I Could Live Here Forever


 
 
 
 Also by Hanna Halperin
 
 Something Wild
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VIKING
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
 penguinrandomhouse.com
 Copyright © 2023 by Hanna Halperin
 Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
 Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint lyrics from “Perfect Day.” Words and music by Lou Reed. Copyright © 1972 Oakfield Avenue Music Ltd. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Sony Music Publishing (US) LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
 Names: Halperin, Hanna, author.
 Title: I could live here forever : a novel / Hanna Halperin.
 Description: New York : Viking, [2023]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022017093 (print) | LCCN 2022017094 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593492079 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593492086 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3608.A54865 I52 2023 (print) | LCC PS3608.A54865 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220415
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017093
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022017094
 Cover design and illustration: Lynn Buckley
 Book design by Lucia Bernard, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_143034192_c0_r0
 
 
 
 For G, with love
 
 
 
 Just a perfect day
 You made me forget myself
 I thought I was someone else
 Someone good
 “Perfect Day”
 Lou Reed
 
 
 1.
 Charlie was soft-spoken, but when he sang, he could transform his voice to sound like anyone—Tom Waits, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie. The first time I heard him sing, I couldn’t believe that something so loud and powerful was coming from him. We met in Madison, Wisconsin, while I was getting my MFA in fiction writing. I was twenty-five years old. Charlie was thirty-one. He had studied creative writing, too, as an undergrad, but when I met him he was working in construction. He was tall and boyish-looking. He had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen.
 We met waiting on the same checkout line at the grocery store. I noticed him before he noticed me. As soon as we looked at each other, it seemed obvious what was going to happen. First he complimented my cereal choice—Raisin Bran—and then he asked if I’d ever tried Raisin Bran Crunch. I shook my head no. I could feel how insanely I was blushing, and I was mortified at how easily I gave myself away.
 He smiled a little and held up the purple-and-blue box in his basket.
 I pretended not to notice the way the woman behind the register was smirking at us, like she was watching the opening scene of a romantic comedy. I agreed to meet him the next night. Our first date was in mid-October at a pub called the Weary Traveler.
 I got there first. The pub was warm and dimly lit, and pretty full for a Thursday night. It was all dark wood inside, except for the tin ceiling, copper and embossed. The walls were covered with weird art, simple paintings of random people, and there were built-in shelves lined with old books and board games.
 The waitress sat me at a table facing the door. When he walked in, he was wearing a T-shirt and no coat even though it was freezing outside. His hands were stuffed inside his pockets, his shoulders hunched, like he was cold. When he spotted me, he looked surprised to see me sitting there waiting for him. He raised his eyebrows and lifted one hand from his pocket to wave.
 I got shy when I saw him. He was so much better-looking than me. It seemed uneven. I was wearing jeans and my favorite black sweater, my hair down.
 “Sorry I’m late,” he said, sliding into the seat across from me. “I see you got started.” He nodded to my rum and Coke.
 “I hope that’s okay.” I’d already drunk half of it.
 “Of course. I should have texted saying I was running behind. I ended up cooking dinner for my mom, and the traffic coming from the other side of town was worse than I expected.”
 “That’s nice of you,” I said. “That you cooked dinner for your mom.”
 “I like to do it when I have the time. Do you cook?”
 “Not really.”
 “I didn’t really start till a few years ago. Nothing too fancy. I make a pretty decent quesadilla.” He smiled then, and his whole face opened up—bright and sweet. His smile made him look like a kid.
 I don’t remember much of what we talked about that night, except that he made me laugh a lot, and I could tell he was observant.
 He spent a long time picking out a certain IPA on the menu but once it arrived he barely touched it. I worried this meant he wasn’t having a good time, but he didn’t seem in a rush, and he wasn’t doing the thing that some people did—glancing around to see who else might walk in. He didn’t pull out his phone once.
 At some point during the evening he told me that his father had left his mother before he was born, but when Charlie was a teenager, he’d looked his father up on the internet and confronted him at his place of work—a pharmacy in Janesville, Wisconsin. When his father realized who Charlie was, Charlie leaned over the pharmacy counter and said, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not here