One True Loves(48)

“It’s just butter,” he said as he grabbed another box and started unloading its contents into the silverware drawer.

“This is not just butter!” I held the top cup part out to show him, as if he’d lost his mind. “Butter butter is pale yellow. This butter is yellow yellow.”

“All I just heard was, ‘Butter butter yellow butter yellow yellow.’?”

I laughed.

“I think we’re both saying the same thing,” he said. “Butter is yellow.”

“Admit there is something up with this butter,” I said, pretending to interrogate him. “Admit it right now.”

“It’s not Land O’Lakes, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I laughed at him. “Land O’Lakes! What are we, Bill and Melinda Gates? I buy store-brand butter. The name on my butter is exactly equal to the name of the store I bought it from.”

Sam sighed, realizing he’d been caught. He confessed. “It’s all-natural, organic, hormone-free, grass-fed butter.”

“Wow,” I said, acting as if this was a great shock. “You think you know a person . . .”

He took the butter from me and proudly put it on the counter, as if to say that it was officially a member of our home. “It might cost almost twice as much as regular butter. But once you try it, you will never be able to eat normal butter again. And this will become your normal butter.”

After we had fully unpacked the kitchen, Sam opened the bread and took out two slices. He put them in the newly plugged-in toaster. When they were done, I watched how easy it was for him to spread butter on the slices. And then my eyes rolled back into my head when I took a bite.

“Wow,” I said.

“See?” Sam had said. “I’m right about some stuff. Next, I’m going to convince you we should get a pet.”

It was one of many moments in my life since Jesse left that I wasn’t thinking about Jesse. I was very much in love with Sam. I loved the piano and I loved that butter. A few months later, we adopted our cats. Sam was changing my life for the better and I was curious to see what else he would teach me. I was reveling in how bright our future felt together.

Now, watching him place evenly buttered bread onto the pan in front of me, I desperately want to simply love him—unequivocally and without reservation—the way I did back then, the way I felt until I found out Jesse was coming home.

We were so happy together when there was nothing to muddy the waters, when the part of myself that loved Jesse was happily and naturally repressed, kept neatly contained in a box in my heart.

Sam moves the slices of bread around the sizzling pan and I propose something impossible.

“Do you think, maybe just for tonight, that we could put a pin in all of this? That we could pretend I had a normal day at the bookstore and you had a normal day teaching and everything could be the way it was before?”

I’m expecting Sam to tell me that life doesn’t work like that, that what I’m proposing is naive or selfish or misguided. But he doesn’t.

He just smiles and then he nods. It’s a small nod. It’s not an emphatic nod or a relieved nod. His nod isn’t saying anything along the lines of “I thought you’d never ask,” or even “Sure, that sounds good,” but rather, “I can see why you’d want to try that. And I’ll go along with it.” Then he gathers himself and—in an instant—seems to be ready to pretend with me.

“All right, Emma Blair, get ready to flip,” he says as he puts the top slices on the sandwiches.

“Ready and willing,” I tell him. I have the spatula in position.

“Go!” he says.

And with two flicks of the wrist, I have flipped our dinner.

Sam turns the heat up on the soup to get it ready.

He grabs two bowls and two plates.

He grabs himself a beer from the fridge and offers me one. I take him up on it. The cool crispness of it sounds good, and for some reason, I have it in my head that having a beer helps to make this seem like just another night.

Soon, the two of us are sitting down to eat. Our dining room table has benches instead of chairs and that allows Sam to sit as close to me as physically possible, our thighs and arms touching.

“Thank you for making dinner,” I say. I kiss him on the cheek, right by his ear. He has a freckle in that spot and I once told him I considered it a target. It is what I aim for. Normally when I kiss him there, he reciprocates by kissing me underneath my eye. Freckles for freckle. But this time he doesn’t.

“Thank you for flipping,” he says. “Nobody flips like you.”

The sandwich is gooey in the center and crunchy on the outside. The soup is sweet with just a little bit of spice.

“I honestly don’t know which I love more, this or your fried chicken,” I say.

“You’re being ridiculous. No tomato soup has ever been as good as any fried chicken.”

“I don’t know!” I tell him, dunking my sandwich. “This stuff is really outstanding. So cozy and comforting. And this grilled cheese is toasted to—”

Sam drops his spoon into his soup. It splashes onto the table. He drops his hands and looks at me.

“How am I supposed to pretend everything is OK right now?” Sam says. “I’d love to pretend things were different. I would love for things to be different but . . . they aren’t.”