And now I can tell him. I can just open my mouth and say it and he will hear it and he will know.
“I love you,” I say. I say it because I mean it right now, but I also say it for every single time I couldn’t say it then.
He looks at me and he smiles a deep and peaceful smile. “I love you, too.”
It all hurts so bad and feels so good that I’d swear my heart is bleeding.
There is such immense relief of an ache so deep that I fall to pieces, as if I hadn’t realized until now how much effort it was taking to seem normal, to stand up straight.
My legs can’t hold me. My lungs can’t sustain me. My eyes stare ahead but don’t see a thing.
Jesse catches me before I fall to the ground. Everyone is looking but I barely care.
Jesse supports my weight and leads me around the corner, into the bathroom. When the door shuts, he puts his arms around me, tightly, holding me so close that there’s no air between us. For years there were immeasurable miles separating us and now, not even oxygen.
“I know,” he says, “I know.”
He is the only person who can understand my pain, my astonishment, my joy.
“I’m going to tell my family we need some time, OK?”
I nod vehemently into his chest. He kisses the top of my head. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
I stand against the bathroom wall and watch him walk out the door.
I look at myself in the mirror. My eyes are glassy and bloodshot. The skin around them is blotched red. The diamond ring on my finger catches the dingy yellow light.
I could have taken it off before I came here. I could have slipped it off my finger and left it in my car. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I didn’t want to lie.
But right now, I cannot for the life of me understand why I thought wearing it was better than tossing it in my jewelry box and replacing it with my little ruby ring.
Both of them are only half the truth.
I close my eyes. And I remember the man I woke up next to this morning.
Jesse is back.
“OK,” he says. “Let’s go.”
He grabs my hand and leads me out through a back door. He walks toward the parking lot. His family is still inside. The wind blows through our hair as we run toward the bank of cars.
“Which one is yours?” he asks. I point to my sedan at the corner of the lot. We get into the car. I turn on the ignition, put the car in reverse, and then I put the car right back into neutral.
“I need a minute,” I say.
Sometimes I think this is a dream that I’m going to wake up from and I don’t know whether that would be good or bad.
“I get it,” Jesse says. “Take all the time you need.”
I look at him, trying to fully process what is happening. I find myself staring at the space where the rest of his pinkie used to be.
It will take us days, maybe weeks, months, or years, to truly understand what each other has gone through, to understand who we are to each other now.
Somehow that makes me feel calmer. There’s no rush for us to make sense of all of this. It will take as long as it takes.
“All right,” I say. “I’m good.”
I pull out of the spot and toward the road. When I get to the main drive, I take a right.
“Where are we going?” he says.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you forever.”
I look at him, briefly taking my eyes off the road.
I don’t know where I’m driving; I just drive. And then I turn on the heat and I feel it blaze out of the vents and onto my hands and feet. I can feel the smothering warmth on my cheeks.
We hit a red light and I come to a stop.
I look over at him and he’s looking out the window, deep in thought. No doubt this is even more bewildering for him than it is for me. He must have his own set of questions, his own conflicted feelings. Maybe he loved someone out there in the world while he was gone. Maybe he did unspeakable things to survive, to get back here. Maybe he stopped loving me somewhere along