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“I don’t know what we are, exactly,” I say. It’s the truth, if nothing else.
“Promise you’ll treat her right if it does get serious?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah, of course I will.”
He nods to himself, apparently satisfied, and lifts his book again.
I’m turning the brief conversation over in my head when my phone buzzes from my pocket.
My chest goes cold when I look at the text and see who it’s from. Sarah? What the hell? She hasn’t texted me since the day she left.
Sarah: Hi, Jesse. I’m in Frosty Harbor. It was a last-minute thing. Do you think we could meet somewhere just to talk?
I grimace. The last thing I want right now is to open up old wounds. I don’t want to talk to Sarah. Andi happens to look my way and the expression on my face must be something, because she trails off mid-sentence with her mom.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, shoving my phone in my pocket. “I just need to go handle something. Here,” I set my truck’s keys on the end table with Andi’s dad. “If Andi needs to head back to the cabin before I get back, maybe you guys could drive her. It may be better if Andi doesn’t drive. Last time I saw her drive, she crashed her car.”
“You crashed your car?” her mom asks suddenly.
Andi gives me a thanks a lot kind of look, but grins and waves as I get up to leave.
I text Sarah back once I’m outside.
Jesse: Where?
Sarah: The old park we used to go to?
Jesse: Yeah. I’ll be there in five.
I spend the walk worrying about what she’s going to want to talk about. It has been a year. A fucking year and she wants to show up unannounced like this and try to mess with my mind? I try to decide how I feel about this from her, and eventually decide it pisses me off. The time to talk to me was the day she left. She didn’t even show me the decency to explain her side of things. And yes, there was a time I desperately wanted to know–not so desperately I was going to lower myself to reaching out and begging for her to explain, but still.
I realize now that time has passed. I don’t think I care anymore why she left or what she thought. Maybe I really have moved on, once and for all. Before Andi, I kept thinking back on my relationship with Sarah as such a big part of my life–like something I wouldn’t be able to replicate with another woman.
Then Andi showed up in a crashed car and a torn wedding dress. She showed me the goal was never to replicate what I had with Sarah, because that wasn’t right for me. The goal all along was to wait for Andi Summers to come crashing into my life.
Only Andi comes with her own set of completely new, completely terrifying questions I need to dig deep inside myself to answer–questions I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle yet.
I see Sarah sitting with her back to me on a bench. She has dyed her hair blonde and she has new tattoos on her neck and the backs of her hands. She hears me coming and turns to look.
She stands. “Hey,” she says. She was always pretty, but it’s strange to see her now after so much time. It’s as if the magic has worn away in the year we spent apart. The things about her I convinced myself were perfect seem just ordinary. She just looks like a person. A person I used to know who holds no power over me anymore.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I try to keep it from my voice, but my annoyance is obvious.
She looks down. “I’m sorry. I just… I wanted to see you. My parents fell in love with this place when they came to see me last year. They talked me into coming with them for the holidays, and I kind of agreed because I knew you would be here.”
“Sarah…”
“Just–” she holds up a hand. “Can I finish what I came here to say?”
I fold my arms, waiting.
“I ran off on you and I’ve felt terrible about it ever since. I needed some more time to explore and find myself, though. I felt this kind of suffocating feeling when you started talking about settling down and marriage and kids. Like I had so much I still wanted to do, and you obviously wanted to rush into the boring stuff.”
“This is what you wanted to say?” I ask.
“I wanted to say I’m ready now. I realized all that stuff only matters if you have someone to share it with. And maybe we could compromise, you know? Settle down, but not stay put. We could still have adventures and see the world, but together. We could call it whatever you want, and maybe even do the whole kids thing down the line.”
