One True Loves Page 6

  I’d never seen Alaska. And I knew I couldn’t afford to go on my own. But I had no interest in writing.

  It was Jesse who finally pushed me to apply.

  The application required a thousand-word piece on any city or town in the world. I wrote an essay about Acton. I played up its rich history, its school system, its local bookstore—basically, I tried to see my hometown through my father’s eyes and put it down on paper. It seemed a small price to pay to go to Alaska.

  My essay was fairly awful. But there were only sixteen applications that year, and apparently, seven other essays were worse.

  I thought Alaska was nice. It was my first time leaving the continental United States and I had to be honest with myself and admit it hadn’t been all it was cracked up to be. But imagine everyone’s surprise when I found that I loved writing about Alaska even more than I liked being there.

  I became a journalism major and I worked hard at improving my interviewing techniques and imagery, as per the advice of most of my professors.

  I graduated college a writer.

  That’s the part that I knew killed Marie.

  I was the writer of the family while she was in Acton, running the bookstore.

  It had taken me a couple of years to get a job that sent me out on assignments, but by the age of twenty-five, I was an assistant editor at a travel blog, with a tiny salary but with the luxury of having visited five of the seven continents.

  The downside was that Jesse and I had very little money. On the cusp of twenty-six, neither of us had health insurance and we were still eating saltines and peanut butter for dinner some nights.

  But the upside was so much sweeter: Jesse and I had seen the world—both together and separately.

  Jesse and I had talked about getting married. It was obvious to everyone, ourselves included, that we would have a wedding one day. We knew it was what we would do when the time was right, the way you know that once you shampoo your hair, you condition it.

  So I was not shocked that Jesse wanted to marry me.

  What shocked me was that there was any ring at all.

  “I know it’s small,” he said apologetically as I put it on. “And it’s not a diamond.”

  “I love it,” I told him.

  “Do you recognize it?”

  I gave it another glance, trying to discern what he meant.

  It had a yellow-gold band with a round red stone in the middle. It was banged up and scratched, clearly secondhand. I loved it. I loved everything about it. But I didn’t recognize it.

  “No?” I said.

  “Are you sure?” he said, teasing me. “If you think about it for a second, I think you might.”

  I stared again. But the ring on my finger was much less interesting to me than the man who had given it to me.

  Jesse had grown up to be even more handsome than he had been cute. His shoulders had grown wider, his back more sturdy. No longer training, he had gained weight in his torso, but it was weight that fit him fine. His cheekbones stood out in almost any light. And his smile had matured in a way that made me think he’d be handsome late into life.

  I was madly in love with him and had been for as long as I could remember. We had a deep and meaningful history together. It was Jesse who had held my hand when my parents were furious to find out I’d never sent in my application to the University of Massachusetts, and in doing so, had forced their hand to send me to California. It was Jesse who supported me when they asked me to move home after we graduated, Jesse who dried my tears when my father was heartbroken that I would not come home to help run the store. And it was also Jesse who helped me remain confident that, eventually, my parents and I would see eye-to-eye again one day.

  The boy that I first saw that day at the swimming pool had turned into an honorable and kind man. He opened doors for me. He bought me Diet Coke and Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey when I had a bad day. He took photos of all the places he’d been, all the places he and I had been together, and decorated our home with them.

  And now, as we firmly settled into adulthood and the resentments of his childhood faded away, Jesse had started swimming long distance again. Not often, not regularly, but sometimes. He said he still couldn’t stand the chlorine smell of the pool, but he was starting to fall in love with the salt of the ocean. I was so enamored with him for that.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this ring before.”

  Jesse laughed. “Barcelona,” he said. “The night of—”

  I gasped.

  He smiled, knowing that he didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “No . . .” I said.

  He nodded.

  We had just gotten into Barcelona on the Eurail from Madrid. There was a woman selling jewelry on the street. The two of us were exhausted and headed straight for our hostel. But the woman was hounding us to please take a look.

  So we did.

  I saw a ruby ring.

  And I’d said to Jesse, “See? I don’t need anything fancy like a diamond. Just a ring like this is beautiful.”

  And here it was, a ruby ring.

  “You got me a ruby ring!” I said.

  Jesse shook his head. “Not just a ruby ring . . .”

  “This isn’t the ruby ring,” I said.

  Jesse laughed. “Yes, it is! This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. This is that ring.”

  I looked at it, stunned. I pulled my hand away from my face, getting a better view. “Wait, are you serious? How did you do that?”

  I had visions of Jesse making international phone calls and paying exorbitant shipping fees, but the truth was much simpler.

  “I snuck back and bought it when you went looking for a bathroom that night,” he said.

  My eyes went wide. “You’ve had this ring for five years?”

  Jesse shrugged. “I knew I was going to marry you. What was the point of waiting to buy you some diamond when I knew exactly what you wanted?”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. I was blushing. “I can’t believe it. It fits perfectly. What are . . . what are the odds of that?”

