Chapter 31 PRESENT

It’s after sundown and snowing again by the time I find parking behind Lucretia’s, but I came prepared. I straighten my beanie before checking my reflection in the rearview. I look ridiculous, but oh well. Shocking revelations are way easier to swallow when they come from an almost-thirty-two-year-old woman in mittens and a pom-pom beanie, right?

Right.

Snow crunches beneath my boots as I make my way along Bridge Street, brick buildings cast sepia by the dim glow of the old streetlamps. Most of the businesses have shuttered for the night, but cars dot the curb. Music and voices drift from inside The Falconer. A gaggle of students push out into the cold, laughing and stumbling. They start up the street, back toward campus, the few that chose to stay in their dorms over the holidays. The group parts for a man in a peacoat and a plaid scarf, walking in the middle of the sidewalk.

Teddy.

We come to a stop maybe ten, fifteen feet from each other. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his coat. It accentuates his broad shoulders. His nose is a little rosy with cold, which I find surprisingly endearing.

“I quit my job,” I announce, lifting my arms and letting them fall to my sides. His lips part in surprise, but I hold up a mittened hand. “Don’t say anything yet. I have my thoughts all organized and you’re going to jumble them, and then it’ll just be—”

“Word vomit?” he provides.

“Something like that.” I take a deep breath, the air stinging my lungs. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And I’ve come to some conclusions.”

Teddy nods. Go on.

“A few hours ago,” I say, “I was sitting in Julien’s office, and something he said made me realize that I’m not really happy with just one fig. I want to be more than just Clara Fernsby, Associate Professor of History.”

His eyebrows pinch and he sucks in a breath like he’s going to say something—probably to ask Associate since when? and What’s this about a fig? —but I just keep talking.

“I want to feel like I’m my own person, not constrained by this—this compulsion to force my life into these neat little boxes. I miss being the girl who stood on a rock with her friends, just… shouting random words, because I wasn’t worried about what anyone else thought. I want to be a sister to Reagan, not a second mother. I want to finally dye my hair black and get a weird tattoo that students will ask me about and then I’ll tell them the story about how I was drunk off my ass in Edinburgh and I thought it would be funny.”

The words all tumble out in one go, so that I’m winded by the time I’ve finished, my breath rising in a fog. There’s a glint of something in his eye, but I can’t tell if it’s love or admiration or if he simply thinks I’ve lost my marbles. Maybe this whole speech worked better in my head.

“But more than any of those things,” I conclude, “I want to be all the things that I am to you.”

“And what are you to me?” he asks without missing a beat.

I wasn’t expecting him to ask that. “I don’t know,” I admit, feeling ridiculous.

He moves closer to me. The shoulders of his coat are freckled with snow and his hair is starting to do that frizzy, curly, disheveled thing that gets me every time. “The love of my life,” he says, brushing a lock of hair from my cheek, but his hand doesn’t leave my face. “We could start with that.”

He bends to kiss me, his other hand rising to angle my mouth toward his. His hands are surprisingly warm, but just as I’m starting to lose myself in the kiss, he draws back.

“Someone with great taste in music”—he lifts a brow—“for a homeschooled history nerd.”

I narrow my eyes. “Are you talking about you, or me?”

“The girl who was kind to me, even when I didn’t have any friends.” He kisses me, once. “And the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

I laugh against his lips, my eyes closed.

He draws back again, dark brown eyes flitting around my face. “And my best friend.”

“We didn’t talk for nine years,” I say softly. I’m not sure I’ve earned it.

“Doesn’t matter.” He puts on a mock-serious tone. “The cool thing about best friends is that you get to decide who you think deserves the title.”

I breathe a laugh. “Well, in that case, I choose you.”

We kiss again, holding each other tight, wrapped in our own warm little bubble. I never want to lose this again. After a minute, we agree that we should probably head inside. Teddy stomps his shoes on the mat beneath the eaves, but freezes with his hand on the door, turning to look at me with his brow knit. “You said ‘ass.’”

I give a tiny shake of my head, bemused. “What?”

“‘Drunk off my ass,’ that’s what you said.” He points at me, triumphant. “You cussed.”

“I also said ‘fuck.’ In Julien’s office.”

“To Julien?”

“Not to him exactly, but—”

“Well, well, well.” The snow crunches behind us and we turn in unison. Izzy plants her fists on her hips and shakes her head, her lips curved in a smug smile. Her hair is sleek and flat-ironed and she’s wearing one of those waist-cinching thermal jackets. She looks more like she’s going skiing in the Alps than bar-hopping in small-town Maryland. “I thought this day would never come.”

“Feeling nice and vindicated?” I ask. “Because we’d like to get out of the cold.” Teddy shoots me a questioning look. “Izzy knew that I had a thing for you since we were like—”

“Sixteen!” she exclaims.

