One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  I move slightly, inviting him.

  And then I am lost.

  I am no longer anyone but the Emma that loves Jesse Lerner, the Emma I’ve been for so much of my life.

  And when we are moving together, breathing together, aching together, I hear him whisper, “Emma.”

  And I whisper back, “Jesse.”

  We are lying in bed.

  We are naked.

  We are tangled in sheets, covered in sweat.

  We lie in each other’s arms and I am reminded of all of the other times we lay next to each other, catching our breath side by side, limbs intertwined. We learned how to do this together, explored ourselves with each other. We loved and desired each other when we were bad at it, and we grew good at it together, in tandem.

  Now, we are great at it. The best we have ever been. Even though we are done, I roll over to Jesse and we begin once more.

  He reciprocates easily, pressing into me and moaning.

  His breath has gone sour. His hair smells dirty. It is my favorite form of him.

  “Again,” he says. It is neither a question nor a command. Rather a simple fact, observed. We will do this again. We have to be closer again. Here we are again.

  And this time, the passion is no longer akin to a house burning down, but instead feels like a steady burning flame, hot and warm.

  Neither of us is in a rush. Neither of us could rush even if we wanted to.

  We are slow and we are purposeful.

  More than anything, I relish the feel of his skin against mine, the feeling of our chests touching ever so briefly before pulling away again.

  Right now, in this moment, I am stunned that I am even capable of having sex with anyone else. That the world wouldn’t—didn’t—stop me. Before I lost him, sex always seemed like something we invented together. Now that he’s back, now that he’s again here with me, I wonder how I ever went crazy enough to think it could be this good with anyone else.

  What I am feeling, what we are doing, is sending signals all throughout my body, like a shot of caffeine, the rush of sugar, the burn of liquor. I can feel my brain rewiring.

  This is what I want.

  This is what I’ve always wanted.

  I will always want this.

  We fall asleep sometime around six in the morning, just as the sun is waking up the rest of the world.

  I wake up to the creak of the front door closing and the thud of two shoes hitting the interior floor. I open my hungover eyes to find that there is no one in bed beside me.

  I slowly roll out of the sheets, find my underwear, and slip it on along with Jesse’s shirt from yesterday. I head down the stairs as I start to smell coffee.

  “There she is,” Jesse says from the kitchen. He walks closer and grabs me, lifting me up. I wrap my legs around him. I kiss him. He tastes like mint and it reminds me just how awful my morning breath is. I look at the clock on the microwave. It’s almost two p.m. Afternoon breath, I guess.

  I haven’t slept this late since we were in college. I wasn’t hammered last night, but ever since the age of twenty-nine or so, my body can’t shrug off a drink like it used to.

  I pull away from Jesse and he puts me down.

  “I should probably brush my teeth,” I say.

  “You noticed that, too, huh?” Jesse says, teasing me.

  “Hey!”

  I lightly hit him on the torso and find myself wondering if I’ve hit the scar that runs down his body, wondering if it’s sensitive, if I’ve hurt him. I want to know what those scars are. I want to know if his teeth are OK after years without dental care or whether he’s suffering from vitamin deficiencies. And then, of course, there’s his finger.

  I also know that I can’t ask. I promised not to ask.

  But he has to talk about it eventually. If not with me, then with someone else. I know that he is pretending to be OK, but no one would be OK after what he’s been through. He can’t pretend forever.

  “I’m kidding,” he says soothingly. “I have waited years to smell your morning breath. Everything about you, morning breath, stray hairs . . . I love it all.”

  When he disappeared, I kept his hairbrush for months. I didn’t want to throw away something that had any of him on it.

  “I love you, Emma,” he says. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

  “I love you, too,” I say.

  Jesse smiles. Toast pops out of the toaster with a swish and a ding.

  “All right,” Jesse says. “Coffee, orange juice, toast and jam, and I got us microwaveable bacon. I will be honest, this stuns me. Microwaveable bacon. Am I crazy or did they not have that a few years ago?”

