One True Loves(44)

Land is a generous description for where he ended up. It was a rock formation in the middle of the sea. Five hundred paces from one end to the other. It was not really even an islet, let alone an island, but it had a gradual enough slope on one side to give it a small shore. Jesse knew he’d traveled far from Alaska because the water was mild and the sun was relentless. Initially, he planned to stay there only long enough to rest, to feel earth under his feet. But soon, he realized that the raft had been punctured along the rocks. It was almost entirely deflated. He was stuck.

He was almost out of water and running low on food bars. He used the old water containers to collect rainwater. He searched the rocks for any signs of plants or animals but found only sand and stone. So he figured out how to fish.

There were some missteps along the way. He ate a few fish that made him vomit. He drank the water faster than it replenished. But he also found oysters and mussels growing on the shoreline and during a particularly relentless rainstorm managed to store over a week’s worth of water—getting him ahead of the game. During the scorching sun of midday, he hung the deflated raft between two rocks and slept in the shade. Soon, he figured out a fairly reliable routine.

Jesse was eating raw fish, barnacles, and food bars, drinking rainwater, and hiding from the sun. He felt stable. He felt like he could make that work for as long as he needed to until we found him.

But then, after a few weeks, he realized we were never going to find him.

He says he had a breakdown and then, after, an epiphany.

That’s when Jesse started training.

He knew that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life living alone on a small patch of rocks in the Pacific. He knew his only way out was the very thing he had been raised to do.

He trained to swim a race.

He counted his strokes and each day swam out farther than he had the day before.

He started out slow, frailer and more fatigued than he’d ever been.

But after a few months, he was able to make it far out into the ocean. He felt confident that one day he’d be strong enough to swim the open water as long as he had to.

It took him almost two years to work up the stamina and the guts to do it. He had setbacks both minor (a jellyfish sting) and major (he saw a shark circling the rocks on and off for a few weeks). And when he finally set out for good, it wasn’t because he believed that he could make it.

It was because he knew he’d die if he didn’t.

He had run out of food bars long ago and the oysters had dried up. Half of the raft had been torn and lost to the wind. He feared that he was not growing stronger but weaker.

There was a rainstorm that brought him days’ worth of water. He drank as much as he could and managed to strap a few bottles on his back using pieces of the raft.

And then he got in the water.

Ready to find help or die trying.

He does not know exactly how long he was out in the open sea and he lost count of the strokes. He says he knows it was less than two days when he saw a ship.

“And that’s when I knew it was all over,” he says. “That I would be OK. That I was coming home to you.”

He never mentions his finger. In the whole story, in his telling me everything, he never mentioned that he lost half of his finger. And I don’t know what to do because I agreed not to ask anything more. I start to open my mouth, to ask what I know I’m not supposed to. But he cuts me off and I get the message. We’re done talking about that now.

“I thought of you every day,” he says. “I have missed you for all these years.”

I start to say it back and then realize I’m not sure if it’s true. I thought of him always—until one day I thought of him less. And then I thought of him often but . . . that’s not really the same thing.

“You were always in my heart,” I finally say. Because I know that’s true. That’s absolutely true.

No matter how much history Jesse and I have shared, no matter how much we may feel like we understand the other, I’m not sure I can ever understand the pain of living alone in the middle of the ocean. I don’t know if I can ever truly appreciate the courage it takes to swim the open water.

And while I’m in no way comparing the two, I don’t think Jesse can understand what it feels like to believe the love of your life is dead. And then to be sitting across from him in your car off the side of the road.

“Now you go,” he says.

“Now I go?”

“Tell me everything,” he says. The minute he says it, I know that he knows I’m engaged. He knows everything. Between the acute awareness of his voice and the sense of “here it comes” that lives in his focused eyes and tight lips, I can tell he figured it out on his own.

Or he noticed my diamond ring.

“I’m engaged,” I say.

Then, suddenly, Jesse starts laughing. He looks relieved.

“What? Why are you laughing? Why is this funny?”

“Because,” he says, smiling, “I thought you were already married.”

I feel a smile erupt across my face even though I can’t tell you where, exactly, it comes from.

And then I start laughing and playfully hit him. “It’s practically the same thing!” I say to him.

“Oh, no, it’s not,” he says. “No, it absolutely is not.”

“I’m planning to marry someone else.”