by Paul Hina
cross that line, only flirt with it."
"Whose line though? Your's? Rachael's?"
"I don't know where Rachael's line is?"
"I'll bet you crossed it the day you met Joelle."
"Maybe, but if I never sleep with her, and she gives me the lift my life needs, the lift my work needs, then it's worth the risk."
"And if you end up sleeping with her?"
"I won't."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because that's the line I've drawn, and I have no intention of crossing it."
"But, Jacob, I saw her. She's beautiful. When are you going to have another opportunity to sleep with a girl like that. I think you're giving your restraint an enormous amount of credit."
"We'll see, but I don't plan on letting my marriage fall apart just because I've a found a muse, a much needed muse. And I won't let Joelle lose her fiancé over a passing infatuation she might have with me. She'll be graduating in two months and that will be the end of it. And someday I'll tell Rachael all about Joelle, and, I think, having the benefit of the time that will have passed by then, she'll ultimately understand why I needed this."
"You're crazy."
"Hey, If I don't allow myself this, if I suppress this desire, then I might never have an opportunity to pull my work back from the brink. Joelle might save my poetic life."
"Or kill you in the process."
"The sweetest of deaths," Jacob says, taking a drink of his soda.
Jacob can hear Rachael moving around the house, and, even in her more quiet moments, she seems louder through her obvious frustration with him. It hasn't helped that he has spent all his private time hidden away in his office, and today has been no exception. He has spent all afternoon and early evening alone with his thoughts, and some old boxes of writing.
But, even in Rachael's frustration, they have come to an understanding that space is what's needed to get him through this rough patch, or at least she is honoring, albeit grudgingly, his desire for space. And though he is sure she expects him to apologize, an apology will not be forthcoming. He has never been one to apologize to someone for speaking the truth, even when he knows the truth is not what they wanted to hear.
Jacob is fully aware of how cruel his truth must seem to Rachael, but he also knows that the truth often seems cruel when we reveal it to the ones we love. They generally have a perception of our true self, and, more often than not, the truth is incongruous to their perception. She thinks his writing problems speak to some underlying problem in their relationship. He sees the problem as something much more personal, outside of her control.
He knows that there is nothing that Rachael can do at this point to help him find what he's lost over time. If there was something she could do, it would've been done already. This is why he has looked outside their relationship for inspiration. As he sees it, he had no other options. If he wanted to rescue himself from stagnation, he had to find a Joelle. And even if he hadn't found Joelle, he would've been forced to create something resembling her from an amalgam of other girls.
But he does have Joelle, and they're meeting tomorrow. And he has no idea what will happen between them, but, in some ways, he wonders how his actions will be affected by his current state of unease with Rachael. Would his decision to meet with Joelle be made more complicated if he and Rachael were getting along better?
He doubts it. Things are plenty complicated as they are.
Jacob's been going through some old pictures of Melissa tonight. He only has a few. They really didn't know each other long enough to amass photographs. He never thought about taking pictures then. There never seemed to be any reason for preserving memories when he was in college. College was supposed to be just the beginning. It didn't seem like his life had really started yet. He honestly believed that their memories would be built in the months and years ahead.
But of course there were only those few months.
Melissa and Jacob's conversations were growing longer by the day, but they really only had those precious few minutes before class began and those several minutes when they would walk from class before things would get awkward. He would walk with her as long as he could, but she was engaged after all, and she had friends on campus who might want to know about this guy who was walking with her. So, he was always conscious of respecting those social perimeters.
But when they did talk, their conversations were probably a lot like most conversations between two college kids who were trying to impress each other. They were mostly literary dialogues about what they were reading in class and what they were interested in reading outside of class. Several weeks went by before things became more personal. He remembers telling her that he was a poet. When he thinks about it now, it is embarrassing to think that he would've even mentioned it. He wasn't yet a very good poet. But, after that, it wasn't long before she asked if she could read some of his poems. That was the first time that he knew she was interested in knowing him more outside of their casual classroom conversations.
So, he started listening for clues about where she lived on campus, and what classes she was taking. Once he started to learn more about where she would be and when she might be there, he would plan for seemingly accidental meetings to occur between them on campus. And these accidents began to happen more and more as the days passed, and eventually it must have become clear to her that these meetings weren't accidents, but she was always still happy to see him.
He can remember always thinking about the next time they might see each other, the next time he could be near her. He remembers not being able to sleep at night because of the excitement of just knowing she existed in the world, and that he would see her the next day. And he would stay up late planning the next accidental meetings, thinking of the things he might say to her, imagining those excited expressions on her face when she saw him coming near her. He would imagine the sidelong glances, the smiles turned to laughter. He would create dialogues between them, dialogues full of the kind of bravado one can easily conjure during nighttime fantasies, when there is nothing on the line.
And it wasn't long before he started leaving his own clues for her, letting her subtly know that he was going to be at the library around this or that time of the evening. And, though it didn't happen right away, one night she finally showed up.
And just by being there, just by showing up, she put an end to the accidental meetings, essentially letting him know that it was time for them to end the pretending, and to acknowledge this attraction that had been building since the first day he saw her across that crowded classroom. He knew then that he would tell her about all the things he had wanted to say to her, express all the things he had felt but suppressed. He would tell her that he never felt this excited about someone's mere presence before, how his life had become nothing but her, how she filled his days and his thoughts, and how the future, for the first time, seemed to have some meaning. He would tell her that she had lit a path to somewhere he believed he was destined to go.
And he did tell her these things.
And she happily listened to these things.
And, though he was certainly inclined to touch her, to kiss her, they didn't physically react to their mutual attraction that night. It wasn't until the next morning, when she met him without a ring on her finger, that they allowed themselves to really be together.
Sam is staring up at Jacob. It is time for his evening walk.
Jacob had hoped he could make it through the evening without having to encounter Rachael, even if by accident. He just doesn't have the energy to fight with her. Things feel so tense now that he doesn't even want to look at her. Just facing her, having her throw a cold dose of reality at him, pulls him from the fantasy world he has let himself live in these past few days.
He goes downstairs, quietly, and grabs Sam's leash. It is difficult to be quiet with the sound of Sam's excited paws on the hardwood of the stairs. But he clips the leash on Sam's collar and, since it looks like the evening has becom
e cooler under the twilight clouds, he grabs a jacket. He doesn't bother to take the time to tell Rachael that he is taking Sam, as he usually does. She'll probably have heard them leave anyway. And this is how they've been communicating the last few days: by shutting doors, through doors already shut.
Moving off the porch to the sidewalk, he looks over at Joelle and Brad's house. Joelle is standing at one of the front windows looking out at him. He smiles but doubts that she can read his expression in what's left of the early evening light. But seeing her there, standing alone at that window, her slender silhouette like some beautiful beacon, reminds him how lonely the evenings have become for him these past few years.
Even when he and Rachael weren't fighting, even when things are fine between them, they have always accommodated different parts of the house, and their rare conversations are usually isolated to specific times of the day, like dinner and bedtime. The isolation has probably never been healthy for him, but it's hard to see how they change things now. They've gone on too long this way. This is the model they've built for their days. For him to say something now would suggest that he'd always had a problem with this seemingly agreed upon arrangement, and she will suspect that he has always been unhappy with their life together. But, truth be told, when he was working, even