  I laugh as I move into the kitchen. “I think it’s relatively new, yeah.”

  “I thought so. OK, sit down at the counter and I’ll make you a plate.”

  “Wow,” I say, impressed.

  I sit down as I watch Jesse move around the small kitchen as if his life depends on it. He pours two glasses of orange juice. He pulls the toast out of the toaster. He gets the strawberry jam and searches for a knife. And then he opens the bacon and puts it on a plate and into the microwave.

  “Are you ready for this? Apparently, this is going to be perfectly crisp bacon in a matter of seconds.”

  “I’m ready,” I say. “Dazzle me.”

  Jesse laughs and then grabs two mugs for coffee. He pours the coffee and hands it to me. I take a sip just as the microwave beeps.

  Jesse moves around the kitchen and then he’s right next to me, putting two full plates of food on the counter, complete with perfectly crisp bacon.

  He sits down and puts his hand on my bare leg. There was once a time when I wasn’t sure where I ended and Jesse began. When we were so intertwined, so very much one being in two bodies, that my nerve endings barely lit up when he touched me.

  Now is not that time.

  Instead, my skin warms underneath his touch. His hand absently moves just slightly higher up my thigh and it gets hotter, brighter. And then he takes it back to eat his toast.

  “Breakfast for lunch,” I say. “Very charming.”

  “What can I say? I’m a charming guy. I also, while I was out, got you a twelve-pack of Diet Coke because I know Emma Lerner, and Emma Lerner needs a steady supply of Diet Coke in the house.”

  My name is not Emma Lerner and I don’t drink Diet Coke anymore and I’m not sure how to respond to any of it, so I don’t.

  “What else did you get?” I ask him.

  “Actually, not much else,” he says. “I figured we could go into town for dinner.”

  “Oh, awesome,” I say. “That sounds great.”

  “I’m thinking me, you, a bottle of wine, maybe lobster.” I look at him, surprised. “We are in Maine,” he adds, explaining himself.

  “I didn’t know that you ate shellfish,” I say. But the minute I say it, I realize how stupid that is to say.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Lobster will be good.”

  “Well, then, great. Maine lobsters and wine it is. And what’s on the docket for this afternoon?”

  “Anything you want,” Jesse says, finishing the last of the toast and giving me the rest of his bacon. I greedily chomp it down. I want even more than what’s on my plate.

  “Anything?” I say.

  “Anything.”

  It’s been such a long time since I had a day where I could do anything. “What about a walk to the lighthouse?” I say.

  Jesse nods. “That’s a great idea. I mean, it’s really cold outside, but assuming we can stand it . . .”

  I laugh. “We’ll bundle up,” I tell him. “It will be great.”

  “I’m in,” he says. “Let’s go.”

  I grab his hand and pull him upstairs. I put on thick pants and a sweater. I grab my coat and a scarf. Jesse already has on jeans and a shirt but I insist he wear something warmer. I look through the closets for an old sweatshirt. I find a sweater in the back of the closet in the master b
edroom. It’s cream and hunter green with a reindeer on it. It obviously once belonged to his dad.

  “Here,” I say as I hand it to him.

  He takes it from me and looks at it. He brings it up to his nose. “I am not kidding when I say this smells like mothballs and death.”

  I laugh. “Just put it on! Otherwise, you’ll just have a jacket and a T-shirt.”

  He begrudgingly lifts it up over his head and pulls it down around his chest. When it’s fitted on him, he claps his hands together. “To the lighthouse!”

  We head out onto the front porch, wrapped tightly in our coats, scarves, and boots. It is even colder than I was expecting. The air is whipping against my ears. I can feel it sharply in the vulnerable spots between my scarf and my neck. It is one of the only things I miss about having long hair. In the summer, you feel nice and cool. But in moments like this, you’re exposed.

  “Onward?” Jesse asks.

  “Onward,” I say.

