OUR LAST SUMMER, TOBIAS GOT AN assignment in the Hamptons photographing the new Montauk Inn. I took a vacation day and went out to the beach with him. It had been a rough winter and a rougher spring. His unhappiness with his job and our opposing schedules were taking their toll. I knew we needed the time together. He knew, too, and he arranged the whole thing. He asked for a bungalow right on the beach (which the shoot paid for), he asked me to get off work, and he picked up my favorite wine and brought it out with him.
Tobias borrowed Matty’s car (he had one of his own now) and drove out east on Thursday. I followed on Friday and met him at the Montauk train station. I took the LIRR out after work, a ride I hadn’t done since our first year in New York, when Sumir’s boss at the law firm had lent him his house for the weekend and Jessica and I had piled into the train with Two Buck Chuck, Scattergories, and bags of popcorn. We were only out there for a long weekend, but it felt like a month.
When I saw him standing on the platform, holding a single sunflower, I knew instantly we were okay. It was him. Tobias. My Tobias. Not the grumpy, downtrodden guy who sometimes inhabited our home, but the boy I fell in love with on the Santa Monica Pier all those years ago.
I leapt into his arms. He picked me up and spun me around. I could smell the salt water on him. “We really should stick to beaches,” he said.
That night we cooked lobster and dipped it in butter sauce on the bungalow’s deck. I had brought in four bottles of white wine from the city in addition to his red, and we drank two of them snuggled in a chair together. I was wearing his sweatshirt—an old one from UCLA that smelled like him. I remember thinking that this was the heaven I wanted to be in—this, right here. The two of us and butter and the sunset—making everything fluid and hazy and golden.
“Why do we fight?” he asked me. “We don’t need to. It’s stupid.” He nuzzled his face in the crook of my neck. I felt his nose graze my collarbone.
“I know,” I said. “It is stupid. I just want you to be happy, and sometimes I feel like you’re not.”
“I am,” he said.
“Now.” I sat up and put my hands on his chest. “But sometimes I feel like you blame me for the work stuff. Like if you had stayed in California you’d be shooting for Vanity Fair by now.”
“That’s crazy,” he said, but it wasn’t, I could tell. He was trying to bury his tone.
“It’s not.” I turned his face to mine. I looked into his eyes. “You came back for me, but it’s not enough if you don’t really want to be here. I love you, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not happy.”
Tobias shifted me in his lap. He brought his face close to mine so that I couldn’t see his features, just the smooth square of skin. “I’ve blamed the situation,” he said. His voice was low and hoarse—near a whisper. “But I don’t want to anymore.”
I felt his heartbeat on my chest, the warmth of his breath on my chin. “Okay,” I said.
“It’s not fair, I know. But I need you to forgive me.”
“Tobias.”
“Please?” he asked. Although it wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” I said.
I kissed him and he wrapped his arms around me. He carried me into the bedroom. It was all white and blue with little accents of sea-foam green.
I didn’t think much more about it. I didn’t think what it meant, that he had admitted it to me. I just thought about the fact that he wanted to let it go. He had, in a moment, decided our future was more important than our past. It was as simple as that.
“Let’s just stay here,” he said to me. We were in bed, naked, our limbs entwined like tree roots.
“We could fish for sustenance,” I said.
“I’d learn the ways of the hunter.”
I laughed. The idea of Tobias hunting anything was comical. He hadn’t so much as had red meat in six months—a fact he thought I hadn’t noticed, but had. He’d left a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma lying around the house. He hadn’t mentioned it, but slowly he’d started to transition his diet. He stopped ordering burgers—not that they were a staple. But he’d started buying vegan imitation meat and roasting portobello mushrooms as a protein.
“I’d gather. Weeds and nuts and seeds. We could build a home of bamboo.”
Tobias raised his eyebrow at me. “A tree fort?”
“Cool in the summer, warm in the winter,” I said.
“Sounds perfect,” he said. He moved his hands on me underneath the blanket. “Just the two of us.”
I didn’t think, but I should have, about his comment. How all our fantasies—his and mine, ours together—revolved around us being alone, somewhere other people, the world with all its politics and societal demands, couldn’t touch us. We were the best when we were separate, uninterrupted. The beach, our apartment, a bedroom with the windows closed. Our problem wasn’t us together, it was us in the world—a world that demanded we reconcile its reality with our romance. If only, I remember thinking, although I wasn’t sure what.