  “Well,” Jesse said shyly, “actually pretty high.”

  I looked at him, wondering what he meant.

  “I took it to a jeweler to have it resized based on another one of your rings.”

  I could tell he was worried this made it less romantic. But to me, it was only more so.

  “Wow,” I said. “Just . . . wow.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  It seemed like an absurd thing to ask; the answer was so obvious. It was like asking if someone liked French fries or whether rain was wet.

  Standing there on the beach, with the sand underneath our feet, the Pacific Ocean in front of us, and our home just a few miles away, I wondered how I got so lucky to be given everything I ever wanted.

  “Yes,” I said as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Absolutely. Of course. Definitely. Yes.”

  We were married Memorial Day weekend at Jesse’s family’s cabin in Maine.

  We had talked about a destination wedding in Prague but it wasn’t realistic. When we resigned ourselves to marrying in the United States, Jesse wanted to do it in Los Angeles.

  But for some reason I didn’t want to do it anywhere but back in New England. The impulse surprised me. I had spent so much time exploring everywhere else, had put so much emphasis on getting away.

  But once I had put enough distance between myself and where I grew up, I started to see its beauty. I started to see it the way outsiders do—maybe because I had become an outsider.

  So I told Jesse I thought we should get married back home, during the spring, and though he did take a bit of convincing, he agreed.

  And then it became obvious that the easiest place to do it was up by Jesse’s parents’ cabin.

  Naturally, my parents were thrilled. In some ways, I think the night I was caught by the cops and the day I called my pa
rents and told them we were going to get married in New England shared a lot in common.

  Both times, I had done something my parents thought was wildly out of character for me, and it surprised them so much that it instantly changed things between us.

  Back in high school, it had made them distrust me. I suspect it had been the trouble with the police that did it more than the drinking. And the fact that I started dating the very boy with whom I’d been detained only served to compound the problem. To them, I had gone from a precious little girl to a hooligan overnight.

  And with the wedding, I went from their independent, globe-trotting daughter to a bird flying home to the nest.

  My mom handled a lot of the finer details, coordinating with Jesse’s parents, reserving the spot by the lighthouse on the water just a mile away, and choosing the wedding cake when Jesse and I couldn’t make it back for the taste test. My dad helped negotiate with the inn down the street, where we’d have our reception. Marie, married to Mike just nine months before us, lent us the place settings and table linens from their wedding.

  Olive flew to Los Angeles from her home in Chicago to host my bachelorette party and my bridal shower. She got rip-roaring drunk at the former and wore a shift dress and an oversized hat to the latter. She was the first to arrive the weekend of the wedding—always proving that Olive didn’t do anything half-assed.

  Our friendship had been a long-distance one since we went off to college. But I never met another woman who meant to me what she did. No one else could make me laugh like she could. So my oldest friend remained my best friend, despite however many miles kept us apart, and it was for that reason that I made her my maid of honor.

  There was a brief moment when my mother and father seemed unsure whether to acknowledge that Marie and I had not chosen each other for that esteemed role. But we were bridesmaids for each other and this seemed to mollify them.

  As for Jesse’s side of the bridal party, those spots went to his two older brothers.

  Jesse’s parents didn’t ever really care for me very much and I always knew that it was because they blamed me for the fact that he stopped swimming. Jesse had confronted them, had told them the full truth: that he hated training, that he was never going to pursue it on his own. But all they saw was the convenient chronology: I showed up and suddenly Jesse didn’t want what they believed he’d always wanted.

  But once Jesse and I became engaged—and once Francine and Joe found out we were willing to have the wedding at their cabin—they opened up a bit more. Maybe they just saw the writing on the wall—Jesse was going to marry me whether they liked me or not. But I like to think that they simply started seeing me clearly. I think they found there was a lot to like about me once they started looking. And that Jesse had grown into an impressive man regardless of whether or not he followed their dream.

  Aside from a few minor breakdowns over my dress and whether we should practice for our first dance, Jesse and I had a relatively painless wedding-planning experience.

  As for the actual day, the truth is I don’t remember it.

  I just remember glimpses.

  I remember my mother pulling the dress up around me.

  I remember pulling the train of it high enough as I walked to avoid getting the edges dirty.

  I remember the flowers smelling more pungent than they had in the store.

  I remember looking at Jesse as I walked down the open aisle—looking at the black sheen on his tux, the perfect wave of his hair—and having a sense of overwhelming peace.

  I remember standing with him as we had our picture taken during the cocktail hour between the ceremony and the reception. I remember he whispered into my ear, “I want to be alone with you,” just as a flash went off on the photographer’s camera.

  I remember saying, “I know, but there’s still so much . . . wedding left.”

  I remember taking his hand and escaping out of sight when the photographer went to change the battery in his camera.

  We rushed back to the cabin when no one was looking. It was there, alone with Jesse, that I could focus again. I could breathe easy. I felt grounded. I felt like myself for the first time all day.

