One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Sam breathes in, letting my words flow into his ears and settle in his brain.

  “Do you mean all of this?” he asks me. “It’s not just something you’re saying to be dramatic and wonderful?”

  I shake my head. “No, I’m not trying to be dramatic and wonderful.”

  “I mean, you’ve succeeded in it, for sure.”

  “But I mean it. All of it. Assuming that you can forgive me for being uncertain, for needing to leave, for needing more time with him, to find out what I think I already knew.”

  “I can forgive that,” Sam says. “Of course I can.”

  It’s important to me that he knows what I’ve done, that I face it. “We went to Maine together, alone,” I say.

  I don’t say anything more because I don’t have to.

  Sam shakes his head. “I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know. It’s over. It’s in the past. All that matters is from here on out.”

  I nod my head, desperate to assure him. “I don’t want anyone or anything except you from here on out, forever.”

  He takes it all in, closing his eyes.

  “You’ll be my wife?” he says, smiling wide. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more loved than in this moment, when the idea that I might marry a man brings that much joy to his face.

  “Yes,” I say. “God, yes.”

  Sam leans over to my side of the car and kisses me, beaming. The tears in my eyes are finally happy tears. My heart is no longer pounding but swelling.

  No more conflicted feelings. No more uncertainty.

  “I love you,” I say. “I don’t think I ever knew just how much until now.” It’s a good sign, I think, that our love has proven to grow, rather than wane, when faced with a challenge. I think it bodes well for our future, for all of the things ahead of us: marriage, children.

  “Oh, God, I was so scared I’d lost you,” Sam says. “I was capsizing over here. Worried I’d lose the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “You didn’t lose me,” I say. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

  I kiss him.

  The two of us are sitting awkwardly half over the console with cricked necks and the stick shift digging into my knee. I just want to be as close to him as possible. Sam kisses my temple and I can smell our laundry detergent on his shirt.

  “Take me home?” I ask.

  Sam smiles. It is the sort of smile that any minute might turn to tears. “Absolutely.”

  I move away from him, putting myself firmly in the passenger seat as he puts the car in reverse and backs out.

  My phone and my wallet are in my car, as well as my weekend bag with all of my things. But I don’t stop him. I don’t ask him to wait just a minute while I grab them. Because I don’t need them. Not right now. I don’t need anything that I don’t have right this minute.

  Sam holds my left hand with his right. He does so the entire way home except for a twenty-second period when I lean forward and dig through his glove compartment for his favorite Charles Mingus CD that he keeps buried in the dash. I still can’t stand jazz and he still loves it. In both important and unimportant ways, Sam and I are the same to each other that we were back then. When the music begins, Sam looks at me, impressed.

  “You hate Mingus,” he says.

  “I love you, though, so . . .”

  This seems like a good enough explanation for him and so he grabs my hand again. There is no tension, no pressure. We are at peace simply being next to each other. A deep calm comes over me as I watch the snowplowed streets of Acton turn to those of Concord, as the evergreens that hug the highway leading us through Lexington and Belmont turn to brick sidewalks and brownstones in Cambridge. The world feels like a mirror, in that what I see in front of me is finally in perfect synchronicity with what I am made of.

  I feel like myself on these streets, with this man.

  We park and head up to our apartment. I am tucked into the crook of his arm, using his body as a shield against the cold.

  Sam turns the key and when the door shuts behind us, it feels like we’ve locked the whole world out. When he kisses me, his lips are still chilled and I feel them warm up with my touch.

  “Hi,” he says, smiling. It is the kind of “hi” that means everything except hello.

  “Hi,” I say back.

  The smell of our apartment, a scent I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed before, is spicy and fresh, like cinnamon toothpaste. I spot both of the cats under the piano. They are OK. Everything is OK.

  Sam pushes himself against me as I rest against the back of our front door. He puts his hand to my cheek, his fingers slip into my hair as his thumb grazes under my eye.

  “I was afraid I’d lost these freckles of yours forever,” he says as he looks right at me. His gaze feels comforting, safe. I find myself moving my head toward his hand, pressing against it.

  “You didn’t,” I say. “I’m here. And I will do anything for you. Anything. For the rest of our lives.”

  “I don’t need anything from you,” Sam says. “Just you. I just want you.”

  My arms reach up around his shoulders and I pull him close to me. The weight of his body against mine is both stirring and soothing. I can smell the drugstore pomade in his hair. I can feel the short stubble of his cheeks. “You’re it for me,” I say. “Forever. Me and you.”

  I was wrong before, when I said there’s nothing more romantic than the end of a relationship.

  It is this.

  There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you’ll never lose them again.

  I don’t think that true love means your only love.

  I think true love means loving truly.

  Loving purely. Loving wholly.

  Maybe, if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to give all of yourself, the kind of person who is willing to love with all of your heart even though you’ve experienced just how much it can hurt . . . maybe you get lots of true loves, then. Maybe that’s the gift you get for being brave.

