Endless Possibility: a RUSH novella (City Lights 3.5) (16 page)

Fear—like a burrowing parasite—gnawed my insides. This wasn’t normal. I had to face that fact. But the next morning, I received a phone call from Yuri Koslov. I’d been sending my old
PX
editor chunks of my memoir as I traveled, and he’d taken on the role of my literary agent with gusto.

“Noah, bratishka. I have news. I sent your pages to a publisher friend I know in New York City. Len Gordon of Underhill Press. Ever hear?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He runs a boutique agency. Very
ooh la la
, if you know what I mean. Big names, he has. And he liked your work.”

“Really?” I let this info settle over me, not sure what to make of it.

“Ja,
really
, Mr. Cool,” Yuri laughed. “But you need to finish. Have you finished?”

“Not yet. I still need the ending.”

“Tick-tock, bratishka. I’ll give you a deadline because Len Gordon won’t want to wait. He’s a friend to me, yes, but he’s also big. Big,
big
! So don’t fuck up it.”

I told Charlotte about Len’s interest in my book and she pulled up my laptop. “He’s big, eh?” she said, typing. “Let’s see if Yuri’s exaggerating or…Oh. My. God.”

“What?”

“Underhill Press?” Charlotte’s hand clamped on my arm. “That’s Rafael Mendón’s publisher.”

I sat back on the bed. “Oh. So…big?”

“Big!” Charlotte threw her arms around my neck. “Noah! Len Gordon read your work and wants to meet with you!” She jounced up and down on the bed with my neck in a chokehold. I laughed and felt warmed by her enthusiasm, but couldn’t muster much myself.

“It’s not done,” I said. “It’s in bits and pieces. I’m still writing it every night as we speak. It doesn’t even have a title.”

“And I haven’t read one word,” Charlotte said dryly. “When do I get a shot, eh?”

“I don’t want you to read it until it’s done, baby.”

I don’t want you to worry about migraines, and breakdowns, and dizzy spells…

But Charlotte didn’t need to read my book. She read
me
.

“Did something happen to you, Noah? While following my tour?” Her hands were soft on my chest, her voice gentle. “I know it wasn’t easy for you. It couldn’t have been. But you can tell me. Did something
bad
happen?”

“I ran into some trouble in Amsterdam,” I said, and told her about my four new buddies and St. Marit who saved my ass. I told Charlotte about Amsterdam so I didn’t have to tell her about anything else. She sighed when I was done and held me close.

“I thought it might be something like that. Are you all right? Do you want to talk to someone about it?”

“No, babe, I’m fine. I just didn’t want to worry you…or upset you over the whole thing. It was stupid of me to be so careless.”

“You can’t blame yourself when a bunch of criminals behaves like a bunch of criminals.” She kissed me hard. “I’m so thankful for Marit. And that you’re with me now, and safe.”

That night, we flew to Paris and we were busy exploring the city, and meeting with the director of the Paris Philharmonic, and arranging the details of Charlotte’s performance. It was easy for me to divert her from reading my memoir. And I was still writing it. Every night. I sat down at the desk in our hotel room and spoke, each word leading me to the end of the book. Asking Charlotte to marry me was that end. I could feel it. A culmination of everything we’d been through, and the exact right ending to the memoir. The only ending I could see.

Paris was the most romantic city in the world. I would do it here; I just had to come up with a proposal worthy of Charlotte. Something to make her swoon and melt; to make her feel cherished and adored. Something big and extravagant and special. A grand gesture. But my weary brain couldn’t concoct anything remotely close to that. I didn’t even have a ring.

I needed help on this one. Reinforcements. And I knew just who to call. 

Charlotte’s Philharmonie performance was spectacular in every way, so much so that they asked her for an encore two days later. The Paris musical world threw a conniption over her, and we found ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of interviews and meetings that would have overwhelmed her had Oliver Sanner—the agent Sabina recommended—not shown up to save the day. He organized Charlotte’s schedule and set her up with a ten-city tour in far-flung places, from Singapore to Sao Paulo through the end of October, and a recording session with Sony in Los Angeles after the holidays.

“That sounds awfully busy,” Charlotte said as we had lunch in a café on the Left Bank. “Ten cities?”

Oliver—who sounded blond and sharp and thin to me, like a No. 2 pencil—laughed lightly.

“This is the season, Charlotte,” he said in a thickly accented voice. “You know that. We must strike while the iron is hot, as you Americans might say. You shall be quite famous by the time it is over, of that I am certain.”

Charlotte’s hand holding mine squeezed. “It’s just that we’ve been on tour all summer. Noah especially…”

“No, no,” I said. “He’s right. You have to do it, Charlotte.” Moreover, I heard in her voice that she
wanted
to do it. She was a fireball of energy and this sort of traveling had been a dream of hers since she was a child.

“Give us a second, Oliver.” Charlotte waited until her agent left to make some calls, and turned to me. “I want to be with you more than I want to be
famous
,” she said, as if the word tasted bad. “I don’t care if that breaks every kind of feminist rule in the book, I’m not going to be apart from you right now. We
just
got back together. Call me selfish or crazy, but if you want to go back to the States, then I’m going with you.”

