EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

“IT’S A GOOD HEADLINE,” SARAH SAYS.

“Meet Elle Leon: The Brains Behind the Summer’s Biggest Blockbuster.”

It’s a great one. And it’s the first interview I’ve ever given.

The movie premiered to rave reviews. I didn’t read any of them. When it blew past the box office projections, I didn’t even look at the numbers.

In the interview, the journalist asked me, “Where is home for you? Where are you happiest?”

My answer was generic. I wasn’t about to turn an interview into my therapy session.

But inside, I knew the truth.

LA didn’t feel like home when I returned. It hasn’t ever since. Home was across the country in a city I hadn’t had the courage to return to.

As for where I was happiest—I wouldn’t know the answer to that. Because, just like Penelope had said, I haven’t been happy in a while.

In the last days of my mom’s life, she wanted to be at home. She had to remain at the hospital, and she hated it.

Don’t remember me here, in this room, she said. Remember me happy. Remember me with you, in the kitchen, making arepas. Remember us dancing on our tiptoes and painting with our fingers. I cried and held her hand and promised. I would only remember her happy.

Penelope was right. She would want me happy too.

I drive two hours down to the storage unit where my best and worst memories are kept. I haven’t visited it since she passed.

The aftermath was a mess. I was a mess. I moved back home for a few weeks, to handle everything. Though, it didn’t seem like home, when it was empty.

No, not completely empty. The house was filled with plants, my mother’s most prized possessions, exotic varieties she had collected over time. Each of them had names. She talked to them. When I asked her why, she said they listened. She said it made them grow stronger. I had to admit, it worked. She would tell them how pretty they looked, and they would bloom. They were bright, colorful, saturated, and always turned toward the sun. She had tried to teach me how to water them, but I hadn’t really listened.

I tried. In those weeks, I tried, but they all died, one by one, and I sat there, in the middle of the room, sobbing, screaming, because they were just like my mom. So vibrant, so alive, then so suddenly fading. So suddenly gone.

Life didn’t care about grief. Neither did the bank. Bills had to be figured out. The house had to be cleared, so it could be sold, to pay off all the debts. I had to find this storage unit and put all our moments in it. Closing the door behind it felt like another burial. The only thing I kept was the necklace. I touch it now, as someone from the facility cuts the lock.

I sit on the floor like an anthropologist, puzzling our past back together. Smiling faintly at all the horrible art projects my mom insisted on keeping: Cali’s painting that she made from makeup because she forgot to bring home the right materials, the macaroni-framed photos we both made in second grade, our toothless grins filling the centers.

I make discoveries, like the only evidence that my mom had a life before her children—dusty textbooks in Spanish, from university before she dropped out. She saved them. I wish I could ask her why. I wish I could ask her if she would go back and make the same choices again, knowing where they ended.

I wish I could ask her if her hatred ever got her anywhere. If sticking by the rules she made for her life ever made living any easier.

I wish I could ask her about breaking them.

My mom always looked at me like I was her mirror. Like I was her past self. Like she might be able to shake my shoulders and warn me off the path she already went down.

Penelope says my mom would have wanted me happy, but why didn’t she choose happiness for herself?

In the last box, I find stuff from the hospital. I almost don’t go through it, but then I sigh and find my courage. Slowly, I unpack it. The last magazines she paged through. The last cards work colleagues and friends sent.

At the bottom sit stacks and stacks of paper. No, not just paper. Screenplays. The ones my mom insisted I print for her.

“Let me read what you’re most proud of,” she said.

I left them in her room, but she was weak at the end, barely awake, and they were untouched by the time she passed.

Or so I thought.

Now, flipping through, I see something that makes me go still. Notes in the margins. Possibly the last words she ever wrote.

Fingers shaking, I flip through them.

They’re critical, and spot-on. She crosses out entire swaths of dialogue. Tells me the conflict isn’t strong enough.

She tells me which parts she loves. Which characters she sees me in. Which lines she liked enough to underline three times.

On the very last page, there’s a paragraph, written hastily, like she wanted to make sure she got all the words out:

“Elle. My little lion. Don’t be one of those writers who saves all the best lines for their characters. Say them yourself. Don’t save the best stories for your screenplays. Live them. Life isn’t a movie. There’s never just one start or ending. There’s always the chance to begin again. My biggest regret is not giving myself new beginnings. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. Begin again and again and again. The promise of a new tomorrow is the best part of living. I love you and your sister more than anything. Take care of each other.”

I cry, holding the page to my chest, like I can imprint the words onto my soul. Like I can hold my mom for one last time.

