JESSIE
It’s amazing how much can change in only a few hours. I’m not talking about the major things: life and death, birth, seeing Love Actually for the first time. I’m talking about how bipolar we are during the hours immediately following a breakup.
At two this morning, when Nat and I were cleaning up, I felt giddy. Empowered. Hear me roar!
But now it’s five in the morning, and I’m lying alone in my California king-size bed I picked out with Kevin, taking up only the right side, and wondering, What the hell am I going to do?
I’m too old to start over. I can’t go through the anguish of a first date ever again. I don’t want to fall in love with someone new. A whole new set of failures and ‘coulda beens’ and ‘almost but not quites.’
Kevin had been sending me texts and e-mails for several hours after I hung up on him. At the time, I didn’t want the distraction. I didn’t want to think about anything other than all of the great things that were happening to me at that moment. So on the advice of a (male) customer, I texted:
I’m swamped with work. Can’t talk. Get some sleep.
And the text worked. Kevin stopped bugging me.
But now, in the silence of dawn, I desperately want to talk to him. I’m terrified of losing him. Or maybe I’m just terrified of being single again.
Maybe this is for the best.
No, I should be terrified. I want kids. And if I start over again with someone else, that could mean having kids three years later than I want. Or maybe only being able to have one kid, because I’ll be so old when I start trying. Or maybe never getting to have a kid at all, or a husband, ever, and being single for the rest of my life.
Then Giovanni pops into my mind. What a depressing reminder of what I’ll never have. When he left tonight, he kissed me good-bye on the cheek, and my knees gave out a little.
Knees turning to jelly. I hate that feeling, I crave that feeling.
I miss that feeling.
Now that I think about it, it’s been years since my body went limp from a guy. I don’t remember ever having that candle-in-the-sun feeling with Kevin. But I must have. I wouldn’t have stayed with him for three years, I wouldn’t want to marry him, if he didn’t make my heart and my loins ache with desire, at least at the beginning.
Loins ache with desire? I have got to quit reading romance novels. You know who would make a really good novel cover boy …
Stop thinking about Giovanni. He belongs to her. He picked her. And she’s my friend.
Which makes me a really terrible person, because I am obsessing over the riddle of how to kiss him without getting into trouble.
I wonder what they’re doing right now. Probably having sex. I mean, seriously—how could they not be having sex every minute of the day? He’s the most beautiful man in the world. How can she not just bide her time all day waiting to get him back into bed? Or onto a couch, or in the backseat of a car. The backseat. I only thought of it because Nat did that with Marc with a c. I wonder if I could get her back together with … Jessie, stop that! It’s bad enough you want her boyfriend—do you have to wish Marc back on her besides?
I should text Kevin. It’s daytime there, and he’d be happy to hear from me. He’s sorry. He wants to marry me. Yes, he had a few moments of doubt, but didn’t I as well? I bought a bar, for God’s sake. First stone and all that.
I should text Kevin. Shorthand the apology. Figure out our next step and get to the wedding planning.
I pull my phone off the charger on my nightstand and look at it.
For a while.
What do I really want? If I could do anything in the world and not fail, what would I do?
Finally, I type:
You up?
I wait.
Nothing. Then …
Indeed. How are you holding up?
I can’t decide what to do about Kevin. Any advice?
Holly would say what’s your heart telling you?
I can’t tell Nat that my heart is telling me to go after her man. But I can tell a half-truth.
What my heart is telling me is that I don’t want to move to Copenhagen.
That actually is the truth. I have no desire. I don’t know what I do want, but I’m absolutely positive about what I don’t.
Well, there you go.
Thanks. Am I keeping you from Giovanni?
Nah. He’s asleep. I kept him up too late, which I feel little guilty about. (Yeah—not at all.) Have I thanked you for finding him for me?
She kept him up too late. Right.
And it’s all my fault.
The heart doesn’t really get to decide much in life. If it did, we would all live in Paris, painting for a living during the day and sleeping with the father of our children, Ryan Reynolds, at night.
Maybe there’s some way to convince Kevin to come home.