Chapter Forty-Two

Vienna,

I'm in this treehouse right now hoping it doesn't collapse. I left after dinner yesterday because I was upset and needed to get away. I hate that I left like that. I'm not a kid anymore. It was fucked up – I'm sorry. I should have stayed and talked to you.

When I realized this, I turned around and booked it back here. I got in at about four am and figured I'd just stay awake until you got up at sunrise, but I'm not as young as I used to be. I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, you and everyone in the house had gone home.

I hope you see this letter. I hope you forgive me. If not, I'll give it until New Year's Eve and if the universe hasn't brought us back together, then I'll message you on Instagram like a loser.

I want you to know, if I could do anything different, I would do everything different. I would never have asked you to marry me. I realize now that I only did it because I wanted to keep you forever. I knew you would say yes. It was selfish. I was afraid to let you go off to college and ask you when we were older, because I didn't know who I'd be and how you would respond. It wasn't the right question, and it wasn't fair of me to make you answer it.

I knew you would have married me. We could have had a beautiful life. You may not see it, but you're the same girl I fell in love with fourteen years ago. I'm sorry for all the shit I gave you this week. I know you were true, and you would have never said you loved me if you didn't mean it fully. You're the truest human I've ever known and loving you has been a privilege.

I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I made you choose between our future and your relationship with your father. You made the right choice. If I was eighteen and could do it all over again, I would say:

I love you. You should go to college, and I'll go to Nashville. I want to talk to you on the phone every day and I'll visit you every chance I get. I love you. I want to hear all about your day at school, and work, what you bought at the grocery store, and what you learned about buying health insurance.

I love you.

I want to tell you when I think you're wrong and challenge you to be brave and always have your back. I love you. Fourteen years is a lifetime, but I still feel like a kid, staring at you for the first time, realizing that my soul can speak. And you answered it with that one life altering smile.

I've been talking to you for fourteen years, every time I pick up my guitar and every time I get on a stage. I'll be doing it for as long as I breathe.

I loved you then and I still do now.

Adam

"Oh my God," I sigh, falling into the couch.

Adam came back for me. He didn't leave like I did. He came back.

Francesca snatches the letter from my drooping hands, and David reads over her shoulder.

"I called it!" he says. "I told you he'd come back!"

Francesca murmurs, "This is the most romantic thing I've ever read." She passes the letter to Heddy.

David finds my phone from under a stack of knit stockings. He shoves it into my hands. "Call him!"

I think of the phone number scribbled on the bottom of the page. I could call him and say I love him, that I messed everything up, that I would never choose someone irrelevant over the chance to have a life with him.

Then, of course, I'd want to touch him. I'd want him to kiss me. I'd want to be swept up in his arms.

"Calling him would be so lame," I whine.

"How else are you going to talk to him?" David asks.

I say, "I don't know. That's not how it's done in the Hallmark movies."

Francesca rolls her eyes. "That's because the women in those movies are dating Santa and he doesn't have a phone."

I explain, "I need a big gesture. Magical. Something that knocks his socks off."

Francesca leans back into the couch pillow. Her eyes dart around, thinking. She asks, "Like one of those airplanes that flies a sign across the beach advertising half price bikinis at a creepy store on the corner?"

"No."

Heddy chimes in, "A billboard!" She swipes her hand in the air like a rainbow saying, " Vienna loves Adam, always and forever."

When her head comes back down from the clouds, I say, "I was hoping for a cheaper gesture."

"Hang on," David says. He stands and reaches for his phone in his back pocket. While he searches through it, he says, "Adam mentioned this little concert he does in Nashville every year around Christmas. He said it's the first place he ever played. He used to work there or something. So, he does this concert tradition every year." His eyes narrow, reading. "Aha!"

He spins his screen around and I read the information from his Instagram post.

Francesca says, "The twenty-first is –"

"Tomorrow," I finish.

David makes a face. "Tickets might not be cheap though, it looks like a small place."

