by Paul Hina
but a fantasy now."
"You've never thought about it?"
"Of course I have."
"And?"
"I'd like to think we would've been happy. We were happy, I think."
"I was."
"Me too," she says, smiling, letting the nostalgia wash over her—a state not unfamiliar to her. "But we were so young. It's easier to be happy when you're young."
"Man, Annie, you need to get some perspective on your age. You talk like you're in your sixties. Is this what happens to someone once they're married and settled in one place?"
"And what would I have been if we were married?"
"Happy."
"Who says I'm not happy now?"
"Well, I won't speak for you, but I know I've never been as happy as I was when I was with you. And, frankly, my time with you has ruined me for other women."
"What do you expect me to say to that? Would you like me to say that I've been ruined too?"
"Misery does love company."
"Right, well, maybe we did ruin each other a bit."
"But at least we knew love, felt that kind of intense connection to someone."
"Yeah, it was pretty wonderful, wasn't it."
"You think it was all worth it in the end?"
"I don't know. I'd like to think so."
"But do you think it's made it more difficult for you to be happy now."
"Maybe, but happiness is a strange concept in that way. We seem to define it purely on our own terms, and it means something different to everyone. Our ideas of happiness completely depend on our expectations and our histories."
"So you're saying that we're only as happy as what's reflected from our pasts?"
"That, and the expectations that we've set for ourselves based on the past, or some fantasy that we've built… You know what? We shouldn't even be talking about this."
"Why?"
"Because it's not good."
"Not good for who?"
"For us. For Eric."
"I thought I was just talking to you. To Annie," he says, and turns to her. "My Annie."
She feels a shock go through her as he says this. He used to say it to her all the time—in quiet moments—and sometimes, when she chases her memory back to those days, she can still hear him say it. But now…
"I'm not your Annie anymore."
"Not to me. You'll always be my Annie."
"Max. Don't. You're being provocative."
"I'm not being anything. We're just talking. There's no ulterior motive here. I have no expectations," he says, trying to make the words sound as believable as possible.
"Good," Annie says. She tries to steady her unsteady hands by taking another drink of wine. She can feel the warmth of his closeness against her bare arm, and she can't help but wonder what it would be like to feel him closer, what it would be like to feel his embrace. Just the thought of it brings tears to her eyes. She tries to suppress the rising emotion, tries to push it down.
"So, you happy now?" he asks. "Not just with Eric, but, more broadly, with life in general?"
"Sometimes," she says.
"That's about as much as anyone can hope for, I suppose."
"Yeah, probably," she says. But she can't help but detect some sadness in her own voice. "What about you?"
"What? Am I happy?"
"Yeah."
"Sometimes. When I'm not dwelling on the past and everything feels… I don't know… Zen, I suppose. When I'm free of thought and the world is just floating by, that's when it'll occur to me that I'm happy, or that I've been feeling something akin to happiness. But then I'll remember that I'm not with you, and—"
"Max, you can't—"
"And that you're with my brother."
"We can't continue living in the past."
"So, you've been living there too, huh?"
Annie looks away, peers straight ahead, doesn't answer him.
"Not a day goes by—not one—when I don't regret what I gave up the day I gave up on Boston," he says.
"How long did it take you to figure that out?"
"I never didn't know."
"Then why'd you go?"
"Because I needed you to be certain," he says, and he's staring at her. He places his hand near her hand, allows them to touch just enough to feel the electricity, to embrace the tension between them.
She moves her hand away—not too far.
"Why weren't you certain?" he asks.
"You can be certain of love and still be unsure about the future. The two can be mutually exclusive."
"I don't think so. I believe that when you love someone you necessarily see your future with them in it, no matter what."
"I did want you to be my future, but I didn't want my future to be lived on your terms. I was afraid that where you were going wasn't where I wanted to be."
"What's that mean?"
