Page 97 of Between Me and You

“HOLY SHIT!!” Piper screams, running down to me, kissing my face all over until I can’t stop giggling.

“OK, now let me have a moment of peace,” I say.

She clutches my cheeks and says, “God, I’m proud of you, Tate. I know none of this has been easy.”

I nod and sink back into the chaise, and she retreats. She must have shut the patio door because the noise from inside is swallowed up.

I check my phone again. This is how he wanted it, how he wrote it, with him waiting for me, with me calling and telling him to come—and without even realizing it, this is how I wanted it too, how I would have asked him to write it if I were still asking.

For him to fly across an ocean for me on New Year’s Eve, for us to stand under the stars as the clock ticks down to a new start, a rebirth, just as it had so many years ago.

The patio echoes with revelry again, the door reopening. I hold my breath and wonder if it’s him, if he’s made it in time, just as he’d written, just as I’d hoped.

He drops his bag next to the chair, and I tilt my gaze upward, and there he is.

Ben.

“You made it,” I say. My smile spreads nearly to my heart, if that were the type of thing a smile could do.

“I promised.” He reaches down, pulls me to my feet, presses my hands to his own heart.

“You wrote it backward,” I say. “So you could see where we got it right.”

“I wrote it backward,” he says. “So I could see everything clearly again.”

“Hey you two lovebirds,” Piper shouts from inside the patio door. “We’re counting down!”

“I think she might be tipsy,” I laugh.

“Well, it’s New Year’s. Maybe we should all be tipsy.”

“Remember Leo at Times Square?” I laugh harder, and he does too. “And that girl, that poor girl he brought, and how he, like, practically ate her face off at midnight?”

Ben’s shoulders shake, and he howls.

“Jesus,” he says through his laughter. “I’m so glad we did that.”

From inside, they are cheeringTen! Nine! Eight!

“So are you going to kiss me?” I say, looking toward him, batting my eyelashes.

“You already know how this ends,” he says. “You know how I wrote it.”

And then we are atTwo!And then we are atOne!

And then Ben is kissing me or maybe I’m kissing him, and just like so many years ago, before we loved each other and before we broke each other, we lose ourselves in the moment when the past becomes the present and the calendar is nothing but a clean slate.

Ben pulls back and stares at me, like he’s seeing me for the first time. Then he says: “Come on, let’s go inside. We have a lot to celebrate.”

I nod. “OK.”

But neither of us moves, neither of us breaks from our embrace. My hands stay knotted around his neck; his stay knotted around my waist. I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat, the fireworks above, and the waves lapping in and out, in and out, in and out.

Finally, I push back and say, “You ready?”

And he says, “I am.”

Then, under the unending sky in our tiny corner of the galaxy, where we have found our way back to each other, I braid my fingers into his, and we go.