Page 78 of Yours, For Good

Could we have become friends? Would I have felt my emotions wake up from slumber, the way I did with knowing you the past many months?

I don't know, Nora. This hypothetical won't help me find answers, but it shows me just how much I appreciate what you've brought to my life.

I hope that, whatever you decide about how much— if at all— you want me in your life, you come to find pieces you're grateful for, too.

Javier

PS: I mostly expect you not to respond to this email either and, like I said, I deserve it. This postscript is to acknowledge the courage you had writing all those letters to Mr. B. Opening your heart like that. I don't know if you kept checking your inbox and seeing no response like I do, or if you felt like I do each time but, if you did, let me add another apology for what it might have caused you.

On my part, I'm willing to reveal that not hearing from you has me in agony. Not that you have to do anything about it, but it's the truth.

Date: June 30

To: Eleanora

From: Javier

Subject: in case you want to know.

Dear Nora,

It's officially summer, and almost a year since I read your file at the JGH Board meeting, and decided you were a perfect fit for the incubator program. It's also been almost two weeks since I last saw you. I think I'm starting my emails like that because when I come back to read them in a year or two, I won't have to do the math for how long it was that I didn't hear from you. Isn't that a strange plan to have? I don't know where we'll be in two years! And I don't know if I'll have you in my life.

It's with that in mind that I'm attaching a few screenshots I've taken of book passages that made me think of you. There's a bunch more, but I'll send them in future emails.

In any case, the main point of today's email is different. I've been thinking a lot about the question you asked me that day before you kissed me.

Can best friends be lovers?

It's a question about what makes the difference between friends and lovers, isn't it?

When I think of Max or Gabe or Jake, I know I love them. It's this feeling of certainty that settles in my chest that harbors no doubt. Meanwhile, I've never had that kind of conviction in matters of the heart. In fact, for a long time, I wondered if I wasn't capable of more than a passing romantic affection for someone.

Then… you. Sometimes, I put my hand on my chest and touch the necklace I don't think you've ever seen (did you ever get that tattoo, by the way?), and I feel my heartbeat. I just did it again. This feels different, in a way that's hard to describe. No wonder there are an infinite number of words written about it. Music that pulls at the heartstrings trying to define it.

I don't understand it. I can't name it yet. All I know is that it's like friendship, but different.

You are the first person to make me shake in my shoes with the need to figure it out.

I thought you should know.

Javier

Chapter 32

Nora

I PUT MY PHONE in my pocket with trembling fingers. Javier's latest email had screenshots attached as well, this time with passages talking about love. Some of them talked about touching the person you wanted, and feeling like you were in a world beyond comprehension, outside of time and space.

He had written a note on it. Maybe it is possible to reach the edges of reality. The film noir hero may not be trapped in dissatisfaction, if he gets to explore new horizons with the right person.

Death by swoon was a big risk at the moment, but I tamed it down. I got ice cream from The Scoop and walked to the same spot where Javier had hugged me for the first time. It seemed fitting; it was the spot where we'd made our pinky promise.

The way things stood, I didn't know if Javier would be part of the life I was building for myself. He might be a simple memory by the time I turned thirty.

Now, two weeks after being at his place in Manhattan, I recounted the things that were mine. I had the friendship I was still building with Sally, and the smiling comfort of her family when they jumped into my calls with her to ask me when I would visit them again. My business was mine, too; despite the hurt it caused, the fact Mr. B. and Javier had remained so removed from the process meant I knew it was all me. My investors were not in the Pendletons' circles, from what I could find online and coyly ask Sally about. All decisions had been mine, especially now that my mentors had done all they could do.

After my upcoming trip to New York, my life was all mine. I would sign the very final documents to establish my organization and start the structuring part of it. If I felt generous and brave, I would attend the John Grier Home fundraiser that Mrs. Lippett had invited me to— it could be a time to assess if I could be on the board myself and change things from within. Once I returned to Lock Willow, I'd have a month to research and decide on the final location for my first office, and find a place to live.