How foolish we are, caring, knowing everything we love will one day be lost.

It’s the ultimate rule of life. Everything always ends . . . and still, we begin again.

That’s how I end up on a plane back to New York, the last place I lived a life better than one of my movies.

The ghost of him is everywhere, touching everything, like the sun. The city is heavy with memories. There’s no hiding from them, so I don’t. I go to the same places, but they feel different, like they’ve been robbed of their souls.

I have the money for the town house now. I stand in front of it, and don’t see a For Sale sign. The exterior is painted a new color. Parker would have sold it after I left. I wonder who owns it now.

After several emails, the real estate agent says the owner has agreed to let me see it off-market. She has large hair and walks exceedingly fast in heels. She makes her way up the stairs in a flash, then puts the key into the lock.

The door creaks open.

It doesn’t look anything like it did when I used to tutor here. No, it’s clearly undergone an extensive renovation. I remember seeing the builders go in and out. The sitting room has been turned into a library, with shelves from the bottom of the wall to the top. There’s a window seat for reading. The kitchen is white with a waterfall marble island and a countertop overflowing with coffee machines. The fireplace has been redone in stone. When I get closer, I see it’s been made into a floral pattern.

“I’ll let you explore,” the real estate agent says, and I’m grateful. “It’s quite an unusual property,” she adds. “Very . . . specific.” She laughs. “The bottom floor is, if you can believe it, a basketball court.”

Strange.

I walk up the stairs. The second floor is a guest bedroom and an office. The desk is against the window. There’s a printer right next to it. There are frames on the walls, but I don’t pay too much attention to them. It’s not like they’ll be staying if my offer is accepted. The third floor has a movie theater, complete with a popcorn machine and projector. Also, another bedroom.

I walk up to the top floor. It’s the master bedroom with the skylight. That’s when I freeze.

The walls—they’re covered in photographs.

Of New York.

Of me.

Of us .

Every single photo Parker took, and some I didn’t even notice, are hanging there, framed like works of art.

No, that can’t be right. I assumed Parker sold it shortly after I left. Why would he keep the town house?

I mindlessly open the door, out to the terrace.

It’s covered in flowers. Roses. Butter colored, cherry colored, ballerina pink; some are striped like candy.

I rush down the stairs, to the office. The frames on the walls—they are surrounding my scripts. Every single one I’ve ever sold is hanging on the wall, proudly displayed.

My body is boneless beneath me as I make my way back down to the kitchen. “Who’s the seller?”

“Some tech CEO,” she says. “He’s never lived here, but it’s well maintained. A team comes in every week to keep it in top condition.”

“And when was it purchased? When was it renovated?”

She looks down at the papers in front of her. “Purchased the end of June, two summers ago. Renovated shortly after.”

If that’s true . . . then he started renovating it while we were falling in love. This house . . .

It’s a love letter to us. A love letter to our summer.

Or, at least, it was.

I think I’m going to be sick.

The real estate agent sighs. “I’ve had multiple offers for the property, but he refused to sell, until now, until I shared your letter with him.” I had written one, to convince the seller to let me see it, since it wasn’t on the market. “You must have really made an impression. He says you’re the only person he would ever sell it to.”

Parker read my letter. He knows I’m looking at the town house. My chest starts to constrict. Suddenly, I’m back on that empty Manhattan block, running away from him, from our future.

I swallow. “How much did he pay for it?”

She tells me.

“That’s my offer,” I say.

The real estate agent types. Sends. Her phone dings.

It’s accepted.

THE ELEVATOR DOORS SWING OPEN, AND I’M MET BY A TEACUP poodle.

Then another one.

And another one.

They’re all identical.

“We like to get them all together, once in a while,” a voice says, strong as ever.

Edith Adelaide.

She’s one of the main donors for the organization I’m involved with, to raise money for arts programs. When I received the invitation to the cocktail party a few days ago, I almost threw it away. I knew being in this place would unearth all types of memories. Still, I came. Part of me wanted to remember, maybe.

I’m one of the first to arrive. Crates are leaning against the walls. Staff comes in and out.

“In the process of selling it all,” Edith says. “Approaching your nineties, there’s simply no certainty. I decided I don’t trust some distant relative not to contest my will once I’m gone. I’m slowly giving it all away, while I’m still breathing.”

The studio has given me free rein on my next project. I think about Edith and her story. She interests me for several reasons. There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask her for a while. It seems rude, but she’s an up-front person. It spills out of me. “How do you deal with it?”

“With what, darling?”

