I wanted to drag him up to the rooftop and stay there all night.
I wanted to be the girl I used to be. The one with the hair, and jeans, and hips. The one with at least a chance of being wanted back.
But no way was I saying that.
I might never get the things I wanted. But at least I was the only one who had to know.
I shrugged.
Ian studied me, as if he could tell by looking.
Then he glanced up at the mistletoe one more time and shrugged right back.
He pressed closer, and he tightened his arm around my waist. I stretched my arms up around his neck, and as I did, I ran my eyes over his collarbones at the V of his blue scrubs, then up along his jaw, to let my gaze rest on his mouth.
Then he leaned down toward me. It felt like slow-motion, with Nina crooning “Midnight Train to Georgia” in the background. Inches away, he slowed down and lingered, like he was savoring the moment. Like he was taking it in. I hadn’t noticed how much Kit had dimmed the lights until suddenly the disco-ball light seemed to fill the room with stars, and it felt like the only steady thing in the world was Ian.
Everything about him felt solid and sturdy and like something I wanted to cling to. There he was, so close up, then closer—and then, impossibly, he lowered his mouth to mine.
Maybe he shouldn’t have done it. But oh, God, I was so unspeakably glad he did.
And there was his mouth again, the same but better, like something lost forever and then found again, and everything suddenly swirled too much for me to see anything at all. I sank into the warmth and comfort and electricity of that moment, knowing it couldn’t last long, but wishing it could go on forever.
Until the music suddenly stopped.
And the lights flipped on, bright as searchlights.
The room froze. The karaoke machine even went dead. We turned to figure out what was going on, and we both saw the same thing at the same time: Myles.
Myles had walked in.
He was halfway across the room, staring straight at us. “What the frick is going on here?”
“It’s a party,” Kit said, no idea who she was dealing with.
But Myles didn’t look over. “Did I just walk in here to see one of my PTs kissing one of my patients?”
“You sure did,” Kit volunteered. “I just Instagrammed it!”
“Congratulations,” Myles said to Ian then. “You just got fired.”
The crowd gasped.
“Say good-bye to your job,” Myles went on, enjoying this moment far too much. “Say good-bye to your PT license. And I’ll have to brush up on my immigration law, but I’m pretty sure you can say good-bye to this entire country, as well.” Myles took a step closer and waved his fingers tauntingly at Ian. “Bye-bye, work visa.”
But Ian had turned away from him. He was looking at me now, running his gaze over my face, studying the details. I could tell from Ian’s expression that Myles wasn’t wrong. Ian had just lost his job, and possibly much more.
My knees chose that moment to start to quiver—though Ian anticipated that, somehow, and he was already setting me back down in my chair. As he got me settled and moved to stand back up, he squeezed my hand, and it felt like good-bye.
“Do you think I’m fricking joking, man?” Myles walked closer. “Because I am dead serious. You just lost everything.”
Myles’s beady little face was red and sweaty, but Ian seemed to go the other way and get calmer and cooler.
Ian turned to face him. “Actually,” he said, “I know what it’s like to lose everything—and getting sabotaged by a weasel like you doesn’t even come close.”
“You sabotaged yourself, friend.”
Ian seemed to consider that. “Maybe I did.” Then he looked up. “But don’t call me friend.”
“Who is this guy?” Kit asked the room. Then, to Myles, “It’s a Valentine’s party. Chill the hell out, dude. Have a cookie.”
Myles looked over and noticed her for the first time. “It’s not even Valentine’s Day.”
“Why is everybody so fixated on that?”
“Ian—” I started.
But Ian had not even turned his head before Myles barked, “Do not approach the patient!”
Ian gave him a look, like, Really? “I’m just going to walk her back to her room.”
“You are not,” Myles declared, crossing over to us. “Take one step toward her and I will throw you out of this building.”
Ian turned to face him dead-on, and at this range we could all see that Ian was a good head taller. “You and what army, you bawfaced prick?”
At that, Myles decided to throw a punch. But Ian somehow blocked it, and then he grabbed Myles’s two wrists to hold them still in the air. “You don’t want to do that,” Ian said calmly. “I’d hate to kill you by accident. For my sake more than yours.”
If the expression on Myles’s face had been a sound, it would have been a whimper. He was in over his head, and he knew it. He knew Ian could crush him—and he also knew he’d just made certain that Ian had little to lose.
Myles opened his palm in a gesture of defeat. “Okay,” he said.
Ian released his grip. They both stepped back.
Then Ian took a few more steps backward, and I realized he was leaving.
He looked around the room, taking it in for the last time.
Then he turned to me, and said, “Maggie!”
Though my eyes, and everybody else’s, were already on him.
Don’t say good-bye, I found myself thinking. Don’t say good-bye.
He looked right at me, gave me a nod, and then said, “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Twenty-three
THE NEXT DAY brought a few beginnings—but mostly endings.
It was the day Kitty was leaving for New York, and the day I was leaving the hospital. The plan was for my parents to arrive late morning, and for my dad to drive Kit to the airport while my mom stayed with me to help pack up. As we waited, I tried very hard not to mope.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone with them.”
Kit wasn’t having it. “Just in the nick of time,” she said. “It’s a miracle we got through this whole month unscathed.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Though some of us were less scathed than others.
When her suitcase was zipped and sitting by the door, she said, “Now can I please tell you the comforting thing I’ve been wanting to tell you?”
“You can tell me,” I said. “But I won’t promise to find it comforting.”
“I find it comforting,” Kit said. “That’s enough.”
“Spit it out, then.”
“So I saw this TED Talk, and it was this researcher from Harvard—” She paused. “Or was it Stanford? Actually, I think it was MIT. Anyway, a total brainiac—”
“You’ve lost me already. Just know that.”
She pushed on. “He researches mathematical probabilities or something, and in his talk, he mentioned that people have, like, a set point for happiness.”
“How does that relate at all to mathematical probabilities?”
“The point is, he had these great statistics. People who win the lottery, when you check in with them a year later, you’d think they’d be super happy, right?”
She wanted me to say it. “Right,” I said.
“But they’re not happy. They’re just as miserable as they were before.”
I tilted my head. “Were they miserable before?”
“And people,” she went on, “who have terrible things happen to them—loss of a spouse, bankruptcy, disfiguring accidents—”
“That would be me?”
At that, Kitty nodded. “Exactly!” She pointed at me. “He specifically mentioned paraplegics.”
I had not heard myself described that way before, and the word gave me a little start. But I pushed past it. “I still don’t see what this has to do with math.”
“There was a specific study on people who had lost the use of their lower limbs—people in wheelchairs—and those findings totally hold true. One year after the accident, they’re exactly as happy as they were before.”
I stared at her.
“Isn’t that great?”
“That’s what you’ve been waiting to say all this time?”
“Yes! You’re going to be okay. Aren’t you glad to know that?”
“Undecided.”
Then, as she came in for a final hug, she said, “I just need you to remember that, okay?” She squeezed a little tighter. “There are all kinds of happy endings.”