Page 76 of The Getaway List
He has to pull his hands apart because I’m leaning in to hug him again, this time without our usual bone-crushing pressure. Like we’re melting a bit, so grateful to see each other and be on the same page again that we’ve got no choice but a complete bodily reset.
“Oh thank god,” I say into his neck, “because logistically, you are way too tall to put into a trunk.”
I feel his soft laugh rumbling against my own chest and close my eyes for a moment, breathing him in. I want this to be real so badly that I don’t want to ask, but I know I have to if I’m going to believe it. If I’m going to be sure he’s coming back because he wants to, and not because he feels like he has to.
“What made you change your mind?”
Tom nudges his chin into my temple. “You did,” he says, as we pull apart again. “And I did. Part of it was hearing about you having that whole conversation with your mom. It made me realize that I still need that conversation. Maybe it won’t help the two of us as much, but I think it will still help me? To have some kind of closure, if nothing else.”
He sounds more sure of himself talking about it than any other time he’s brought it up, but I can still see the way he’s waiting for me to respond before he feels fully settled in it. I nod firmly and say, “Good.”
He nods back, satisfied. Then he shifts his weight between his feet, his expression thoughtful but not guarded. “And I think the other part of it is—I’ve never known New York with that closure. You were right about this thing with my mom sort of changing my perspective on the city,” he says, meeting my eye meaningfully. “I don’t think I realized just how much that started to shift until I was watching the group chat these past few days and thinking about all the things I was missing out on. I think if I can start working through all this I’ll be able to give the city a real chance. Maybe find my own place like you guys are.”
I take Tom’s face in my hands, the gesture both affectionate and teasing. “Tom, you absolutely ridiculous if not very handsome human,” I tell him. “You already have a place there. Not just with us, but with— Oh, shit.”
Tom’s brow quirks in amusement. “What?”
I abruptly take my hands off his face to root around in my tote bag. “We didn’t even get the chance to lure you back with this. You have to lie to the others and say you begged and kicked and screamed to be left alone until you saw it. For dramatic effect.”
I pull out the notebook then, one with a brown leather cover and delightfully blank pages that made for a perfect canvas for a story of the summer.
“But this is yours,” says Tom worriedly.
I smile wider than I mean to, because it’s the first time Tom’s said as much about sending me the notebook through the dispatch. It took me half the day to find an identical one for him, but it’s worth it. It’s the perfect size, beautiful and hardy and built to last.
“It’s not,” I say. “Mine’s preoccupied with another project. But this one is all yours.”
Tom opens it carefully, skimming through the pages, his eyes already welling before he’s taken any of it in. Each of the pages crinkles with old memories, carefully chosen by me and Jesse and Mariella and artfully arranged by Luca. I open my mouth to tell him so, but I figure I’ll let the group tell him. That, and Tom seems too overwhelmed to hear much of anything right now.
He comes to a slow stop on the front page, where there’s an insignia in the same place where he put one for me. The callback to the time-stone mantra. “‘From the home where you’re known,’” he reads out loud. He looks at me with a fondness that makes me feel known, and I feel a shiver of happiness in my bones. “This is beautiful. I can’t wait to read every page.”
“I’ll wait until we get to the others so we can go through it,” I tell him. “But just—I hope you’ll read the stories all the people shared from the dispatch. Little ways it turned people’s days around or brought them together or made them laugh. You don’t just have a place in New York, Tom, but all over it, in all these connections you made.”
Tom’s throat bobs as he carefully hands it back to me, eyes steady on me. “If that’s true then so do you,” he says. “I never would have made the app without you in my life, making sure I still had a connection of my own.”
My face burns from the depth of what those words mean to me. Of what that connection has always meant to me, and how lucky I am to have it. If I let myself think about it too much I’m going to start crying all over again, and I’ve spent enough time the past week doing just that.
So I clear my throat and say, “I know talking to your mom is going to be tough, but—it’ll be different this time. I’m a subway ride away. We all are. You’ve got every single one of us on your side.”
Tom nods quietly, his eyes misting again. “I can’t believe you’re all really here.”
“Of course,” I say. “We’ve got each other’s backs now. Even when each other’s backs have abandoned polite society to sell a wine varietal called Get Off My Lawn.”
“It’s a popular one,” Tom admits, pulling in a breath to collect himself. On the other side of it he asks, “So where is your notebook?”
“Right in here,” I say, patting my tote bag again. I smirk, feeling almost shy about it, and add, “You didn’t tell me it was from you.”
Tom smiles with satisfaction, seeing the outline of it in the bag. “It didn’t matter who it came from. Just mattered that it got to you,” he says. “Even if you don’t end up writing, I think it’s clear you’re a person who was meant to create things.”
I think of the way the notebook came to me when I needed it most, in a moment of doubt when I needed an extra nudge to believe in myself. Tom’s right that it mattered that it got to me, but wrong if he thinks that it doesn’t make it any more special, coming from him.
“I finally started writing in it,” I tell him.
Tom’s brows lift, happy to hear it. “Writing what?”
“My submission for that short-story contest,” I say.
“You’re entering it?” says Tom, positively beaming.
