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Frankie, who sits, hands folded and resting on her very pregnant belly, as she makes some dry quip.
FRANKIEEE
And then, behind them, as striking as a sudden silent storm, walks in Charlie’s sister, the only other secret I’ve kept in my life: Tallulah Clarke.
everyone likes me. At least if I don’t stick around too long, or if they don’t; if we don’t spend enough time together for me to wear out my welcome and rub them wrong.
“Sure. But when you’re ready to walk what you so eloquently talk, you giant hypocrite, I’ll be here.”
my parents are a toxic mess whom I put up with more than I should;
I never know what to do with compliments.
“Someone’s bossy.” A twinkle settles in his eyes. He grins. “I can be. But generally, I much prefer when it’s the other way around.”
OH MY GOD VIGGO
That’s how you know you really love something, Tallulahloo, when it feels worth the hassle, when even the hardest parts of it feel like a gift.”
“But I got over it. I moved on.” “Sure. But just because we’ve moved on doesn’t mean some hurts don’t linger.”
Oh...
“Once you swap a secret with a Bergman, you’re bonded to them for life. We’re friends now, Lulaloo. Like it or not.” “I do not like. I unlike. Unsubscribe. Unfollow.”
Lucia, Ren and Frankie’s eleven-month-old daughter, shrieks with delight as I turn with her safely tucked in the baby-wearing harness strapped to my chest and she spots her dad. Ren’s face melts from feigned seriousness to a soft, lovesick smile.
I am crying over this fictional baby
“Daddy says you can have good things and still be sad. He says there’s room for all my feelings.
Fuck this family and their healthy emotions
Gigi’s beside them with a book in hand, too, which I think she’s supposed to be “reading,” except it’s upside down.
Lmfao
I can be grating to spend extended periods of time around, especially when I’m fixated on a particular activity or outcome. I wouldn’t want you to feel cornered into something you’d regret.” Tallulah frowns at me. “Says who?” “Says who, what?” “Who,” she says calmly, but there’s an edge to her voice, “says you’re ‘grating’ to spend a lot of time around?” “Oh . . .” Heat creeps up my cheeks. I clear my throat. “Just . . . most of the people who’ve spent a lot of time around me.”
“Then fuck them,” she says icily. “Fuck anyone who makes you feel like you’re too much. If they feel that way, they aren’t enough for you.”
You’re rambling. Stop. Stop while you’re ahead. Or less behind. Just stop!
And then Tallulah offers her hand and says, “Well then, Viggo Bergman. Looks like you’ve got yourself a roommate.”
They were rommates
Who handled my friend group’s rental finances, groceries, meal planning, upkeep, who was the quiet listener, the shoulder to cry on, the receptacle and vessel for what everyone else needed. I don’t have needs. Or feelings. I’ve never felt I could afford that luxury.
Viggo pulls out his phone as I pull out mine. We exchange numbers. He sends me a GIF of an animated historical romance cover, a guy who looks like Fabio in Regency clothes wiggling his eyebrows at the viewer with a come-hither stare. I send him a GIF of Alexis Rose saying, “Ew, David!”
Oh god i love them
“We’re doing a skills swap, of sorts. He’s going to help me iron out the kinks in my book—” “ ‘Iron out the kinks,’ eh? Is he going to help ‘fill your plot holes,’ too?”
Lmfao
This might be the most considerate thing anyone has ever done for me. It’s going to spoil me, make me want things like this, even when I’m gone and this is over. And I’m so scared to want anything from anyone. All it’s ever done is hurt me.
...oh
“We’ll just be going,” Oliver says, doing a little moonwalk past us, flashing me a smile. “Have a great day!” “What is going on?” I ask. Oliver pauses mid-moonwalk. Ren and Seb freeze in the throes of their hug.
Oliver i love you
I’ve been “helpful” to a lot of people over the years. I like to be helpful. But I’ve also learned what often comes after I’m helpful, when the way I’m simply trying to be useful seemingly becomes too much—when I’m too much. Unaware that I’m doing it, I push and shove my way around, take it too far. Say more than I’ve been asked to. Suggest more than I should. That’s when people pull away. They like me for my helpfulness, until how I’m helpful bothers them, then they don’t. Then they’re done.
“I see love as . . . elemental, something so deeply woven into everything that makes life feel alive. And I’m not even talking exclusively about romantic love. Love takes so many forms. Love for ourselves. Our surroundings. Strangers. Friends. Family. Partners. To me, to reduce it to only an animalistic impulse does it a profound disservice.
“That . . . charged, impenetrable space between two people who feel so close—their hearts, their minds, their bodies—yet never truly touch, that place of mystery, that’s real. And I think, it’s that reach to feel and know and connect to every part of each other, in spite of the distance between us . . . I think that’s love, in so many beautiful, mysterious iterations.”
“I can’t.” The intensity of his gaze pins me in place. “I don’t know. What I do know is it drives me up the goddamn wall.” “Well”—I raise my mug—“sympathies. You think I appreciate being horny for a high-handed IKEA-furniture-assembling, plant-hoarding, romance-loving, rescue-animal-adopting pushover?”
“Jesus. Christ.” Sighing, I fold my arms across my chest. Two Labrador retrievers, one brown, one black, both gray at the snout, doze, curled around each other on a plush dog bed placed in a patch of thick, hot sunlight that spills through the bookstore’s large front window. “Not even close,” he says, pointing. “That’s Romeo. And that’s Juliet.”
I didn’t have to know, didn’t have to make some profound sense of why they were put on my path when they were, for me to love them. I could just . . . love them. That was enough.”
It’s too much to ask, to want, to expect. You’re too much.
