One True Loves (24 page)

Later on in the afternoon, as I'm picking up a very late lunch, I get a text message from Sam.

You forgot your allergy meds and phone charger. I left them on your desk.

The first thing I think when I see the message isn't how sweet he is or that I'm glad to be able to charge my phone. My first thought is that there's a chance he's still at the store. So I rush to my car, sandwich in hand, hoping that I can get back to the parking lot before he leaves.

I hit absolutely no red lights and I turn right into the parking lot just as Sam is in his car with his blinker ready to turn left. I wave him down.

I don't know what I'm doing, what good I think will come of this. I just know that there is nothing like thinking that you might lose your fiancé to make you realize how much you ache to see your fiancé. That remains true even if you think it's you who might be leaving, you who might be messing it all up.

Sam backs up and rolls down his window. I park my car and walk over to him.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.”

He is wearing his black wool coat with a white oxford button-down and a navy chambray tie. I bought him that tie.
He liked the tiny anchors printed on it and I said I wanted to treat him to something he'd get excited to wear at work.

“Thank you for my meds,” I say. “And the charger. That was really nice of you.”

Sam nods. “Yeah, well . . .”

I wait for him to finish and then realize that he's not going to.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Been better,” he responds. He looks sad but also distant. It feels as if the two of us can't reach each other. I find myself moving physically closer to him, trying to connect. “I will be fine. It's just weird sleeping in our bed alone,” he says. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” I say, and then—I don't know what possesses me—before I know it, I have bent down and kissed him. He kisses me back but then pulls away. I wonder if it's because he can tell I've kissed someone else.

“Sorry,” I say. “Force of habit.”

“It's OK,” he says.

“How were the cats this morning?” I ask. I love talking to Sam about our cats. I love inventing silly names for them and making up stories about what they do when we're not around.

“Homer slept in the bathtub,” Sam says.

Before I had a cat, before I loved those two little furballs, I would have thought someone saying, “Homer slept in the bathtub,” was boring enough to put me to sleep. But now it's as fascinating as if you'd told me he'd landed on Mars.

“He wasn't under the piano?”

Sam shakes his head. “Nope, he won't leave the bathroom. When I tried to take a shower this morning, I had to pick him up and lock him out of the room.”

I should be back in that house. I should be with Sam and
Mozart and Homer. I don't know why Homer's in the bathtub or what it means. But I know it wouldn't happen if I was there.

Good Lord.

There is so much guilt lying around here, just waiting for me to pick it up and carry it with me. There is so much I can torture myself about.

Maybe I deserve to.

But I resolve, right now, to leave it waiting. I'm not taking it on. Even if I should. It does no one any good, least of all me, to have it clawing at my back.

“I love you,” I tell him. It just slips out. I don't know what I mean by it. I just know that it's true.

“I know,” he says. “I have never once doubted that.”

We are quiet for a moment and I fear that he might leave. “Will you play ‘Piano Man'?” I ask him.

“What?” he says.

“Will you play ‘Piano Man'? On the steering wheel? And I can do the harmonica?”

I always ask him to do it when I want to fall a little bit more in love with him. I like remembering the first time he did it. I love watching how skilled he truly is. Now, it's become so familiar that I can hear the notes when he plays it, even though he's always playing in silence.

But instead of pushing up his sleeves and positioning his fingers like he has always done in the past, he shakes his head. “I'm not gonna do that.”

“You always do it.”

“I'm not going to perform for you,” he says. “I hope you change your mind and realize that you love me and that we should be together for the rest of our lives, but . . . I'm not going to audition for the part.”

It's one thing to break a heart. It's an entirely different thing to break someone's pride.

And I think I have done both to him.

“You're right,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“Listen, you've been through something I can't even imagine. I know it's shaken you to your core. I love you enough to wait for a little while until you figure it out.”

I grab his hand and squeeze it—as though if I could just squeeze enough, hold it the right way, the gratitude I feel in my heart might run through my arms, out my hands, and straight into his soul. But it doesn't work that way. I know it doesn't.

“Thank you,” I say. “I don't know how to thank you. But thank you.”

Sam takes his hand away. “But you can't have both of us,” he continues. “I can't pretend things are OK until they're actually OK. OK?”

“OK,” I say, nodding my head.

He smiles. “That was a lot of ‘OKs' at one time, huh?”

I laugh.

“I'm gonna go,” Sam says, putting his car in drive. “Otherwise, I'll be late for rehearsal. And then, you know, I suppose I'll just go home, eat some dinner, and watch ESPN Classic. A rousing good time.”

“Sounds like quite a night,” I say.

“I'm sure you've got big plans, too,” he says, and then I watch as his face freezes. It's clear he wasn't thinking when he spoke. He doesn't want to know what I'm doing tonight. But now that he's said it, I can't get out of this without in some way acknowledging whether I do have plans. “I just meant . . . uh, you know what? Just don't say anything.”

“Yeah, OK,” I say. “Not saying anything.”

But not saying anything is saying something, isn't it? Because if there truly was nothing for him to worry about, I would have just said, “No, Sam, seriously, don't worry.”

I didn't say that. And we both know it.

Sam looks at me. And I can tell that he has reached his limit. He cannot do this anymore. “Bye, Emma,” he says, starting to turn the wheel. He stops himself and starts talking again. “You know what? I'm going to keep the ball in my court.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I'll call you when I'm ready. But . . . don't call me. I know it probably makes the most sense for you to tell me what you've chosen after you've chosen but . . . I'd rather you tell me once I'm ready to hear it.”

“I can't call you at all?”

Sam shakes his head somberly. “I'm asking you not to.”

This is the smallest amount of control he can claim over his own fate. I know that I have to give it to him.

“Whatever you want,” I say. “Anything.”

