Page 77 of The Best Worst Thing

Some Other Story

The Pacific, cold and misty, stared back at her.

Five hours had passed, and nothing.

The once-exploding phone in her back pocket, now set to silent with only one exception.

She’d heard from her very confused mother, her suddenly not-so-tight-lipped mother-in-law, even her goddamn high school English teacher.

The podcast had spread like wildfire, but from Logan—from the only person on this planet who mattered right now—there was nothing.

There was radio silence.

And so, a couple of hours ago, when the soaring high of telling the whole world just how much she loved him had begun to fade, Nicole grabbed her jacket and slipped out of Mari’s apartment to get some air.

Instead, she’d found herself wandering the fog-cloaked streets of his old town, retracing their every step, retelling their entire story, remembering what it had felt like—for that perfect summer—to have known a love that real.

She had, like a ghost, taken in every inch of the two-square-mile city.

The damp, cold mulch of their running path; the shadowy stretch of Pier Avenue that played host to their favorite pastry shops and sandwich spots; the sleeping silhouette of their diner’s corner booth, its plastic salt-and-pepper shakers neatly awaiting someone new.

And now, as she stood alone on their beach, as the surf broke and the tide surged and the winter whirled, she inched closer to the coastline, cupped her hands into the icy foam of the frigid shore, and washed away her tears until the salt no longer stung her face and the cold no longer numbed her fingers.

She had put all her cards on the table.

She had put up a hell of a fight.

But before that, she had let him go.

She had pushed him two thousand miles away.

And—adrenaline, gone—she understood.

Not every love could last forever.

Not every mistake could be washed away.

And so, shoes and socks in hand, she dragged her shivering body back up the hill, past the hastily parked cars and the buzzing bars, past the sleeping bookstores and the faded ice cream parlors, until she was turning onto Highland Avenue, until she was turning onto Mari’s street, colder and older and ready—finally ready—to call Dave, to face the facts, to wait until Logan’s name appeared in bold on a press release written six states away, then begin to turn the page on the love she’d let go to waste.

But as Mari’s building came into view—thick pink stucco; fading Spanish tile; the light from her living room window, soft and warm and beckoning her to come back home and heal her broken heart—Nicole couldn’t help but laugh.

Because none of it mattered.

Because Logan Milgram was sitting right there on the sidewalk in a pair of faded blue jeans, grinning like an idiot, arms wrapped around his bent knees.

“I heard a rumor you loved me!”

“It’s true! You’re my Captain Wentworth! ‘You pierce my soul!’ ”

He laughed, pushing himself up off the concrete, wiping his palms on the front of his jeans as she threw her arms around his neck and he slid his hands around her waist. But when she tried to find his lips, he held her back, gleaming.

“You, Nicole Speyer, have sent me on quite the wild goose chase.”

“Did you take the job? Where do you—”

“Next time you go big, remember to go small.”

“Did you move to Chicago? Did you—”

“When I landed, like, ninety minutes ago,” he said, thumbing the waist of her jeans, “I had ten thousand notifications. People found me on LinkedIn. People found me on Facebook. I didn’t even know I still had that. The messaging app is separate, it was very noisy, I—”

“You were flying home?” Her heart leaped out of her throat. “You live here?”

He nodded, smiling, touching her. “I live here. I live in Culver. I just got back from a meeting in Nashville. I did it—I started my own thing. When you were gone and I had nothing left to lose, it was so clear to me that you were right, that I wanted something that was all mine. And what was holding me back wasn’t some job of a lifetime in Chicago, and it wasn’t even you.

It was this idea that you’d only love me if I was stable, if I made things easy and simple for you.

That our relationship could only work if I never let you down, never made things harder.

That you wouldn’t love me if I started a business that failed, especially while you had a new baby, while you were trying to figure out life without Gabe, if I wasn’t always putting your needs first and that’s on me.

You never asked me to do any of that or give those things up, and I should’ve gone for it while I still had you.

I should’ve bet on myself while you were still mine.

And on a semirelated note, Erika and I just signed a three-year lease for this office space on Jefferson, so I officially have zero dollars to my name. ”

“Did you really? I’m so proud of you. I’m so happy,” Nicole said, pulling him closer, pushing her forehead against his. He smirked, then pressed her arms to her sides.

“Patience, Missouri. Not until I finish my story, all right?”

Nicole rolled her eyes, then gestured for him to carry on.

“So,” he said, “turns out my sister-in-law listens to your podcast. Matty’s wife, I told you, she did IVF last year too.

Anyway, she’s calling, she’s freaking out, she’s just put it all together, that you’re the Nicole I was crying about over Thanksgiving.

I’ve got texts from literally everyone at PS—I’ve got clients calling, which, thanks for that, by the way.

Brilliant workaround for my nonsolicitation.

I set up four meetings on the way here. Anyway, I’ve got half my mom’s book club calling, someone from the Issaquah Reporter calling.

Everyone, sending me the link. Everyone, telling me it’s the cutest thing they’ve ever heard.

So then I listen to your show on the tarmac.

Very well done. A little stalkery, but I’ll allow it.