Ohviggo i get it
“This place, Viggo . . .” Oliver looks around. “I’m no expert on running a bookstore, but it’s ready. It’s been ready since the night the family was here. Your inventory is bursting off the shelves. You have your pastry recipes down to a science, a coffee machine that practically makes the drinks itself. Your plants have flowered since we were here!” His voice is louder now, his cheeks pink. He’s fired up. “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you just open those damn doors and let yourself succeed already?” “Because I don’t know if I’ll succeed!” I yell.
Your honor hes just like me and we cant blame him for that
“This is not going to fail,” he says, confident, calm. “And even if, somehow, it didn’t work out the way you hoped, you would not be a failure. You would grieve and then pick yourself up, brush yourself off, move forward.”
God i needed to hrar that
“I know. But these books we’re surrounded by, that you’ve voraciously read, isn’t that what they’re all about? Being brave enough to take risks to have the life we want and love? Be brave for yourself, Viggo. You deserve it.”
But maybe there isn’t some crystal clear sign that this is the right moment, this is when it will all work out. Maybe, like the store’s success, my heart’s happiness can’t be guaranteed, even with all the time and preparation in the world. Maybe all I can do is trust myself and throw its doors wide open. How wise. How absolutely terrifying.
I have to suck it up. Push through. Handle my struggle on my own. Like I have before. Like I will again.
NOOOO
“You want to describe . . .” I scrunch my eyes shut, trying to think how to explain it. “You want them to feel, when they’re there, in the kitchen, like . . . He should . . .” I groan in frustration. “Sorry, I’m a kinesthetic learner. Seems I’m a kinesthetic teacher, too. Mind if we hop into the kitchen and I show you what I mean?”
Rizz her up king
“One day,” I tell him, as I clasp his fingers and remove them from my face, “I’m going to write a thriller about a woman who snaps when one more person tells her to smile.”
As you should
“You’re not being silly. You’re being nervous.” I clasp his hand and squeeze tight. “It’s okay to be nervous. But you’ve got this.
“It is a good place to start,” Charlie says. But then she goes quiet. The kind of quiet that I know means she’s biting her tongue. “Just say it,” I tell her. “Go to therapy!” she blurts so loud it startles the seagulls hovering near us,
I am Charlie
“Rest in peace, Heath,” Viggo says, as the end credits of A Knight’s Tale start to roll.
SUCH A GOOD MOVIE
“I wanted it to work that way. But life is meandering side trails, accidental shortcuts and detours, dead ends, turning back. It’s not just a path rolled out before you; I wanted it to be. And that’s because . . . I’ve struggled for a long time to find my path. To find my place. I’ve made friends and lost some, tried things that I thought would fill that ache inside me, make me feel better about myself. When I’ve come close to failing those things, I’ve turned around, taken new trails, found something else I was sure I’d be better at, that would finally make me feel like I was walking the path
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Tallulah and I . . . That’s a complete statement. That’s what I picture. Tallulah and I.
“Ah, but if I diminish a joyful moment and lower the high, it’s not such a painful drop when disappointment and failure inevitably come.”
I clasp his hand, squeezing it tight, and mercifully, he goes quiet. I know we need to have this conversation, that avoiding it is unhealthy. But I tell myself this isn’t avoidance. This is . . . a pause.
“Time. Opening up to them. But mostly time. Until one day . . . I realized, to the Bergmans, I already was one of them. That they’d opened their arms and hearts to me, and once they do that, they do it fully, without reservation. I had nothing to prove, no place to earn. Their love, that belonging, it was right there the whole time, waiting for me to see it.”
Frankie, Ren’s wife, stands tall, dark hair swept back in a ponytail, a sleepy baby in one arm, her cane in the other hand.
FRANKIE MY BELOVED <3
“We’re missing a few members presently, but welcome to the dysfunctional section of the Bergmans.” “Frankie!” Willa snorts. “What?” Frankie shrugs, holding my eyes. “It’s true. This is what they do, love people who’ve got baggage and hang-ups. The Bergmans are different. We’re different from them, no judgment, just a fact. They don’t see love like we do, with conditions and clauses, end dates and disappointments, and it’s a mindfuck at first. We get it. You’re not alone. If you ever think you are, we’re here.”
One of his favorite historical romances, according to the adorably detailed “Bookseller’s Favorites” index cards he’s written and perched around titles he loves shelved across the store. I downloaded it before our flight. Finally, I tap it and watch the book open up. I settle in beside the man I love, a story he loves in my hands.
This is so cute
“I can’t,” I gasp, falling into my brother as he wraps his arms around me. There’s a quiet murmur of voices, chairs scraping, cups being set down. A door opens. I’m guided by my brother’s strong arm down the hall to an open door. That’s when I realize where I am, what’s happening. I stand at the threshold of the basement, watching my brothers trundle down the steps, knowing what I’m about to face, what’s been coming for me for years, what’s finally here. My own Bergman Brothers Summit.
YESSSSSS
“Well, technically,” Ryder says, “I have yet to earn a Bergman Brothers Summit.” Everyone stares at him sharply. Ryder grimaces. “Sorry. That was not, uh . . . that was not helpful, right now.”
Lmfao
“I love you, Viggo. And I know I’m no love expert, not the way you are, but I know my heart, and this is true: I love you. “I could have danced around that word for as long as I lived, but it would never have changed what you mean to me. It could never change that my world is meant to have you right at the heart of it, that my life is wider and brighter and sweeter for sharing it with you. I want to dream dreams and work hard and hold hands and face whatever comes with you. “I don’t need the word ‘love,’ but I have it and I’m going to use it. Loud and often.” She draws in a deep breath,
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