One True Loves(19)

Aside from a few minor breakdowns over my dress and whether we should practice for our first dance, Jesse and I had a relatively painless wedding-planning experience.

As for the actual day, the truth is I don’t remember it.

I just remember glimpses.

I remember my mother pulling the dress up around me.

I remember pulling the train of it high enough as I walked to avoid getting the edges dirty.

I remember the flowers smelling more pungent than they had in the store.

I remember looking at Jesse as I walked down the open aisle—looking at the black sheen on his tux, the perfect wave of his hair—and having a sense of overwhelming peace.

I remember standing with him as we had our picture taken during the cocktail hour between the ceremony and the reception. I remember he whispered into my ear, “I want to be alone with you,” just as a flash went off on the photographer’s camera.

I remember saying, “I know, but there’s still so much . . . wedding left.”

I remember taking his hand and escaping out of sight when the photographer went to change the battery in his camera.

We rushed back to the cabin when no one was looking. It was there, alone with Jesse, that I could focus again. I could breathe easy. I felt grounded. I felt like myself for the first time all day.

“I can’t believe we just snuck out of our own wedding,” I said.

“Well . . .” Jesse put his arms around me. “It’s our wedding. We’re allowed to.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” I said.

Jesse had already started unzipping my dress. It would barely budge. So he pushed the slim skirt of it up around my thighs.

We had not made it past the kitchen. Instead, I hopped up on the kitchen counter. As Jesse pushed up against me, as I pressed my body against his, it felt different from all the other times we’d done it.

It meant more.

A half hour later, just as I was coming out of the bathroom fixing my hair, Marie knocked on the door.

Everyone wanted to know where we were.

It was time to be announced.

“I guess we have to go, then,” Jesse said to me, smiling with the knowledge of what we’d been doing as we kept them waiting.

“I guess so,” I said in the same spirit.

“Yeah,” Marie said, none-too-amused. “I guess so.”

She walked ahead of us as we made the short walk over to the inn.

“Looks like we’ve angered the Booksellers’ Daughter,” Jesse whispered.

“I think you’re right,” I said.

“I have something really important to tell you,” he said. “Are you ready? It’s really important. It’s breaking news.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ll love you forever.”

“I already knew that,” I said. “And I’ll love you forever, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll love you until we’re so old we can barely walk on our own and we have to get walkers and put those cut-up yellow tennis balls on them. I’ll love you past that, actually. I’ll love you until the end of time.”

“You sure?” he said, smiling at me, pulling me toward him. Marie was just up ahead, grabbing the door to the reception hall. I could hear the din of large-scale small talk. I imagined a room full of my friends and family introducing themselves to one another. I imagined Olive already having made friends with half of my father’s extended family.

When this was over, Jesse and I were leaving on a ten-day trip to India, courtesy of his parents. No living out of backpacks or sleeping in hostels. No deadlines or film shoots while we were there. Just two people in love with each other, in love with the world.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You are my one true love. I don’t even think I’m capable of loving anyone else.”

The double doors opened and Jesse and I walked through, into the reception hall, just as I heard the DJ announce, “Introducing . . . Jesse and Emma Lerner!”

Hearing my new name felt jarring to me, for a moment. It sounded like someone else. I assumed I would get over it in time, that it would grow on me, likening this moment to the first few days of a haircut.

Besides, the name didn’t matter. None of that mattered when I had the man of my dreams.

It was the happiest day of my life.

Emma and Jesse. Forever.

Three hundred and sixty-four days later, he was gone.





The last time I saw Jesse he was wearing navy blue chinos, Vans, and a heather gray T-shirt. It was his favorite. He’d done the laundry the day before just so he could wear it.

It was the day before our anniversary. I had managed to snag a freelance assignment writing up a piece on a new hotel in the Santa Ynez Valley in Southern California. Despite the fact that a work trip isn’t exactly the most romantic way to spend an anniversary, Jesse was going to join me on the trip. We would celebrate one year of marriage touring the hotel, taking notes on the food, and then squeezing in a visit to a vineyard or two.

But Jesse was asked to join an old boss of his on a quick four-day shoot in the Aleutian Islands.

And unlike me, he had not yet been to Alaska.

“I want to see glaciers,” Jesse said. “You’ve seen them but I haven’t yet.”