in a better place

part two

“I don’t have it in me for another drink.” And I don’t think anyone is surprised that we left the bar together. “Should we just hold hands and be cute and walk around somewhere?” He asks.

“Absolutely.”

He takes my hand and we walk down Yorkville Avenue.

“Remember our first date?” I ask.

“Terroni night?”

“Oh my god. Not Terroni night. The Oxley.”

“Ah. Right right.”

“And I lived right there.” I point to a condo building that was just past Bay.

He smiles. “I remember that address. I remember walking you home. And purposely not coming up.”

“Yup. Made out in front of my building. Then you were like, “‘Merry Christmas, Emily Mais.”

He starts laughing. “And you were like ‘what was that’.”

“Thrown. I was thrown.”

We get to a street corner. His tone switches.

“Emily - it bothers me. That you think that I don’t have your back.”

“Jesse -

“I have terrible communication skills. I do. But when you’re getting mad at me, I feel like you’re actually mad at someone else.”

“My dad.”

“He betrayed you, Emily. I didn’t.”

There’s a bench on a street corner. I seat myself down.

“You’re not wrong. I probably shouldn’t be projecting my trauma onto you.”

I don’t want to get into the logistics. I don’t want to map out their actions side by side. Jesse knows enough, and I know enough not to argue with him in this state.

“I just…if you ever needed me. If you were ever with a guy and you were in trouble or you didn’t feel safe - I would be there for you. I would drop everything for you.”

I am tempted to respond with “how would that work if my number is blocked” - but I don’t. Because this is Jesse at his most honest.

“I need you to tell me something. And I need to hear it from your mouth directly. Do you ever see us being together? Because I’m not doing this again. I’m not having another night like this, and then agreeing to “try again.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know…look at the pattern.”

“It’s not great.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“I do. I want someone who gets just as excited about life as I do. And I don’t want to have to train someone on how to teach me.”

“You shouldn’t have to. And you’ll get that. It’s crazy, Em.” He shakes his head. “Because I know if I needed to bury a body - you’d be the first person I’d call.”

Neither of us say anything else for a while.

He continues. “But I think both of us are at a turning point. I just bought a house. You’re more clear on what you want…”

I nod. “I…I just have so much love for you. And I think I always will. I just get frustrated because I have all of this love and it doesn’t go anywhere. But I’m grateful for it, you know?” My eyes start to water and I feel his hand stroking my back.

“You’re a blueprint.” I continue. I look up at my old apartment building. “Almost a decade. And I still feel the exact same way. You can do whatever you want and we can say whatever we want to each other and I…I feel like I still look at you with like, stars in my eyes.”

“It’s both of us, Emily. Both of us feel that way.”

“Should we just like - have a kid? It solves a lot of problems - we’d be in each other’s lives forever.”

“Emily - I’m not having a child out of wedlock. I also don’t think you’re thinking about this clearly.”

“You know - some of the best relationships I see are when two people are co-parenting.”

He starts laughing. “I’d worry about that kid. Too smart for their own good. And an extremely dark sense of humor. We’d have to watch him.”

“And they’d probably have to parent us. Are mom and dad fighting again -”

“Or are they having another kid?”

I lean my head against his shoulder. He kisses the top of my head. We stay like this for a while.

“You guys are really cute.” One of the girls from the bar slurs as she walks by. “And she looks great. Like - she looks really great.”

“Thanks! We’re not dating.”

He starts laughing. “Jesus Christ.You really can’t help yourself, can you?”

“No.” But I turn to face him, and we kiss. We continue to kiss on this park bench on this street corner in Yorkville until he pulls out his phone and says “I’m calling an Uber.”

“To where?”

“My place?”

I nod. I expected him to tell me that he’ll drop me off at mine. I think about how if he wanted to actually end it, to actually have real closure - he probably would have suggested that instead.

We climb into the backseat of the car. In between us making out - he pauses.

“Can I ask you something?”

I nod.

“I need you to tell me if I ever put you down. Or treated you terribly while we were dating. Or if I ever made you feel small.”

“Jesse - you treating me poorly while we were dating was never the issue. You treated me like I was a princess. And you were my biggest fan. I never…you would never put me down.”

Relief washes over his face. “Ok. Good. I needed to hear that.”

-

Dear Jesse,

Life is dizzying. Maybe I am the way I am and I believe in what I believe in because of us. Because nothing is ever planned or linear. It is circular and doesn’t have an expiration date. It is special and it just is.

Are we together somewhere? I hope so. I hope I’m lucky enough to put this mystery to bed and finally visit that world someday. I wonder what it’s like. Are you writing? Are we writing?

You bought a house in a neighborhood nearby. You did it. You fulfilled that dream. And selfishly, I’m relieved about the high probability of a run-in.

Jesse, we are a “...”. Not a period, not a question mark, not an ending nor are we a beginning. We are two people who know each other well. Two people who see each other clearly.

-

It’s a pattern, what we do. We will take the elevator up to the third floor. We will walk into his apartment and I will leave my white Zara kitten heels at the door. I will then leave my purse on his kitchen island. He will shut the door to his bedroom and I don’t ever wait for him to undress me, I will undress myself. He will watch and then we’ll end up on top of his sheets. And I will fight back every “I love you” that I want to say.

In the morning, the sun peaks through his blinds. He’ll be out of this apartment by the end of the month, which makes me realize it will probably be my last morning here.

He starts talking about one of his friends. “It’s wild - she just watches as her fiancé shmoozes with everyone. Especially women. I think it like, weirdly turns her on to watch him flirt with other girls.”

“I can’t with your world.” I tell him. “We lead very different lives. And I’m not sitting here saying one is better or one is worse, all I’m saying is that it’s different.”

“I don’t know. I just feel like, if I have to impress someone - I would want my fiancé to impress them with me. Like we’re on the same team. Don’t you? What do you think?”

“Well - I won’t have the role of being your fiancé so I don’t feel the need to answer that question.” It rolls off my tongue so quickly and sharply, it surprises even myself.

He opens his mouth and then closes it. The air feels tighter.

I turn to face him.

“Jesse - listen. If you still feel like you need to keep my number blocked - then that’s fine. I just like - don’t want this to be the last time we speak. It doesn’t need to be a regular thing…”

“You are never just a regular thing, Emily Mais.”

It’s unusually warm for early June. I zip up my vintage Levi’s and pull my black strapless top over my head. I take one last look in his bathroom mirror. Mascara is smudged. Hair desperately needs to be washed. I’ve looked better.

He throws on a blue t-shirt and shorts. “I’ll call you an Uber. Let’s walk down together?”

I nod. I don’t think I have time to say goodbye to this apartment. It was a setting. And I’ve learned that settings change quickly and rapidly. But other things don’t.

We walk out of his apartment and into the elevator.

“45 minutes of sleep.” I tell him.

“Same. I think I just started to doze off at 7. How’s your vision?”

“Contacts came out in record timing. But you’re still blurry.”

He’s laughing. “You’re cute when you can’t see. I always like watching how you hold your phone a centimetre away from your face. And how you find your way back to bed. It’s like a bat using echolocation.”

I’m still laughing when we get outside. The Uber is around the corner.

The sun shines, he pulls me in for a kiss.

“Well. Have a good summer, Jesse.” It’s me trying to end things in the best way I know how.

He opens the car door for me, I slide into the back. Before he closes it, he shows me his phone.

“Unblocked your number, Emily Mais.”

But some things never really end at all.