One True Loves(56)

Jesse smiles and then looks away from me, shifting his body toward the counter and away from our table, repositioning his legs. “What about Erickson’s? Is that still open? Or have they forsaken me, too?”

The way he says it, the word “forsaken,” and the fact that he doesn’t look at me, it all adds up to make me think Jesse’s angrier than he’s letting on. That he does resent me for moving on. He says he understands, but maybe he doesn’t really understand at all.

“They are still open, yeah,” I say, nodding, trying to please him. “Most stuff is still open. Most stuff is still the same.”

“Most stuff,” he says, and then he changes his tone. “And Blair Books? Is Blair Books the same? I mean, clearly there’s new management.”

“Yeah,” I say, smiling, proud of myself. “Although I’ve kept it mostly the same. And my parents are still involved a bit. It’s not like I’ve gone rogue. I do things pretty much the way they did them.”

“Do you even put out those little ‘Travel the World by Reading a Book’ bookmarks?”

“Yes!” I say. “Of course I do.”

“What? No way!”

“Yeah, totally.”

I have pushed the food around my plate. He’s pushed his around his. Neither one of us has taken so much as a bite. When the waitress comes over, she frowns.

“Looks like you aren’t very hungry,” she says as she pours more water in my glass.

“It’s delicious,” I say. “But we’re just . . .”

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” Jesse says. “Can we get it to go?”

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” she says, taking both of our plates with her.

When she leaves, we have no food to play with and nothing to look at but each other.

“You used to hate those bookmarks,” Jesse says.

“I know,” I say. I find myself embarrassed about how much I’ve changed. I am tempted to lie, to rewind, to remember exactly who I was before he left and try to be that version of myself again.

The Emma he knew wanted a different life. She wanted adventure. She ached with wanderlust. She used to think you couldn’t find joy in simple things, that they had to be big and bold and wild. That you couldn’t feel amazed at how good it feels to wake up in a nice bed, that you could only feel amazed by petting elephants and visiting the Louvre.

But I don’t know if I was totally that person when he left.

And I’m definitely not that person now.

The future is so hard to predict. If I had a time machine, would it even make a difference to try to go back there and explain to my young self what was ahead?

“I guess I did say that,” I tell him. “But I like them now.”

“You never cease to surprise,” Jesse says, smiling. Maybe it’s OK with him if I’m not exactly the way I was when he left.

The waitress comes back with our meals in boxes and the check. Jesse hands her cash before I can grab my wallet.

“Thank you,” I say. “That was very nice of you.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

I check my phone and see that it’s eight fifty. The time has flown by so quickly.

“I have to head to work,” I tell him. “I’m running late as is.”

“No . . .” he says. “C’mon. Stay with me.”

“I can’t,” I say, smiling at him. “I have a store to open.”

Jesse walks me to my car and pulls a set of keys out of his pocket, unlocking, from afar, a gray sedan a few spaces down.

“Wait a minute,” I say to Jesse, as something is occurring to me. “You don’t have a license. You can’t be driving.”

Jesse laughs. “I had a license before I left,” he says. “I’m approved to drive a car.”

“Yeah,” I say, opening my door. “But didn’t it expire?”

Jesse smiles mischievously and it slays me. “Expired, schmexpired. It’s harmless.”

“You just always have to push things, don’t you?” I say, teasing him. “Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “But you can admit you find it charming.”

I laugh. “Who said I find it charming?”

“Will you get in the car with me?” he says.

“In your car?”

“Or yours,” he says.

“I have to go to work.”

“I know. I’m not asking you to go anywhere with me. I just want to be in the car with you. It’s cold outside.”

I should tell him good-bye. I’m already running later than I want to be.

“OK,” I say. I click both doors open and watch as Jesse sits in my passenger seat. I sit in the driver’s seat next to him. When I shut my car door, the outside world mutes, as if we can keep it at bay.

I watch as his eye line settles on my now-bare ring finger. He smiles. We both know what the empty space on my left hand means. But I get the impression there is a strange code of silence between us, indicative of the two things we don’t talk about. We won’t talk about what happened to my finger, just like we don’t talk about what happened to his.

“I missed you, Emma. I missed us. I missed your stupid eyes and your awful lips and that super-annoying thing you do when you look at me like I’m the only person that’s ever mattered in the history of the world. I missed your very un-adorable freckles.”