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We are, to be sure, a miracle every way. —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I love a happy ending.
I’d never seen someone and felt my chest tighten, my belly do this disconcerting flip-flop, let alone someone who quickly made it clear she thought she was better than me and my countless questions in our shared lit class, the Austen novels I couldn’t stop reading and rereading, sensing something in them, searching for something more that I couldn’t put my finger on. I didn’t know what it meant, the way Tallulah made me feel.
“Ours is a brief history, Viggo, but it is undeniably defined by competition.”
That’s what I’m worried about, I think, sipping my coffee. And then I’ll leave, and you’ll leave, and I’ll have a happiness hangover when my life shrinks back to being sad and stressful.
“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.”
My heart does something funny in my chest. It bristles and it burns. Love. He uses that word so easily, so confidently. I, on the other hand, recoil from it.
I keep quiet about my loneliness. I hold tight to what I’m holding out for—an epic romance, a grand, once-in-a-lifetime connection with someone who turns my world upside down, who makes me feel that glorious thrill romance novels capture.
don’t think any of them understand what it is to want romantic love the way I want it—to walk around with this aching, gnawing want that feels like a sickness spreading through me the longer it goes untreated. I’m hurting enough as it is—I couldn’t take them diminishing that, misunderstanding it, or worse, trying to shove some random person into my path to see if we click.
I’m so used to pulling back, shutting down, retreating. I’ve never had someone ask me how I feel, what I need. I’m the one who’s done that for others.
“I’ve read four hundred and ninety-one historical romance novels, Tallulah. I have lots of Regency-era fantasies, and this is probably one of the more ‘normal’ ones.”
Don’t assume other people’s problems are an indictment of you. Don’t take on their shit, especially mine, and make it yours, or I swear to you, this arrangement is off.”
“Hey! That’s for my room. It’s the only kind of plant I can keep alive!” “Lula, I got some tough news for you, but you deserve to know the truth—it was never alive to begin with.”
I’m avoidant. I know this. I’m averse to opening myself up to people. There’s this powerful grip around my chest that tightens when I try with Viggo.
“I don’t know how to live well with someone like you.” “Like what?” She huffs, but she doesn’t seem annoyed, more like . . . stumped, as if she’s searching for the right words. “Friendly. Emotionally well-adjusted. Determinedly helpful.”
Because here I am again, with Tallulah Clarke, who already has a history of being all high-and-mighty, leaving me once more feeling like an asshat.
“I don’t handle it well. And I coped by being petty. My blood sugar got a little low, too, which isn’t an excuse, just a context. I get moody and irritable when it’s low. So . . . I made you a sandwich by way of apology, and I know I keep saying sorry, but I promise, I’ll do better.”
Eyebrows lifted, the barest coy smile softening her mouth, she raises her glass. “I say we get a little sauced.”
My smile widens. “You’re seriously considering lying about an allergy so I won’t get them, aren’t you?”
I’m nervous about bumping into him this morning, trying to survive this interaction without my trusty coping mechanism: avoidance.
Avoidance is not the healthiest way to live, I know this.
“If one day you felt like something more existed between us, that would just be some hormones making you feel warm and fuzzy about me?”
I shrug. “A hormonal response because of an evolutionary adaptation that makes me predisposed to bond to people who make me feel good, yes.”
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.
I’ll never know exactly how, emotionally, mentally, the world presents to you, how you experience it, in the same way I’ll never actually physically touch you, no matter how close I might try to get . . . But, that proximity, that touching-yet-not-touching . . .”
I have no words. No way to explain how deeply I respect the conviction of his belief, even when I am so empty of corroborative experience to embrace it. Listening to him talk, I feel glimmers of what he’s known, how he’s encountered love and intimacy. But mostly, what I feel is a profound sense of how far my life experience has been from what he knows. Sadness washes over me.
“Nah. I’m a reader. Not a writer. I just want to enjoy it, not make it my job, beyond pushing books I love on people.”
I smile wider because I can with my back to him, inordinately tickled by those little moments he gets grumpy with me, when our roles reverse.
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 never worked. Never felt right. Romance novels did it better. They always did it better. Until now. Until her.
“Yes, I said, ‘evening promenade.’ Don’t give me that attitude, old man. I like my historical romances—expressions like that are going to slip out from time to time, so you better get used to it.”
No millennial in their right mind calls unless something’s seriously wrong.
A smile lifts my mouth. It’s the smallest thing, but it feels so damn big. Tallulah’s responded to my message with a sunshine-yellow heart.
“I do recognize, to my profound disappointment, that romance novels don’t comprehensively reflect reality, but I still think there’s something to be said for feeling the magic of finding your person, knowing they’re right for you. I’m someone who needs that, who’s hardwired to hold out for that epic kind of love. I think that’s why I love romance novels the way I do, why I’ve gone this long, meeting so many fun, attractive people that I have a good time with, but never want to go further than a date or two, even though I’m actively looking for that kind of connection.”
“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.
I am a ‘diversify your existential portfolio’ kind of guy, and I just went all in on this place. If it fails, I fail . . .” My voice breaks. I cover my face with my hand, exhaling heavily. I’m dangerously close to crying.
Maybe the truth isn’t that love is disproved by how poorly I’ve seen it born out, but that I’ve just wanted it to be. Because then I could protect myself from its complexity, its vulnerability.
What if love is like anything else humans strive at—something you can fail at spectacularly, and, by contrast, by some mysterious, terrifying chance of sharing it with the right person, through hard work and hope, something you can also do spectacularly well?
I have to suck it up. Push through. Handle my struggle on my own. Like I have before. Like I will again.
“I’ve started to realize, Tallulah, that life, people, connection, most of it is unclear and undefined. I love that romance novels break it down into these linear, straightforward steps. But . . . that’s not how life works, not how people or relationships work; not how you feel about someone, how healing and growing and taking risks, works.”
“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 frown. “I find that . . . deeply relatable. But I’m going to tell you what Linda told me: that’s not a healthy way to look at the good in your life.”
“I mean, I craved it, their family’s love, their closeness. But it was bittersweet sometimes, a reminder of all I didn’t have. They were so welcoming, and I always felt so at home with them, but I still used to worry that I’d never truly feel like one of them.”
“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.”
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.”
My mouth lifts reflexively, because that’s what happens now, like there’s a glowing, golden string connecting the corner of his mouth to mine. When he smiles, I smile.
I want to say it so badly, but, God, what if he doesn’t want to say it back? What if he doesn’t feel that way yet, doesn’t think he’ll ever feel that way? What if the way I say it is unromantic, anticlimactic, a disappointment?
I settle in beside the man I love, a story he loves in my hands.
And falling in love looked . . . nothing like I believed it would. It wasn’t sudden or showy, clean-cut or clear. It was uneven and unexpected, creeping quietly, a vine that began as a small, delicate shoot winding its way through me, until one day it was everywhere, twined through my heart, my mind, my life, every corner of it.
