One True Loves(70)

What is the matter with me?

What am I doing?

Run-ins with the police aren’t as thrilling at thirty-one as they were at seventeen. It’s one of those things that was charming once. Ditto having sex in the kitchen and speeding. I mean, c’mon, I’m talking cops out of tickets and doing it next to a box of microwaveable bacon? This isn’t me. I’m not this person.

“We forgot to eat the pizza,” Jesse says as he gets up and walks to pick it up off the table by the door. He puts it on the dining table. I get dressed, eager now to be covered. Jesse opens the box.

I stare right at the pepperoni and pineapple pizza. If I eat it as is, my stomach is going to hurt. But if I pull the cheese off, I’ll just be eating gummy tomato bread.

“You know what?” I say. “You go for it. I’m not feeling pizza at the moment.”

“No?”

“I don’t really eat cheese anymore. It doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Oh,” he says.

It occurs to me that there are a few more things he should know, things I should be clear about.

“I changed my name back to Emma Blair because Blair Books is my store. I love it. And I’ve built a life around it. I am a Blair.”

“OK,” he says. A noncommittal word, said noncommittally.

“And I know I used to be the sort of person who always wanted to bounce around from place to place but . . . I’m happy being settled in Massachusetts. I want to run the store until I retire—maybe even hand it over to my own children one day.”

Jesse looks at me but doesn’t say anything. The two of us look at each other. An impasse.

“Let’s go to bed,” Jesse says. “Let’s not worry about pizza and last names and the bookstore. I want to just lie down next to you, hold you.”

“Sure,” I say. “Yeah.”

Jesse leaves the pizza behind as he leads me up the stairs to the bed. He lies down and holds the blanket open for me. I back into him, my thighs and butt nestled into the curve of his legs. He puts his chin in the crook of my neck, his lips by my ear. The wind is howling now. I can see, through the top of the window, that it is starting to snow.

“Everything is going to be OK,” he says to me before I fall asleep.

But I’m not sure I believe him anymore.





I wake well after the sun has come up. The snow has stopped falling. The wind has retreated. For a moment after I open my eyes, everything seems peaceful and quiet.

“Not sure if you can tell from the view out the window but I think we’re snowed in,” Jesse says. He is standing in the doorway of the bedroom in a T-shirt and sweatpants. He is smiling. “You look adorable,” he adds. “I guess those are the big highlights of the morning. We’re snowed in, you’re as cute as ever.”

I smile. “How snowed in is snowed in?”

“We’re as snowed in as you are adorable.”

“Oh, God,” I say, slowly sitting up and gathering myself. “We’ll be stuck here for years, then.”

Jesse moves toward the bed and gets in next to me. “Worse fates.”

I lean into him and quickly realize that both of us could stand to bathe.

“I think I might hop in the shower,” I say.

“Great idea. My parents told me they put in a walk-in sauna in the master. Last one there has to make breakfast.” And off we go.

The water is warm but the air is damp and humid. The steam fogs the glass doors. There are more showerheads than I care to count, two coming from the ceiling and a number of jets coming from the walls of the shower. It is hot and muggy in here. My hair is flattened and smoothed back across my head. I can feel Jesse just behind me, lathering soap in his hand.

“I wanted to ask you . . .” Jesse says. “Why did you leave LA?”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean, I just assumed you’d still be out there. Why did you come back?”

“I like it here,” I say.

“You liked it there, though,” he says. “We both did. It was our home.”

He’s right. I loved my life in California, where it never snowed and the sun was always shining.

Now, my favorite day of the year is when daylight savings begins. It’s usually when the air starts to thaw and the only precipitation you can be threatened with is a little rain. You’re tired in the morning because you’ve lost an hour of sleep. But by seven o’clock at night, the sun is still out. And it’s warmer than it was yesterday at that time. It feels like the world is opening up, like the worst is over, and flowers are coming.

They don’t have that in Los Angeles. The flowers never leave.

“I just knew I needed to come home to my family.”

“When did you move back?”

“Hm?”

“How long after . . . how long was it before you moved back to Acton?”

“I guess soon,” I say, turning away from him and into the water. “Maybe two months.”

“Two months?” Jesse says, stunned.

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” he says. “I just . . . all these years I always pictured you there. I never . . . I never really pictured you here.”

“Oh,” I say, finding myself unsure how to respond or what to say next. “Do you see the shampoo anywhere?” I say finally. But I’m not paying attention to the answer. My mind is already lost in the life that Jesse never pictured.