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In response, I fist a handful of his shirt and yank him inside, smacking my calf into Lucie’s suitcase in my rush to get my mouth on his. I try to pour all my feelings about Long Beach into that kiss.
His hands are in my wild morning hair and mine are reaching under his shirt. And though his breath is minty fresh and mine is decidedly not, he clearly doesn’t care, given the way he groans into my ear, snapping us around so he can bracket me against the door. This new confidence in him—I’m a little obsessed with it.
“As much as I’d love to keep doing this,” he says, letting out a low hum against my neck, “we have a proposal to make happen.”
“Right. We should get going.”
Neither of us moves.
“Or,” I continue, “hear me out.”
“Hmm?”
“I just think,” I say, running my fingers up and down his spine, making him shiver against me, “that if and when we get out of here, we’d be disappointed in ourselves if we didn’t spend an entire imaginary day… doing this.”
“You do raise some excellent points.” A kiss to my collarbone. “Ironclad argument. No objections.”
So that’s exactly what we do.
DAY TWENTY-NINE
Chapter 37
CONVINCING JOCELYN TO PROPOSE TODAY is shockingly easy.
Less easy: assembling a map of three-dimensional landmarks out of greeting cards.
“This didn’t look quite as complicated in my head,” Jocelyn says as we kneel on the floor in my living room, glue and tape and scissors scattered around us. We assess the lopsided Eiffel Tower made of thank-you cards, the wobbly Golden Gate Bridge made of mazel-tovs.
“I think it’s almost there.” Miles squints, turning his head. If he turns too far to the left, he’ll expose the heart-shaped mark I left on his throat yesterday. The one that was still there this morning. “If we add a few more cards on this side, we should be able to maintain the Eiffel Tower’s structural integrity.”
I swear to god, only Miles could make the words structural integrity sound hot.
When we showed up at Jocelyn’s Bellevue law firm with a fabricated story about the two of us meeting at freshman orientation and immediately clicking, there must have been something in the urgency of my voice that made her agree to do this today.
“Being spontaneous is romantic,” I said in her office, feeling a little like I was pleading my own case, of sorts. “And there’s just something about today. September twenty-first.”
Jocelyn sat back in her ergonomic chair, tapping her red nails along her chin. “Like the Earth, Wind & Fire song! I do love that song, and so does Mollie… and I could probably use some help for what I have in mind.”
And on the drive back to my house, when we passed Island High School and I turned in the passenger seat to point it out to Miles, he reached for my hand and held it tight.
Jocelyn has been secretive about her proposal, but she’s been collecting supplies for weeks. The plan is to re-create their favorite trips in greeting-card form, including a small rendering of Ink & Paper made out of—well, ink and paper.
“I wanted you to be part of this at first,” Jocelyn says once we fix the Eiffel Tower, moving on to what I think is supposed to be Powell’s Books in Portland. “But with school…”
“Light schedule on the first day,” I say. “Mostly just listening to professors read the syllabus. Being told not to plagiarize.”
“And prove you did the assigned reading,” Miles says, mouth quirking to one side.
Miles and I keep trading these glances that bring heat to my cheeks, and every other time, Jocelyn raises her eyebrows at me. I pretend I can’t see her, knowing my face is turning red but not caring.
It’s nearing the end of the workday when we finally finish, our hands sticky with glue and crisscrossed with paper cuts, Jocelyn having thanked us both about a hundred times. The living room has been transformed, a miniature museum of my mom and Jocelyn’s relationship. She deserves this, after all her late nights and single-momming and trying her best to give us a life that for years she could only dream about.
At first Jocelyn wants to light candles around the living room, but we realize that might be a fire hazard, given all the paper. So we improvise, creating some mood lighting with scarves strategically draped over lamps.
“Thank you for letting me be part of this,” Miles says as we position ourselves on the staircase, where my mom won’t be able to see us.
“I’m glad you’re here.” I bat my lashes at him. “As a token of your gratitude, could you say structural integrity a few more times?”
