The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

“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?”

All he could see was that he was building something stable for us to set our foundation on. But I never wanted the foundation. I just wanted him.

“Growing up, I didn’t have the true-friends thing, or the close-family thing, and then you came along and turned into both for me. And I’m sorry, I know it’s so much to take, but I need you all.

“What if you make new best friends?” I ask. “Fuck that,” Adam says. Jamie’s pointed look seconds that emotion.

The scene in front of me fades, replaced with a developing picture of my potential life in Seattle: doing a job that I love with people who appreciate and recognize me. Falling back into the cadence of happy hours and weekend adventures. Finding a place of belonging that I made, something I’ve never done. Letting my friends come see me, weaving them into that fabric. Saying goodbye to the era that shaped me, yes, but starting a new one that’ll watch me grow.

“You look so beautiful I can’t feel my knees.” Shock and heat wind around me. I whisper, “I’m a mess.” “I know,” he whispers back, his eyes deep and pleading.

“Hello, wife,” he whispers. She gives him a radiant look. “Not yet.” “Hurry,” Adam tells Cole without looking at him, drawing a ripple of laughter from the guests.

Eli and I speculated about which one of us would get married first. We’d been curled up in his bed, studying, cocooned in a quiet that soothed me. Eli doesn’t let me look away. I can see the same memory playing in his mind. I can see him thinking what he said that night, now in past tense: it was going to be us.

“But this is my home, you know? Everything’s a mess, but it is perfect in its weird way.”

“It matters,” he says, his voice breaking, “because I’m in love with you.”

I get out a strangled, “Again?” He’s not smiling, but his mouth is soft, his eyes are soft, this word is soft: “Still.”

The hurt in my voice is clear; that she was there at all, and that he made so much effort because he wanted her there that much. He can hear it,

“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.”

“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 want to keep you because when we broke up, the first person I wanted to call to make it hurt less was you, my best friend, and it killed me to realize I didn’t even have that anymore.”

“But how would it have been fair to ask you to give me another chance when I couldn’t give you what you deserved? I couldn’t even give that to myself.”

You don’t need to send me anything to make me miss you, Georgia. I already do.

Because you don’t want me to say goodbye this morning. You don’t know yet that with us it’s never goodbye. But you will, I promise.

I pull more apart, reading each one as the purpose of the list becomes clear. There are three silent words before each item: I love you.

Because you let me call you Peach when no one else is allowed to.

Because you were smug as hell when I told you Heather Russo has a crush on me. I love your petty little heart. You know I belong to you, but you don’t know how.

Even though I can’t make you happy.

There’s thirteen years’ worth of love here. I can see it even in the five years of absence.

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.

Eli spent the entire week at Blue Yonder telling and showing me that he wants real and honest and messy. This list is telling me the same thing: he wants to love me in totality. I have to let him. Isn’t that the way I deserve to be loved—completely, messily, imperfectly? Isn’t that the way I deserve to love myself?

“The cupcake is a front. I’m here because I love you.”

“You kept them all, though.” “I did.” His eyes search mine. “Why?” “Because I’ve loved you for a long time, too.”

who would die with a shit ton of money in the bank but no one there to hold his hand.” I take his, just so he remembers that’s not his path.

“You told me you wanted me to choose something for myself, and now I need you to trust that I am. I’m choosing neither of those jobs because it doesn’t feel right. I’m choosing you and me because it does.”

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