“A little over two years,” I said.
“Is that a long time or a short time?”
That’s when I knew that Sam was sincerely listening, that he was interested in learning exactly who I was in that moment. I realized that Sam understood me, maybe had always understood me, in a way that very few people did. And that meant that he knew that two years was both forever and just a moment ago.
“It depends on the day,” I said. “But right now, it feels like a long time. How about you? Who broke your heart?”
Sam sighed, as if preparing himself to rehash it all. “I was with someone for years,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking out onto the water.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What always happens, I guess.”
“Werewolf got her?” I asked him.
He laughed and looked at me. “Yeah, brutal. Took her right out of my arms.”
I smiled and continued to listen.
“We just outgrew each other,” he said finally. “It sounds so banal. But it hurt like nothing before.”
I didn’t know anything about growing apart. I only knew being ripped apart. But I imagined it felt like a tree root slowly growing so big and strong that it breaks through the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It sounds awful.”
“I just wasn’t the same person at thirty that I was at twenty,” he said. “And neither was she.”
“I don’t think anybody is,” I said.
“I feel a bit jaded by it now, to be honest,” he said. “Like, will I be the same person at forty? Or . . .”
“Will we outgrow this, too?” I said, completing his thought.
And then Sam said something that has stayed with me ever since.
“I think it’s a good sign, though,” he said, “that I was crazy about you at sixteen and I’m still crazy about you now.”
I smiled at him. “It certainly seems promising,” I said.
Sam shortened the distance between us and put his arm around me. My shoulder crept into the pit of his arm and he reached across the length of my back. He squeezed me just the littlest bit.
It didn’t seem easy, the idea of loving someone again.
But it did seem possible.
So I sat there with him, watching the river, and allowing myself to feel hope again, to feel joy again, to feel how nice it was to be in a man’s arms on a bench by the river.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that.
I just know that it was four a.m. when I finally made it home.
At my front door, in the early hours of the morning, fifteen years after we met, Sam Kemper finally kissed me.
It was sweet and fresh and gentle. He smelled like morning dew, like a wonderful beginning.
“When can I see you again?” he asked as he looked at me.
I looked right back at him, no artifice between us. “I’m here,” I said. “Call me.”
Four and a half months into our relationship, I told Sam I loved him. He’d said it a few weeks before and told me that I didn’t need to say it back, not then anyway. He said he’d been head over heels for me all through high school, carrying a torch for me since the first time he met me at the store. He told me that part of the reason he left Acton without saying good-bye the summer before college was that he knew that I had fallen in love with Jesse, that he didn’t have a shot.
“What I’m saying is that loving you—even if I’m not sure you love me—it’s familiar territory,” he said. “I’ve picked it right back up like riding a bike. And I can do it for a little while longer, if that’s what you need.”
I was immensely grateful because it was exactly what I needed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I did. I knew I loved him even before he said it. But I couldn’t utter the words. I wasn’t prepared to acknowledge the shift that had already happened. I wasn’t ready to let go of the word “wife” and grab on to the word “girlfriend.”
But that night, four and a half months in, as we both lay in my bed, naked and touching, entangled in blankets and sheets, I realized that even if I wasn’t ready for the truth, that didn’t make it untrue.
“I love you,” I said into the darkness, knowing the sound had nowhere to go but into his ears.
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I thought you might,” he said. I could tell he was smiling just by his tone.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t say it until now.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “I get it.”
Sam always seemed to have a grasp on what was truly important. He never seemed bogged down by petty things. He prioritized the heart of the situation over the details. He paid attention to actions more than words.
I didn’t like sleeping in my own bed anymore without him. I always held his hand at the movies. I waited all day to see him again just so I could kiss the soft spot by his eye, where his wrinkles were settling in.
He knew I was head over heels in love with him. So he was OK if it took me a while to say it. And that just made me love him more.
“I just . . . it’s sometimes hard not to associate moving forward with forgetting the past,” I said.
“If it helps . . .” Sam said as he moved closer to me. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I could see the glow of his skin. “I don’t expect you to stop loving him just because you love me.”
I probably should have smiled or kissed him. I should have told him how much I appreciated his magnanimous spirit and his selflessness. But instead, I started crying so hard I shook the bed.
He held me, kissing the top of my head, and then he said, “Is it OK if I tell you a few more things I’ve been thinking?”
I nodded.
“I think you and I have something that could last for a very long time, Emma. Maybe I even knew that back in high school, maybe that’s why I was as infatuated with you as I was. But I feel—I have always felt—more myself with you than anyone I’ve ever met. And for the first time, I’m starting to see what it would mean to grow with someone, as opposed to merely growing beside someone, the way I did with Aisha. I’m not worried about our future, the way I thought I’d be when I fell in love again. I’m OK just being with you and seeing where it goes. I just want you to know that if what we have lasts, and one day we talk about getting married or having kids, I want you to know I’ll never try to replace Jesse. I’ll never ask you to stop loving him. You can love your past with him. My love for you now isn’t threatened by that. I just . . . I want you to know that I’ll never ask you to choose. I’ll never ask you to tell me I’m your one true love. I know, for someone like you, that isn’t fair. And I’ll never ask it.”
I was quiet for a minute as I processed what he’d said. He put his arm underneath me and held me tight. He smelled my hair. He kissed my ear. “I’ve just been thinking about that for a while and I wanted to tell you.”
I stopped crying and I took a very deep breath in.
The room smelled of sweat and sleep. The bed beneath us felt soft and safe. I had found a man who understood who I was and accepted me entirely, who was strong enough to make peace with the tender spot in my heart for the love I used to have.
“I love you,” I said to him, again. The second time, it came out of my mouth with less effort.
“I love you, too,” he said. “I love everything about who you are. Always have.”
I moved onto my side to face him with my hands underneath my head. He turned to meet me. We looked at each other and smiled.
“It makes me so happy to have you in my life,” I said. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
Sam smiled. “Think of all the people in the world,” he said, tucking my longest hair behind my ear. “And I was lucky enough to find you twice.”
“Think of all the women trying to buy a piano,” I said. “And I’m the one you hit on.”
Sam laughed.
“Turn around, would you?” he said. He said this when he wanted to spoon me, when he wanted to fit my body into the cradle of his. I did so happily.