  I am a woman who dares to love again.

  I finally love that about myself.

  It’s messy to love after heartbreak. It’s painful and it forces you to be honest with yourself about who you are. You have to work harder to find the words for your feelings, because they don’t fit into any prefabricated boxes.

  But it’s worth it.

  Because look what you get:

  Great loves.

  Meaningful loves.

  True loves.

  I wear a pale lavender dress at my second wedding. It is sleek and ornate. It feels like the wedding dress of a woman who has lived a full life before getting married. A dress that signals a strong, well-rounded person making a beautiful decision. Marie is my maid of honor. Ava is our flower girl; Sophie is our ring bearer. Olive gives a speech that leaves half the room in tears. Sam and I honeymoon in Montreal.

  And then eight months and nine days after Sam and I say our vows in front of all of our friends and family, I am talking to Olive on the phone as I close up Blair Books on a balmy summer night.

  Marie left early to pick up the girls from our parents’. We are all meeting up for dinner at Marie and Mike’s house. Mike is grilling steaks and Sam promised Sophia and Ava he’d make them grilled cheese.

  Olive is talking about the first birthday party that she is throwing for her baby, Piper, when I hear the familiar beep of call-waiting.

  “You know what?” I say. “Someone’s on the other line. I gotta go.”

  “OK,” she says. “Oh, I wanted to ask you what you think about sea animals as a theme for—”

  “Olive!” I say. “I gotta go.”

  “OK, but just . . . do you like sea animals as a theme or not?”

  “I think it depends on what animals but I have to go.”

  “I mean, like, whales and dolphins, maybe some fish,” Olive explains as I groan. “Fine!” she says. “We can FaceTime tomorrow.”r />
  I hang up and look at my phone to see who is calling me.

  I don’t recognize the number. But I recognize the area code.

  310.

  Santa Monica, California.

  “Hello?”

  “Emma?” The voice is instantly familiar. One I could never forget.

  “Jesse?”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi!”

  “How are you?” he asks me casually, as if we talk all the time. I have gotten postcards from California a few times, even one from Lisbon. They are short and sweet, simple updates on how he is, where he’s headed. I always know he’s OK. But we don’t text that often. And we never talk on the phone.

  “I’m good,” I say. “Really good. How about you?”

  “I’m doing well, yeah,” he says. “Miss you guys in Acton, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” I say.

  “But I’m good. I’m . . . I’m really happy here.”

  I don’t know what else to say to him. I can’t quite tell why he’s calling. My silence stalls us. And so he just comes out with it.

  “I met someone,” he says.

  Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me—that he met someone, that he wants to tell me. But both things do.

  “You did? That’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah, she’s . . . she’s really incredible. Just very unique. She’s a professional surfer. Isn’t that crazy? I never thought I’d fall in love with a surfer girl.”

  I laugh. “I don’t know,” I say, locking up the shop, walking out to my car. It’s still bright out even though the evening is fully under way. I will miss this come October. I make a point to appreciate it now. “It kind of makes perfect sense to me that you’d fall in love with a surfer girl. I mean, it doesn’t get much more California than that.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Jesse laughs.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Britt,” Jesse says.

  “Jesse and Britt,” I say. “That has a nice ring to it.”

  “I think so. I think we’re good together.”

  “Oh, Jesse, that’s so wonderful. I’m really so glad to hear it.”

  “I wanted to tell you . . .” he says, and then he drifts off.

  “Yeah.”

  “I get it now. I get what you were saying. About how falling in love with Sam didn’t mean that you forgot me. That it doesn’t change how you once felt. It doesn’t make the people you loved before any less important.

  “I didn’t get it back then. I thought . . . I thought choosing him meant you didn’t love me. I thought because we didn’t work out, it meant we were a failure or a mistake. But I understand it now. Because I love her. I love her so much I can’t see straight. But it doesn’t change how I felt about you or how thankful I am to have loved you once. It’s just . . .”

  “I’m the past. And she’s the present.”

  “Yeah,” he says, relieved that I’ve put it into words for him, that he doesn’t have to try to find them himself. “That’s exactly it.”

  I think you forsake the people you loved before, just a little bit, when you fall in love again. But it doesn’t erase anything. It doesn’t change what you had. You don’t even leave it so far behind that you can’t instantly remember, that you can’t pick it up like a book you read a long time ago and remember how it felt then.

  “I guess what I’m saying is I’ve come around to your way of thinking. I am immensely thankful I was married to you once. I am so grateful for our wedding day. Just because something isn’t meant to last a lifetime doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant to be. We were meant to have been.”

  I am sitting in the front seat of my car with the phone to my ear, unable to do anything but listen to him.

  “You and I aren’t going to spend our lives together,” Jesse says. “But I finally understand that that doesn’t take away any of the beauty of the fact that we were right for each other once.”

  “True love doesn’t always last,” I say. “It doesn’t always have to be for a lifetime.”

