For the Hope of It All (Merrymount #1)

by Ila Sikorski

You just never know who is on the end of your invisible string, you know?

Maybe it just wasn’t enough. Lately, I’ve been abandoning the blind optimism and not going into first dates with much hope. I mean, how much can you really know about someone from a dating profile? And even then, how much of it is true?

I remember thinking how old-fashioned it felt and how it made my stomach literally flip. I drove home listening to my happy Taylor Swift playlist. For once thinking about how this really might be the beginning of something, even if it wasn’t the thing.

As hard as it is living in a constant state of the talking stage, I know my worth. I know what I’m holding out for, and it’s not Sawyer “I’m going to take your breath away and then send a shitty text two days later” Hale.

I can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to waste my time spiraling because, technically, he owed me nothing. I just got caught up in my head.

I’ve spent the past few years trying to make everything work, including a job I hate, going on countless first dates (sometimes second dates, but never thirds), and spending my weekends escaping reality with spicy romance books so I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts and scattered take out containers. Here goes nothing… I guess.

I just think I’ve mastered my role as a sitcom side character in everyone’s life.

I need to unpack. I need to grocery shop. I need a fucking job. But first, I need coffee.

And then he goes ahead and puts the baseball hat back on. Backwards. Fuck.

Every single article of clothing I’ve ever owned is thrown across the entire room, clean and dirty clothes now mixed together to the point where I know I’m just going to have to wash all of them. I really didn’t mind the idea of downsizing until I thought too much about the lack of closet space I now have.

People deserve to see and remember what they looked like and how they felt during the quiet happy just as much as the big happy.

She was my first and only everything. As shitty as it sounds, I stayed with her longer than I should have and then kept coming back because I felt like I owed her.

So, reaching out to Margot after Katie and I ended things again, potentially making her feel like someone’s second choice, just wasn’t an option for me. I couldn’t be selfish just because I made a bad call. Besides, Margot was incredible. I didn’t know why she was on a dating app to begin with. In my mind, there was no way she’d be single for long. I just hoped whoever she found was appreciating her and not fucking blowing it like I did.

if she’s single, this is my chance to right my wrong.

“Can I fix this? Should I fix this?” I ask Gran. “Oh, Sawyer, your worst quality is your inability to see the good you bring to the table.”

“Just ask her out, Sawyer. You’re not planning a proposal, and for as much as you beat yourself up, technically, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t cheat. You didn’t leave her hanging. You made a bad call, but you’re a good guy. Margot will see that and give you another chance. And if she doesn’t, well, you have a new neighbor that you’ll actively try to avoid. It’s the same thing you were going to do until you found out who she was.”

You fish on your side, I’ll fish on mine. No one fishes in the middle.

with something new every time he cooked. In my wallet, I have the tattered newspaper clipping of that old, decrepit cabin for sale that my grandpa saw his future in, the thing that started it all. I keep my mom’s copy of the Grimms Fairy Tales she used to read to me on my bedside table, along with her engagement ring tucked into a drawer. And I have my dad’s tiny notebook of recipes in the silverware drawer in my kitchen. It’s all I have left of the three most important people in my life who were taken from me before I even had the chance to experience real life with them.

“Do you think I have a shot?” I ask. “If you want the cookie-cutter answer, yeah sure, of course you do. But the reality is you fucked up, man. You say you had this great night with her. That’s awesome. I’m happy for you, but you kind of ditched her. Now it’s a year later, and she looks like the second choice because your first plan didn’t work out.” The realization hits me like a fucking truck. If I posted this in one of those Reddit threads, I’d be the asshole.

“Yes, sir,” she jokingly says. I hear her follow behind me, and it takes everything in me not to stop dead in my tracks. Now is not the time to explore what that just did to me.

I feel like I’m safe when I’m with him.

I want to tell him I feel the same way she did. Fate is real, and I do think everything happens for a reason. But I stop myself before I do. It doesn’t feel right saying it to someone who has lost so much.

“Don’t even think of opening up that door,” I hear Sawyer call from behind me. “Or what?” I say as I pick up speed on a jog to try to beat him. Before I can register him approaching, his arms are around my waist, picking me up, spinning me around, and placing me back on the ground so now I’m behind him. I’m giggling, and I can feel his laugh just as much as I can hear it. Sawyer opens the car door, dramatically bowing, gesturing for me to get inside. “We’ll never have to find out. When we’re together, you do not open doors, Pix. Got it?”