Anyway, now I’m crying on the plane—thanks for that too—and also about ready to murder someone, because you know LAX, and it’s taking forever for them to find an open gate, and I’m desperate to come and see you, and you know how it takes forever to get a car, so I call Dave and beg him to come get me and—”

“Dave? Dave hates me.”

Logan twirled Nicole around and pointed to a royal blue Prius idling across the street.

At once, Dave glanced up from his glowing phone and really, truly smiled.

Nicole smiled back, shouting that she was sorry, he was right, and she would babysit his kids until the end of time.

And then, shaking his head, he gave her a strange little salute and drove away.

“Okay, okay,” she said, turning back to Logan, retracing him. His arms, his shoulders, his jaw. Everything, the same. Everything, different. “Then what?”

“So then, we’re sitting at the gate with the seat belt sign on for, like, a lifetime, and I’m really starting to lose it, so I tell the flight attendant, ‘Hey, this girl, this woman, she loves me. It’s her birthday, and she loves me. I have to get off this plane.’ ”

“And they let you?”

“No! They told me to sit the fuck down!”

“This story is really long. Can you consolidate just this once? I really want to kiss—”

He pushed his index finger against her lips. “This is the deal, Nicole. You talked a big game on that podcast of yours. This is your prize. You begged for this. This is your life now.”

She glared at him, laughing. He pulled her closer, smirking.

“So finally, I’m off the plane and Dave finds me, which is a whole other sidequest, and then we rush back to my new apartment because I had something I wanted to bring you.

Then we speed back to my old place, because you said you were at my door, but you weren’t there.

So then we race over to your house, ring the bell.

Some lovely family that appears to be idly rich has moved in—great people, very cute dog, gave me a Popsicle—and they said they didn’t know where you moved, but they gave me your realtor’s number, so I called her, but she was at a boot camp, and once she realized I didn’t want to buy a house, she seemed a little annoyed, so that was a dead end.

And that’s when I realized I should call Mari, that—”

“Why didn’t you call me? This story makes no sense.”

“Because I wanted to go big! Because I wanted to surprise you! Come on!”

Nicole pulled him in tighter, burrowing her face into his sweatshirt, breathing him in as he talked and talked and talked.

“So then,” he said, “finally, on the third try, Mari picks up. Apparently, she missed my first two calls because she was too busy planning you a sad retreat to the coast of Portugal or something. Anyway, she says you’re living with her, that you got a job you really like, that—”

“Logan, you have to shut up. You have to get to the point. When I said I wanted to want to kill you, I did not mean immediately. I meant eventually. Like, when I’m fifty.”

“You know what, Nicole?”

“What?”

He lifted her off the ground, twirled her in a circle, and pulled her in so tight her heart nearly burst. “You’re lucky.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because I’m a very nice guy.”

“That right?”

“That’s right. I’m going to forgive you for telling me to shut up.

I’m going to kiss you for, like, forever.

And then, after that, you’re going to bring me up to Mari’s, and I’m going to meet all your noisy friends, and then I’m going to eat all of Mari’s food, and then, when that’s done, I’m going to take you home and start making up for lost time. ”

Nicole hooked her fingers into his belt loop. “Plan approved. But those noisy friends are … it’s my sister. And Valerie. They’re both here.”

“The baby’s here? I get to meet the baby!?”

“I mean, you can’t actually meet the baby yet. She’s inside Valerie. That’s typically how—”

“It’s a girl? You’re having a girl!?”

Nicole nodded, tears in her eyes.

“I’m so happy for you!” he said. “Can we call my mom? Can we please FaceTime my mom?”

“After we bang, yes. Like, tomorrow morning, okay? We can get on a plane. We can go meet her. Then we can fly to Saint Louis, meet my parents, get it all done in a day. You still have a zillion miles, right?”

Logan grinned, finding her face. Their lips nearly locked.

“Ah!” He pulled away. “I almost forgot. I got you something.”

He opened his workbag and handed her the most horrendously wrapped, six-inch-by-six-inch rhombus of a package she’d seen in her thirty-three years of life.

“I assume you’ll handle the wrapping from this point forward,” Logan said as she peeled back the crinkled, cut-all-wrong, confetti-patterned paper he’d taped directly onto the gift itself. “But if not, that’s fine. We’ll just be party bag people. I’m good with that.”

Nicole laughed, pulling the last few scraps away. It was a book—a board book. Goodnight Mr. Darcy.

“Logan, I—”

“Damnit! You’ve already read it, haven’t you? I can get you something else. I can—”

She kissed him.

She kissed him for a long, long time.

“I love you,” she said, arms around his neck.

“You are such a fucking moron, and I love you. Nothing you say makes any sense. This summer—it was the best, worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me.

I am so unbelievably lucky. You are a complete and utter bonehead.

The king of the dingbats. I still cannot believe how much I ended up loving you. ”

“Sweetest words I’ve ever heard,” he said, kissing her again.

And then, laughing, he carried her up the stairs to Mari’s apartment while she tugged on the neck of his sweatshirt, continued to tear him to absolute shreds, and looked into his eyes and told him she loved him over and over again.

Looked into his eyes and saw some other life, starting to unfold.

Saw some other story, finally ready to be told.