“Well, that's what I want,” he says, nodding, and then he puts his foot on the gas and drives away.

Gone.

I realize just how cold I am, how frigid it is outside, and I race back into the store. I remember that I left my sandwich on the front seat of my car and I don't even bother to go get it. I'm not hungry.

I didn't eat breakfast, either. It appears my appetite had been the first thing to go.

Tina is ringing up a pair of books for two older ladies when I walk in. “Hey, Emma,” she says. “Do you remember when we are getting more copies of the new Ann Patchett?”

“It should be next Tuesday,” I say as if today is any normal
day, as if I can think straight. “Ladies, if you give your contact info to Tina, she or I will call you when the copies are in.”

I smile and then briskly walk into the back of the store. I sit down at my desk. I put my head in my hands and I breathe.

My mind races from Sam to Jesse and back.

I keep saying that I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. But the truth is, I know exactly what I'm doing.

It's one thing to play coy with them, I suppose. But what I have to do is stop playing coy with myself.

I am going to choose one of them.

I just don't know which one it is.

Love and Maine

Or, how to turn back time

T
he store closed about forty-five minutes ago. The register has been tallied. The sales floor is clean. Tina went home. I'm done. I can get in the car and go. But I'm just standing in the dark stockroom. Thinking about Sam.

My phone rings and I pick it up to see that it's Jesse. Just like that, Sam flies out of my head, replaced by the man he replaced.

“Hey,” Jesse says when I answer. “I thought I'd meet you at the store.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised. I just assumed I'd meet him at my parents' house once I'd grabbed my things.

“Is that cool?”

“Sure,” I say, shrugging. “Yeah. That's good. I'm still here.”

“Well, that's good,” he says. “Because I'm outside the front door.”

I start to laugh as I head toward the front.

“Are you serious?” I say, but he doesn't need to answer because as I step onto the sales floor from the stockroom, I see him through the glass doors.

He is silhouetted by the streetlights in the parking lot. His body, in a heavy jacket and relaxed pants, fills the glass.

I unlock the door and let him in.

He grabs me, not just with his arms, but with his whole
body, as if he needs all of me, as if he can't bear another minute apart.

And then he kisses me.

If loving them both makes me a bad person, I think I'm just a bad person then.

“So . . . Maine?” I say, smiling.

“Maine,” Jesse says, nodding once in agreement.

“All right,” I say. “Let me just grab my purse. Actually, we can both go out this way. My car's in the back.”

“It's OK, I'll drive us.”

I give him a skeptical look. Jesse waves me off. “C'mon. Grab your stuff. I'll meet you in the car.”

I go back and get my purse, then lock up the store and get into his car. All despite the fact that he shouldn't be driving.

Sometimes I worry Jesse could lead me into hell and I'd follow along, naively saying things like, “Is it getting hot to you?” and believing him when he told me it was fine.

“We have to stop at my parents',” I say when we're on the road. “I need to get some clothes.”

“Of course,” Jesse says. “Next stop, the Blairs'.”

When we pull into their driveway, I can tell just by what lights are on that everyone is over at Marie and Mike's.

Jesse and I head into my parents' house to grab my things, and I warn him we'll have to say good-bye to everyone over at Marie's.

“That's fine,” he says as I unlock the front door. “How far away is Marie's?”

“No, that's Marie's,” I say, pointing to her house.

Jesse laughs. “Wow,” he says. I watch as he looks at the distance between Marie's house and my parents'. “The Booksellers' Daughter strikes again.”

It has been so long since someone called her that. It's become moot, for a lot of reasons.

Jesse turns and looks at me. “But I guess you're more of a Booksellers' Daughter than we thought, huh?”

I smile, unsure if he means this kindly or not. “A bit more, maybe,” I say.

Once we're in the house, I bound up the stairs heading to my old room, but when I turn around behind me, I notice Jesse is still in the entryway, staring.

“You OK?” I ask.

He snaps out of it, shaking his head. “Yeah, totally. Sorry. I'll wait here while you get your stuff.”

I get my bag and gather the things I've left on the bathroom sink.

When I come back down, Jesse is again lost in thought. “It's weird to see that some things look exactly the same way they did before.”

“I bet,” I say as I make my way to his side.

“It's like some things went on without me and other things paused the moment I left,” he says as we head out the front door. “I mean, I know that's not true. But all your family got was a new TV. Everything else looks exactly the same. Even that weird cat painting. It's in the exact same place.”

Sam and I picked out Mozart because he looks exactly like the gray cat in the painting above one of my parents' love seats.

I never would have even considered getting a cat without Sam. But now I'm a cat person. A few weeks ago, Sam sent me a picture of a cat sitting on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I laughed for, like, fifteen minutes.

I put my things in Jesse's car and then the two of us start walking over to Marie's.

“You sure you're ready to see my family again?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he says with a smile on his face. “They're my family, too.”

I knock on Marie's door and I hear commotion.

And then Mike answers the door.

“Emma,” he says, giving me a hug and then moving out of the way for us to come in. “Two times in one day. What a treat. Jesse, nice to see you again,” he says, and puts his hand out. Jesse shakes it. “Pleasure's mine,” Jesse says.

Jesse and Mike hung out at family gatherings, but there was never a reason to confide in each other anything more than “How've you been?” They weren't close because Marie and I weren't close. When I think back on it now, it seems best likened to boxing coaches, with Marie and I as the fighters, our husbands pouring water into our mouths and psyching us up to go back in there.

We walk into the dining room to see Marie and my parents. Sophie and Ava have gone to sleep. The moment everyone sees Jesse, they stand up to greet him.

My dad shakes Jesse's hand heartily and then pulls him in for a hug. “Son, you don't know how good it feels to set my eyes on you.”