One True Loves Read online

  “Um . . .” I looked at it and decided I could do it on my own. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”

  I picked up the keyboard and headed for the door, looking for Sam as I went. I made it all the way to the front of the store before I saw him. He was coming down the stairs.

  “Sam!” I said.

  “Emma!” He said it in my exact same inflection.

  “You’re still here,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d left.”

  “I was upstairs. I’m here looking at baby grands.”

  Admittedly, it took me a second to realize that baby grand wasn’t some sort of candy bar.

  “Oh, wow, you’re buying a baby grand piano,” I said, setting the keyboard down for a moment. “Further proof that you don’t actually work here.”

  He smiled.

  “I’m so sorry I assumed that you were a salesperson. I think I just figured because you worked at our store and . . . Anyway, I just made an ass out of myself when I went up to the register and tried to give you commission on my purchase.”

  Sam laughed. “You know, I suspected at the end there that you might have thought I worked here, but I wasn’t sure how to clear it up without . . .”

  “Making me feel dumb?”

  He laughed. “Kinda.”

  “Well, I officially feel dumb.”

  “No, don’t,” he said. “It was my pleasure to help you. Really. It’s so nice to see you again.” The sincerity with which he looked at me was disarming. And I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or not. I was thinking maybe I did.

  “I owe you a thank-you,” I said. “You were a great help.”

  “Do you need lessons?” Sam said. “If you wanted I could . . . teach you. I’d be happy to do it. Show you a few things, just to get you started maybe.”

  I looked at him, unsure how to respond.

  “Or if not that, maybe I could just take you out for a drink sometime,” he said.

  The realization of what was happening washed over me like a wave. Not one of those small waves that runs over your feet and gets the bottom of your jeans wet as you walk along the sand, either. The kind of wave that happens when you’re coming out of the water, with your back to the ocean, and it just appears out of nowhere and pummels you.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, stunned. “You’re asking me out?”

  I saw Sam’s shoulders slump and I caught the disappointment pass across his face before he covered it up.

  “I was trying to be casual and subtle about it. Maybe one of those dates neither of us are sure is a date,” he said, and then he shook his head. “It’s over ten years later and I’m just as bad at it now as I was the first time, huh?”

  I felt myself blushing and my blushing made Sam start to blush.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just getting out of a really long relationship, so I’m out of practice. You might not believe it but I used to be very good at talking to women back in college. As my dad always says, be direct but—”

  Sam looked at me like he’d just revealed a terrible secret. He put his hand on his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did I just admit that I ask my father for dating advice?” he said, without changing his expression.

  I laughed. A quiet laugh. A “Yes, you did, but it’s totally fine” laugh.

  That’s when I remembered how much I always liked him.

  I liked him.

  Sam was cute. And sweet. And he thought I was funny.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Look. I thought you were a salesperson. You ask your dad how to hit on women. We’re like the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of social interaction.”

  He laughed. He looked so relieved.

  I wanted to see him again. That was the truth. I wanted to spend more time with him. I wanted to be around him.

  “How about this?” I said. “You can teach me ‘Chopsticks’ and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “Well, if it’s just ‘Chopsticks’ you’re after, I have a great idea.”

  I looked at him, willing to hear him out.

  He took my keyboard and I followed him as he led me up the stairs. The rickety, tight staircase led to a room full of huge instruments. A few upright pianos, a harp, a cello. Sam led me toward a sleek black baby grand. He put my keyboard down and then sat at the piano, tapping the spot next to him on the bench. I joined him.

  He looked over at me and put his hands delicately on the keys. Then leaned into it and started playing “Chopsticks.”

  I watched as his hands flew across the keys, the way they seemed to instinctually know what to do. He had nice hands, strong but gentle. Short, clean nails; long, lean fingers. I know women sometimes say they like men to have calluses and knobby knuckles, that they like a man whose toughness shows on his palms. But looking at Sam’s hands, I decided that way of thinking was all wrong. I liked the way his hands were agile and almost elegant. I found myself looking up his wrists to his arms and shoulders.

  Watching Sam play the piano, remembering how skilled he was, how talented he was, how dexterous—I found myself wondering what else he could do with his hands.

  You think you know who you are, you think you have your identity down pat, signed and sealed in a box that you call “me,” and then you realize you’re attracted to musicians—that “dexterous” is sexy to you—and you have to rethink everything you know about yourself.

  He stopped playing. “All right, now you go.”

  “Me?” I said. “Do that? I don’t even know where to start.”

  He pressed down on a white key in front of me. I, dutifully, put my pointer finger on it.

  “Try this finger,” he said as he pulled my middle finger onto the key.

  I nodded.

  “Now, hit that key like this.”

  He hit another key in a rhythm, six times.

  So I did the same with my key.

  “And now hit this one,” he said as he pointed to another.