  Jesse and I talk about his family. We talk about college, about high school, about our months in Europe, our honeymoon in India. I feel like my old self with him, the carefree version of me that died when I thought he did. But it would be a lie to say that I am so entranced with our conversation that I forget the cold. The cold is impossible to forget.

  We can see it as our breath hits the air. We can feel it in our bones. Our lips feel cracked, our cheeks blistered, our shoulders are hunched around our necks.

  We huddle close to warm each other. We hold hands inside the warmth of Jesse’s coat pocket. We find a spot in the sun and we stand in it, letting the subtle heat save us.

  “Come here,” Jesse says, even though I am already right next to him. He takes me closer, pulling me into his chest. He rubs my back and shoulders, runs his hands up and down my arms, trying to warm me up.

  It occurs to me that my memory of him was a poor substitute for the real thing.

  They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings. Over the past years without him, my memories of Jesse have become a copy of a copy of a copy. Without meaning to, I have highlighted the parts of him that stood out to me, and the rest have faded away.

  In the copy of a copy, what stood out to me about him was how much I loved him. What faded into the background was how much he loved me.

  But I remember it now, how it feels to be the recipient of this much love, this type of dedication.

  I wonder what stood out to him when he remembered me. I wonder what faded to gray.

  “All right,” Jesse says. “We can’t stand right here in the sun forever. I say we start running to the lighthouse, to warm up.”

  “OK,” I say. “You got it.”

  “On the count of three.”

  “One . . . two . . .”

  “Three!”

  He takes off like a cheetah. I pump my legs as fast as I can to keep up.

  As I run, the wind grows worse on my face but soon I start to heat up in my chest, in my arms, in my legs.

  Jesse turns his head back and checks in on me as we’re running. And then we come around the bend.

  Even though it’s still a bit in the distance, the lighthouse and the ocean are in plain view. The stark white of the tower against the dark blue-gray of the water is just as beautiful today as it was when we were married here. Back when I still believed that love was simple, that marriage was forever, that the world was safe to live in.

  Can we start again, from this very spot?

  “I’ll race you to the fence,” I say, even though I know that I have no shot of winning.

  Jesse gets to the fence and turns around, claiming his victory. I slow down, giving up once I’ve lost. I walk toward him.

  As I gulp the cold air into my lungs, it cuts like a knife. I take it slower; I calm my body down. There is a faint line of sweat on my skin, but it cools down and disappears in an instant.

  “You won,” I say as I stand next to Jesse and put my head on his shoulder. He puts his arm around me.

  We stand next to the lighthouse, catching our breath, looking out onto the rocky ocean. That’s the thing about Maine. The water splashes onto rocks more than sand, onto the side of cliffs more than beaches.

  I can’t imagine living for years on rocks and sand, using an inflatable raft as shade from the sun. There is no way that Jesse can be adjusting as simply as he’s presenting.

  I want to believe him. I want, so badly, to believe that he is this OK. I mean, I have to let him do this all at his own pace, don’t I?

  It’s just so nice to think that things can be as beautiful as they once were.

  “That was the happiest day of my life,” Jesse says. “Here with everyone, marrying you.”

  “Mine, too,” I say.

  Jesse looks at me and smiles. “You look so cold you might shatter.”

  “I’m pretty freezing,” I say. “Should we head back?”

  Jesse nods. “In sixty seconds.”

  “OK,” I say. “Sixty seconds. Fifty-nine . . . fifty-eight . . .”

  But then I stop counting. I just enjoy the view and the company, a sight I never thought I’d see again with a man I thought I’d lost.

  Candles on the table. Pinot Gris in our glasses. Warm bread that I’ve managed to crumb all over the cream-colored tablecloth.

  And one small, very expensive lobster on the table. Because December is not exactly the high season.

  “What are we doing?” Jesse says to me. He’s sitting across the table, wearing a long-sleeve black shirt and gray chinos. I’m in a red sweater and black jeans. Neither one of us brought nice enough clothes to dine here. The maître d’ was clearly hesitant to even seat us.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It seemed like a nice idea, but I just think . . .”