Reagan materializes behind her, her hair in twin braids and her lanyard slung around her neck. In contrast to Izzy’s form-fitting thermal wear, everything Reagan’s wearing looks like she bought it three sizes too big on purpose.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Someone had to drive me,” Izzy points out.

Teddy looks at me, then tosses a thumb at Reagan. “Are we sure she’s old enough to drink?” he teases.

Reagan rolls her eyes with a groan, throwing an arm around each of our necks and dragging us inside.

There’s something magical about a crowded pub on a winter’s night, the air warm and thick with friendly chatter. A Christmas tree stands beside the fogged window, strung in colorful lights and popcorn garlands; silver tinsel dangles from the exposed beams; and the whole place smells like peppermint schnapps, thanks to the holiday-themed cocktails scribbled on the menu. The four of us grab a booth and I order a round of eggnog for the table.

Izzy pulls a face when a mug is placed in front of her. “I forgot people actually drink this stuff.”

The server delivered a fifth mug to the table, as requested, but there’s no one here to claim it. It looks like Bel decided not to join us after all. I’m a little disappointed—maybe because it was my first time trying to establish a friendship outside of work in I don’t know how many years—but I’m not going to let that put a damper on my mood.

I lift my mug in a toast. “To old friends.”

“Hey,” Reagan says.

“And their annoying kid sisters,” Izzy amends. We clink glasses. Izzy plugs her nose before taking a sip, but stifles a gag anyway, beating her chest with a fist and coughing. “Oh my god, that’s worse than I remembered.”

Teddy clears his throat. “You know, I think there’s actually a rule that says faculty aren’t allowed to drink with their students.”

Reagan shoots him a sardonic smile across the table. “Good thing I’m not your student anymore.”

“What grade did you end up giving her?” I ask.

“B.”

Izzy and I gasp in unison.

“I didn’t know that!” Reagan cries.

He mimics her former smile, and somehow it’s a lot more convincing on him. “That’s because I haven’t put it in the system yet.”

The door to The Falconer swings open again. Snow chases Bel Jones inside. She scans the busy room, unwinding her long scarf before pushing through the crowd. “I hope you appreciate the lengths I’ve gone to for this friendship,” she tells me, standing over our table. “First I join a subcommittee, now I drive to a pub in the middle of a snowstorm. That’s love, right there.”

“And I hope you know that I appreciate you more than I know how to articulate,” I say.

She doesn’t take a seat, but her eyes dart around the table, curious.

“Oh, right.” I gesture at the other side of the table. “My sister Reagan you might’ve met, but actually I don’t think so… and this is Izzy, an old friend from camp. This”—I lean across the table to nudge the last glass of eggnog toward her—“is Bel. My favorite coworker.”

Teddy shoots me a mock-reproachful look and I shake my head. Technically, he’s not my coworker. Though also, technically, Bel isn’t either, anymore.

With Bel standing and Izzy sitting down, they’re almost the same height, and they opt to shake hands on this equal standing—or seating.

“Together we almost form one whole name,” Bel observes. “Izzy. Bel.”

Izzy scoots over to make room on her side of the booth, wedging Reagan against the paneling. “My name is actually Isabel. But no one calls me that except for my grandma.”

“What if we’re both Isabels?” Bel asks.

Izzy arches a brow. “Are we?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she says coyly, picking the mug of eggnog off the table. It almost makes it to her mouth before she pauses, staring down at it with her nose wrinkled. “What is this?”

“Eggnog,” I say, in tandem with Izzy saying, “Disgusting, is what it is.”

Bel frowns at it, then shrugs. “I’ll drink it if you will.” She holds the glass in the middle of the table.

Teddy’s eyebrows shoot up. “Are we toasting again?”

Bel looks around at all of us, her arm still outstretched. “You guys toasted already?”

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming,” I say, raising my own mug. “What should we toast to this time?”

“What was it last time?”

“‘To old friends.’”

“Hmm.” Bel glances around the crowded pub, looking for inspiration. “To… new beginnings?”

Seems fitting enough. “Sure. To new beginnings.”

Still wedged against the wall, Reagan wriggles an arm free and grabs her mug, shooting a scathing look at Izzy—who’s paying her absolutely no mind. Izzy sighs, raising her drink to meet ours. “Bottoms up, I guess.”

I down the rest of my eggnog and stamp the empty glass on the table.

“Speaking of old friends,” Teddy says, with a pointed look at Izzy, “Darvish sends his love.”

“Rejected,” Izzy says, though she can’t hold back a grin. “Return to sender. Wrong address.”

“Sorry, who’s Darvish?” Bel asks, looking around at all of this.

