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THIS LABEL

Sabrina

I freeze.

In the back of the town car, zigzagging toward Park Slope, passing last-minute shoppers rushing down the sidewalks, swinging red and white shopping bags, my body goes cold.

Is he really ending this while holding my hand as we pick up his kids? After he screwed me against the door? Is this the next about-face? I tug my hand away from him so I can raise all my drawbridges.

What was I thinking? Believing in…whatever this even is. That was so stupid. “What can’t we do?” I ask, my armor on.

I’m suiting up, grabbing a shield and a sword when he reaches for my hand once more, urgently.

“I can’t pretend,” he says, squeezing my fingers, his voice intense.

“I can’t pretend this is just sex and trysts and lessons for me.

It’s not. I didn’t want to put a label on this thing when I asked you to come here.

I kept it all open-ended because of my past and your past. And I didn’t want you to feel any pressure,” he says, the words tumbling out in a heap, just like I laid all my confessions bare the night of my almost-wedding.

I turn my gaze toward him, mesmerized by the words falling from those gorgeous lips. “But I can’t keep doing that. I just can’t, Sabrina,” he says.

Hope dares to poke up, like a flower bud in March. “Why is that?” I ask, trying to mask the trembling in my voice.

“Sabrina, I said it before—this is all new to me. I’ve never felt anything like this.

It’s like sparks inside me all the time,” he says, and I’m shot back in time to the day he built the yoga shelves, when I asked him about Elle and he said it didn’t feel like sparks .

It didn’t feel like lightning . I hold my breath because maybe this thing between us does feel like lightning to him.

Pretty sure the crackles in my chest are a sign it’s that way for me. “I’m crazy for you,” he says.

And I was wrong.

He’s not backing off.

He’s coming closer.

It’s like all the Christmas lights flickering on in the city are inside me now, like I’m powering them. Like this hope and this joy can illuminate the entire metropolitan area. And if I could tell Elena how I felt, I can do it with Tyler.

“It’s the same for me,” I say, grabbing his shirt collar, since I need to hold him now. I have to. And it’s such a relief to tell him. It’s such a relief to leave the in-between. I feel like I’ve shed a coat as the clouds parted and the sun broke free. “I’m crazy for you too,” I add.

Tyler’s smile is full of disbelief and happiness, maybe in equal parts. “Yeah?”

“Obviously,” I say, my fingers twisting tighter in his shirt. But even though I love everything he’s saying, and I adore the jolts I feel in my chest, there are two big questions.

Luna and Parker. “But what about the kids?” I ask, with some concern .

No, a lot of concern.

I let go of the hold on him so we can face this big issue.

He scrubs a hand across the back of his neck, as if he’s thinking. “Do you want to tell them?”

My stomach twists. That’s a huge step. We’ve only just walked out of the in-between. Am I ready for something that big? I’ve barely hit the six-months-post-failed-wedding mark. And this is the first time Tyler and I have truly talked about our feelings.

Is now the time to tell the kids?

But if I’m asking the question, the answer is no. “Probably not yet,” I say gently.

He nods immediately, making it clear he’s on the same page I am.

“I’m not sure what I’d say yet either, to be honest. And I know this is probably a lot for you and it’s all coming on quickly,” he says, and once again, he sounds just like me the night of my 1001 confessions, and I love his confessions as much as I think he loved mine.

“But I couldn’t go another second without you knowing how I feel for you.

Maybe we can figure out the details sometime in the new year, whenever you’re ready.

What to say, what it means, how it works, your job and the kids and… everything.”

Yes, everything. Because there is so much to figure out.

“But I couldn’t wait another second. And I just wanted you to know,” he says, stopping to take a breath, a necessary one.

He grabs my hands again, and this time I let him.

“Does this mean you’re my…girlfriend?” But he laughs as soon as he says that.

“I want you to be my girlfriend, but that’s such a ridiculous word.

Such a young word. Lover is worse. But I just couldn’t pretend that I’m not thinking about you all the time, wanting all the best things for you, and needing you to be mine. ”

I squeeze his hands tighter, his confessions wrapping around me like the warmest embrace of my life. “Is that what you want for Christmas?”

He smiles. “You. All I want is you.”

I don’t know the answers to all the bigger questions either, like how we navigate this, or how we act in front of the two little people we both love, but I like this label— his.

“You can have me.”

That night, the four of us go to the Christmas Eve show of the Ice Spectacle . I dress in black pants and a pink sweater with sparkly little silver threads in it, and a snowflake necklace that Tyler gives me when he slips into my room for a minute before we’re about to leave.

“This is for you,” he says, and he puts it on me as I hold up my hair. He kisses the back of my neck and whispers, “A snowflake for my Sabrina Snow.”

We leave with Luna and Parker. We don’t have to make a plan to know how to act.

Intrinsically, we’re on the same page. I don’t want to confuse them either.

My life’s been so topsy-turvy and I need time to adjust to whatever this means.

So Tyler and I don’t hold hands in front of the kids.

We don’t kiss in front of them, and we don’t make little inside jokes.

But after we enter the arena and take our seats right by the ice for the skating extravaganza, he stretches an arm across the back of the seats, squeezes my shoulder, and whispers, “Merry Christmas, Sabrina.”

I turn to my boss, who doesn’t seem like my boss right now. He seems like the man who put his heart on the line. For me. “Merry Christmas, Tyler.”

And as the four of us settle in and watch the show, I feel like a new label fits.

Family.