I dry off in the open air.
I reach for my cell at the bottom of my bag. I’ve missed seven calls from my team but it’s my holiday, and I’m giving myself this.
Instead, I punch in Ben’s number, just as he wanted me to.
He answers on the first ring.
“We’re an ocean apart, but I can see you clearly, all the way from here,” I say, staring out to the horizon, then up at the darkening sky, the stars beginning their nightly dance.
“I see you too,” he says. “All the way from here.”
“It feels like it took us forever to get this right,” I reply. “Get here as fast as you can.”
“Not forever, just a few more hours,” he says. “I’m already on my way.”
49
BETWEEN ME AND YOU
BY BEN LIVINGSTON
(FINAL DRAFT)
INT. BEN’S BEDROOM—DUSK
Ben, our hero, sits on his bed in his small apartment, stunned. Fading light ekes through his window. From his expression, it’s obvious that he just received news that he can’t get over. Then a joyful—the happiest—grin spreads across his face. In one quick instant, he grabs the phone off his bed, lets out a hoot, and runs to the front door, where his suitcase is already packed and ready. He races down the steps to the waiting taxi.
BEN:
How quickly can you get me to the airport?
DRIVER:
Traffic’s not bad. It’s New Year’s Eve. Everyone’s at home getting fancy, ready to party. So twenty minutes, no problem.
Ben checks his watch.
BEN:
Twenty minutes is perfect.
DRIVER:
Gotta be somewhere by midnight?
BEN:
Gotta kiss a girl by midnight.
The driver laughs, guns the gas. We pan out to see the taxi racing down the 405.
50
TATUM
NEW YEAR’S EVE
The sky is bigger than I ever dreamed it could be. That’s what I keep thinking from my chaise, tucked under a blanket on the empty Hawaiian beach as midnight nears. That the world is so immense, and we are so small, and isn’t it a miracle that we find someone to love amidst its expanse? That Ben and I found each other? That we found our way back to each other again?
I check the time on my phone. He’ll be here in time. I know it.
“Hey, Tate, you coming in?” Piper shouts from the open patio door. From behind her, I can hear the pulse of music, the sound of heightened laughter from my family, as they dance and celebrate and wait to ring in the new year, the new chapter.
“Mo-o-o-o-ommmm,” Joey yells beside Piper. “I’m addicted to sparkling apple cider! It’s. The. Best!” He toots a noisemaker in triumph.
“I’ll be in soon, don’t worry,” I call back to them.
“You OK?” Piper says.
“I called him,” I say. “He’s coming.”
“HOLY SHIT!!” Piper screams, running down to me, kissing my face all over until I can’t stop giggling.
“OK, now let me have a moment of peace,” I say.
She clutches my cheeks and says, “God, I’m proud of you, Tate. I know none of this has been easy.”
I nod and sink back into the chaise, and she retreats. She must have shut the patio door because the noise from inside is swallowed up.
I check my phone again. This is how he wanted it, how he wrote it, with him waiting for me, with me calling and telling him to come—and without even realizing it, this is how I wanted it too, how I would have asked him to write it if I were still asking.
For him to fly across an ocean for me on New Year’s Eve, for us to stand under the stars as the clock ticks down to a new start, a rebirth, just as it had so many years ago.
The patio echoes with revelry again, the door reopening. I hold my breath and wonder if it’s him, if he’s made it in time, just as he’d written, just as I’d hoped.
He drops his bag next to the chair, and I tilt my gaze upward, and there he is.
Ben.
“You made it,” I say. My smile spreads nearly to my heart, if that were the type of thing a smile could do.
“I promised.” He reaches down, pulls me to my feet, presses my hands to his own heart.
“You wrote it backward,” I say. “So you could see where we got it right.”
“I wrote it backward,” he says. “So I could see everything clearly again.”
“Hey you two lovebirds,” Piper shouts from inside the patio door. “We’re counting down!”
“I think she might be tipsy,” I laugh.
“Well, it’s New Year’s. Maybe we should all be tipsy.”
“Remember Leo at Times Square?” I laugh harder, and he does too. “And that girl, that poor girl he brought, and how he, like, practically ate her face off at midnight?”
Ben’s shoulders shake, and he howls.
“Jesus,” he says through his laughter. “I’m so glad we did that.”
From inside, they are cheering Ten! Nine! Eight!
“So are you going to kiss me?” I say, looking toward him, batting my eyelashes.
“You already know how this ends,” he says. “You know how I wrote it.”
And then we are at Two! And then we are at One!
And then Ben is kissing me or maybe I’m kissing him, and just like so many years ago, before we loved each other and before we broke each other, we lose ourselves in the moment when the past becomes the present and the calendar is nothing but a clean slate.
Ben pulls back and stares at me, like he’s seeing me for the first time. Then he says: “Come on, let’s go inside. We have a lot to celebrate.”
I nod. “OK.”
But neither of us moves, neither of us breaks from our embrace. My hands stay knotted around his neck; his stay knotted around my waist. I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat, the fireworks above, and the waves lapping in and out, in and out, in and out.
Finally, I push back and say, “You ready?”
And he says, “I am.”
Then, under the unending sky in our tiny corner of the galaxy, where we have found our way back to each other, I braid my fingers into his, and we go.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the counsel of my agent and friend, Elisabeth Weed. After countless drafts filled with structural problems and obstacles that seemed insurmountable, and when it would have been easier to throw in the towel and write a more traditional novel, Elisabeth said, Keep going, you can do this, and so I did. I am enormously grateful for her words and support.
Tiffany Yates Martin provided editorial insights that elevated the plot and characters beyond my initial musings and in ways that I could not have done on my own. Thank you, thank you. It was a joyous collaboration.
Danielle Marshall, Kelli Martin, Dennelle Catlett, Devan Hanna, Gabriella Dumpit, Nicole Pomeroy, and the entire team at Lake Union have offered the best possible cushion for a writer: a bubble of support and enthusiasm and kindness, and I am appreciative of their hard work and expertise every step of the way.
Kathleen Carter Zrelak is a dream publicist. Truly. Just wow.
Michelle Weiner at CAA, thanks for your advocacy; Laura Dave, thanks for your wise notes. My mom, thanks for your incredible copyediting eye and your hours spent with the manuscript and a red pen. It’s true that I use way too many commas.
Brandon Flowers, who doesn’t know me and will never likely see this, provided the inspiration for the book’s title through his music that I often listened to on long walks, mulling over Ben and Tatum and their messes. Thanks! Everyone should go listen to his excellent song, “Between Me and You.”
My dogs, Pele and Paco (and the late Pedro), get a thanks for helping to bring Monster to life. (Also, I’ve always wanted to thank my dogs.)
And to my husband, Adam, and my children, Cam and Amelia. Between me and you, I couldn’t ask for more.
ABOUT THE A
UTHOR
Photo © 2015 Kat Tuohy Photography
A New York Times bestselling author, Allison Winn Scotch has published The Department of Lost & Found, Time of My Life, The One That I Want, The Song Remains the Same, The Theory of Opposites, and In Twenty Years, a Library Journal Best Books of 2016 selection. Her novels have been translated into twelve different languages. A freelance writer for many years, Allison has contributed to Brides, Family Circle, Fitness, Glamour, InStyle, Men’s Health, Parents, Redbook, Self, Shape, and Women’s Health. A cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied history and marketing, Winn Scotch now lives in Los Angeles, where she enjoys hiking, reading, running, yoga, and the company of her two dogs, when she’s not “serving as an Uber service” for her kids.
Follow her at www.allisonwinn.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/allisonwinnscotch, or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/aswinn.
Between Me and You Page 35