The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

For past me, who didn’t give up, and for future me, who will look back on all of this and be so proud.

I’ll watch him test versions of nicknames with other friends, but mine will only ever be Peach. When I eventually ask him why, he’ll tell me it’s because he knew exactly who I was to him from the start.

Years later Eli will tell me that he fell in love with me right then, and in this movie-like memory I always see it—how we can’t quite break eye contact, the flush along the shell of his ear when I sit next to him on the couch minutes later, the way his eyes linger on me when Adam and I bicker over control of the TV, the steady bounce of his knee. The beautiful, shy smile he gives me over the pizza we have for dinner later. He’ll hold on to it for years, but eventually that spark will become a wildfire. And then we’ll burn it all down.

Sometimes I swear adulthood is staring at your phone and wondering which of your friends has enough time to deal with your latest emotional meltdown, then realizing none of them do.

You know our boy. I do, and god, I wish I didn’t still. It’s a gift to know someone when you’re in love with them, and a curse when you’re out of it.

“There you are.” A smile melts across his face, slow and sleepy. “Hey, Peach.”

“See you, shithead.” “Endearment?” Cole calls. “Derogatory,” I call back. Eli’s laughter follows me up the path before it’s cut off by Cole’s low murmur.

“You and I are going to have a reckoning, Georgia. It doesn’t have to be this week, but it’s going to happen.”

Eli is the living embodiment of it’s always the quiet ones.

“It’s probably my fault. Maybe I’m being extremely obvious about it,” he murmurs. “Maybe he’s been catching me staring at you when you’re not looking, thinking about all the unchecked things on our list.”

“Fuck, the way I’ve wanted you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I don’t know how anyone can look at me and not see it.”

“You’re always taking care of other people. Who’s taking care of you?” The question comes out of nowhere, hits me somewhere deep, even with the tender way he asks it. Maybe because of it. “Oh, you know, good ol’ me,” I say in a tone two hundred miles away from casual.

“I know you’re scared. I mean, fuck if that’s not the human experience,” she says quietly. “But you deserve to let yourself feel whatever you need to. You can be messy. A disaster, if you need to. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it, I promise you.”

And I think, this is what love is. What I’m looking at, what I’m feeling, what’s happening here this weekend. What I crave in every corner of my bones, and what I’m so scared of getting, because so often I lose it.

“That’s a lot of flights.” “I’m a slut for miles,” Adam says. “I have an entire credit card devoted to getting miles.”

He stops just short of me, a flame in his eyes. No, not a flame—a wildfire. “It matters,” he says, his voice breaking, “because I’m in love with you.”

“When I say I’m still in love with you,” he says quietly, “I mean today and yesterday and this entire week. I mean at Nick and Miriam’s wedding and I mean for the past five years.” If possible, he gets even quieter, but now he’s closer so I get every word. “When I say I’m still in love with you, I mean the first time I saw you and right now. I mean every second in between.”

“Yes,” Eli says. “That’s why it matters. Because I’m so in love with you that I feel like I can’t breathe. I think it every time I look at you, every time you let me in or you laugh or you look at me like I mean something to you. I know it’s fucking messy, and I know you hate that, but it’s also true.” I feel like I’m being pulled apart string by string, like everything that I’ve kept inside is being unraveled by him. I’m being methodically disassembled, all my tender parts exposed. “I can’t do this,” I breathe. His expression collapses. “Why?” “Because I want to keep you!”

It’s a privilege to have someone trust you enough to show you those pieces of themselves, the most vulnerable and tender, the least polished. It’s a show of trust to let you see them first thing in the morning, in the middle of a panic attack, right after they’ve cried. To give you a shaky smile after a messy fight. To come back to you again and again with their heart in their hands.

Time is a miracle. It shows you what you had, and sometimes it brings it back to you. Different. Better.