One True Loves Read online

  “No, I didn’t!” I said.

  “Yes, you did. You did this,” he said, hitting the bar with the same fingers I’d hit it with just a few moments ago. “And it’s this.” He hit the bar again. It looked exactly like the first one.

  “That’s the same thing.”

  Sam laughed and shook his head. “Nope. It’s not.”

  “Do it again.”

  “Which one?”

  “Do what I did and then do what the real thing is.”

  He started to repeat mine.

  “No, no,” I said. “Slower. So I can spot the difference.”

  He started over and slowed it down.

  He did mine.

  And then he did his.

  And there it was. Right toward the end. I’d skipped a key.

  I smiled, knowing I was wrong. “Aw, man!” I said. “I did mess it up.”

  “That’s OK. You’re still very good for a beginner.”

  I gave him a skeptical look.

  “I mean,” he said, his whole body shifting away from the bar and toward me. “You play the bar beautifully.”

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “I’m serious, actually. If you got into it, I bet you could be really good.”

  “You probably say that to all the girls,” I said, waving my hand at him, dismissing the compliment. I gracefully picked up my gimlet and slowly brought the filled-to-the-brim glass to my lips. It was sweet and clean. Just the littlest bit dizzying.

  “Just my students,” he said.

  I looked at him, confused.

  “Now seems like a good time to tell you I’m a music teacher,” he said.

  I smiled at him. “Ah, that’s awesome. What a perfect job for you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “And what about you? Are you some big travel writer now? My mom said she saw your name in Travel + Leisure.”

  I laughed. “Oh yeah,” I said. “I was. I did that for a while. But, uh . . . no, now I’m actually running the store.”

  “No way,” Sam said, disbelieving.

  “Shocking, I know,” I said. “But it’s true.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Colin Blair’s greatest wish. There’s a Blair running Blair Books.”

  I laugh. “I guess dreams do come true,” I said. “For my dad at least.”

  “But not for you?” Sam said.

  “Not the dream I originally dreamt, as you know,” I said. “But I’m starting to think you don’t always know what your dreams are. Some of us have to run smack into one before we see it.”

  “Ah,” Sam said. “Cheers to that.” He tilted his glass toward me and I clinked mine against his. “May I change the subject ever so briefly?” he said.

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  “You seem to get even more beautiful with time,” he said.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said, pushing his shoulder away with my hand.

  I was flirting. Me. Flirting.

  It feels so good to flirt. No one ever talks about that. But in that moment, I felt like flirting was the very thing that made the world go around.

  The excitement of wondering what the other person will say next. The thrill of knowing someone is looking at you, liking what they see. The rush of looking at someone and liking what you see in them. Flirting is probably just as much about falling in love with yourself as it is with someone else.

  It’s about seeing yourself through someone’s eyes and realizing there is plenty to like about yourself, plenty of reasons someone might hang on your every word.

  “So you’re a music teacher,” I told him. “Where do you teach?”

  “Actually, not far from Blair Books. I’m just over in Concord,” he said.

  “Are you serious?” I said. “You’ve been that close by and you never stopped in to say hello?”

  Sam looked at me and said, very sincerely, “If I had known you’d be there, I assure you, I’d have rushed over.”

  I could not stop the smile from spreading across my face. I grabbed my gimlet and took a sip. Sam’s beer was almost finished.

  “Why don’t I get you another?” I said.

  He nodded and I waved the bartender over.

  “Your most expensive beer on the menu,” I said to her gallantly. Sam laughed.

  “That’s a pretty rich stout, are you sure you want that?” the bartender asked.

  I looked at Sam. He put his hands in the air as if to say, “You’re in charge.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I said to her.

  She left and I turned back to him. We were both quiet for a minute, unsure what to say next.

  “What’s your favorite song to play?” I asked him. It was a stupid question. I knew it when I asked it.

  “On the piano?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you want to hear?” he asked.

  I laughed. “I didn’t mean now. There’s no piano now.”

  “What are you talking about? We played ‘Chopsticks’ right here on this bar.”

