After things ended with Jackson, Annie decided to go on vacation alone to think about what she wanted. This scene takes place when she returns. A few lines have been removed because the full version would probably have a spoiler of an event that happens at the very beginning of the book.
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Betsy greeted Annie at the airport and told her that everything in the house looked wonderful and Annie never looked better. Annie wanted to ask if Betsy had seen Joey, but stopped herself. As they drove to Annie's new home, she talked about her vacation and told Betsy all the places she'd seen and things she'd done.
When Annie had all her bags in the foyer and they were saying goodbye, Betsy pulled a padded envelope out of her purse and handed it to Annie, “Joey kept asking me to tell him where you were staying so he could send you this, but I didn’t want to disrupt your vacation so he told me to give it to you when you got back. He knows you want your space right now,” she added to explain why Joey wasn’t delivering it himself.
Annie took the envelope in her hands and smiled to see the familiar writing on the front, “Thanks Betsy, but I wouldn’t have minded getting a package,” she assured her and felt warm just seeing her name in Joey’s handwriting.
“Especially from Joey,” Betsy teased, grinning, then hugged Annie, “I’ll let you get settled in then. You’re coming for dinner tonight right,” she asked sounding hopeful.
Annie nodded, “Yeah. I’ll come have dinner with you two at the diner tonight. Just please don’t invite Joey too. I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet.”
Betsy nodded, but in her heart didn’t understand why Annie was locking out the one man who truly loved her, but Annie was different than her; Annie was more calculated and cautious. Betsy was glad to see her returning to normal after her hasty relationship with Jackson had ended, “dinner then. I’ll make chicken and dumplings for you,” she told Annie knowing that was her favorite comfort food.
“Can’t wait,” Annie said, smiling as she watched Betsy walk out to her car. Annie closed the door, grabbed her laptop bag and went into her new office.
The furniture she had ordered looked wonderful in the study. She plugged in her laptop and started booting it on the new desk. While it was starting, she opened the envelope from Joey. She found herself almost nervous ripping it open and wished her letter opener were handy, but at the same time, ripping into it almost made it feel like Christmas. She knew there was something more than a note in here because the envelope was bulk and heavy.
When she got it open, she reached in and pulled out two things: a small, flat, pink paperweight in the shape of a heart. On her seventeenth birthday, Joey had given her a similar one, but that one was red. Her heart raced and tears came to her eyes when she saw it; apparently Joey remembered that day as vividly as she did. She blushed red even though she was alone thinking of the night he had given her that gift. It was a night she’d never forget. The glass was smooth and felt soothing in her hand.
She put the paperweight on her desk and smiled at it as it caught the sunlight streaming in from the window to her left; the window that looked out toward the house Joey grew up in. She was left holding a DVD case with no label, just a generic yellow sticky note with Joey’s familiar writing on it that read “watch this when you’re alone.”
Annie figured now was as good a time as any and she opened the case, taking the DVD out and carefully slid it into her laptop. A video started and she could see Joey sitting in the room at the inn where he had confessed that he was still in love with her and she wondered if he could still be staying there. He smiled softly and then spoke, “Hi Sunshine. I know that you think you know how I feel about you already and I know that I should have told you my real feelings for you long before you ran off and married Jackson. Before I married Alyssa even,” he said and looked down, rubbing his eye and clearing his throat, “in fact, I never should have said goodbye at the end of college. That was my first mistake, but I can’t go back and change it. I can only tell you how I feel now.”
He paused and looked directly into the camera, “Annie, you mean more to me than I could have ever imagined. You’re not just the woman I want to spend my life with, you’re my best friend. I hope you’re having a great vacation in Vegas and I hope you’re not mad at me for sending this to you. I know you wanted me to give you some time to digest everything I told you that afternoon and I’m so so sorry that I caused trouble between you and Jackson. That was so selfish of me, but I felt like I had to tell you before things got even more serious between you two. Betsy told me that you told her you would let me know when you’re ready to talk to me and while it’s agony not talking to you I will respect your wishes and not call you or email you. Since I’ve been alone so much lately I’ve been scanning in all my old photos and I wanted to share some with you, so the rest of this DVD is a digital scrapbook for you to watch whenever you want. I really miss you and hope to see you soon Sunshine,” he said and the screen went black.
After a few seconds, words appeared in white text on the black screen that said, “My favorite years,” then they faded away to black screen again and the song “My Favorite Year” by the Dixie Chicks started playing. Annie knew this song and knew that Joey liked them. When she had seen him at the football game shortly after she had finished law school, he mentioned that he had tickets to go see them and she had gone out and bought the CD at his recommendation even though she really didn’t listen to country music much anymore.
When the lyrics started, she saw a photo that immediately brought her to tears and she rested her elbows on the desk, her head chin resting on her hands as she watched the screen. It was a photo of them holding hands walking into their Kindergarten class on the first day of school. She had a long pony tail and red plaid dress with a white lacy collar, white lacy little girl socks and mary jane shoes. He was wearing corduroy pants, a button-up shirt tucked in and had his hair more neatly combed than she remembered it ever being. They both looked nervous, but excited.