While Izzy launches into a long-winded explanation, Teddy excuses himself from the table. “Sorry, I just remembered,” he says in an undertone to me as he slides out of the booth, “I need to grab something out of my car.”

I glance around at the crowd, trying to figure out where our server went so that I can order another round for the table—though maybe not eggnog, this time. That wasn’t the hit I was hoping it would be. “Didn’t expect it to be so busy tonight,” I mutter.

“It’s the middle of December in a small college town,” Bel points out. “There’s not much else for people to do.”

Reagan lifts out of her seat and swings an arm, doing a much more effective job of capturing our server’s attention than I was able to. She orders a round of cranberry kamikaze shots for the table, despite groans and protests from literally everyone else that we’re too old to be doing shots. “Shut up,” she says. “Your early thirties are not old.”

Izzy casts a sideways glance at Bel. “How old are you, anyway?”

Bel purses her lips. “I’m immortal.”

She’s twenty-eight, actually, but I’m not about to spoil this for her. “Like Bella in Breaking Dawn, ” Izzy whispers reverently, more to herself than anyone else at the table. She’s about two seconds away from offering to be her Edward, I’m sure of it.

The front door swings wide and Teddy shoulders his way back to the table a moment later, an arm tucked behind his back. “I thought maybe you were going to tell me that they gave you tenure,” he explains, a little apologetic. “I meant it as a sort of congratulations, and kind of a joke, but…” He settles back into the booth and sets a package on the table. It’s wrapped in a simple brown paper sack like a bagged lunch, the top folded over and neatly creased. He slides it over to me and scratches an eyebrow, sheepish. “Didn’t exactly have a lot of time with the gift wrap.”

I unfurl the top, shooting him a curious look, because I have no idea what this could be. I reach down into the bag and extract a book. It’s a battered paperback, the spine creased with heavy use and the pages so badly dog-eared that it doesn’t quite close correctly. Lectures on the Philosophy of History . I smooth the bent cover with a thumb, my vision clouded by tears.

“It’s the first book you ever loaned me,” Teddy explains, needlessly. “I never did mail it back.”

I sputter a wet laugh, swiping beneath my eyes. “I tried to make you read Hegel when we were fifteen. What was wrong with me?”

He holds back a smile. “I believe your exact words when you handed it to me were ‘required reading.’”

“No wonder you went ahead and started college early. I was already putting you through historiography boot camp.” I flip through it, the margins graffitied with Teddy’s notes and mine, passages traced in green and yellow highlighter, page corners folded over. I let it flap closed, except the cover remains curled back, the title page peeking out from behind it. There’s something written there in soft gray pencil. I fold the cover back, scanning the script. It’s Teddy’s handwriting, but more recent than the notes in the margins—messier, less careful, like he spent less time thinking about how he wanted to write it and more letting the words just tumble out onto the page:

Clara,

Figured it was about time I returned this to you. Not sure what seventeen years’ worth of late fees might look like, but I’m prepared to face the consequences.

I know our own history is imperfect, but I’m glad it eventually led me back to you. Abraham Lincoln once said, “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” Or maybe that was Georg Hegel. Either way, I disagree. It might’ve taken me a while, but I learned just fine, and what I learned most is that I will do whatever it takes not to lose you, this time around. I’m all in.

I love you,

Teddy

I trace a thumb over the words. I’ve spent so long dwelling on the past, wishing I could erase all the negative and do it over, but perhaps if our lives had gone any differently, we wouldn’t have ended up where we are today. And I’m happy with where we are. There’s no bad guy in our story, no one person who wronged any more than the other. There’s just… life. Sometimes it’s messy and complicated, and sometimes there are forks in the road, anticipated and not.

“Thank you,” I whisper, because words don’t feel adequate, which almost seems a silly sentiment when he’s giving me back a book I once owned, but it’s not. That he’s held on to it, and thought to give it back to me tonight, means the world. If our story were a book we picked up for Long-Distance History Club—not so long-distance, these days—then this feels like closing a chapter. Looking toward the future instead of just the past, because while the past has its value, it’s not the end-all. I smooth the bent cover again before turning to look at him. “I’m all in, too.”

He swallows, nods, bends to kiss me. The chatter of the bar ceases to exist, and I could almost pretend it’s just the two of us, lost in each other— almost, but we’re interrupted by the server delivering a round of cranberry shots to the table, the tiny red drinks garnished with lime, and then all the people I love are lifting their glasses in another toast.

“What are we toasting to this time?” Bel asks.

“I think we’re running out of toasts,” Izzy grumbles.

“How about… to looking ahead,” I say with a glance at Teddy, because this is far from the beginning of our story.

But it’s also far from the end.