  I laughed at him, game to play, but suddenly having a hard time remembering what songs are played on a piano. “How about ‘Piano Man’?”

  Sam made a face. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”

  “It’s all I could think of!”

  “All right, all right,” he said. “It’s actually a good choice anyway because it has a nice bit of show-off flair at the beginning.”

  He straightened his posture and rolled up his sleeves, as if he were playing an actual instrument. He moved a napkin out of the way and then picked up my drink. “If you could please get this out of my way, miss,” he said.

  “Certainly, sir,” I said.

  He interlaced his fingers and stretched them out away from his chest.

  “Are you ready?” he asked me.

  “I was born ready.”

  He nodded his head dramatically and began to run his hands over the bar, as if there were a full piano right there in front of him. I watched as his fingers glided over the nonexistent keys. He was so confident as he pretended to play that I almost believed it.

  “Excuse me,” he said as he was playing, “but I believe the harmonica would have come in by now.”

  “What? I can’t play the harmonica.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “I don’t know the first thing.”

  “You must know how musicians hold harmonicas. I assume you’ve seen at least one blues band in your life.”

  “I mean, sure.”

  He kept his head down, looking at the bar, playing. People were starting to look at us. He didn’t care. Neither did I.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I surprised myself and I did it. I put my hands up to my mouth as if there were a harmonica between them and I ran my mouth over the space it would have occupied.

  “Slower,” Sam said. “You’re not Neil Young.”

  I laughed and stopped for a minute. “I don’t even know what I’m doing!”

  “You’re doing great! Don’t stop.”

  So I played along.

  “All right, wait for a minute; there’s no harmonica in this part.”

  I put my fake harmonica down as he kept playing. I could tell he was going through the full song, each note. I watched how effortless it was for him, how his fingers seemed to move with the expectation they’d make a beautiful sound. And yet they were making no sound at all.

  “Now!” he said. “Get that harmonica going. This is your moment.”

  “It is? I didn’t know!” I said, desperately pulling my hands up to my face and really committing to it.

  And then Sam slowed and I could tell the song was ending. I took my hands down and I watched him as he hit the last few notes. And then he was done. And he looked at me.

  “Next request?” he asked.

  “Have dinner with me?” I asked him.

  It just popped out of my mouth. I wanted to talk more, to spend more time with him, to hear more about him. I wanted more. “We can eat here or a
nywhere nearby if you’re in the mood for something in particular.”

  “Emma . . .” he said seriously.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we get burritos?”

  Dos Tacos was brightly lit with orange and yellow undertones instead of the flattering blue light of the bar. But he still looked handsome. And I still felt beautiful.

  Even when I bit into my gigantic carne asada deluxe burrito.

  “If I could only eat Mexican food for the rest of my life, that would be fine with me,” Sam said. “Completely fine.”

  I wanted to tell him that food in Mexico tasted nothing like this. I wanted to tell him about the three weeks Jesse and I spent in Mexico City, where we found this tiny little restaurant that served amazing chiles rellenos.

  But I didn’t want to talk about the past.

  “I wouldn’t mind at all,” I said. “Not one bit.” I reached over and took a chip out of the basket in front of us at the same time that Sam did.

  We collided, ever so briefly, and I liked the feel of his hand on mine. This is what it’s like to be on a date, I thought. This is what it’s like to be normal.

  “But if we’re talking about desserts,” Sam said, “I don’t know if I’d choose Mexican for the rest of my life. French maybe, éclairs and custards. Italian could be interesting, tiramisu and gelato.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Indian desserts are pretty incredible. They are all really creamy and nutty. Like rice puddings and pistachio ice cream type stuff. I might have to go with that.”

  “Wow, that sounds great.”

  I nodded. “But maybe nothing beats tres leches. Which is Mexican, I suppose. Although, almost every Latin American country you go to claims it’s theirs. It’s like baklava. I swear, I’ve spoken to at least twenty people who all claimed they know for a fact their people invented baklava.”

  “That’s funny, because my family invented tres leches right here in the United States.”

  I laughed. “And I personally invented baklava.”