“With people always assuming your husband was the one who made the fortune. With people assuming you have all of this”—I motion around the apartment—“because of an inheritance, and not because you were one of the first people to invest in internet companies?”

She tilts her head a bit. “I don’t,” she says. “It drives me mad.” She shrugs. “But I don’t live my life for other people. I live it for me. The chatter doesn’t really matter.” She looks pensive. “Someone close to me once told me that, at the end of the day, the only important thing in life is who you love—and who loves you.”

The elevator dings. She smiles at me. “Excuse me, dear.”

There are famous poets, authors, screenwriters, and artists in attendance, along with other supporters of the arts. We talk about upcoming school programs. We set dates for different initiatives. It’s nice, catching up with people I’ve seen at the other gatherings I’ve attended.

I’m at the food spread, considering a line of cheeses and wondering if it would be rude to just take the board as my plate, when a voice sounds behind me.

“Elle Leon?” I turn around, only to see a stylish woman standing there. Her gray hair is tied into a bun, and she’s wearing heels I would kill to both have and be able to stand so comfortably in. “It is you! I’m such a big fan.”

I smile. This isn’t the first time this has happened since my identity was revealed, but it never gets less surprising. Not only that someone has seen a movie I’ve done, or that my words have been made into movies at all, but also that she knows it was me who wrote them.

It’s rewarding to meet viewers. It reminds me who I’m writing for: The girl just like me as a teenager, watching for an escape. The mother and daughter watching to try to understand each other. This fashionable woman in front of me, who tells me that my latest movie helped her through a recent breakup.

“Dating at my age is a challenge,” she admits. “But I’ve never given up on love.”

“You shouldn’t,” I say, even though I did a long time ago.

She’s looking at me intently. She smiles. “I feel like I know you,” she says, eyes crinkling, and it’s not something I haven’t heard before. I think of it as a gift, that I’ve managed to have written material viewers feel so close to. “And not just because of your movies. I—”

“Mother,” someone says. He sounds annoyed, like he wants to leave. “We have to get across town for . . .”

And there he is.

Parker Warren.

No, it can’t be him. But it is, even though he looks a little different. More severe. His cheekbones are just a little more pronounced, his hair is a little more unkempt. He’s scowling, until he looks up at who his mother is speaking to.

His words trail off. He doesn’t even make a move to finish his sentence. All he’s doing is staring at me with a disbelief and intensity that I recognize, with green eyes that I’ve tried to forget.

I should have known there was a chance he would be here, but no. He lives in San Francisco. And this is a meeting for a charity benefiting the arts .

My heart is hammering. I can’t do this. I can’t smile and talk to him and pretend, and it’s the rudest thing I’ve ever done, but I say, “Excuse me,” to the lovely woman I was in the middle of talking to, and I bolt.

The elevator is taking too long. I press the button a thousand times, but this thing is ancient, and its little bulbs are taking far too long, and we’re on the top floor, and I can’t really breathe. So, I do the only thing I can.

I take the stairs. I find the right door, and I just start going, faster than I’ve ever gone in my life. One flight after another.

At some point, I hear the door open. Close.

“Elle.”

His voice echoes. I haven’t heard him say my name in so long, and that one word makes me go still. Elle. In his mouth, my name sounds like someone else. Someone who was happy, someone I’m just barely now starting to remember.

I hesitate long enough for him to make it down three flights of stairs, and then he’s right there, right above me.

We just stare at each other.

“You didn’t stop running, did you?” he says, his voice just a rasp, his eyes filled with something like hope.

I’m backed up against the wall, bracing it like it might protect me from these raw feelings that are starting to claw through my ribs. “I very clearly just did.”

He shakes his head. “No, I mean running regularly. Exercising.”

Oh. I wonder if the fact that I’m not folded over my legs and heaving after running down several flights of stairs is his first hint.

He’s right. I kept running, even after I left that summer. I run almost every morning now. It’s the only thing that clears my head.

It’s a part of him I didn’t want to end.

There are just ten steps between us. He moves, and then there are just nine.

“You’re supposed to be in San Francisco,” I tell him accusatorily.

He shakes his head. “I established an office here. I’ve transferred most of the company’s base to New York.”

“Why?”

“All my best memories were here,” he says simply.

He takes another step. His gaze is gluing me in place. I feel like I’m a specimen trapped beneath a microscope, shifting beneath his unrelenting study.

“Are you happy?” he asks. His voice is sharp, to the point. Another step.

I can’t find it within myself to be anything other than honest. “No. Are you?”

“I’m fucking miserable.” Another step. “I’ve been miserable since the day you left me in that jewelry store.”