“Charlotte, I don’t want to go back to the States. I want to be right there as you turn the fucking world on its head with your talent. Wouldn’t miss it.”

I could practically hear her biting her lip. “What about your book? Don’t you need a chance to really sit down and finish it?”

“I’ve been writing it as I go,” I said. “That’s how it’s been, and that’s how it’ll be to the end.”

I kissed her worry away, and she told a very happy Oliver Sanner that the tour was a go.

After lunch, as we strolled along the Seine under the shadows of Notre Dame, Charlotte squeezed my hand on her arm. “I’m so happy for you, Noah. And for me. My dreams are coming true faster than I’d ever thought possible. Only it’s a million times better than I ever imagined because I have you to share them with.”

“Thank you, baby,” I said. “I’m happy for you too. I’m happy that the world is going to hear you. You deserve to be heard.”

“So do you, Noah,” she said seriously. “I know Len Gordon is going to sign you, and even if he doesn’t, you’ve found another life after the magazine. That’s amazing to me.” She laughed and nudged me with her elbow. “Now if I could just get to
read
your book…”

My book. It still felt strange how fast I’d arrived at this. I remembered the picnic Charlotte took me on, where we read from Rafael Mendón’s latest release and Charlotte told me I should write my own. And how impossible it seemed. Her belief in me, even then, had been so solid and unwavering. Even the picnic itself only happened because she insisted upon drawing me out of the house…

And just like that, I knew how I’d ask Charlotte to marry me.

A picnic. In Paris. Under the Eiffel Tower. Cliché? Maybe. But the picnic is what I thought would make it special. A hearkening back to Charlotte’s effort to draw me out of the stifling dark and into the lighted world. To show her how far we’ve come and how important she was to me. That I lived outside the four walls of that townhouse because of her.

I was lost in the daydream of it when I felt Charlotte’s warm hand on my cheek.

“My god, Noah, that smile. What on earth are you thinking about that could make you look so beautiful?”

You, baby. What else, but you?

My reinforcements arrived the next day. I went to the airport to meet Ava’s plane, alone.

“What…? Where is…How are you here?” my twin sister asked over the noisy crowds. “Where is Charlotte?”

“Rehearsal,” I said. “How was your flight?”

“How was my…? How did you do that?”

I laughed. “I spent the entire summer
doing that
, remember? Now do I get a hug, or what?” She moved into my arms, and I held her tight. “I’ve missed you, Aves.”

She pulled out of my embrace to hold me at arms’ length. “You too, Noah. I guess your crazy-ass plan worked after all. I knew you could do it.”

“Yes, you did. And that meant a lot to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, so let’s get out of this mess. We have a lot to talk about. First, how are you? You look beat. How are the migraines?”

“The migraines are awesome. Best ever, really.”

She socked my arm. “I’m serious.”

“They’re fine. Under control.”

And too fucking frequent.
I’d had one just the night before. The Azapram went to work before it got too bad, but the fact another had come at all was starting to scare me. I was grateful my sunglasses hid my eyes. I don’t know how much or if any thoughts I had showed up in them anymore, but I didn’t want to take my chances. Ava would know I was lying, but I wasn’t about to scare
her.

We began to walk, me on Ava’s arm, out of the airport, and I eased a sigh that she was leading me. Yeah, I’d made it to the airport and found Arrivals, but it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. It would always be difficult. The fact that it didn’t piss me off or send me into a panic was the victory.

“Okay, so tell me about the fun stuff. Are you really going to pop the question to Charlotte?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling like an idiot. “I sure am.”

We took a cab to the hotel, and on the way I told Ava about my picnic proposal, and what it meant given our history. The edge of cynicism that colored all of Ava’s words, softened.

“That sounds lovely, Noah. Really. So what’s my job? Grocery shopping? Please tell me I didn’t fly all the way from London—”

“
All
the way? It’s hardly an hour-long flight—”

“—just so I could do your grocery shopping.”

“You can shop, yes, but not for the food. Tomorrow, I need you to go out with Charlotte in the morning —shop or brunch or whatever—while I get the picnic stuff. When she’s at afternoon rehearsal, help me pick out the ring.”

I heard Ava’s breath catch, and then she cleared her throat. “Yeah, that…I can do that.”

I smiled at her, for even though I couldn’t see her, I knew my sister; I could feel how touched she was even though she had a hard time expressing it.

I slung my arm around her shoulders. “You’re my second pair of eyes, Aves. Except for Charlotte, no one knows me better than you. I know you’ll help me find the perfect ring for her.” I grinned. “Or at the very least, keep me from being tricked into spending a small fortune on cubic zirconia.”

She laughed, and I felt her get back on solid ground, shields up. I hoped that someday she’d find a man who loved her as much as I loved Charlotte, someone she could be herself with, and with whom she could be happy.

“I love you, Ava,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too, little bro,” she said, and I know she was replying to both.