  Sam laughed and I looked around to see that everyone appeared to have cleared out and the staff behind the counter had started cleaning up.

  “Oh no,” I said. “I think they’re closing.” I pulled my phone out of my purse to check the time. It was 10:02.

  “Are you saying the night is over?” Sam asked as he finished the chips sitting in between us. The way he said it, the way he smiled at me and held my gaze, told me that he didn’t think the night was over, that he knew I didn’t, either.

  “I’d say we should go to a bar and get a drink,” I said. “But we already did that.”

  Sam nodded. “We sort of did things in reverse, didn’t we? Maybe we should go get lunch now.”

  “Or meet for coffee.” I gathered all the trash onto my tray. “Either way, we should get out of here. I don’t want to be like that guy who would always come read books ten minutes before closing. Remember that guy?”

  “Remember him?” Sam said, standing up. “I still resent him.”

  I laughed. “Exactly.”

  Sam and I threw everything away, thanked the man behind the counter, and walked out onto the sidewalk. It was one of those Boston nights that almost make the winters worth it. The air was warm but fresh. The moon was full. The tall, age-old buildings that often looked dirty in the day glowed at night.

  “I have a crazy idea,” Sam said.

  “Tell me.”

  “What if we went for a walk?”

  My first thought was that it sounded wonderful and my second was that I wouldn’t last more than ten minutes in my heels.

  “Too quaint?” he asked. “Like it’s the nineteen fifties and I’m asking you to split a milk shake?”

  I laughed. “No!” I said. “I love the idea. I just know that my feet will start to hurt.”

  Up ahead, I saw one of the ubiquitous crimson red signs that litter the city—CVS.

  Seven minutes later, I had my high heels in my purse and a pair of five-dollar flip-flops on my feet. Sam had a king-sized Snickers.

  “Where to?” I asked him, ready to take on the city.

  “I didn’t really have a plan,” Sam said. “But, uh . . .” He looked up and down the street. “This way?” He pointed away from the cluster of buildings.

  “Great,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  And off we went. Slowly at first, just putting one foot in front of the other, talking as we did.

  The city was humming. Groups of girls out together, college kids walking around, tipsy drinkers smoking cigarettes out on the sidewalk, men and women holding hands on their way out or way home.

  Sam told me about teaching eighth-grade orchestra and jazz band, about how he had recently started picking up extra money as a studio musician a few times a month.

  I told him how the store was doing, how my parents were doing. I updated him on Marie, told him about Sophie and Ava, even showed him a few signs I’d learned recently. I told him about a few days before when I recognized Ava signing, “Milk, please.”

  Sam listened as if I was the most fascinating woman in the universe and I realized how long it had been since someone listened to me like that.

  We both made fun of ourselves for living in the city and working in the same suburban area where we grew up, a reversal of the common commute.

  We stepped over gum and we made way for other pedestrians and we bent down to pet dogs. We walked past Harvard dorms and Harvard Yard. Twice we walked past a T stop and I wondered if we both wouldn’t gravitate toward it, using it as a way to say good-bye. But my feet didn’t head in that direction and neither did Sam’s. We just kept walking, slowly and peacefully, deeper into the night.

  We eventually found ourselves walking along the Charles. My feet started to hurt and I asked Sam if we could sit on one of the benches along the river.

  “Oh, I thought you’d never ask. I think I started forming a blister around Porter Square.”

  We sat down on a bench and I picked up my phone to check the time. It was one in the morning. I wasn’t tired. And I didn’t feel like going home.

  There was so much we had already talked about. We had talked about work and music and families and books. We had talked about anything and everything—other than Jesse.

  But once we sat down on that bench, it somehow became impossible to ignore.

  “So I suppose you know I’m a widow,” I said.

  Sam looked at me and nodded. “I had heard,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up.” He reached over and grabbed my hand, gently and with tenderness. “Emma, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I hope this feels okay to you,” he said. “Us being out here. Together.”

  I nodded. “Surreal, maybe,” I said. “But, yeah, it feels okay.”

  “I can’t even imagine how hard it has been for you,” he said. “How long has it been?”

  “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.”