  “I can’t believe we just snuck out of our own wedding,” I said.

  “Well . . .” Jesse put his arms around me. “It’s our wedding. We’re allowed to.”

  “I’m not sure that’s how it works,” I said.

  Jesse had already started unzipping my dress. It would barely budge. So he pushed the slim skirt of it up around my thighs.

  We had not made it past the kitchen. Instead, I hopped up on the kitchen counter. As Jesse pushed up against me, as I pressed my body against his, it felt different from all the other times we’d done it.

  It meant more.

  A half hour later, just as I was coming out of the bathroom fixing my hair, Marie knocked on the door.

  Everyone wanted to know where we were.

  It was time to be announced.

  “I guess we have to go, then,” Jesse said to me, smiling with the knowledge of what we’d been doing as we kept them waiting.

  “I guess so,” I said in the same spirit.

  “Yeah,” Marie said, none-too-amused. “I guess so.”

  She walked ahead of us as we made the short walk over to the inn.

  “Looks like we’ve angered the Booksellers’ Daughter,” Jesse whispered.

  “I think you’re right,” I said.

  “I have something really important to tell you,” he said. “Are you ready? It’s really important. It’s breaking news.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll love you forever.”

  “I already knew that,” I said. “And I’ll love you forever, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll love you until we’re so old we can barely walk on our own and we have to get walkers and put those cut-up yellow tennis balls on them. I’ll love you past that, actually. I’ll love you until the end of time.”

  “You sure?” he said, smiling at me, pulling me toward him. Marie was just up ahead, grabbing the door to the reception hall. I could hear the din of large-scale small talk. I imagined a room full of my friends and family introducing themselves to one another. I imagined Olive already having made friends with half of my father’s extended family.

  When this was over, Jesse and I were leaving on a ten-day trip to India, courtesy of his parents. No living out of backpacks or sleeping in hostels. No deadlines or film shoots while we were there. Just two people in love with each other, in love with the world.

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. “You are my one true love. I don’t even think I’m capable of loving anyone else.”

  The double doors opened and Jesse and I walked through, into the reception hall, just as I heard the DJ announce, “Introducing . . . Jesse and Emma Lerner!”

  Hearing my new name felt jarring to me, for a moment. It sounded like someone else. I assumed I would get over it in time, that it would grow on me, likening this moment to the first few days of a haircut.

  Besides, the name didn’t matter. None of that mattered when I had the man of my dreams.

  It was the happiest day of my life.

  Emma and Jesse. Forever.

  Three hundred and sixty-four days later, he was gone.

  The last time I saw Jesse he was wearing navy blue chinos, Vans, and a heather gray T-shirt. It was his favorite. He’d done the laundry the day before just so he could wear it.

  It was the day before our anniversary. I had managed to snag a freelance assignment writing up a piece on a new hotel in the Santa Ynez Valley in Southern California. Despite the fact that a work trip isn’t exactly the most romantic way to spend an anniversary, Jesse was going to join me on the trip. We would celebrate one year of marriage touring the hotel, taking notes on the food, and then squeezing in a visit to a vineyard or two.

  But Jesse was asked to join an old boss of his on a quick four-day shoot in the Aleu
tian Islands.

  And unlike me, he had not yet been to Alaska.

  “I want to see glaciers,” Jesse said. “You’ve seen them but I haven’t yet.”

  I thought about how it felt to stare at something so white it looked blue, so large that you felt small, so peaceful you forgot just what an environmental threat they posed. I understood why he wanted to go. But I also knew that if I were in his position, I’d turn down the opportunity.

  Some of it was travel fatigue. He and I had spent almost ten years grabbing on to every opportunity to get on a plane or a train. I was working at a travel blog and writing freelance on the side, doing my best to get placed in loftier and loftier publications.

  I was a professional at navigating security checkpoints and baggage claims. I had enough frequent-flyer miles to go absolutely anywhere I dreamed of.

  And I’m not saying that travel wasn’t incredible, that our life wasn’t incredible. Because it was.

  I had been to the Great Wall of China. I’d hiked a waterfall in Costa Rica. I’d tasted pizza in Naples, strudel in Vienna, bangers and mash in London. I’d seen the Mona Lisa. I’d been inside the Taj Mahal.

  I had some of my most incredible experiences abroad.

  But I’d also had a lot of them right in my own home. Inventing cheap at-home dinners with Jesse, walking down the street late at night to split a pint of ice cream, waking up early on Saturday mornings to the sun shining through the sliding glass door.

  I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

  And I was starting to yearn for a chance to settle in somewhere and maybe, perhaps, not need to rush to get on a plane to go somewhere else.

  I had just found out that Marie was pregnant with her first child. She and Mike were buying a house a short commute from Acton. It seemed all but finalized that she would take over the store. The Booksellers’ Daughter realizing her full potential.