  “Right. And that doesn’t mean it’s not true love,” Jesse says.

  It was real.

  And now it’s over.

  And that’s OK.

  “I am who I am because I loved you once,” he says.

  “I am who I am because I loved you once, too,” I say.

  And then we say good-bye.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My grandmother Linda Morris lived her entire life in Acton. She passed away a few weeks before I sat down to start this book. It was my trip home that October for her memorial, with the beautiful leaves and crisp air, that made me realize just how deeply I love the place I am from. And just how much I wanted to write about it in tribute to my grandmother. The people in my life whom I have cherished the longest are people from Acton and its surrounding towns. So this is my way of saying not just thank you but also I love you.

  This book—and every book I’ve written—would not be possible without three particular women: my editors, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Cantin, and my agent, Carly Watters.

  Greer, thank you for seeing all the things I can’t see and for having the faith to know I will find a way to fix them. Both of those qualities were in dire need this go-around and I could not be more grateful that you were on my team. Sarah, thank you for being such a great champion. I know that my work is in great hands at Atria and that is because of how good you are at what you do. Carly, thank you for always getting just as excited about my work as I do and for knowing what I’m going to ask before I ask it. Four books in, I still feel so lucky to have you as the face of this operation.

  Crystal Patriarche and the BookSparks team, you are unbelievable publicity all-stars. Tory, thank you for handling every crazy question I have with patience and grace. Brad Mendelsohn, thank you for not only being an awesome manager who thinks ten steps ahead, but also finally putting together your daughters’ trampoline.

  Thank you to everyone at Atria, especially Judith Curr, for making Atria such an exceptional imprint to be a part of. I feel incredibly fortunate that my book travels from one talented hand to another on its way to publication.

  To all the bloggers who have supported me time after time, this book exists because you’ve rallied readers. You make my job fun and your passion for great stories and characters is infectious. Thanks for always reminding me why I love what I do and for helping me reach a diverse and incredible readership. I owe you one (million).

  To all the friends and family I’ve thanked before, I thank you again. To Andy Bauch and my in-laws, the Reids and the Hanes, I have dedicated this book to you because as much as I love Acton, I also love Los Angeles, and it is in no small part because of all of you. Thank you for always supporting me and for making this huge city feel like home.

  To mi madre y mi hermano, Mindy and Jake, I love you guys. Mom, thanks for moving us to Acton so I had an exceptional education, an incredible support system, and, eventually, a place to write about. Jake, thanks for moving to LA so I have someone who I can talk to when I miss the Makaha and the Honey Stung Drummies from Roche Bros.

  And last but not least, Alex Jenkins Reid. Thank you for reading all of my work as if it were your own—for being thoughtful enough to see what there is to love about it and honest enough to tell me when it sucks. And—on those occasions when it does, in fact, suck—thank you for going to get me an iced tea and a cupcake. Thank you for waiting until I’m ready to try again and then rolling up your sleeves with me and saying, “We’ll figure this out.” You’re always right. We always do.

  ONE TRUE LOVES

  A Q&A with

  TAYLOR JENKINS REID

  When you set out to write One True Loves, did you know whether Emma would end up with Jesse or Sam? Did you find yourself rooting for one or the other as you wrote?

  That is the question! I spent a lot of time, before I even sat down to write the first word of the book, trying to decide what I believed the truth of the situation would b
e. I asked myself (and a lot of my friends) what they thought they would do. I decided that there was one answer that simply felt more honest than the other answer. And I went with it. So when I started writing the first draft, I knew the ending.

  As for whether I was rooting for either, I swear that I remained entirely neutral—and that I’m still neutral—about who I wanted to win out in the end. I only felt that one was more likely and I told the story I felt was the most real. But I love both Jesse and Sam madly and I worked hard in the hopes that readers would, too.

  How have you developed as a writer over the course of crafting your four novels? Are there differences in how you approached writing One True Loves compared with your debut, Forever, Interrupted?

  I’m embarrassed to say I don’t have a concrete answer for this! I think my readers might be a better judge of that than I. I’m inclined to turn the question around and ask, of those who have read all of my work thus far, how do they see [my writing] changing?

  One of the most obvious evolutions for me to recognize is that once I’ve talked about something in one book, I find myself working double time to avoid talking about it in another. So with One True Loves, I put in a great deal of effort to create challenges that my characters in other books haven’t faced before. The more you write, the more you have to go out of your way not to emulate your past work—and that has led me to some really fun places I might not go [toward] as naturally.

  What does “true love” mean to you? What about this concept did you want to explore in One True Loves?

  My main goal was to put forth the idea that just because a relationship ends, it doesn’t mean that it has failed. I don’t think that true love means lasting love. If you remove that requirement and you start looking at the people you have loved in the past, you start to ask yourself: Did I love that person with all my heart? Did they change me for the better? Was I good to them? Am I glad it happened? And if that’s the case, I think we should call that relationship a success.

  What inspired you to set part of One True Loves in your hometown?