I quickly buckle myself in. As hot as it was to see him reach over one-handed earlier, I do not trust myself with him that close to me again. And it’s dark out. I’m always braver in the dark.

“Don’t do that with me, Margot.” He’s called me some variation of pixie all night, so the sudden serious change in tone and use of my actual name catches me off guard. “Do what?” I ask. “Make yourself small like that.” “I’m not-” “You are. And what I hate is that I think it’s second nature for you now because those around you have benefited from it for far too long.”

Sawyer and I clearly have different versions of cozy because mine would not be appropriate for a date. I can’t walk out in his t-shirt that I’m pretty sure he hasn’t realized I stole the last time we did laundry together with no pants.

Hold on. He knew I’d be spiraling, and he seemingly… is okay with it? Accepts it? Accepts me? Jesus Christ. I’m doing it again. I’m getting ahead of myself.

She overthinks everything, and I fully blame every piece of shit who made her think she wasn’t worth it all, myself included. I’ll be making up for that for as long as she lets me. The fact that she’s still showing up and giving me this second chance says everything about who Margot is, and she doesn’t even see it.

She seems shocked I said yes that fast, the startled look on her face giving her away. Doesn’t she get that I’d agree to just about anything to spend time with her?

Margot’s lips are pressed against mine. She’s that first rush of cold when you get into the water on a hot summer day. She’s a song you haven’t heard in years but remember every lyric to, no matter how much time has passed. She’s spotting a doe with her babies, getting to peacefully watch them from a distance in a clearing. She’s the calm quiet in the early mornings.

I feel a small pang in my chest, the one that only makes itself known when I’m caught off guard by a father and daughter together. But, just like every time, it’s quickly replaced with a warming sensation, knowing there’s a little girl out there whose dad loves her very much. I’ll always want that for everyone.

“Your tattoos are so fucking sexy. I’m gonna trace every single one with my tongue someday,” I say into her skin.

Some guys - boys - out there do not fully appreciate the act of eating a woman’s pussy. They rush through it, treating it like a chore when it can be the whole fucking meal. I don’t have that problem, I fucking love this.

the first time I have you, I want you in my bed all night. I want to wake up to you. I want to make everything so good for you, Margot.”

“You’re not wearing any underwear.” I mean it as a question, but it comes out more like a statement. She leans back, staring at me with hooded eyes. “Nope,” she pops the P at the end. “All day?” My voice sounds shaky. She shrugs her shoulders. “I hate underwear lines.” This fucking woman. I slide my hands up both sides, sliding my thumbs into the crease where her thighs meet her hips, groaning into her neck. “Fucking hell, Margot.” “I thought for sure you’d notice earlier. I’ve been waiting all day.” She whispers into my ear in between soft bites, slowing on the last part, enunciating each word.

“Wow,” she whispers, and I swallow the word, kissing her again. “You’re…” I start. “Me? You…” she breathes. We smile at the same time and laugh together as I slowly pull out of her. “Yeah,” we both say, still chuckling. I fall beside her onto the bed, and she wiggles her way out of my arms, taking her warmth with her. And I wonder if there’s a way to manly pout my way into making her come back.

I hate that I get in my head over the smallest things. It’s just all really new.

the way she lights up when she gets to spend time with that kid makes me think of things that have never crossed my mind before. If she told me to put a baby in her tomorrow, there’d be no shot of me turning her down.

I didn’t realize how easy it would be to have another person in my life if they just got along with my best friend and my grandmother like Margot does.

Happy feels weird. Happy feels really fucking good, though.

When you’re growing up, you’re taught that sex is the most intimate thing you can do with a person, but that’s wrong. Because I’ve had sex - bad and good - and nothing has felt as exposing as this. He’s being so gentle with me, as if I’m going to break at any second. He thought he was coming over here for hot, shower sex and isn’t making me feel bad for not being in the right state of mind to deliver.

I don’t miss the way her eyes light up when I say home. Anywhere with her is home to me now.

We could wait. We don’t have to get married tomorrow. If she wanted to, I would.