The photos progressed from Kindergarten through the years. Some of them were pictures of the two of them on bikes racing on the street just outside of her house, some had Betsy in them, some were of them on various holidays or at field trips.
As the photos progressed from elementary to junior high you could see that their relationship was deepening, but still not romantic. There were photos of them working on school science projects, photos of them together on vacation with Joey’s mom and dad in Hawaii when her parents allowed her to tag along. Annie, always shy about her body, was wearing a one piece swimsuit laying on the beach with her eyes closed while Joey stood over her about to pour a bucket of water on her. The next picture was of her dripping wet, chasing him in the sand with her long, wild hair flying behind her.
She felt tears on her cheeks, but kept watching lost in memories. After that photo, there was one of them at their eighth grade dance all dressed up, then they were standing side by side in the foyer she had just walked through and they had back packs on. She recognized this as their first day of high school. Joey had braces and shaggy hair; she had long hair hanging loose on her shoulders and a homemade lunch in her hands. She recalled sharing her dessert with him that day because he’d had a bad morning. He wouldn’t tell her what it was about, but she remembered he said he got in a shouting match with Tommy, one of their classmates and had detention on his first day; something his dad grounded him a week for.
Then the photos started changing even more; she remembered that being the year she really got interested in boys and she had a crush on Tommy who was a football player and popular. There weren’t as many of them holding hands, but they were still obviously friends. There were some of them the following summer at band camp with Betsy, then the next one was obviously after they had kissed. They were holding hands again and she couldn’t place when or where this photo had been taken. She’d never seen it before. They were walking down a dark street holding hands, their heads close together and she suddenly realized that was the playground in the background. Someone had taken a photo of them walking home from the playground hand in hand, whispering something to one another and if she didn’t know better, she’d say it was the night that they first kissed. It looked like it was taken from in front of her house and she realized her mom or dad had probably witnessed the whole thing and taken a photo as Joey walked her home. The were directly under the streetlight on the corner and the flash hadn’t been used, which is how she had not known it had been taken.
The photos that followed were all them after they had become a couple. They were going to homecoming, sitting on the couch watching television, in the porch swing sipping lemonade, at birthdays, Christmas, band camp kissing in the dorm room. They were getting their drivers licenses, going to the prom, graduating, going to college, studying, partying, then she got sad when she realized that the following photos were of them the summer after they graduated college when they had decided to split up.
She saw the picture that Joey had taken of them watching the sunrise their last morning together in his college apartment and she sobbed and realized that the music had changed. It was “Bitter End” by Dixie Chicks and she paused the video long enough to get a bottle of water out of her backpack in the foyer and some tissues. She knew now why he wanted her to watch it alone; he knew it would make her cry. She knew his intention was not to make her sad, but he knew how sentimental she was and that seeing these photos would make her cry even if they were tears of happiness at seeing photos of the good times. However, after her marriage had been annulled she felt like tears were bound to turn up no matter what. The amount of regret she felt about her relationship with Jackson made her feel worse than she had when she caught Joshua cheating on her.
Annie looked at the photo of them frozen on the screen and ached for Joey's arm around her right now like it was in that picture. On her vacation she had come to the realization that she still loved Joey just as much as she had the day he took this picture. She always had, but when he married Alyssa she had done her best to try and get over him.
She pressed play and the presentation continued. The photos that followed that day changed. There were a few of Joey moving into his new dorm at medical school, then she saw something that made her smile and cry tears of happiness; he had saved all of her postcards from her travels that fall and winter after they had separated and she went traveling to find herself. He had scanned in the front and back of each post card. She smiled when she saw the postcard from Paris, which was followed by a photo of her, Betsy and Erin who had all traveled to Europe together as a graduation present from their parents. There was a photo of them at the base of the Eiffel Tower, then one of them at the top with Paris spreading out behind them.
More post cards and photos from Europe followed, then the post cards from her solo trip came; New York, Boston, Florida, Chicago, Phoenix and all the small towns in-between. Photos of her graduating from law school followed and she wondered how he’d gotten those; he was engaged to Alyssa at that point and she hadn't seen him at her graduation. The last photo was one that Alyssa had taken of them at the homecoming game where Annie had run into him a few years ago. Annie and Joey were both smiling big; their arms around one another and she knew then why Alyssa had been jealous. Joey had never stopped loving her. She could see it now; the way he held her in that photo said it all. He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at her while she smiled at the camera and the longing in his eyes was apparent. That photo dissolved and the screen faded to black.
Annie pulled the DVD out of her laptop and held it for a moment before she put it in the case and then in her drawer. She didn’t know how to respond to Joey. She felt like she needed a little more time to get her head together and thought that the work of getting settled into her new house would help with that so she took her bags upstairs and started unpacking and doing laundry while she organized her closet and put fresh sheets and linens on her bed.