I swallow. His eyes are suddenly on my throat. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “For . . . the way I just left. I’m sure you hate me. I’m sure you didn’t want to see me here, and—”

“I don’t hate you, Elle. I could never hate you.”

“I would hate me,” I say. I do sort of hate me, I think. Another step. Another. He’s so close now. Nothing but electricity is filling the space between us, and it scares me how much I want to be near him, even after all this time. I fill it with words instead, the way I always have. “I . . . I saw the town house,” I say, even though he obviously knows that, since I just bought it.

Something flashes in his eyes, then. Pain. Another step.

Of course. He didn’t just buy the town house . . . he changed it. Renovated it. My voice is just a rasp. “You made it for me.”

“I made it for us, Elle.”

We’re on the same footing now. I crane my neck to look at him. I almost forgot how tall he is.

“Congratulations on your closing.” He sounds happy for me, but his eyes haven’t lost that intensity, like it is torture for him to stand here and talk to me about the house he made for us and the fact that I’m living there without him. “Are you . . . are you with anyone?”

I shake my head, and his relief is tangible. Me living in that house with someone else might have been too much.

“Are you?” I ask, bracing myself, waiting for him to say yes, waiting to hear that he’s someone else’s summer now.

He shakes his head. “There’s no one else, Elle,” he says. “There’s never been anyone else. Not for me.”

Good. I mean, not good, but—

Yes, good.

He’s so close, and my body seems to melt beneath me, relaxing like coming back home after a long flight. The day in the jewelry store feels like yesterday. It’s so easy, I think, for certain moments to feel more important than entire years.

His breath is warm against my forehead.

A door opens, somewhere. I hear it closing. A few guests are grumbling about the elevator.

This stairwell felt like ours, but the reminder that it’s not has shattered the illusion. Parker takes a step back. I straighten.

“It was nice to see you, Parker,” I say, outstretching my hand. A handshake. I can do a handshake. If he hugs me, I think I’m going to burst into tears, and I’ve already been dramatic enough, running down this stairwell.

He takes it.

He doesn’t let go as he reaches into his pocket and gets a pen. Without missing a beat, he begins to write something on my wrist, right across my pulse. “My number. You never got it.”

And then he’s gone.

IT’S MY FIRST NIGHT IN THE TOWN HOUSE.

The movers have just left. I’m surrounded by boxes, or, as I like to call them for this week, my furniture.

I’ve just taken a shower, and no matter how much I scrubbed, the ink wouldn’t come off my wrist. Stupid expensive pen. I’m sitting on the floor in my sweatpants, in front of a box/my current coffee table, staring at the numbers, before finally getting the courage to dial them.

It rings only once.

Then: “ Elle. ”

I blink. “How did you know it was me?”

“This is my personal phone. And you’re the only person I’ve given the number to.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Maybe. What are you doing right now?”

“Sitting on the floor, using a box as a coffee table,” I admit.

I hear shuffling, like he’s getting up. “Why are you sitting on the floor, Elle?”

“I don’t have any furniture yet.”

“You bought it furnished,” he says. “You didn’t like it?” he adds, sounding genuinely concerned.

“No, I did. It just—I just needed something different. So, I donated it. My new stuff comes this week.” What I don’t say is that the reminder of him was everywhere, and I needed to make this place feel like mine. “What are you doing?”

“I’m at the office.”

I frown. It’s ten at night. My stomach also chooses that exact moment to growl.

“Hungry?”

“I was moving all day.”

“You should have called me,” he says. “I would have helped you.”

I’m about to say something like I’m sure he has better things to do during the day than to help me move, but I know he would. A moment of silence. Two.

“Can I come over?”

My skin feels like it’s on too tight. That’s what I wanted, right? No. I should say no. Instead, I say, “I don’t know if you heard me when I said I’m sitting on the floor.”

“Should I bring food?” he asks, undeterred. “Do you still like pizza? Or do you want something else?”

“Pizza’s great.”

That’s how Parker Warren ends up on my stoop less than twenty minutes later, holding a pizza box. I open the door, take the box, and say, “Thank you, I tipped online,” and then slam the door in his face.

When I open it again, he’s glaring at me, though it doesn’t hold any bite. “Funny, Elle,” he says, before stepping past me into the town house.

He looks around appraisingly. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

It is entirely empty save for three boxes in the living room and two in the kitchen I’ve stacked to make a barstool.

I nod. “Thank you. I was going for extreme minimalism.” I motion toward my box creation. “You take the stool,” I say graciously, as I hop up onto the marble counter, next to the pizza box.

