However, my tortured thoughts are interrupted by the sound of keys in the door, and my fight-or-flight mammalian brain takes over until it dawns on me that thieves don’t use keys. But Dax does.
Every cell inside of me is on edge as the lock flips, and I steel myself for the conversation I’m about to have. The one I should have had years ago.
He doesn’t notice me at first. He’s too absorbed in the actions of throwing down his leather weekend bag and tossing his keys into the little porcelain dish on top of his bookshelf. I stare at him from the doorway like a creep. Eyes appreciating, heart longing, everything below that lusting after the man who has always been my other half.
“Hey.” The floor creaks beneath my feet as I step forward. Dax whips around at the sound, grabbing a shoehorn with his hand and raising it above his head.
“Jesus Christ, Gems. You scared the shit out of me.”
I hold up the still-full water pitcher. “I’m here for the plants. You asked me to—”
“Yeah, sorry. I know. I was just thinking about you, and then you appeared out of nowhere. I wasn’t sure you were real for a second.”
“You were thinking about me?”
He drops his eyes to his bag, which he shoves to the side with the toe of his boot. “Yeah. I was up north. Needed a few days to clear my head. But I was going to call you when I got in. And then you were here.”
“I’ve been thinking about you too.”
There’s a sudden tension in the air. It’s heavy and thick. As if we both know that a conversation is about to happen that will change everything. It becomes a game of chicken. The first one to talk lays their heart on the table. Open. Exposed. Where anything can happen. And I don’t hesitate for a second to do it.
“I love you, Dax.” The words come easily. I’ve had a month to practice. “I am totally and completely in love with you. And I know you’re probably standing there ready to remind me that I spent the last four years with someone else. And you’re right, I did. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I think I stayed with Stuart so long because he was safe. He was easy. And losing him would not devastate me.”
A hard lump forms at the back of my throat. I swallow hard and continue.
“But losing you would. And I think I was afraid that if I loved you, one day you could change your mind, and we wouldn’t be Gemma and Dax anymore, and I couldn’t risk that. But then I had a small glimpse of how it would feel to not have you in my life, and it made me realize that you are my person, Daxon. And I want to be with you. Even if it means I might lose you one day.”
I pause to breathe. To regroup. Maybe even to see if Dax will hint at how his side of this conversation will go. But Dax doesn’t move from his spot by the door. He doesn’t move at all. As if my sudden and unexpected confession has frozen him in place.
“What are you thinking?” I finally ask him.
“A lot of things.”
“Are they good things?”
His answer is a tentative half step forward. Then a deep breath. Then another. “I spent the last week thinking that maybe we needed to stop being friends.”
A sharp pain shoots through my chest as I face my worst fear. “You did?”
Dax swallows. “It’s just too much.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t even form words, like You’re wrong or I can fix this, whatever it is. I’ll do whatever it takes. I open my mouth to attempt, to try, but Dax is faster.
“I couldn’t handle pretending. Waiting for the next Stuart to come along and watch you love him and not me. So I just didn’t think we could be friends anymore.”
“Dax—”
“But the idea made me sick. Fucking miserable. Dougie made me come home early because he couldn’t look at my sad face any longer. But when I walked in here just now and saw you here in my apartment, I knew I’d deal with a hundred more Stuarts if I could keep you in my life. I love you too much, Gems. And you’re never gonna lose me.”
My lungs draw air with ease. As if a thousand-pound weight has suddenly been lifted from my chest.
“So this means…” I’m almost too afraid to say it.
“It means you better get over here and kiss me because I have been waiting four years for this.”
It’s all the invitation I need. In a beat, I’m across the floor and in his arms.
There’s no hesitation to our kiss, no timid brushing of the lips. His tongue melds perfectly with mine as his hands wind their way into my hair. Like they’ve done it many times before.
Almost as if they’ve remembered.
I think we kiss for hours. Who the hell knows? Time and reality are skewed for me lately. When he finally pulls away, his lips are slightly puffed from what may have been the most epic make-out of both our lives.
“That was really good,” he says, still cradling my face in his palms.
“I was going to say incredible, but if we want to stick with good, I’m willing to put in the practice.”
He places another soft kiss on my lips, but when he pulls away, his brows are pulled low.
“What are you thinking?”
He pauses for a moment before answering. “Just that it didn’t feel like a first kiss at all.”
I still don’t fully understand what happened this past month. Why the universe chose me, chose us for this second chance.
“Yes, I’d have to agree.”
Chapter 32
6 months later
“Hello, gorgeous.”
I’m talking to the floor. But it’s a hardwood floor. It could use a sweep and possibly one of those buffing machines you rent from Home Depot, but none of that matters because it’s my wood floor. And my empty aluminum shelves that are soon to be filled with lemon-scented beauty products and a dream four-and-a-half long years in the making.
“I have brought sustenance.” Kiersten props open the front door of my store with her hip and holds up a doughnut box. The bell that chimes above her head is a sound I have missed. A memory from literally a lifetime ago and one that I haven’t heard in six long months.
I pull a Boston cream from the Nana’s doughnut box, take a sip of still-hot oat misto from Brewski’s, and stare out at the beginnings of Wilde Sisters Beauty 2.0. The 2.0 part is silent. I say it only to myself, in my head, as I have decided that my sister and my aunt and even Dax aren’t quite ready to live in a multi-reality universe.
I chalk up my time in Other Gemma’s life as a strange dream or a vivid hallucination that taught me a few life lessons I needed to learn.
“I feel like we need to make a toast.” My sister raises her coffee cup. My coffeeless aunt holds up her book.
“To Gems. For finally growing a vagina and making her dreams happen. I love you. I wish you every success and me an endless supply of fancy face cream.” She lifts her coffee even higher. “And to me and my brilliant mind for dreaming up the perfect marketing plan to ensure Hamiltonians are lining up to get inside.”
“Hear, hear!” cheers my aunt as I embrace my sister. For the last six months, things have been different between us. Better. I’m trusting in my abilities to solve my own problems, and that’s given her some room to focus on her own life.