  I followed each of his instructions, just as he told me. I was supposed to be looking at the keys, but half the time I was looking at him. He caught me once or twice, and I turned my head back to my fingers and the keys beneath them.

  I played slowly and unmelodically. My fingers hesitated and then moved too quickly, sort of panicked and squirrelly. But I could recognize a faint pattern in my own movements.

  His body brushed up against mine as we sat on that bench. He kept touching my hands with his.

  “All right,” he said. “Think you can do that fast now? I’ll play the other part as you do it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Yeah, I got it.”

  I rested my finger on the first key. He put his hand, gently, on the one just below it. “On three,” he said. “One . . . two . . . three.”

  I hit mine.

  He hit his.

  And there it was.

  Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh . . .

  “Chopsticks.”

  We only played for a few seconds before I had hit all the notes I knew. Feeling shy, I pulled my hands back into my lap. A part of me hoped he’d continue to play. But he didn’t. He stopped his hand in place and rested it gently on the keys. He looked at me.

  “So now that you know ‘Chopsticks,’ ” he said, “let’s go get a beer.”

  I laughed. “You’re smoother than you think,” I said.

  “My dad says it’s best to be persistent,” he said, joking. He looked confident. Hopeful.

  I thought about it for a minute.

  I thought about how nice it would be to order a gimlet and sit and talk to someone who was both a handsome man and an old friend.

  But as Sam looked at me, waiting for my response, I suddenly felt a very sharp sense of fear. True fear.

  This wouldn’t be dinner with an old friend.

  This would be a date.

  I couldn’t just throw myself into something like that.

  I looked at Sam’s smile. It was fading as I made him wait for a response.
r />   “It’s a rain check,” I said. “Is that OK?”

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Totally. Of course.”

  “I really want to,” I said, reassuring.

  “No, I get it.”

  “I just have a thing.”

  “No worries.”

  “I’ll give you my number,” I said, wanting him to know that I did want to see him again, that I was interested. “And maybe we can go out next weekend.”

  Sam smiled and handed me his phone.

  I called myself, so his number showed up on my phone, too. I handed his phone back.

  “I should get going,” I said. “But we’ll talk soon?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good.”

  “It was really nice to see you,” I said.

  “You, too, Emma. Seriously.”

  He reached out his hand and I grabbed it. We shook but then let our hands hang there for a moment. The effect was somewhere between shaking and holding.

  As I drove back to my apartment that afternoon, with a keyboard in the back and Sam’s number in my phone, I found myself wondering whether I could be with someone like Sam, whether Sam could mean something to me.

  I had always had a tender spot for him, always cared for him. And maybe it was time that I went out on a date with a nice guy. A nice guy who had always been good to me, who I might have even said yes to back in high school if things had been different.

  Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there.

  And I figured when that happens, you can let them pass by like a bus not meant for you. Or you can get ready.

  So I got ready.

  I thought about it all night. I tossed and turned. And then, the next morning, on my way into the store, I texted Sam.

  Drinks on Friday around 7:30? Somewhere in Cambridge? You pick.

  It was before nine. I didn’t expect him to answer.

  But my phone dinged right away.

  McKeon’s on Avery Street?

  And there it was.

  I had a date.

  With Sam Kemper.

  I had never been so excited and so sick to my stomach at the same time.

  What was I going to do if I started to have feelings for someone?

  Maybe it wouldn’t be Sam. Maybe it would be years in the future. But realizing you want love in your life means you have to be willing to let love in.

  And that meant I needed to let Jesse go.

  I could think of no other way to do it, no other way of processing it, than putting it into words. So, after work that night, I sat down on my couch, grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, and I wrote a letter.

  Dear Jesse,

  You’ve been gone for more than two years but there hasn’t been a day that has gone by when I haven’t thought of you.

  Sometimes I remember the way you smelled salty after you’d gone for a swim in the ocean. Or I wonder whether you’d have liked the movie I just saw. Other times, I just think about your smile. I think about how your eyes would crinkle and I’d always fall a little bit more in love with you.

  I think about how you would touch me. How I would touch you. I think about that a lot.

  The memory of you hurt so much at first. The more I thought about your smile, your smell, the more it hurt. But I liked punishing myself. I liked the pain because the pain was you.

  I don’t know if there is a right and wrong way to grieve. I just know that losing you has gutted me in a way I honestly didn’t think was possible. I’ve felt pain I didn’t think was human.

  At times, it has made me lose my mind. (Let’s just say that I went a little crazy up on our roof.)

  At times, it has nearly broken me.

  And I’m happy to say that now is a time when your memory brings me so much joy that just thinking of you brings a smile to my face.

  I’m also happy to say that I’m stronger than I ever knew.

  I have found meaning in life that I never would have guessed.

  And now I’m surprising myself once again by realizing that I am ready to move forward.

  I once thought grief was chronic, that all you could do was appreciate the good days and take them along with the bad. And then I started to think that maybe the good days aren’t just days; maybe the good days can be good weeks, good months, good years.

