Page 64 of Only After We Met
Still by the window, she listened as I continued. “This is just how it has to be. I’d be happy if you wrote me in a few years and told me you were going to marry someone and they were going to make you happy. I want you to be happy.”
I leaned against the wall and slid downward until I was resting on the gray carpet. We just stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. She was scowling, angry, unable to understand my words, my way of loving her. She was moving her foot rhythmically. Her hands were folded in her lap.
“I don’t know if I would be happy if you had a girlfriend…”
She said it so low, so softly…that it made me laugh. At that, and at her, for how visceral it was, because she didn’t care if it was wrong; she was ready to confess her fears aloud. To me, at least. And that made it even more special, knowing she was letting me see her that way, letting me see through her…
“I wouldn’t hold it against you. But you shouldn’t worry about that…”
“Why? Because you don’t believe in love? Because it scares you?”
“It doesn’t scare me. It’s not that. I do believe in it. Sometimes.”
“You can’t believe in somethingsometimes.Either you do or you don’t.”
I stroked my jaw, took a deep breath, and tried to be honest with her for once—for a night—because Ginger was willing to be honest with me.
“What I believe in is moments. I believe you can fall in love many times in your life, with the same person, with different ones, with yourself, or just with a period of time.”
She looked out the window.
“I don’t know if I could invite you to my wedding,” she said.
I laughed. Ginger did too.
And I got up and walked toward her again. It was still snowing, but the outline of the moon was visible, just barely, in the midst of the darkness, a slender, waning sickle.
“I see it too,” she said, guessing at my thoughts.
“Us on the moon,” I whispered.
I don’t know how much time passed before she fell asleep with her head resting on my chest. I watched her in silence, memorizingthe lines on her face and convincing myself that I preferred to regret all those what-ifs over the risk that I might lose her forever. I thought of Paris; even there I had asked myself what would have happened if I’d dared to kiss her in the airport. Where it would have led to if we’d tugged on that thread, if we could have woven something new or only pulled what was already there apart. I thought about the detours we take and those we leave behind because we’re too scared of where we might end up.
She murmured something incomprehensible when I picked her up and laid her in bed. I lay beside her and took her hand. I searched for her pulse, the constant rhythm of the song that accompanied me as I closed my eyes.
33
Ginger
I swallowed, trying to dissolve the knot in my throat. But no luck. Because he was leaving. Because I knew the memory of last night would soon feel distant. And it wouldn’t be enough. And I couldn’t stop looking at him, every inch of him, as he dragged his two suitcases. His firm steps. How little he hesitated. His hair uncombed, exactly as it had been this morning, when I kissed him on the neck as he slept and he smiled before opening his eyes…
He stopped as he reached security. He turned back to look at me, sighed, and seemed a little sad. His eyes were bright and were staring straight into mine…
“I guess this is goodbye,” he managed to say. Then he smiled and bit his lower lip.
“You said that to me before. Almost a year ago.”
“I know. I’m super original…”
“Come here.”
He pulled me close and hugged me.
What would it be like to stay there forever, sheltered in his arms? I asked myself that, pressing my face into his chest until hepushed me away softly. For a moment, I thought I’d burst into tears if I looked at him again. And there was no reason to. I didn’t even expect this visit. I didn’t expect anything. And yet he’d come…
He grabbed my chin and lifted my face.
“Hey, Ginger Snap, what is it? Come on, look at me.”