The second I do, I feel it. Sparks traveling up my spine. Memories clicking into place. His eyes on me. They’re too green, and they’ve darkened, like he’s remembering too. I swallow and move to open the box. We flatten it so we can each use one side as a plate. The crust is still hot. Overflowing cheese sticks to my fingers. It’s instinct to look at him as I take the first bite, to nod, to smile, to say in our wordless way how amazing this tastes.

Bite after bite, my stomach sinks. This was a mistake. Everything . . . everything is coming back, and it’s sharper than I thought it would be, it hasn’t dulled in the slightest. If anything, it’s all gotten stronger.

We eat in silence, and when the pizza box is closed, there is nothing to distract us. There’s nothing but a summer of memories between us.

“I’m sorry,” Parker finally says.

“For what?”

“For buying the town house. For not understanding. I’m sorry I hurt you.” He did hurt me. But I hurt him too. “It took me a while to get it, to understand that it wasn’t really the house you wanted but the freedom to buy it. The freedom . . . to do whatever you wanted. The freedom to both dream and achieve that dream, on your own terms. You deserved that feeling of pride. I’m sorry I took that away from you.” His voice is serious, sincere.

“Thank you,” I say, meaning it. “I’m sorry too. For . . . for how it all happened.”

I was scared that day. Scared that I was choosing love over my career when it had only just started. Afraid that being with someone so successful would diminish me in some way. Terrified that I was letting my mom down.

In the last few years, my career has flourished. I’ve done better than I ever could have imagined. But none of the deals or screenplays has filled that place in my chest that was full for just a few months. None of that made me as happy as I thought it would.

“Date me, Elle,” he says.

“For the summer?” I say, repeating our conversation that feels like forever ago.

He nods. “We’re both in New York. We both like spending time with each other. We’ll take it slow. We’ll go for a run tomorrow morning.”

A run. I could do a run.

“Okay.”

He helps me off the counter, and his touch is featherlight, but my skin feels electric, like my body has suddenly booted back to life. I haven’t wanted anyone in so long. Not like this. Part of me wants to invite him upstairs. Part of me wants to just start where we left off. But I walk him to the front door instead.

This town house came with a key to Gramercy Park, and that’s where we run first, before making our way to Madison Square Park. We stop for breakfast tacos at a little truck and eat them sitting on the lawn, surrounded by people lying on mismatched blankets like patches on a quilt, reading books or fast asleep under the pulsing sun.

We run by a furniture store, and I see a mirror I love. He helps me carry it home, both of us fighting to match steps while we get it up the stairs. When my bedroom furniture finally arrives the next day, he helps me build my bed frame. We sit on the floor and count screws and read directions that seem harder than anything either of us studied in college. We finish just minutes before my mattress is delivered, and he helps me carry it up the stairs. He changes the sheets from the washer to the dryer while I’m busy taking in another delivery.

We eat dinner on the floor, off a coffee table that just arrived. He watches me absentmindedly look at the walls, frowning as I chew.

“What is it?” he asks.

I’m staring at the family room. “Nothing.”

He gives me a look, and I’m a transparent walkway to him, so there’s no use in lying. “I don’t like the wall color. But the rest of the furniture comes in tomorrow. I don’t have time to change it without making a mess.”

That’s how we end up at Home Depot at nine o’clock at night. We’re standing in front of a swath of endless colors, utterly perplexed at the names. “Ultra Pure White,” I say. “Not to be confused with Only Sort Of Pure White.”

“Stonehenge Greige,” he says. “For when you want your kitchen to remind you of a mysterious cluster of rocks.”

I shake my head. “No. Sautéed Mushroom is definitely more fitting for a kitchen.”

“But is it sexy?” he says, repeating my words from years before.

I almost choke on nothing. “No,” I say, trying to ignore the faint heat I feel spreading across my cheeks. “Whipped Cream definitely gets that distinction.”

A sexy kitchen and whipped cream are not the images I meant to summon, but here I am, far too aware of every dip in Parker’s gaze as I bend over to look at each color. Finally, I say, “This one.” Our hands brush past each other as he reaches for the swatch, and sparks travel down my arm, sinking into the base of my spine. Neither of us looks at the other, though I’m positive he feels this gravity between us, the air stretched taut. These past few days have been almost torturous, spending time in close proximity to someone you’re absurdly attracted to without doing anything about it.

“I’ll go find some tape,” he says.

“Good idea.”

PAINTING WALLS IS MUCH HARDER THAN I THOUGHT. SUDDENLY, I understand why so much of the renovation process is shown in time lapse on HGTV.