"I knew you were applying to graduate schools, schools exclusively on the west coast, and I didn't want you to assume that I'd just follow you around. I wasn't sure where I wanted to end up, but I knew I didn't want my future decided by the location you chose for us. I had no interest in being another woman who followed her man around. That wasn't me. I wanted to have some control over my own path."
"Who ever said you couldn't have control? We could've talked about all of this then."
"Right, just like the long conversations we had after I told you I was going to Berklee, or when I hesitated to say yes when you proposed."
"That's different. Talking about our plans for the future could've been done casually, without hurt feelings. Not answering when your lover asks you to marry him is anything but casual. It's seminal, and you ruined it. You silenced the moment."
"And for my silence you decided to silence our voice altogether."
"That may be true, and maybe I acted—"
"Why are we rehashing this? Is this going to make us feel better about the past? Because it's certainly not going to change anything now."
"You're right."
They sit in the quiet for a minute. And you can almost hear the jazz in the background over the buzz that hovers between them. There are so many things to say, and yet there are so many fears about exposing too much—too much love, too much vulnerability.
"What about the girl that came on this trip with you? What's her name?"
"Stacy."
"Right. What's going on with her?"
"I don't know. She's just a kid, really."
"What's that mean? How old?"
"Twenty-four."
"Oh, she's not a kid. She's not that much younger than you."
"In years, maybe. But she's not the brightest girl I've ever been with."
"But she's pretty."
"She's very pretty, yes."
"Of course she is," Annie says, and her attempts at good humor toward this girl are quickly turning to jealousy. "And you're flying to meet her tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"Ohio. I'm meeting her parents."
"Christmas with her parents? And just after she's met your parents? Sounds serious."
"I suppose it does."
"Is it?"
"In as much as we're together and not seeing anyone else."
"But?"
"But I'll never love her the way she expects me to love her."
"How do you know?"
"You can tell these things pretty early on, don't you think?"
"Yeah, probably."
"See, you set the bar too high."
"Sorry," she says, and moves her hand on top of his hand.
Max can't tell if this touch is a consoling touch or an act of desire, but he has a sudden impulse to kiss her. It flashes over his body like a reflex. And his love for her, in that moment, is so full and so strong that he can hardly imagine being away from her ever again.
But he knows that's exactly what he'll have to be—away from her.
"You know, if you had ended up with someone other than my brother, I c
ould've come here tonight, and we could've left together. Never looked back."
"Yeah, but who says I—?"
"And I could've kissed you just now."
"Max, we shouldn't…"
"I wanted to, you know. Just now."
"You did?"
"I did. I wanted to."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Why?"
"Because I wouldn't have been able to stop you," she says, tired of pretending that the feelings she's feeling, the desires that are dancing across her skin, don't exist.
"So we both just go through the rest of our lives trying to forget that we love each other?"
"Yeah, well, we've been doing a real bang-up job of it all these years," she says, sarcastically.
"But we've fooled the rest of them."
"I suppose we have."
"And this is our cross to bear?" he asks.
"There are worse crosses to bear."
"I suppose, but this one feels pretty terrible at the moment—sitting next to you, being this close to you."
"At least we're close," she says. "I can't tell you how much I've wanted to see you, how often I've dreamed of seeing your face again. Sometimes I would imagine that time had stopped for us, and that whenever me met again, you'd look exactly the same as I remembered."
"And? Am I the same?"
"You've grown. Your face has matured," she says, looking into his eyes.
"Before I came tonight, I was trying to prepare myself for how I would react when I saw you. But, when you walked out from the kitchen, I fell apart inside. My only hope was that I was at least appearing to keep it together."
"Max, stop."
"You don't know how many times I've wanted to call, how many times I've wanted to come back here to steal you away from him."
"Really?"
"And I did fly back once. Right before your wedding."
"What?"
"I did. I flew in, got a rental car, and psyched myself up for a whole dramatic scene. I had a big speech all prepared. I was ready to tell you how he'd never love you like I loved you, and how you'd never know the happiness that we could've known if you stayed with him, and that if you didn't leave him right then than you'd always wonder about us. But I couldn't do it. I made it