My party was that night. I had a blue dress that I had picked out myself. My mom and I picked out fake sapphire stud earrings to match. I felt very grown-up.
The woman put the gun to my right ear and told me it might hurt. I told her I was ready.
The pierce shot through me like a shock. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the pressure of the squeeze, the pain of the puncture, or the sting of the air on a fresh wound.
I shuddered and closed my eyes. I kept them closed. My mom and the lady with the piercing gun asked me if I was OK and I said, “Can you do the other one now? Please.”
And that ache—that sense that I knew exactly what to expect and I knew that it would be awful—feels exactly like the ache inside me now.
I know exactly how much it hurts to lose Jesse. And I’m in this car, waiting to be pierced.
“When my parents have adjusted a bit,” Jesse says as we approach the state border, “and I feel like they will be OK if I leave, I’m just going right back to Santa Monica.”
“Oh, Santa Monica? Not interested in trying out San Diego or Orange County?”
Jesse shakes his head. “I think Santa Monica is my place. I mean, I thought you and I would spend the rest of our lives there. I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that you were back here. But you know what? I think it will be really good to go back on my own.” He says it as if it’s just occurring to him that by letting me go, he has freed himself of some things.
“If you do go, will you let us all know how you are?”
“I have no intention of ever leaving anyone wondering where I am again.”
I smile and squeeze his hand for a brief moment. I look out the window and watch as we pass bare brown trees and green highway signs.
“And you,” Jesse says after a while. “You’re gonna marry Sam and live here forever, huh?”
“If he’ll have me,” I say.
“Why do you say that? Why wouldn’t he have you?”
I fiddle with the heat controls on my side of the car, aiming the air right on me. “Because I’ve put him through hell,” I say. “Because I haven’t been the easiest woman to be engaged to lately.”
“That’s not your fault,” Jesse says. “That’s not . . . that’s not the whole story.”
“I know,” I say. “But I also know that I’ve hurt him. And the last time I spoke to him he said not to call him. That he would call me when he was ready to talk.”
“Has he called you?”
I check my phone again, just to be sure. But of course he hasn’t called. “No.”
“He’ll take you back,” Jesse says. He’s so sure of it that it makes me realize just how unsure I really am.
I risked my relationship with Sam to see if there was something left with Jesse. I knew what I was doing when I did it. I’m not pretending I didn’t.
But now I know what I want. I want Sam. And I’m afraid that I may have lost him because I didn’t know it earlier.
“Well, if he doesn’t take you back . . .” Jesse says, just as he realizes that he needs to be three lanes over. He doesn’t finish his sentence right way. He’s focused on the road. I wonder, for a moment, if he’s going to say that if Sam doesn’t marry me, he’ll take me back.
I am surprised at how unnatural and inaccurate that would be.
Because I haven’t been choosing between Sam or Jesse. It was never one or the other. Even though at times, I thought it was exactly that.
It was about whether Jesse and I still had something, or whether we didn’t.
I know, like I know that stealing is wrong and my mom is lying when she says she likes my dad’s mint juleps, that what has happened between Jesse and me is because of Jesse and me. And not because of anyone waiting in the wings.
We are over because we aren’t right for each other anymore.
If Sam doesn’t want me to come home after all of this, Jesse will call me to make sure I’m OK and send postcards from sunny places. And we’ll both know that I could join him. And we’ll both know that I’m not going to. And we’ll be OK with that.
Because we had this.
We had three days in Maine.
Where we reunited and broke our own hearts.
And walked away in two pieces.
“Sorry,” Jesse says now that he’s been able to make it through the interchange and can focus on talking again. “What was I saying? Oh, right. If Sam doesn’t take you back, I will personally kick his ass.”
I laugh at the idea of Jesse kicking Sam’s ass. It seems so absurd. Jesse could probably kick Sam’s ass in about three seconds. It would be like one of those boxing matches where the one guy gets in a punch right off the bat and the poor sucker never knew what hit him.
Sam, my Sam, my adorable, sweetheart Sam, is a lover, not a fighter. I love that about him.
“I’m serious,” Jesse says. “This is an insane situation. If he can’t see that, I will personally see to it that he is in physical pain.”
“Oh!” I say, joking with him. “No, don’t do that! I love him.”
I don’t mean it as a profound announcement, despite how profoundly I feel it. But no matter how I say it, it’s sort of an uncomfortable thing to say, given the circumstances.
I watch Jesse swallow hard and then speak. “I’m happy for you,” Jesse says. “I am.”
“Thank you,” I say, relieved at his magnanimity. I don’t think he’s being honest, right now. But he’s trying really hard. I have so much respect for him for that.
“And that’s going to conclude our discussion of him,” Jesse says. “Because otherwise, I’m going to be ill.”
“Fair enough,” I say, nodding my head. “Happy to change the subject.”
“We’ll be home not too long from now,” he says. “We’re almost in Tewksbury.”
“Should we play I Spy or something?”
Jesse laughs. “Yeah, all right,” he says. “I spy with my little eye . . . something . . . blue.”
Maybe relationships are supposed to end with tears or screams. Maybe they are supposed to conclude with two people saying everything they never said or ripping into each other in a way that can’t be undone.
I don’t know.
I’ve only really ended one relationship in my life.
It is this one.
And this one ends with a good-natured game of I Spy.
We spot things and we guess them and we make each other laugh.
And when Jesse pulls the car into the front parking lot of Blair Books, I know I only have a moment before the piercing gun comes to my ear.
“I love you,” I say. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you.”
“I know,” he says. “I feel the same way. Go grab the life you made for yourself.”
I kiss him good-bye like you kiss your friends on New Year’s. I don’t have it in me to kiss him any other way.
I gather my things and I put my hand on the car door, not yet ready to pull the handle.
“You were a wonderful person to love,” I say. “It felt so good to love you, to be loved by you.”
“Well, it was the easiest thing I ever did,” he says.
I smile at him and then breathe in, preparing myself for the piercing pain of leaving.
“Will you promise me that you will take care of yourself?” I say. “That you’ll call me if you need anything. That you’ll . . .” I don’t know exactly how to phrase what I mean. He has been through so much and I want him to promise me, promise all of us who care about him, that he will work through it.
Jesse nods and waves me off. “I know what you mean. And I promise.”
“OK,” I say, smiling tenderly. I open the door. I put my feet onto the pavement. I get out of the car and close it behind me.
Jesse waves at me and then puts his car in reverse. I watch him as he does a three-point turn out of the lot. It hurts just as much as I thought it would. The pressure, the ache, the sting.
I wave as he makes a left onto the main road.
And then he’s gone.
I close my eyes for a moment, processing what has just happened. It’s over. Jesse is alive and home and our marriage is over. But then when I open my eyes again, I realize where I am.