  Jesse stands up and puts his napkin on the table. “C’mon,” he says.

  “Now?” I’m standing up.

  I watch as Jesse pulls out a few bills from his pocket, counts out a reasonable figure, and puts it on the table, nestled under his glass. He doesn’t have credit cards or a bank account or any sort of identification. I bet Francine gave him cash and told him she’d take care of getting him everything he needed.

  “Yeah,” Jesse says. “Now. Life is too short to be sitting in some restaurant drinking wine we don’t care for, eating a lobster we don’t like.”

  That is absolutely true.

  We run to the car and I hop in the passenger seat, quickly shutting the door behind me. I rub my hands together. I stomp my feet. None of it warms me up.

  “The wind is nuts out there!” Jesse says as he starts the car. I have offered to drive every time I’ve been in the car with him and he keeps turning me down.

  “I’m still hungry,” I say to him.

  “And the night is young.”

  “Should we head down to the Italian place and grab some subs or a salad to go?”

  Jesse nods and heads out of the parking lot. “Sounds good.”

  The roads are dark and winding and you can tell by the way the trees sway that the wind isn’t letting up. Jesse slowly pulls into the makeshift parking lot of the restaurant. He parks and turns off the ignition, leaving the heat on.

  “You stay here,” he says. “I’ll be back soon.” He’s out the door before I have time to respond.

  In the quiet dark of the car, I have a moment to myself.

  I use it to check my phone.

  Work e-mails. Coupons. Texts from Marie and Olive asking how I’m doing. I open up a few of the work e-mails and find myself overwhelmed by one from Tina.

  Dear Colin, Ashley, and Emma,

  It is with a heavy heart that I have to render my resignation. My husband and I have decided to sell our home and buy a condo outside of Central Square.

  Unfortunately, this means I will be leaving Blair Books. Of course, I can stay on board for the s
tandard two weeks.

  Thank you so much for the opportunity to work at your wonderful store. It has meant a lot to me.

  Sincerely,

  Tina

  There were assistant managers before Tina and I always knew there would be assistant managers after her. But I’m having a hard time imagining it all running smoothly when she leaves. My parents are also taking a step back in the coming months and that means that everything really will rest on me—and only me—in the future. On any other day, I think I’d probably have some perspective on this, but for right now, all I can do is ignore it. I archive the e-mail and am taken to the next message in my in-box. I quickly realize it is from my wedding venue.

  Dear Ms. Blair,

  Our records indicate that you have inquired about the cancellation fee for your event scheduled for October nineteenth of next year. As discussed in your initial consultation, we reserve the right to hold the entire deposit.

  However, as we also discussed at the time, that weekend is a popular one. Seeing as how a number of couples have expressed interest in your date, our owner has agreed to release half of your deposit if you cancel before the end of the month.

  I hope this answers your question.

  Sincerely,

  Dawn

  I didn’t contact Dawn. Which means there’s only one explanation.

  Sam’s really prepared to leave me.

  I’m truly on the verge of losing him.

  This isn’t how my life is meant to go. This isn’t what my inbox is meant to look like.

  I am supposed to have love notes. I am supposed to have cat pictures and e-mails about caterers and invitations.

  Not messages from the Carriage House telling me that my fiancé is a few clicks away from canceling our wedding, that I could lose him, lose a wonderful man, because of my own confusion, my own conflicted heart.

  What am I doing here in Maine?

  Have I lost my goddamn mind?

  I am suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to get in the driver’s seat and drive home to Sam right now. But if I did, if I went back to him right now, could I honestly say that I wouldn’t think about Jesse anymore?

  If I go home to Sam, it needs to be with the confidence that I will never leave him. I owe him that much. I mean, I owe him everything. But taking him seriously and not toying with him is the absolute least I can do. And I’m aware that even then it might not be enough.