One True Loves(50)

And my dream would be coming true right now.

But I gave up on that dream and went out and found a new one.

And in doing so, I’m ruining all of us.

You can’t be loyal to two people.

You can’t yearn for two dreams.

So, in a lot of ways, Sam is right.

He is the wild card.

In this terrible-wonderful nightmare-dream come true.

“It’s like I’m eighteen all over again,” he says. “I love you and I have you and now I’m terrified I’m going to lose you to Jesse for the second time.”

“Sam,” I say. “You don’t—”

“I know this isn’t your fault,” Sam says, interrupting me. His mouth turns down and his chin shakes. I hate watching him try not to cry. “You loved him and then you lost him and you loved me and now he’s back and you didn’t do anything wrong but . . . I’m so mad at you.”

I look at him. I try not to cry.

“I’m so angry. Just at everything. At you and at him and at myself. The way I told you . . .” he says, shaking his head. He looks away. He tries to calm down. “I told you that I didn’t need you to stop loving him. I told you that you could love us both. That I would never try to replace him. And I really thought that I meant what I said. But now, I mean, it’s like the minute I find out he’s back, everything’s changed. I’m so mad at myself for saying those things back then because . . .” He stops talking. He rests his back against the dishwasher, his arms over his knees. “Because I think I was kidding myself,” he says, looking at his hands as he picks at his nails.

“I think it was just this thing that I said because I knew it was theoretical. It wasn’t real. I wanted to give you the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t trying to replace him because I knew that I was replacing him. He wasn’t a threat because he was gone and he was never coming back. And he was never going to be able to take you away from me. He couldn’t give you what I could. So I said all of that stuff about how I didn’t expect you to stop loving him and how we could both fit into your life. But I only meant it in theory. Because ever since I heard he was back, I haven’t been happy for you. Or even really that happy for him. I’ve been heartsick. For me.”

He looks at me, finally, when he says this. And between the look on his face and the way his voice breaks when the words escape from his mouth, I know that he hates himself for feeling the way he does.

“Shhh,” I say to him, trying to calm him down, trying to hold him and comfort him. “I love you.”

I wish I didn’t say it so often. I wish that my love for Sam wasn’t so casual and pervasive—so that I could save that phrase for moments like this. But that’s not very realistic, is it? When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.

“I know you do,” he says. “But I’m not the only one you love. And you can only have one. And it might not be me.”

“Don’t say that,” I tell him. “I don’t want to leave you. I couldn’t do that. It’s not fair to you. It’s not right. With everything that we’ve been through and how much you’ve done for me, how you’ve stood by me, and how you’ve been there for me, I couldn’t . . .” I stop talking when I see that Sam is already shaking his head at me as if I don’t get it. “What?” I ask him.

“I don’t want your pity and I don’t want your loyalty. I want you to be with me because you want to be with me.”

“I do want to be with you.”

“You know what I mean.”

My gaze falls off of his eyes, down to his hands, and I watch him fiddle with the beds of his nails—his own version of wringing his hands.

“I think we should call off the wedding,” he says.

“Sam . . .”

“I’ve thought about it a lot for the past few days and I thought, for sure, you were going to pull the trigger. But you haven’t. So I’m doing it.”

“Sam, c’mon.”

He looks up at me, with just a little hint of anger. “Are you ready to commit to me?” Sam says. “Can you honestly say that no matter what happens from this moment on, we are ready to spend our lives together?”

I can’t bear to see the look in his eyes when I shake my head. So I look away as I do it. Like every coward in the history of the world.

“I have to let you go,” Sam says. “If we have any chance of surviving this and one day having a healthy, loving marriage.”

I look up at him when I realize what’s happening.

He’s leaving me. At least for now. Sam is leaving me.

“I have to let you go and I have to hope that you come back to me.”

“But how can—”

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much. I love waking up with you on Sunday mornings when we don’t have any plans. And I love coming home to you at night, seeing you reading a book, bundled up in a sweater and huge socks even though you have the heat up to eighty-eight degrees. I want that for the rest of my life. I want you to be my wife. That’s what I want.”

I want to tell him that I want that, too. Ever since I met him I’ve wanted that, too. But now everything is different, everything has changed. And I’m not sure what I want at all.