The Ex Vows

by Jessica Joyce

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.

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.”

“Damn, you two are really vibing today. What’s up?” Just a minor morning dry hump and a mountain of confusing feelings, I think, my cheeks heating.

“Anyone who could leave you doesn’t deserve you in the first place.”

“You want to rumble, Georgia?”

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

“This is going to mean something to me.” It’s a last warning, but I don’t need it. “It’s going to mean something to me, too.”

How strange it is to have a first for the second time. How lucky and messy and perfect.

Maybe it’s just like going back to visit a home that isn’t yours anymore. Maybe you don’t have the key, but someone lets you in anyway, and you stay awhile, and it feels so good just to be somewhere you once belonged.

“I’ve still got my list,” he says, his hand curving over my thigh. “I know how you love those.”

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

“I love it when you beg, Georgia. You never ask for anything.”

I did my best to cling to now, but those little flashes of further and future and forever snuck in, revealing what my deepest, messiest self wants: Eli, in every era.

“Do we need Nick Miller tonight?” he whispers finally. I let out a relieved breath. “No pillow person necessary. He was a terrible chaperone.”

😂😂😂

“I’m buzzed, not drunk. Drunk Eli would’ve forgotten that you gave Cole the first dance instead of me. Buzzed Eli remembers very clearly.”

“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?”

“I’ve never been good at stopping when it comes to you,”

Sometimes you have to cut yourself open, Georgia, and you hold yourself so tightly.” “I have to.” I hate the way my voice breaks. “You think so, and I understand it,” she says. “You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?”

“I think it had to happen like this, where everything went wrong the first time so it could go right this time.”

Eli can’t see my heart, and it’s for the better because he’d see his name everywhere in it. But it’s for the worse because he doesn’t see that his name is everywhere in it, and that hurts him.

“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.”

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.”

Time is cruel and a miracle all in one swoop. It shows you what you had, and sometimes brings it back to you, but it’s always different.

“I want you any way I can have you. I want you every way I can have you. I just want it to be honest.”

“I miss you and I’m in love with you and I hate being friends with you, if we’re being honest. It fucking blows.”

You don’t know yet that with us it’s never goodbye. But you will, I promise.

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?

We can be all those things—good, bad, easy and needy, okay or not on an endless cycle—and trust that the other will stay. Our circumstances are messy, but so is life. It doesn’t mean that we can’t love each other through it. We already are.

“You hate being my friend?” “Yes.” Oh god, that sounded violently emphatic. “I mean, no, I love being your friend, but it’s not all I want with you.” He takes a step, eyes locked with mine. I can see his hope there, right on the surface. “What do you want?” “Everything,” I choke out. “All the good stuff and the messy stuff and even the bad stuff. I want all of it.”

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

“Are you asking me to rumble, Eli Mora?” “Maybe I am, Georgia Mora.”

“What do you say? A rumble for old times’ sake?”