“Sometimes I wonder if I would have just let my parents push me toward pro training if I hadn’t met you,” he says. “You were the first person who didn’t care how good of a swimmer I was. The first person who just liked me for me. That . . . that was life changing. Truly.”
He turns and looks at me intently. “You’re a lot of the reason why I am who I am,” he says.
“Oh, Jesse,” I say, so much tenderness and affection that my heart is soaked, “there is no me without you.”
Jesse kisses me then.
A kiss is just a kiss, I guess. But I’ve never been kissed like this before. It is sad and loving and wistful and scared and peaceful.
When we finally pull away from each other, I realize I’m tipsy and Jesse might just be drunk. The bottle is gone and as I go to put down my glass, I accidentally tip it over. That unmistakable cling and thud of a wine bottle hitting the floor is not followed by the familiar crash that sometimes accompanies it. Grateful, I pick up the intact bottle and our glasses.
I think it’s time to switch to the soft stuff.
I get us some glasses of water and remind him about the book.
“You really want to read a book together?” he says.
“It’s that or Taboo.”
Jesse acquiesces, grabbing blankets and pillows from the couch. We lie down on the floor, close to the fire. I open up the book I pulled aside earlier.
“The Reluctant Adventures of Cole Crane,” I begin.
I read to children’s groups on Sunday mornings sometimes. I’ve started getting more confident, making up voices for the characters and trying to make the narration come alive. But I don’t do any of that now. I’m just me. Reading a book. To someone I love.
Unfortunately, it’s a very bad book. Laughably bad. The women are called dames. The men drink whiskey and make bad puns. I barely get through five pages before handing it over to Jesse. “You have to read this. I can’t do it,” I say.
“No,” he says, “c’mon. I waited years just to hear your voice.”
And so I read some more. By the time my eyes feel dry from the fire, I’m reluctantly invested in what happens to the Crooked Yellow Caper and I find myself wanting Cole Crane to just kiss Daphne Monroe already.
Jesse agrees to read the second half while I lie in his lap with my eyes closed.
His voice is soothing and calm. I listen as it ebbs and flows, as his words fall up and down.
When he’s been reading for over an hour, I sit up and take the book out of his hand. I put it on the floor.
I know what I’m about to do. I know that it is the last time that I will ever do it. I know that I want it to mean something. For years I never had a chance to say good-bye. Now that I have it, I know this is the way I want to do it.
So I kiss him the way you kiss people when it is the start of something. And it starts something.
I pull my shirt over my head. I unbutton the fly of Jesse’s jeans. I lay my body flush against his. It is the last time I will feel his warmth, the last time I will look down to see him below me, with his hands on my waist. It is the last time I will tell him I love him by the way I sink my hips and touch his chest.
He never looks anywhere but at me. I watch as his gaze moves down my body, watching me, taking it all in, trying to pin it to memory.
I feel seen. Truly seen. Cherished and savored.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you the most romantic part of love is the beginning. The most romantic part is when you know it has to end.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been as present in a moment as I am this very second, as I make love to a man I once believed was my soul mate, who I now know is meant for someone else and something else, is meant to build his life somewhere else.
His eyes have never looked more captivating. His body underneath me has never felt safer. I trace my hands over the scars on his body; I intertwine my left hand with his right one. I want him to know he’s beautiful to me.
When it’s over, I am too tired and stunned to mourn. I crawl back into the crook of his arm and I hand him the book again.
“Read?” I say. “Just a little while longer.”
All of this. Just a little while longer.
“Yeah,” Jesse says. “Anything you want.”
I fall asleep in his arms, listening to him read the end of the book, happy to learn that Cole grabs Daphne by the shoulders and says, finally, “My God, woman, don’t you know it’s you? That it’s always been you?”
Falling out of love with someone you still like feels exactly like lying in a warm bed and hearing the alarm clock.
No matter how good you feel right now, you know it’s time to go.
Errr Errr Errr Errr Errr.
The sun is shining brightly in my face. And Jesse’s watch is beeping.
The cover of The Reluctant Adventures of Cole Crane is bent back, underneath his leg.
The fire is out.
“Time to get up,” I say.
Jesse, still trying to adjust to wakefulness, nods his head and rubs his face.
We both head into the kitchen and grab some food. I drink a full glass of water. Jesse drinks cold coffee from the pot. He looks out the kitchen window as he drinks and then he turns back to me.
“It’s snowing again,” he says.
“Hard?” I ask. I look around to the front window to see that there’s a fresh blanket of snow on the driveway.
“We should get on the road soon,” he says. “I think it looks pretty clear right now, but we don’t want to wait too much longer.”
“OK, good idea. I’m going to get in the shower.”
Jesse nods but doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t follow me up the stairs to join me. He doesn’t make a joke about me being naked. Instead, he moves toward the fireplace and starts to clean up.
It is then, as I start walking up the stairs alone, that I feel the full weight of the new truth.
Jesse is home. Jesse is alive.
But Jesse is no longer mine.
Within forty-five minutes, Jesse and I have gathered our things and are ready to go. The dishes are done, the remaining groceries are packed up, the mess we made has been cleaned. Even The Reluctant Adventures of Cole Crane is back on the shelf, as if it had never been read. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we were never here.
Jesse grabs the keys and opens the front door for me. It is with a heavy heart that I pass through it.
I don’t offer to drive because I know he won’t let me. He’s going to do things his way and I’m going to let him. So I get into the passenger seat and Jesse puts the car in reverse.
I take one last look as we pull away from the cabin.
There are two tracks of footprints leading from the front door.
They start out close together and veer off in different directions as our feet head for opposite sides of the car.
I know those footprints will be gone soon. I know they might not make it to tonight if it keeps snowing like this. But it feels good to be able to look at something and understand it.
The footprints start off together and they grow apart.
I get it.
It’s fine.
It’s the truth.
Two True Loves
Or, how to make peace with the truth about love
Jesse and I are almost to New Hampshire by the time we start actually having a conversation. We’ve just been listening to the radio, stuck in our own heads for the past hour and a half.
I have thought mainly of Sam.
About the stubble that always grows on his face, about the fact that he’s clearly going to go gray early, about how I am eager to go back to spending my evenings with him at the piano.
I hope that when I tell him he’s the one I want, he believes me.
It’s been rough going but I have finally figured out who I am and what I want. In fact, never has my identity felt so crystal clear.
I am Emma Blair.
Bookstore owner. Sister. Daughter. Aunt. Amateur pianist. Cat lover. New Englander. Woman who wants to marry Sam Kemper.
That doesn’t mean that it’s without pain and sadness. There is still loss.
I know, I know deep in my gut that the moment when I get out of this car, when Jesse drops me off and says good-bye, I will feel as if I am breaking.
I feel the same way I did when I was nine and my mom took me to get my ears pierced for my birthday.