Love Nouveau

by Berry, B. L.

  “Nothing, actually. I think I’m just going to lounge around and watch eighties movies.” With any luck, Jake Ryan or Lloyd Dobler will show up at my house and save me from my family. Johnny Castle was a welcomed distraction already, though I found my mind drifting off to Phoenix and the memory of doing our own dirty dance throughout most of the film.

  “Well … I’ve got an idea. But it would require you leaving the house and actually putting clothes on.”

  “I’m listening,” I say, encouraging him to continue.

  “Can you be ready in an hour? I need you to go somewhere for me.”

  What the heck? Am I running errands on his behalf like a personal secretary? Could he be more vague?

  “Oookay?”

  “Go get dressed. I’ll text you the location in a minute. Do you think you can be there in an hour?”

  I want to put up a fight and be lazy, but his boyish charm and excitement win out. “As long as it’s not across town, sure.”

  “Perfect. I don’t think it’s very far from you. I’ll call you in an hour.”

  I’m intrigued by the prospect of this mystery location and what’s in store for me today. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he were there waiting for me? I quickly shut down that thought, knowing he needs to be in St. Louis this week to complete his plans for the prospective client.

  By the time I’m done pulling my hair up into a loose ponytail and changing into my favorite yoga pants and a well-loved, Depeche Mode shirt, my phone chimes, notifying me that I have a text message.

  Rather than sending me an address, Phoenix has texted me directions to follow to my destination. I instantly recognize the place he’s referencing as it is walking distance from my parent’s house. Tossing on a baseball cap, I grab my keys and my phone and head out the door toward Lake Michigan.

  It is truly a magnificent day. It makes me wonder why I’m so content spending so much time inside. The sidewalks are crowded with families enjoying the sunshine as cyclists and runners weave in and out of the crowds. I follow the lakefront running trail south toward Castaways, a beachfront bar and grill designed to look like a beached cruise ship. On beautiful days, like today, it turns into a meat market for all of the local trixies.

  His directions take me right along the lake to a remote section of land that juts out from the main shoreline on the backside of the restaurant. For being so out in the open, it sure is secluded.

  I check the time and sit down on the ground, listening to the sounds of the waves and distant laughter while I wait for Phoenix to call. I extend my arm and take a quick photo of myself with the lake in the background and send it off to Phoenix so he knows I'm here.

  Minutes later, “Everlong” fills the air and my heart skips a beat. I quickly answer.

  “This spot is beautiful!” I melt into the phone. I’m thankful that no one is around because I am certain I sound like an overeager goofball.

  “It looks like you found the place easily. I’m glad you got there,” he says, the smile in his voice evident.

  I look out over Lake Michigan and watch a sailboat, full mast, dipping with the waves in the wind. It reminds me of Monet’s Sailboat series and the serenity it brings. I want to reach out and place this image, this moment in a frame.

  “So why on Earth did you have me come here?”

  “Do you remember what you told me the night we first met?”

  We talked about a lot of things that night. I rake through my mind and don’t recall mentioning Lake Michigan at all.

  “No, but in fairness we talked about a lot of things and there was a good amount of alcohol involved. So while some things are foggy, I definitely remember meeting one of the hottest, sweetest guys I’ve ever known.” I bite my lip, figuring a little flattery will do him some good.

  “Well, the night we first met, you told me that the Gateway Arch is your favorite place to be in St. Louis. So that’s where I’m calling you from. And right now, you’re sitting in my absolute favorite place in all of Chicago. So rather than call each other from the confines of our own homes, I thought this afternoon we could share our favorite places with each other while we talk.”

  My heart sighs in delight. This boy. He does things to me I never imagined possible. He makes me feel emotions that I’ve fought to shut out for years. It’s almost too much.

  I’m rendered speechless as I listen to him softly breathing into the phone, his breaths falling into the pace of the soft lake waves. It’s calming and rhythmic. A soft smile plays at my lips as I realize that this moment by myself, with him on the line, is the epitome of perfection. Or about as close as perfection can get without him physically here with me.

  “Thank you,” I finally muster in a whisper at his thoughtful gesture. Even though we’re hundreds of miles apart, he has found a way to connect us on a deeper level. I have no idea what I’ve done to be deserving of such a wonderful man, but I want to claim him as mine.

  “The landing today is stunningly beautiful, Ivy. I can’t believe I’ve never actually been down here before. It’s not nearly as touristy as I thought it would be, although you couldn’t pay me to go up in that thing,” he says, suppressing a nervous laugh. I would never have guessed he was afraid of heights.

  “The arch towers to insurmountable heights and there is a blinding reflection at the top where the steel begins to curve back down toward the Earth…”

  I close my eyes and listen to him describe his surroundings to me in great detail, my imagination becoming his canvas. I can feel the height of the arch above me, soaring up and over and down. I can see the family attempting to fly the kite on the windless day, with little success. And I can almost smell the flowering bushes along the path in the park at the foot of the arch. But when he tells me about the elderly couple sitting hand in hand on a nearby bench, I smile. And I can hear the smile in his voice too.