We lay plastic sheeting down across the floors, covered by a canvas drop cloth. Then we start smoothing the walls. Parker finds the circuit breaker in the basement and shuts off the room’s electricity so we can remove the switch covers. We tape the trim.

“This is so much easier on TV,” I say, groaning as we begin to pour the paint into trays. “Particularly because while they’re painting, I’m sitting on my couch with a latte.”

Parker cracks a smile. Then, before I can move, he’s flicking paint off the brush, directly onto my loungewear set.

I must look shocked, because Parker starts laughing. I give him a scathing look. “You’re laughing now, but I wonder what you’ll think when you’re scrubbing Fuzzy Unicorn from behind your ears for the next week,” I say, making a move toward the closest tray.

Yes. The paint color is really called Fuzzy Unicorn.

He steps in front of the paint tray, becoming an impenetrable wall. He’s too quick. I try to fake him out, but his arms end up around my body, and we’re laughing, and then, all too suddenly, I’m backing away. We’re back to quietly painting.

We’re supposed to paint top down. We have brushes, then rollers, and if I had known it would be this much work, I would have kept my mouth shut.

Still . . . painting beside him is fun. Anything with him is fun. Even when we’re finished with the first coat and literally watching paint dry. I stretch out my body, lying in the center of the floor, on top of the plastic and drop cloth. It’s almost like a blanket. From the corner of my vision, I watch Parker flip through the swatch book we grabbed on our way out of Home Depot, in case I wanted to paint any more rooms.

After seeing how much work it is, I’m suddenly very content with the paint colors of the rest of the town house.

“So, do you think there’s, like, a college major?” he asks. “Paint namer? Is that a creative writing concentration?”

I snort. “Maybe,” I say, eyes on the ceiling. “I think that might be my backup dream job. Naming paint for Benjamin Moore.”

I hear a page flip. “Peach Surprise? Really?”

“That actually sounds delicious.”

“Milk and Cookies.”

“Yum.”

“Smokey Wings.”

“Okay, this person was clearly ready for lunch.”

“So Sublime.”

“Nice.”

“Pink Prism. Wild Wilderness.”

“Clearly, they have an alliteration kink.”

“Coffee Beans.”

“The paint of my dreams.”

“Candlelight Dinner,” he says.

“Maybe we should start speaking exclusively in paint tones. There’s so much variety.”

“Adorable.”

“Thank you.”

He gives a long-suffering sigh. “Touchable.”

“So, we’re getting into sexy kitchen territory.”

“First Kiss.”

I swallow.

“My Sweetheart.”

My eyes are fluttering closed. His voice is doing strange things to me.

“Forever Fairytale . . .

“Love at First Sight . . .

“Kiss Good Night . . .

“Heart Breaker.”

I can hear him put the booklet down. No more names. For a few moments, he’s just silent. When I open my eyes and rise to my elbows, I see him watching the wall, lost in thought.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Do you ever regret it? Do you ever wish you never ran out of that jewelry store?”

It wasn’t what I was expecting. I would be a liar if I said anything but “Yes.”

He closes his eyes, as if that one word has hurt him, or maybe saved him.

“But also no,” I say. His eyes open again. “I . . . I had stuff I needed to figure out myself. My career. My own relationship with money. I needed time.” Time to see everything I could do alone.

“And now?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I frown. “When I left . . . I was miserable, but I saw your company flourishing. It seemed . . . it seemed like the universe had righted itself, you know? I thought about trying to reach you sometimes, but you were back in San Francisco, and I—I didn’t know if you still cared.”

“You didn’t think I still cared?” he says slowly. He rises to his feet. I do too. We’re standing so close, but it feels like there’s a world between us. “Didn’t you get my flowers?”

I did. He sent flowers to CAA every single day for an entire year, since he didn’t have my address. I had told him I hate when they die, so his solution was to get me new ones each morning. They were always accompanied by handwritten letters. Sarah asked me if I wanted them mailed to my address, but I refused.

“Didn’t you see the billboards?”

I sigh. All down Sunset Boulevard, and beyond, the billboards were changed to paintings of my favorite flowers, along with little images only I would understand. Lattes. Baseballs. Cannoli. Some had short phrases, like he was using them as text messages. He must have rented out every billboard in the city at least once.

After a year, they stopped. Everything stopped. And I hoped that was the end of it, even though my feelings never wavered for a moment.

His eyes are burning through me. “I haven’t been with anyone since you, Elle.”

I swallow. Could that be true? I haven’t seen any photographs of him with anyone, but I just assumed he was being more discreet.

“I was busy. And you— you seemed busy.” It looked like he had thrown himself into his work, and so had I.

