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I take another deep, calming breath and make my way into my living room. When I spot them both on the couch, game controllers in hand, Charlee giggling and him with an open smile, I stop to lean against the threshold, watching them.

I can’t help but wonder if, in a different world, this could’ve been us. A family.

Or if now, in this lifetime, he already has one.

Forty-seven After

CHARLEE IS FASTasleep on the couch when the ending credits of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban roll through the screen—her favorite of the series, of course.

“You impressed her, you know,” I say quietly to Greyson without taking my eyes off of her sleeping form. She’s bundled up, taking up more than her share of the couch her and Greyson are sitting on.

“Did I?” he asks, and it feels like he’s asking more than meets the eye. Hidden questions buried beneath unspoken words and even more questions.

And here we are, somehow. Hovering in the moment I’ve been waiting for.

It came too fast. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for this conversation, if I’m being honest.

It feels oddly like reading a good book—the few and far between kind; the kind you can open up and lose yourself in entirely. The ones you nearly devour in a day, but at the same time, you spend half of the next picking it up and finishing it by only a sentence or two at a time, because you can’t bear for it to be over yet.

It’s a lot like getting to know Greyson again.

The knowledge of who he is and what his life looks like has been at my fingertips all this time, I just didn’t want to look.

I’ve preferred these small amounts of exposure, the tiny slivers of who he is slowly presenting themselves to me without giving away how the story unfolds, because I think I’ve known all along that once I find out the truth, I’ll be forced to close these pages of my life forever.

And I don’t want this to be over.I’m not ready for whatever this is that still lives and breathes between us to end.

“You did,” I finally answer Greyson’s question, suffocating the rest of my thoughts so they don’t have enough air to breathe. “I don’t think we’ve ever made it to the last world without giving in and using the whistle at least once…” I say, still a little more than distracted. I will my heart to stop racing. And my thoughts, too.

“Honestly, I think you might’ve reached hero-status in her eyes in the span of one night,” I continue, “and that is not an easy feat when it comes to this girl.”

“Good to know,” he says with a half-smile, genuine.

We both glance over at Charlee again, and the look I’ve seen a few times tonight flits across his face—a curiosity in his eyes, and a hesitant tilt to his lips.

“She’s a sweet girl.” He clears his throat. “Is, uh…” And he clears his throat again, looking slightly nervous. It makesmea little nervous, though I’m not sure exactly why. “Is her father in the picture?” he asks.

That takes me off-guard.What an odd, intrusive question to ask.

“Um…yes. Fortunately,” I eventually answer him.

He nods, looking mildly uncomfortable.

“He’s an amazing father, actually,” I add, though it doesn’t seem to make him any less uncomfortable.

Charlie’s dad really is good to her, though. He just happened to be a more than shitty husband. He had cheated on Maggie, and she’d been blindsided. Hell, even I had been blindsided. Not one of us saw it coming. He didn’t seem like the type. Not even close. But I guess we never really expect these kinds of things from the people we trust. So, we all lost a friend in him when it happened.

It was just after Charlee’s third birthday when Maggie found out. She kicked him out, but he begged her to let him try and keep his family together, promising counseling and a whole other slew of empty assurances, so she took him back. Only to quickly find out he’d also been trying to mend things with the woman he’d been cheating on her with, and then she kicked him out for good.

“Shitty husband. But a great father—thankfully,” I give voice to my thoughts.

Greyson quickly looks over at me, his eyes wide and surprised. He clears his throat uncomfortably for what feels like the hundredth time tonight, looking uneasy on an entirely different level. “I had no idea you’d married,” he says, his voice rough.

What? Me?“What?” Oh.Oh!And I draw it all together. “No.” I laugh on an exhale. “Notme,” I say with a hand pressed against my chest. I can feel my heart beating a mile a minute beneath my palm. “Charlee isn’t mine.” I shake my head. “Oh my god.” And I can’t help but laugh again. “Is that what you’ve been thinking this entire time?”

He nods, his eyes slightly narrowed in confusion.

I know I need to pull myself together and clarify, butoh my god, this is kind of hilarious, isn’t it?