Scandalized(81)

“This is the role of a lifetime,” he agrees.

“It’s only four months.”



* * *



But four months turns into six, and the role catapults him into household-name territory. We see each other as frequently as we can, but it’s hard to find blocks of time when he’s completely free. He wins a BAFTA for The West Midlands and major award buzz follows this new performance of his; Alec soon has his pick of jobs and collaborations. But when I visit, I get him only in the tiny cracks of his free time, and when he comes to LA, his schedule is just as packed. It isn’t the same being on his arm on the red carpet as it is being pinned beneath him in bed or curled up together on the couch. I’m lonely and he’s homesick for me. He worries he’s losing focus, and I can’t dive deep on any project because I prioritize flying to see him whenever he has a free second. Even when we have time together, it feels desperate and too short.

The problem is that I don’t know what the alternative is. Even if we move in together, will we see each other more often? He’s at the peak of his career and can rest in a few years when he’s checked every box on his professional bucket list. And I want to work, too. Not because I need to support myself anymore, but because I love research and writing, and as much as Alec is the undisputed love of my life, I don’t want to simply follow him around from one location to the next. I want to have a reason to get out in the world and write about what I see there.

The solution comes one night when we’re in Fiji together on a short getaway celebrating our one-year anniversary and Alec casually tells me some wild anecdotes about a man he met on his current film shoot, and how this man met his wife. Yanbin is a horror movie afficionado from Beijing and his wife, Berit, is a biologist from Stockholm, and—the best part—they actually met on a train to Busan. Her research takes her around the entire globe, and he travels with her in between cinematography projects with the studio that hired Alec. The stories they told about the unconventional ways they made their marriage work are better than any romance novel I’ve ever read.

So I write a piece for The Guardian about them. A simple human-interest story. But then I start receiving letters from other couples. At first, maybe a dozen every week. Some of the stories are so unreal they make me gasp or cry or laugh hysterically. I write another feature about a transgender couple from Malaysia who wrote to me, and who I meet for an interview. After that story runs, the letters begin arriving by the hundreds every week.

I become obsessed with these unlikely and engrossing real-life romances, enamored with the people in every letter. Sometimes I even find the most unexpected points of connection between couples across the globe. All the love stories are touched by the same magic: right place, right time. I decide to write a book, compiling my interviews and their letters into a series of interwoven missed connections and found soulmates. Because I can work from anywhere, I can travel with Alec wherever his next role takes him. I write in a fever all day, and every night, wherever we are, I sleep wrapped around him. For months we are blissful nomads, living in Charlotte, Stockholm, Toronto.

While exhilarating, it’s also exhausting, so when Alec gets the offer for a big-budget BBC production, he takes it.

Tonight, after a celebratory dinner with his parents, Sunny, and Yael, we curl up in bed in a London hotel and agree it might be time to buy a home here.

“And while we’re at it,” he says, sending a warm palm up over my stomach, across my breasts, and down again, “maybe we should get married.”



* * *



I almost die on my first day back in England. It’s the most prosaic version of near-death—an American stepping into oncoming traffic in London—but I can’t really blame it on drivers on the opposite side of the street because I wasn’t even watching for cars.

I was staring at the number 14 on the blue door of a flat in Holland Park. I was absently waving in thanks as my taxi driver pulled away from the curb and growing breathless thinking how long the flight felt—how it felt longer than even that first unending trip back from London nearly two years ago now—and whether it was stupid of me to come a day early to surprise Alec when he’s probably working his ass off to get our new place ready.

My limbs feel disorientingly electrified; my heart is beating so hard it’s pushing insistently against my windpipe. I guess there are times in life when we realize even in the moment that something transformative is happening. If I think about it, so many of my moments with Alec fall into that category. Like our first elevator ride, or later that night when he said to me, Whatever we want, in that deep, resonant voice while his thumbs massaged my palm. The evening we stood together in front of an infinite number of Alecs-and-Gigis reflected back to us and shared a thousand glimpses into our forever. His smiling lips on mine in front of the entire world just after he was told he won an Oscar. The moment I sent in the completed draft of my manuscript and Alec did a drumroll on the desk with his hands, or three weeks ago and the surprise appearance of him at my doorstep in LA with a bottle of champagne and a hard copy of the bestseller list. And now, the day we’re finally moving in together, two weeks before our wedding. After all this time, we have a home base.

The thought sings to me as I cross the street: life will throw curveballs, and things won’t always be this easy or straightforward, but this love—our love—is the rare wonder that comes along once in a lifetime.