Do I Know You?(85)

“I wish you, Graham, would dance with me more,” she declares.

Her no-nonsense tone lifts my eyebrows. Eliza’s posture only sharpens, wild confidence entering her gaze.

“I wish you would ask me about my day. About anything. I need to keep exploring, stepping outside of my normal routine, and I want you there with me when I do. I need you to be up for the challenge,” she continues.

Her words wrap around my heart. “I vow to never stop dating you,” I reply. While Eliza had the opportunity to figure out what she wanted to say while she was putting this together, I’m coming into this vow renewal pretty much cold. Even so, I find my words come easily. “I vow to never stop getting to know you. To believe in myself because—believing in myself is believing in us.”

Eliza’s smile is iridescent. It fills her face—it fills the room. My own private moonlight.

“I love you,” she says.

“God, I love you so much,” I rush to reply.

Pulling her to me, I kiss her fiercely. She kisses me back. There’s nothing else, no layers, no charged questions, no one here except me and the woman I love, my best friend in the world. It’s impossibly, incredibly real.

When I step back, I thumb the rings hanging from her necklace. I know their contours as well as the hand on which I’ve seen them worn for five years, studied the stone’s winking facets while Eliza cooked or drove or flipped the pages of whatever she’s reading for work.

In unspoken reply, she turns around. I brush her hair aside, exposing her neck, and with featherlight fingers, I undo the clasp of her necklace. She catches the rings as they slip from the chain. Then, her eyes questioning, she holds them out to me. When I take them, the platinum and diamond feel at once delicate and unbreakable in the palm of my hand. Facing me once more, Eliza puts out her left hand.

For the second time in five years, I slide the rings onto her finger.

Once I have, Eliza reaches for my right hand and deftly removes my wedding band from where I’ve worn it for a week. We watch together, our heads bowed over this quiet dance of hands, as Eliza returns it to where it belongs.

“I vow never to take this off again,” I say quietly.

She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t need to. I hold her hand tightly, making more vows silently to myself. I will never give up. Our marriage will change over the years, but I will always remember this—there’s a way back. We just have to be brave enough to find it.





53


    Eliza


WE STAND ON the balcony, wrapped in a sheet, staring at the vista that stretches forever in front of us. In the distance, the details of the trees disappear, the foliage reduced to one continuous expanse, darkly carpeting the cliffs. Nevertheless, they’re there. Growing, reaching. Ever changing.

The night is perfectly calm. There’s no whisper of wind. The soft roar of the ocean surrounds us, its own faint, ever-present reminder of the enormity of the world outside this private universe we’ve created for ourselves this week. It’s breathtaking. It’s endless.

It’s waiting for us.

The idea doesn’t make me nervous. It would’ve when we got here, would’ve even yesterday. In this moment, though, I feel comfortable enjoying the sweetness of tonight while looking out into the inescapability of tomorrow.

Graham is behind me, his body flush with mine in the bedsheet covering us, his lips pressed to my bare shoulder. I gaze up into the sky, my breathing even. On my left hand, the feeling of my wedding rings is inexpressible comfort. Searching the skyline, I follow the swirl of stars to one bright spot in the distance, smudged like iridescent ink on the black page of the night. On our balcony, we don’t have quite the view we did last night, when we stood on the hilltop now partially obscuring the curve of the Milky Way, the band of stars overhead.

I don’t need the full view, though. I remember everything. I’ll never forget it.

Behind me, Graham’s deeper breathing moves out of sync with mine, like two rhythms in one song. I guess it’s cliché or mushy, but with his smoothly shaven chin resting on my shoulder, his body close enough for me to smell his familiar scent, I’m happy. In his arms, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Like I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be.

I understand myself better—I understand us better. I think something starts to happen in the different ways you see your partner over the years. There’s the concept of them—their human résumé, their vocation, the collection of things you’re proud of in them, the good qualities you know they embody—but then, separately, there’s the day-to-day person. The person who reminds you to do the laundry, or who microwaves dinner, or who wakes you when he gets up in the morning. It’s not like they clash, one the disillusionment of the idealized other. It’s more like the quotidian sometimes eclipses the more fundamental picture.

I understand now that Graham didn’t know how much I see the wonderful light in his full picture. But I do. With this week behind us, I think he finally knows I do. The idea is its own profound peace, perfectly in tune with the calm night.

Over the whisper of the ocean, I almost don’t hear my husband’s murmured question.

“What do you think they’re doing right now?”

I twist to see his face. He’s staring out into the stars like I was, their patterns reflected on his irises. He looks down to meet my gaze, the promise of a smile on the lips I’d just felt on my skin.