own to the back of the couch near my shoulder and started twirling a lock of my hair. But then something dawned on me. I leaned back. “Hang on a second," I said. "If you were ready to forgive me this whole time, then why were you acting like such an asshole to me when I first walked in the door? I didn’t do that to you when you showed up at my birthday party.”
He raised his eyebrows. “First of all, you kind of did. And second of all, it only took me two weeks to go crawling back to you. But it took you four months to come back to me.”
“So you’re telling me that your asshole-ry had more time to build up?” I asked.
“Yep. Compound interest is a bitch, babe,” he joked. But then his look turned serious. He lifted his hand to cup my face and skimmed his thumb across my cheek. “I’m really fucking glad that you’re here,” he said. “I mean it.”
“I’m really fucking glad that I’m here too,” I said. Then I let him pull me onto his lap and kiss me like I’d never been kissed before. Finally.
But all too soon, he pulled away. We were both panting slightly and my fist was still balled in his shirt when he brushed my hair to the side and asked, “So, what happens now?”
I let the wrinkled fabric on his sleeve go, but I kept my hand plastered firmly to his arm. Even though I was sitting on top of him, I didn’t want to break any connection between us for even a second. Luke must have felt the same way because his hand was still resting possessively on my thigh. “What happens now is we compromise,” I said. “I left my job so that I can finish the rest of the tour with you, and then when the tour’s done, I’ll get a new job and you’ll live with me. Wherever in the world that may be.”
“Alright that’s a deal,” Luke agreed. “I’ll even help you get a new job. I’ll call in favors, whatever you need. You want a job at Rolling Stone? I’ll find someone who can make it happen.”
“Wow, please never do that,” I admonished. “Plus, having tried it, I’m not sure that the big, national publication thing is for me. All I’m saying is be ready to buy a dogsled if my next offer comes from the Anchorage Daily News.”
He gave me a bemused look. “Is that really how you think everyday people get around in Alaska?”
“I mean, yeah, kind of.”
“Okay, well then I will also learn to build an igloo if that’s what it takes. Just as long as we’re going to be there together,” he said.
With absolute confidence I replied, “We will be.”
“Good,” he smiled before he pulled me tightly against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and right in that moment, I felt complete. Especially when Luke breathed in deeply and said into my hair, “I missed this.”
We sat like that, just holding each other until finally he leaned back and grabbed my hips. “Okay, it’s time to get you naked, L.L.,” he said without preamble. “It’s been four months and I’m dying to see what kind of tan lines you picked up over the summer. Your neck is also glaringly devoid of any bite marks. We’ll have to remedy that immediately.”
“Ew, Luke, we’re in public,” I said. I was actually totally down to get down right here and now, but I felt like traditional gender roles dictated that I at least try to feign modesty.
“We’re in the dressing room at a concert hall,” Luke reasoned. “I’m certain it will be neither the first nor the last time someone gets it on back here.
Well, with that kind of sweet talk, how could I say no?
A while later, we’d just finished putting our clothes back on when Luke walked over to the other side of the room.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“It hurts me that you even have to ask,” I replied while I straightened my shirt.
Luke walked back over to the couch with a new bottle of Jameson and two cups with ice.
“I thought that you guys didn’t keep Jameson on hand,” I said as he poured a couple of fingers in each one. “You said you were ‘a Jack Daniels crowd.’”
“We don’t.” Luke replied. “But I do. You know, just in case.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I brought it with me when I left Chicago back in May. I was hoping that I’d have an occasion to open it. And, look, now I do.” He grinned as he handed me a cup.
Embarrassingly, tears formed in my eyes for about the hundredth time since I’d gotten here. “You brought this with you on tour?” I asked as they threatened to spill onto my cheeks.
“Yeah.”
“Because you were hoping that I’d come back to you?”
“Yeah.” He said it like it wasn’t a big deal, but to me it was such a big deal. Luke had never given up on us, and from this moment on, I knew that I never would either. Then, just because I wanted to, I leaned over and kissed him silly.
Not long after that, still feeling freshly fucked and enjoying the most satisfying whiskey of my life, I watched Luke, my Luke, the man that I loved, perform the songs that he’d written just for me, and I knew that he loved me too. I also knew that later tonight, I would fall asleep next to him. And I knew that I’d do the exact same thing tomorrow night. And the night after that. I was where I was supposed to be with who I was supposed to be with. So was Luke. We were home.
About The Author
I'm Maggie Mares, a lawyer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at fiction writi
ng. If you did, then I hope you'll tell others and leave a good review on Amazon. If you didn't, then I hope you'll be cool and keep it to yourself. After all, I don't take to the internet to criticize your hobbies.
Snow Patrol and Tired Pony have been two of my favorite bands for a long time. Their songs tell stories about ordinary love and heartbreak that are extraordinary for the people experiencing them, and I wanted to write a novel that told that same type of story.
Proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the hopes that they will nurture more great artists for me to fall in love with. You can learn more about them at www.ohyeahbelfast.com.
You can connect with me on Twitter, @MaggieMares, Instagram, @MagsMares, or just send me an email at [email protected].
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[1] Snow Patrol. “Chocolate.” Final Straw. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2004.
[2] Tired Pony. “The Beginning Of The End.” The Ghost Of The Mountain. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2013.
[3] Tired Pony. “Blood.” The Ghost Of The Mountain. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2013.
[4] Snow Patrol. “Disaster Button.” A Hundred Million Suns. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2008.
[5] Snow Patrol. “Dark Roman Wine.” Up To Now. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2009.
[6] Tired Pony. “Punishment.” The Ghost Of The Mountain. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2013.
[7] Snow Patrol. “Crack The Shutters.” A Hundred Million Suns. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2008.
[8] Snow Patrol. “Set Down Your Glass.” A Hundred Million Suns. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2008.
[9] Snow Patrol. “It’s Beginning To Get To Me.” Eyes Open. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2006.
[10] Snow Patrol. “How To Be Dead.” Final Straw. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2004.
[11] Snow Patrol. “Make This Go On Forever.” Eyes Open. Polydor Ltd. (UK), 2006.
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