  “They have to be eighty years young,” he says. “And after all this time they are still so in love.”

  I smile thinking back to Delilah’s bench in Madison and I suddenly feel overwhelmed with emotion. We both release a quiet sigh at the same time.

  We’re fortunate to be sharing the same blazing sun, with nary a cloud in the sky. I imagine Phoenix sitting in the shade of a large oak tree, shoes off, digging his feet in the soft, damp grass. What I would give to be sitting there beside him.

  “Tell me about the lake. What do you see?” he asks.

  I look out across the lake and admire its vast beauty. It’s hard to believe that living here for two decades I’ve never come out to these break walls. It’s so close to my parents’ home and such a welcomed escape. As I look into the green waters, I suddenly feel as if I am in a gallery, looking at a painting. Not examining it objectively, but focusing on how this moment, like artwork, makes me feel.

  Sitting here on the edge of the city, it’s like I’m sitting on the edge of the Earth with my feet dangling off the side. I feel small and insignificant. Not in a bad way, though.

  I notice that no matter what, the water always returns with each and every delicate wave. Even after being repeatedly pushed away from the shoreline, the water always comes back, beating its rocky edges, smoothing them out, wearing them down over time. It’s kind of romantic—after an infinite number of rejections, the water doesn’t give up. Nature wills it to return. Beyond its control, it just keeps coming back. It’s a bit like love.

  My eyes focus on a small stone a few feet away from me. I crawl over and reach out to pick it up, feeling the smoothness of its sides between my fingers. While on my hands and knees, I catch a glimpse of myself in the water’s surface. I look completely different, happy even.

  “I … I see the work of persistence. Forces beyond our control breaking down the sharp edges, making the hard lines soft.”

  I realize this wasn’t the response he was anticipating, and that he has no idea that I’m holding the result of innumerable years of work by Mother Nature in my hand. That I’m looking at myself in an en
tirely different light due to the intangible work of Cupid’s arrow. My eyes examine the stone more closely and I can’t help but realize how perfectly insignificant it is, how insignificant I am.

  How can something so incomprehensibly great have such a profound impact on something so insignificant?

  We both fall silent and our breathing falls into pace with one another.

  It amazes me that this spot exists right in the heart of the downtown bustle. It’s so calming and peaceful and humbling. It’s not a place that you would think to come to either and it makes me wonder how Phoenix stumbled upon it.

  “How did you discover this place? I grew up less than a mile from here and never once followed this path out this way.” I close my eyes and lie down against a large rock, listening to the waves gently lap up against the break wall and feel the cool air slowly warm as the sun spills over the horizon.

  “It had to have been three or four years ago. I was in Chicago for the weekend with …Annie, my girlfriend at the time.” There is an uneasiness to his voice when he mentions her name, and I realize this is the first time since our date in Madison that he’s talking about his past. “I was training for a marathon and—”

  “Wait, what? You run marathons?” This comes as a surprise. I know he frequently runs, but it seems a bit silly to run a stupidly far distance for fun. Maybe he is insane.

  He softly laughs. “No, I don’t run marathons, Ivy. I was training to run the Chicago Marathon, but ended up getting injured during a long run and never made it to the starting line.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” I don't know why I’m apologizing, but I imagine having a lofty goal and falling short is nothing short of frustrating. Or heartbreaking. Both, really.

  “Anyway, I was out one morning for a long run along the lakefront path. The sun was just coming up over the horizon and the sky was simply electric. It was my first and only time I have ever witnessed a sunrise. And it was breathtakingly beautiful—a kaleidoscope of blinding light in shades of gold, fiery orange, and magenta. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was also the moment I decided to break up with Annie.

  “That sunrise was so exquisite it begged to be shared with someone. But I didn’t want her to know about it. She just wouldn’t have appreciated it. So I kept it a secret. It wasn’t worthy of being shared with her. A lot of moments weren’t worthy of being shared with her, but I was too blind and too comfortable to do anything about it. It took some time, but I finally realized during that run that staying with Annie for as long as I did meant I was sitting idly and not spending time with my soul mate. Sitting on the curve of that breaking wall, I realized that by staying with her I was doing a disservice not only to myself, but also with the woman I was meant to be with and share sunrises with…” His voice trails off in a reflective moment before he adds, “you.”

  The gravity of his words hit me like a freight train, fast and overwhelmingly powerful. Our connection is unmatched. I never imagined anyone could genuinely feel this way about me. Heck, I never imagined I could genuinely feel this way about anyone else. Or genuinely feel, period.

  I have no words for him. Just feelings. And I know we need to talk about the implications of what he just confessed, but I don’t know where to even begin. Even at this distance, even with only knowing him for such a short period of time, my heart is tethered to his. He believes he’s meant to be with me, and I want to believe that he is right. I want to believe that this emotion we share is strong enough to overcome the odds. That together we can prove that distance is no match for us.

  That sometimes people are just meant to be together.

