THE GOOD NEWS

ANNABELLE

Jack hadn't come after her.

Annabelle found out in the cab, when she had space to feel it, that she was glad he didn't come after her. A month ago, that would have been its own devastation, proof that she didn't matter enough to chase. But tonight, it just confirmed she had never been the point.

She thought about the apartment. Jack had asked her a year ago with reasonable and affectionate logic whether it made sense for her to give up her lease.

We're basically living together anyway, it's practical. He had said. And part of her had wanted to say yes so badly she'd had to talk herself down, but something old and stubborn in her head held the line. Her mother's voice. No ring, no lease. Old-fashioned in a way she had been's somewhat embarrassed about.

She pressed her forehead against the taxi window and let the tears go quietly, and she was deeply grateful that she had one thing left that was hers. Somewhere to go.

She got home and immediately opened the wine she'd been saving to celebrate with Maya after the proposal. Annabelle shook her heard at her own delusions. She should have known something was wrong, but she was too busy turning the red flags green to notice.

Two bottles later. Drunk and with swollen eyes, she sat on her bathroom floor, which felt appropriately dramatic, scrolling through the archive of men she could have dated in the five years she wasted with Jack. She was making a list in her notes app, criteria and everything.

Beautiful. That was non-negotiable. Jack was handsome in a forgettable way, and she was done with forgettable. She wanted a face that could make one you their breath in an airport.

She was scrolling F******k when she found Enoch. Annabelle would not usually allow herself to look directly at him. She'd developed this habit after he'd come to a family Christmas and hugged her hello and she'd had to go stand in another room for ten minutes to recover her personality. He was her cousin, and he was beautiful in a way that felt almost cosmically unfair, like God had been specifically trying to make her life difficult.

But tonight, she's earned it.

The photo was from a company event. Enoch in a dark suit, talking to someone off-frame. He never smiled in photos. He had a face that didn't need to negotiate with you. She looked at it for a long time with the total absence of shame that two bottles of wine grants, and then she looked at the little phone icon next to his name.

Her fuzzy brain reminded her, it was the middle of the night in London and he's important and busy, but she called anyway. Two rings. Three. She was composing her exit strategy when the line opened. She heard soft breaths and then:

"Anna." Her name in his voice, low and careful, like the call had surprised him.

"Cousiiiiin." It came out stretched, more relieved than she intended, because he'd picked up at whatever time it was in London, and something about that made her feel better just slightly. "Oh, my goodness. You picked up. I really didn't think you would."

"Clearly." A pause that felt too long for Anna. "It's two in the morning."

"Is it?" She considered this. "You are so beautiful. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

Silence. "No."

"That's a lie." She pointed at nothing. "That is an outright lie and I won't accept it. You have a mirror, Enoch, you have eyes." She stopped herself. Redirected. The wine was making her brave in directions that had no business being explored. "Anyway. My dearest cousin. I have good news."

She heard something shift in his silence. A quality of attention that hadn't been there before. "Good news."

"Yes. Big news." She nodded at the wall. "Important news"

Her voice caught, she couldn't continue her words. Just like that. Mid-sentence, with no warning, the whole careful construction of the evening collapsed, and she was back in the restaurant with the gold earrings and Jack's phone face-up on the table, and five years, five years was gone.

The sound that came out of her was not her best moment. Enoch probably had to pull the phone away from his ear. She couldn't stop; the tears had been waiting all night, through the taxi and the wine and the list-making. It came out somewhere between a screech and a wail, and she was dimly, helplessly aware that she was doing this on the phone with the most composed man she had ever encountered in her life.

"Anna." His voice, steady in a way that had to be deliberate. "Anna, I'm here."

"I'm so stupid." She said with hiccups, her tears quiet now. The wailing had burned through.

"We both know that's not true. Tell me what the problem is so I can fix it."

She went completely still as she sat on the tile with both hands around her phone and felt warmth grow in her chest.

"You sound so manly when you say that." She blurted out her thoughts.

He let out a chuckle. "Talk, Anna."

"Say it again first."

There was a pause, and she almost thought he wouldn't respond. Then she heard him repeat: "Tell me what the problem is so I can fix it.”

She melted away instantly and told him all about the cause for her tears, her voice a mixture of mumbles and sniffs.

"I'm single again," Anna paused to catch her breath. "Jack cheated on me with Mia. He said they were childhood friends. Friends don't do the things they do to each other," she laughed. "I brought her soup, Enoch; she was sick in October and I drove across town and brought her the soup she said she liked.”

She told him everything about the restaurant, the proposal that didn't happen, the texts she'd read backwards with her heart rate climbing. The relief about the apartment that had made her cry harder than the cheating did, in some ways, because what did it mean that she'd been subconsciously bracing for tonight without knowing.

Enoch was quiet through most of it. She could feel him listening, occasionally he made a sound that meant keep going. Once he said something under his breath in a tone that she didn't catch.

Then she told him about her beauty list. Yes, that was what she had decided to name it.

Annabelle was comprehensive about her complete and total refusal to spend another day of her twenties being practical about men. She was going to date beautiful men, she told Enoch in a whiny voice.

She was going to be catastrophically, irresponsibly available to romantic possibility, and she was going to feel everything she'd talked herself out of feeling for five years and if she died single and happy and surrounded by the memories of excellent company, then she would die satisfied.

She heard him trying not to laugh and failing, and his laugh was low and warm, and she'd forgotten it sounded like that.

"Are you writing this down?" she asked.

"Every word."

"Good. I want witnesses." She let out a sudden, jaw-unhinging yawn that arrived without warning. Her exhaustion from the wine and crying and the hour all landing at once. "You should know," she added, because her filter had clocked out and was no longer available to protect her, "that the list has every beautiful man I know. "

"Am I also on the list?" He asked in an almost whisper, but she heard it.

"Yes, dearest cousin, you are the number—”

Another yawn swallowed the end of the sentence. Her eyes were closing, and she was too tired to keep it up. She was asleep before she knew she was falling.