He shakes his head, frustrated. “It didn’t matter where I was. If you had asked me, I would have gone to LA. I would have walked to you, if you wanted me to.”

I’m breathing too heavily now. So is he. His eyes are blazing with intensity. He takes a step toward me.

“There hasn’t been a day, an hour, a minute, where I don’t think about you, Elle. I’ve watched all your movies. I know all the words. I’ve read every script, just to have your voice in my head again. Just to see how you think. I read your interview. I knew you lied about the question about home. I know you came back here to feel a whisper of what our summer was again, to try to find the happiness that hasn’t existed since.”

“How could you know that?” I demand.

“Because I did too.”

He’s looking at me like I’m not alone in this regret, this sadness. Like I’m not the only one whose heart and mind were left in another summer. Everything I have of value was trapped there, a snow globe of memories that have now gone still.

“I just want,” he says, slowly, taking a step toward me. His eyes are burning, a forest on fire. “A chance to love you beyond that one summer.”

My lips crash against his. For a moment, he’s still, like he’s afraid to move, afraid to break this, and then hands are weaving through my hair, fingers curled around my neck, and he’s tilting my head back, and he’s tasting me like he might never stop.

My own hands are trailing down his body greedily, like they’ve been waiting all this time to see if he still feels the same, and he does, and I don’t want anything between us. I start peeling his paint-splattered clothes off as fast as I can. He starts to undress me too, my shirt is over my head in an instant, his fingers are trailing over the curve of my ass as he drags my sweatpants down. I step out of them and directly into his arms, and then I’m clinging to him. There’s nothing tender about this. It is desperate, and wanting, and overdue.

I’m in nothing but my underwear as he sets me down on the kitchen counter, and then that’s gone too, and I’m back in his arms again. He makes to carry me toward the stairs, up to my room, but we don’t make it that far. Legs locked around him, I start to drag myself down his length, writhing, full of want, and he groans as he presses me against the nearest wall.

I gasp, the wet paint cold against my skin. “Our work—”

“Is just getting started,” he says, and then he reaches down to take my breast in his mouth. My back arches off the wall. My nails dig into his shoulders. He drags my nipple through his teeth, biting gently against its sensitive peak, and I’m gasping.

“I need you,” I say. Every nerve in my body is on fire. I grind against him, sliding, as if to show him how much, and he curses.

“I’ll get a condom?”

“If you want,” I say. “But I’m on the pill. And I haven’t been with anyone else since you either.”

We lock eyes, and I know what we’re both thinking. So many days wasted, not doing this. They were necessary, I meant that. But now, with his hand between us, positioning himself, I mourn every moment we weren’t together.

We both groan as he pushes in. I dig my nails into his back without meaning to, the stretch nearly painful, and he curses against my shoulder. His hands are gripping my ass as he slowly works me down his length until he finally bottoms out. For a moment, he just stays there, letting me get used to him.

“Please,” I say, wriggling, needing to soothe this relentless ache. Then he starts to move, and my nipples drag against his hard chest as he starts to fuck me against the wall.

My head falls back, hair getting smeared in paint, but I don’t care, I meet him stroke for stroke, I gasp as he grips my hips. My hands slip as I try to hold the wall, like it might keep me from falling over the edge of this endless pleasure.

We somehow end up on the floor, and I ride him like I’ve imagined so many times alone, his hands on my waist. He watches me like he’s transfixed, and I press my hands against his chest, marking him with the paint as I move shamelessly, desperately. He turns me around, and I groan at the stretch, at the fullness, as he gives me everything I’ve been missing these last two years.

This is it, I think. This is the best I’m ever going to feel in my entire life.

IT’S ON THE FLOOR, SPENT, CHEST STILL HEAVING, THAT I SEE THE wall we’ve ruined. My body is very clearly imprinted against it.

“I’m going to have to paint over that a few times,” I say, wincing.

Parker’s voice is dead serious as he says, “No, you’re not. I’m taking it. That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’m going to hang it in my room.”

I turn to face him. “You’re ridiculous.”

“For you, I am a complete fool, yes,” he says.

I stand. The paint on my back is starting to dry. I need to wash it off. Parker stands too. My handprints are against his chest, and I look at them with far too much pride. He follows my gaze and grins. “I wish I could keep these,” he says. “I’d tattoo your hands on me, if you wouldn’t hate that.”

I step closer to him. “We . . . definitely painted over the bad memories. Made new ones. Better ones.” I say, remembering his words from before.

“Elle,” he says. “There is no such thing as a bad memory with you.”