  Now I wonder if grief isn’t something like a shell.

  You wear it for a long time and then one day you realize you’ve outgrown it.

  So you put it down.

  It doesn’t mean that I want to let go of the memories of you or the love I have for you. But it does mean that I want to let go of the sadness.

  I won’t ever forget you, Jesse. I don’t want to and I don’t think I’m capable of it.

  But I do think I can put the pain down. I think I can leave it on the ground and walk away, only coming back to visit every once in a while, no longer carrying it with me.

  Not only do I think I can do that, but I think I need to.

  I will carry you in my heart always, but I cannot carry your loss on my back anymore. If I do, I’ll never find any new joy for myself. I will crumble under the weight of your memory.

  I have to look forward, into a future where you cannot be. Instead of back, to a past filled with what we had.

  I have to let you go and I have to ask you to let me go.

  I truly believe that if I work hard, I can have the sort of life for myself that you always wanted for me. A happy life. A satisfied life. Where I am loved and I love in return.

  I need your permission to find room to love someone else.

  I’m so sorry that we never got the future we talked about. Our life together would have been grand.

  But I’m going out into the world with an open heart now. And I’m going to go wherever life takes me.

  I hope you know how beautiful and freeing it was to love you when you were here.

  You were the love of my life.

  Maybe it’s selfish to want more; maybe it’s greedy to want another love like that.

  But I can’t help it.

  I do.

  So I said yes to a date with Sam Kemper. I like to think you would like him for me, that you’d approve. But I also want you to know, in case it doesn’t go without saying, that no one could ever replace you. It’s just that I want more love in my life, Jesse.

  And I’m asking for your blessing to go find it.

  Love,

  Emma

  I read it over and over and over. And then I folded it, put it in an envelope, wrote his name on it, and tucked it away.

  I got in bed and I fell asleep.

  I slept soundly and woke as the sunlight started beaming in from my window. I felt rested and renewed, as if the earth and I were in perfect agreement about when the sun should rise.

  When I showed up at the bar, Sam was wearing a dark denim button-down shirt and flat-front gray chinos. He looked like he might have put pomade in his hair, and when I leaned in to hug him hello, I noticed that he was wearing cologne.

  I’d known it was a date. I’d wanted it to be a date.

  But the cologne, the smell of wood and citrus, made it all crystal clear.

  Sam liked me.

  And I liked him.

  And maybe it was that simple.

  I knew it wasn’t. But maybe it could be.

  “You look great,” Sam said.

  When I got ready that evening, I’d put on a tight black skirt and a long-sleeved black-and-white-striped T-shirt that clung to the better parts of me. I took more care applying my mascara than I had in years. When it clumped, I used a safety pin to straighten my lashes, the way I’d seen my mom do when I was a child.

  And then I put on pale pink ballet flats and headed toward the door.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror just as I was leaving the house.

  Something wasn’t right. This wouldn’t do. I turned around and exchanged my flats for
black heels. Suddenly, my legs looked longer than they had any right to be.

  Feeling confident, I went back into the bathroom and outlined the edges of my lips in a perfect crimson line, filling it in with a lipstick that was called Russian Red. I’d only worn it once a few months ago when I took Marie out for a fancy dinner in Back Bay. But I’d liked it then. And I liked it now.

  When I made my way back to the front door and once again caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I felt borderline indestructible.

  I looked good.

  I knew I looked good.

  This was my good look.

  “Thank you,” I said to Sam there at the bar. I pressed my lips together and I sat down on the stool next to his. “You’re no slouch yourself.”

  The bartender, a tall, formidable woman with long, dark hair, came over and asked me what I wanted to drink. I quickly perused their signature cocktails list and nothing struck a chord. It all just looked like various ways to mix fruit juice and vodka.

  “Gimlet?” I said.

  She nodded and turned away, starting to mix.

  “What are you having?” I asked him. He was sitting in front of a pale draft beer. “I hope you haven’t paid for that yet. It’s supposed to be on me.”

  Sam looked over at me and smiled a sorrowful smile. “They made me pay when they handed over the beer,” he said. “But that just means you’ll have to buy my second.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The bartender put my drink in front of me and I handed her my credit card. She disappeared.

  “I mean, you say that, but for my second beer, I plan on ordering the most expensive one on the menu.”

  We were both sitting facing forward, looking at each other with glances and side eyes.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “It’s the least I can do since you took the time to teach me this.”

  I started playing “Chopsticks” on the bar with my right hand as if the keys were underneath it. Sam angled his body toward me to watch.

  “Very good!” he said when I was done.

  “A plus?” I asked.

  He thought about it while sipping his beer. “A-minus,” he said as he put his beer down. “You just missed it by a hair.”

  “What?” I said. “Where did I go wrong?”

  “You missed a note.”