her about the other thing I’d found, something better than a journal. My quest to see if Georgina owned the second part of Little Women had hit the jackpot in more ways than one: Tucked inside the pages, right near where Jo finds out that Laurie went and married that unrepentant book burner Amy, was a letter:
My darling,
That you should ever read those words, and see my soul in them, sends a tingle down my spine. It would take the courage of this entire nation for me to even give this to you, but I cannot live with all these words pent up inside of me, bursting to escape, wrapping you in their cursive arms, each dot in every ellipsis substituting for the kisses I long to give you…and then…and then…everything. Ellie says I’m silly, flighty, a terrible flirt. Perhaps I am. But my heart beats, too, just as hers does. Or will you agree? Will I send you this and then be told I’m only seventeen, that I don’t know my own mind, that I can’t know my own feelings, that I must sit still and behave?
I don’t believe you could ever be so cruel. I may not be serious, but you have always taken me seriously. Did you feel what I felt when we bumped hands? Did your skin cry for mine with every touch? It must have. Mine could not burn so hotly without there being a spark in return. I am passion and I am fire, and all of it is yours, if you’d come find me.
Unless…and remember what those dots represent, my darling…unless I don’t send this at all. Unless I fold it up and tuck it to my heart and keep you there instead, the only way I can guarantee that I can hold you close to me forever. What do I do? What would you do, my love, my only, my life, my
There was no final page, an agonizing analog version of your DVR cutting off the last three minutes of your show. I had yelped when I realized that was all I was going to get; I’d opened up nearly every book in the library and shaken them to see if the rest of the letter had been tucked away somewhere, and had no luck. (Instead, I found a receipt proving that shortly before her death, Georgina had spent two hundred pounds at Pizza Express.) I’d been so tempted to ask Marta about it, but the letter thrummed with forbidden ardor, and mentioning it to Georgina’s mother—even sixty years later—felt like violating a confidence. So tonight, I held the letter metaphorically to me, as I’d held it physically to my heart on that Christmas night, and repeated her words like they were my own mantra. I am passion and I am fire, and all of it is yours, if you’d come find me.
Who knows when I actually dozed off, but my Champagne bottle had suffered a serious depletion, producing a vivid dream that Nick was shaking me awake while wearing a tiara.
“Bex,” he said to me. “Come on, let’s get home to bed.”
I peeled open my dry eyes. My mascara, which I’d applied in a misplaced fit of holiday spirit, had turned to glue. Nick was standing before me, his shirt askew, a New Year’s crown atop his head. He smelled like a brewery.
“You’re here,” I said, grabbing at him as if trying to make absolutely sure he wasn’t an illusion. “You’re alive. Are you drunk?” I blinked. “I’m drunk.”
“Popeye drove me back,” he said sloppily. “Happy New Year.”
He bent down to kiss me, and I moved my face. “No. We don’t get to kiss. I’m mad at you,” I said.
“What do you mean?” He frowned.
“I am going to tell you,” I slurred, holding up some shaky fingers. “First, when I told you to go to your mother’s, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t come home. Third, you’ve been gone a week, and you barely texted me. And second”—I waved another finger in his face—“you went to a New Year’s Eve party and left me at home to spend it with your grandmother. Who is in a coma, Nick. A coma.”
“I am a prat,” he agreed.
“Thank you.” I crossed my arms. He leaned toward me. “Nope, I’m still annoyed.”
“The party was awful,” Nick said, “and I realized it was a mistake and all I wanted was to come home to you. Does that help?”