He carries me upstairs, into the shower, and braces my hands against the wall as he gently scrubs the paint off. Then as he pushes into me. I’ll never get used to this, to the way my body responds to him, to the way my restless mind goes quiet when we’re like this.

When we’re done, and the handprints are scrubbed off, he presses my fingers to where they once were and says, “I’m yours, Elle.” His lips slip down the water against my throat, down to my collarbones, across my wet shoulder. “I don’t want anyone else. I’ve waited two years for you. I can wait more. Or, forever, if you decide you don’t want me.” He pulls back to look at me. “I’ll be waiting every single day until you’re ready.”

June turns to July. We decide to take a trip to Upstate New York. We book a cabin that’s small enough for us to end up on the floor again, wrapped in blankets in front of a fireplace. We hike in the mornings and make s’mores at night.

Back in the city, we go to Central Park to run. We frequent Parker’s coffee shop, which he still owns. They’ve expanded their scone selection, much to my happiness. I sit and start to write my next screenplay. The words come easier than ever.

When Cali and Pierre come to the city for a wedding, we offer to watch Isabella for the night. I watch Parker play hide-and-seek and blocks and Barbies for the hundredth time, never once looking tired.

Bit by bit, we finish putting our own new touches on the town house. We install new wallpaper in my office. He helps me source rare scripts I want to keep in my new collection. I visit him in his company’s headquarters more than once and bring him lunch. He teaches me the beginning of coding, and we marvel at how fast we both can type.

July turns to August. We volunteer at an animal shelter. We fall in love with a dog with a black spot around one eye and wordlessly agree he’s coming home with us. We choose his name by going to the paint section of Home Depot. Parker tries and fails to teach Derby to go to the bathroom on a pad, so we take him outside twice every night. Parker usually doesn’t wake me, and one night, I feel him slip under the covers, hair slicked with rain, legs tangling back with mine. I feel him press his lips against the top of my head, then, after he turns onto his back again, I hear him say something quiet into the night, something that sounds like “Thank you.”

I turn to face him. “What are you doing?” I ask, my question turning into a yawn.

He just looks at me, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I’m thanking the universe that we got to be here, at the same time.”

“Even though I snore?” I ask.

He smiles. “Even then.”

“Even though . . . I’ve changed?” I’m not the same person I was two summers ago. Some parts have gotten better. Others, worse.

“I didn’t fall in love with a version of you, Elle,” he says. “I fell in love with every you.”

My throat goes tight. All he’s given me is honesty. He deserves the same. I stare at the ceiling like it’s a blank page where I can get the right words out. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I think . . . along the way . . . I lost part of myself.” The last eighteen months have been solely about working, not living. “But I know one thing for certain. Our summer, I was me. I was . . . happy.” I turn to look at him. “It’s not going to be easy, forgetting. Healing. Remembering.”

“I know,” he says, tracing his lips across my shoulder. Pressing them against my pulse. “I will be there, at every turn. I will be a map to finding your way back to yourself.”

Weeks later, we’re in Gramercy Park. Derby is staring at a squirrel but not chasing it. Parker is smiling, his eyes crinkling, and I’m just watching him. Something has clicked into place, like a lock I didn’t know existed, with a key I didn’t realize I was looking for.

“Date me, Parker,” I say.

He looks at me. “For the rest of the summer?”

I shrug. “I was going to say forever.”

He stills. He seems to know what I mean, but he doesn’t move a muscle, like he’s afraid he might break something tenuous. But there’s nothing fragile about my feelings right now. They are strong and deep-rooted.

“I’m ready,” I say steadily. I’m not fixed, I’m not final, but I’m getting there. And I know I don’t want to take the journey without him.

Parker smiles then. He walks toward me, Derby not far behind. “You have no idea how many days I’ve waited to hear you say that,” he says. “Every day for two years, actually.” And then he takes a ring out of his pocket. I must look confused, because he says, “It’s always been with me, since you left. Just in case you came back.”

Before I know it, he’s down on one knee. He’s offering me the ring. It isn’t what I would have ever expected.

Parker Warren bought me the largest diamond in existence. He bought me a chain of coffee shops because they discontinued my favorite scone. He bought me a ring for every day of the summer we spent together. He bought me the ugliest bracelet on the planet because he thought I smiled at it.

Compared with any of that, the ring is modest. It is not meant to be flashy. It is, I realize, tears slipping down my face, meant to be mine .

Its diamonds are arranged into the shape of a flower. One that will never die.

I take it from him. Slip it on. And then my lips are on his.

It’s the end of August. Summer is almost over.

And this time, I’m ready for it to be endless.