Happy Place(104)

This is how I used to think of love. As something so delicate it couldn’t be caught without being snuffed out. Now I know better. I know the flame may gutter and flare with the wind, but it will always be there.

We talk about the night sky. We talk about the ghost of our old dorm building. The bright purple flowers that always erupted alongside the long road to Mattingly, and the broken eave over our New York apartment that let icicles grow into three-foot daggers. We talk about the things we remember, the things we’ll miss.

“We’ll come back,” Kimmy says. “Baby needs to know about the magic of Maine.”

“I don’t know,” Sabrina says. “Maybe next year, we go somewhere new.”

Wyn’s hand tightens on mine, like even the mention of next year might turn us to smoke.

And even that pain is a kind of pleasure, to feel so loved, to love so deeply.

We stay up until Cleo is nodding off against Kimmy’s shoulder and Sabrina can’t stop yawning, and then we say good night, like it’s any other night. Like tomorrow we might wake and start the whole week over.

When we close ourselves into our bedroom for the night, Wyn and I stand locked together in the dark, my hands against the back of his neck, his head bowed into my shoulder, breathing into each other.

My body has always loved him without reservation or caution. It knew so long before my brain did, and it still knows.

His neck, his shoulders, his waist, the soft hair that leads to his waistband, the jut of his hip bones. The smooth curves of his back and the tightening muscles of his stomach. Every piece of him I’ve thought about, dreamed of, longed for.

“Your fingers are cold,” he whispers, bringing my hand to his lips.

“Your skin’s so warm,” I whisper back.

Slowly we undress, find our way to each other. We don’t pretend tomorrow won’t come but give ourselves over fully to tonight.

A tangle of limbs and blankets. Skin sliding against skin. Fingers gripping the backs of necks, the soft parts of hips, the hard muscle of thighs.

“I love you,” he says into my mouth, and I wish I could swallow it, like that would let me keep that sound forever, this moment forever.

My nose burns. My voice crackles. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” he whispers.

“Because,” I say, “those words don’t belong to me anymore.”

“Of course they do,” he says. “They belonged to you before I ever saw you. They belong to you in every universe we’re in, Harriet.”

I close my eyes. Try to hold on to the words. They burn into my palms.

Before I knew Wyn, I could have been okay without him. Now I’ll always feel the place he isn’t.

Want is a kind of thief. It’s a door in your heart, and once you know it’s there, you’ll spend your life longing for whatever’s behind it.

He knots his hands with mine, telling me he loves me in every way he can.

Only once I’m half asleep, drifting off with my temple pressed to his chest, do I hear him whisper it one last time: “I love you.”

Through the gauzy layers of sleep, I hear myself murmur, “You.”





37





REAL LIFE

Sunday


I WAKE BEFORE my alarm and turn it off before it makes a peep. Wyn is fast asleep, naked and beautiful in the deep blue of early morning.

He would want me to wake him.

But I can’t stand for our last moment together to be a goodbye. I want to remember him like this, while he’s still mine and I’m his.

I finish packing quietly and tiptoe downstairs.

Cleo and Sabrina are already sipping tea and coffee, respectively, in the kitchen. “I told you I could take a cab to the airport,” I whisper, joining them as Sabrina fills a mug for me.

“No way,” she says, “are your last few minutes in Knott’s Harbor going to be with a stranger.”

“Actually,” I say, “my last few minutes in Knott’s Harbor will be spent with Ray.”

“All the more reason to give you a ride. These could be the last minutes of your life, period,” Sabrina says.

Cleo spits a mouthful of tea into her mug. “Sabrina.”

“Kidding!” she says. “Is Wyn coming?”

“I let him sleep,” I say.

She and Cleo exchange a look.

“I know,” I say, heading them off. “But it’s what I need.”

Sabrina slings an arm over my shoulder. “Then that’s what you get, my girl.”

We drive to the airport in the Rover, and Sabrina and Cleo insist on parking and walking me inside. We linger by the security gate for a while—we’re way too early for an airport this tiny—but I can’t stand long goodbyes. Every second gets harder.

I make it through our tight group hug without crying. I keep my stiff upper lip as we take turns promising we’ll see each other soon. And when Sabrina reminds me that there’s room on her couch in New York anytime.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to San Francisco, and when I came clean with them about how I’d been feeling at work, they’d both been adamant that they couldn’t tell me what to do either. I need to figure out what I want.

As if reading my mind, Cleo touches my elbow and says, “There’s no wrong answer.”