  THE REST OF THE WEEK passes in a blur as I’m kept busy helping Genevieve complete all of the final wedding preparations. And by helping I really mean doing her bitch work. It is exhausting. I address envelopes for her thank you cards from her bridal shower. We go to Bloomingdale’s four times to add more items to their wedding registry. And we even have her makeup trial done three times, because we left the first two appointments wearing the wrong shade of champagne eye shadow. In case you are wondering, champagne comes in thirty billion shades.

  If I ever get married, I’m just going to elope because all of this fanfare doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Genevieve is so focused on her wedding day that she’s forgetting it’s the years that come after that are the most important.

  It’s nearing midnight and Phoenix hasn’t seemed himself all night. He wasn’t playful in his texts throughout the day and now there is a sadness looming in his voice that I just can’t decipher. My mind grazes over the past hour, thinking back to anything I might have said that could have rubbed him the wrong way. I felt like I’ve carried most of the conversation, and on the whole tonight’s call has felt a bit … strained.

  Maybe he’s pulling away from me because he knows that there is no way for us to be together. An ‘us’ is simply not in the cards given our very different futures and the physical distance between us. I wouldn’t blame him. It’s already going to be so hard to end whatever this is that we have when the time comes.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Phoenix? You just seem so sad tonight,” I ask with a frown. I don’t want to push him to talk, but something is clearly weighing on his mind and it’s going to chew at my insides until I know what it is. When he hurts, I hurt.

  The whoosh of his lungs as he exhales is startling. “No, I’m not okay. I’m not sure what I am right now.”

  Shit. This is it. This is the part where he tells me we can’t be together. But truthfully, I’m so thankful for the little time we shared. I no longer believe in coincidence. Rather, I believe in my instinct. Trusting myself to follow what I’m drawn to. I have faith that my intuition will not steer me in the wrong direction, but instead, guide me to the exact place I need to be at just the right moment in time. I refuse to regret opening myself up to him, and I brace myself for the blow that inevitably is going to come as I wait for him to continue.

  “I got a voicemail from my Uncle Tom while I was in the shower this morning.”

  And exhale.

  That’s certainly not what I was expecting. And Uncle Tom? That’s not a name I’ve heard before. Then again, he’s never really talked about his family. From what I’ve gathered, his father is estranged and he’s an only child, which really leaves him with no one of importance in his life. Except for maybe me. I nervously chew on the tip of my thumb and listen intently.

  “That's my dad’s brother,” he says with a heavy sigh. “He called … he called to tell me that my dad is sick.”

  Oh, no. Even through their relationship is strained, I can’t begin to imagine how much this must hurt. Now, more than ever, I want to crawl through the phone and into his lap. I want to be able to reach out and comfort him. Damn this distance.

  “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry, Phoenix.” There are no apologies I can offer to help ease his weary mind, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. “Have you tried calling him?” I ask, my voice thick with sincerity.

  “My dad? No,” he says sharply, and in the silence on the line, I swear I hear him whisper, “I’m scared.

  “I did call my uncle back though…” His voice trails off and I hope the silence will encourage him to open up. “He has an aggressive case of non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” he continues after a few minutes of silence. “It sounds like they didn’t catch it early enough, so even with treatment his prognosis isn’t good.”

  I feel the air get sucked from my lungs and my heart physically aches for him.

  “I’ve spent the past few weeks avoiding phone calls from my dad,” he confesses. “He has reached out at least once a day since the end of April. I’ve sent each and every one of those phone calls to voicemail and never once checked his messages.”

  “Maybe you should call him back?” I suggest gently. “I’m sure he would find comfort in talking to his only son.”

  “No! I’m far too angry,” he clips. His voice is steel and I know there is no changing
his mind. At least not today. “I just thought I would feel different. I’ve always thought that he was the one who should have died. He should have been in that car wreck, not my mom. So, in a way, this disease is just karmic retribution. But now … him dying isn’t going to bring my mom back. It’s just going to make me an adult orphan. And it pisses me off.”

  He doesn’t have to explain himself—I know exactly what he means. The notion of bad shit happening to good people is something I’ve grappled with most of my life. So when bad shit happens to bad people, you expect it to feel much more satisfying. Except it never does.

  “I’m sorry that I'm being such a downer.”

  “No, you’re not being a downer. You’re just sorting through it all.” I bring my knees up to my chest and wrap my free arm around them, hugging myself tightly. “I wish I were there with you.”

  “Me too,” he says with a sigh. “But I get to see you in what, three weeks?”

  “Less than three.” I’m half tempted to skip Genevieve’s bachelorette party this weekend and head to St. Louis to be with him. He sounds like he could really use a friend right now.

  No.

  Actually, I’d like to believe that he could really use me.

  “I can’t wait. There have been a few times I’ve wanted to just jump in my car and drive up there to see you,” he confesses.

  My heart feels lighter at the thought of him dropping everything to road trip it to Chicago for a visit.

  “Well, you know what they say, good things come to those who wait, but great things come to those who are patient.” Though my patience is wearing thin these days.

  I much prefer instant gratification, and I would do anything to make time move faster so we could be together again, but I know the wait will be worth it.

  Jesus Christ on a cracker, I sound like a walking ad against premarital sex.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” I ask.

  “Sure, Ivy,” he says with a sigh.