Francesca groans, "No one cares about the ticket price, Dave, this is her big gesture, this is the moment she can see him in person . Vee, you have to go."

Heddy's face lights up. "Who's ready for a road trip?"

With the five-hour drive mapped out, including stops for lunch, potty breaks, and gas, all six of us pile into the van. It's midday morning. We should get to Nashville with time to spare.

"It says you have to buy tickets in person, at the box office," I read as we drive across the Tennessee border.

Francesca bites her lip. "Maybe this is a scam."

I stare at her in disbelief. "If it was a scam, they'd want us to use a credit card."

"Oh, that's right."

Heddy sits beside me in the backseat. She breaks her meditation to offer, "I'll bet it's just how the venue does business. Especially since it's a special concert. They probably just want to make it fair for everyone who wants to see him."

"We will be there in plenty of time," David says.

"You could stand outside the back door and wait for him to let you right in," Francesca replies. "And take your top off, that'll get his attention."

I say, "That'll get anyone's attention."

I feel suddenly nervous about this whole idea. I'm unfamiliar with the world of Adam Kent. I watched how differently he changed when Mackenzie's sister recognized him, how charming he was to the crowd at the inn. I don't belong in this part of his world. What if this is wrong? He might hate us showing up, making his work life awkward.

My stomach hurts. The stress of worry goes to my head, making me dizzy, and it's all I can think about until I David announces, "Be there in five."

I open my eyes and sit up. "Can we stop somewhere really quickly? I need to freshen up."

"We don't want to be late," Francesca says.

"I know." My voice shakes. "I just need a minute."

We pull over at a chicken shop, and Francesca gets in line to order the kids dinner while I go into the single stall bathroom. My shaky hands press into the sink.

This is me and Adam. Nothing to be nervous about.

Talking on the porch. Spending the time together at the inn. Holding hands in the grocery store. That's what I'm fighting for – a normal, easy relationship full of love and compassion with a man who I know will treat me with the utmost respect.

I catch a look at myself in the mirror. Fourteen years' worth of thinking I wasn't pretty or interesting enough might have stopped me making this gesture. Eighteen-year-old Vienna lived a little bit in every mirror I passed. I didn't smile at her, and I couldn't love her, because she taunted me with unfulfilled dreams. Fuck you, I would tell her.

Adam told me he didn't love me because I was beautiful, he loved me because I was me. When he saw me in the market that day and when he held my hand outside of the ice cream shop, I didn't feel beautiful. At that time, I felt like crap. I had very few kind things to say about myself, but in the years that followed, I made up a story about that girl. With every passing year, I treated her as the baseline of perfection. A quality I can't revert back to. I looked on that time with longing, and I'll probably do the same in ten years.

I wish I were thirty-two again. She had no idea how beautiful and youthful she was. How loved, for all of her flaws.

I tuck my hair behind my ears. Adam's letter crinkles in the pocket of my coat. My nose wrinkles, and my cheeks are pink. I don't care if Adam sees me in the crowd and I wow him with my beauty or if someone judges the quality of my jeans or the sleekness of my hair. I view my perfectly imperfect face and smudged mascara and feel a surge of love for myself.

"I'm sorry I was so mean to you," I whisper.

My green eyes and glistening lashes flutter, folding the skin at the corners. Every line on my thirty-two-year-old face exists because of eighteen-year-old Vienna.

She was courageous, intimate, bold, deep feeling, and scared. I blamed her, me , because I hadn't been strong enough to see into a blank future, and I realize now that my life isn't anyone's fault, least of all my own. If I'd chosen differently, who knows what life could have created? I may not have learned the courage to look myself in the eye and tell her:

"I forgive you."

I needed to see Adam to properly see myself and the girl that lived with him, who I'd abandoned, because I blamed her for everything I couldn't keep.

She smiles back at me. She forgives me.

For the first time in fourteen years, I know where I'm going when I step out this door. I'm not acting on autopilot. I'm going to tell Adam I love him, that I'm sorry, and I'm done hiding myself away.