It's a Love Story

by Annabel Monaghan

Dan’s sitting across from me and catches my eye. Ping. There it is again.

We are kissing so deeply that he lets out a sound that I’m sure the whole house has heard. “Shhhhh,” I say and he laughs into my mouth.

You’re beautiful when you’re having big emotions.” I smile and kiss his chin. I am certainly having big emotions right now. “That’s completely nuts.” He loves my jaw.

“It’s not a small thing. It’s more who I am.” “I think you’re amazing,” he says. He’s looking right into my eyes when he says it.

I am in love, all the way out on a limb with Dan, and I feel safe here.

He’s looking at me with so much love that I feel brave all over again. I reach around my back and take his hand in mine. I bring it up to his chest so that I can see this grounding thing, our hands woven together.

Dan wipes a tear from my cheek. I never planned to tell this story, and here I am telling it to Dan, who I love. Every impossible thing is in this bed right now.

“I find you exceptionally lovable.” I don’t know what to say to this. My heart is wide open at this point, and Dan’s just placed a gift inside.

Those are beautiful words, I think: “exceptionally lovable.” And also: “two heads on a single pillow.”

Dan takes my hand in his and moves them both up to his heart. “So. Now you know. You’re lovable.” I smile. “Okay.” Dan wipes a tear from my cheek and says, “I’d like to be the person who could take all of your sad things and make them happy. Like I’d hunt down each one and turn it over.”

I turn on the water and catch myself in the mirror. I am different. I am beautiful in a way I never thought possible, like all the way through.

I am having a moment; I feel happy. I push down the automatic fear that this will be pulled from me, that I’ll be happy and the world will take it back.

“I feel like I met a girl on vacation, but I get to take her home with me tomorrow,” he says. I am dying to get from here to tomorrow. I don’t necessarily want to leave Long Island, but I do want to get to the other side of this Jack thing, one way or another.

wrap my arms around his neck. I think what I want to say is I’d do anything for you. I can picture him at my house with Clem and me.

“This is it,” Dan says. “You can totally do this. You’re totally worth writing a song for.” Tears burn in my throat at this. It’s like he’s seen the hole in me and wants to fill it. “Thank you,” I say. He puts a gentle hand on my back to push me ahead.

Hearing how consistent I am about being desperate takes me back to that night where I was desperate for love but was told that I was too weird and gross to have it.

There’s a burning at the back of my nose that feels like betrayal. This pain has nothing to do with Jack, I realize. Jack is just tied up in that day, the way an old song can take you back to a kiss.

I am uncompelling, unable to hold interest. You could be watching me and turn the channel. You could be my dad and decide not to be. This absolutely tracks.

I knew this already. I am not compelling enough for love. I am not worth sticking around for. And all of this has to stop. Jack is a total douchebag, but he was right about that.

I look up at his impossibly handsome face and the way he’s looking at me like he loves me. It’s so cruel to look at me that way. It’s just because he’s only known me a week. He’ll understand soon enough.

But this is so stupid, it’s just a story. It’s bullshit.” “What’s bullshit?” he asks. He takes my hand and stops me. “What are we talking about? Don’t say us.”

He pulls me into his arms and holds me tight. I listen to his beating heart. I smell his quiet smell. I know this is the last time, so I just take a second, like a fading dream. I am awake now.

“Oh, stop. Quit trying to turn everything into a love story. Everything isn’t always about love. We’re just people on a trip. It’s called a fling, Dan. Look it up.” He stops walking and I turn to see him, recoiled like he’s been slapped.

I could reach out to him now and apologize—it’s clear that I’ve hurt him. I’ve taken something that felt specific and once-in-a-lifetime, and I’ve turned it into a weekend at Club Med with a guy named Bruno.

I am in free fall here, but I know one thing: there are no unicorns, especially not for me.

He’s giving me space, which I appreciate, but he really has no idea how much space I’m capable of giving him.

“Actually, I think I’m going to go to bed,” I say. “But you go ahead.” He’s looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me, like I’m not the person he woke up with this morning. Which I’m not. At all.

The thoughts I’ve been entertaining about forever and a little girl with Dan’s coloring and my curls sit sour in my stomach. There’s another sentence I should say about the kids and the pie, but I can’t quite get it out.

“She’ll come back when she wants,” Cormack says and pulls me into his arms. “I really hope you do.” Dan’s got his hands in his pockets watching for my next move.

I have a feeling in my body that I know is jealousy. Feeling jealous of my mother, whose life I ruined by being too brutal for her true love, is a new low.

I felt it. I know what love is now, and I remembered that it’s not for me. “I’m just really angry.” At myself for believing I could have the fairy tale, at her for never owning up, at Dan for lifting the curtain and showing me what I can’t have.

Dan: Jane That’s all he says, but when I read it, I hear it in his voice. The way he says my name, the way he whispered it in my ear, into my neck, my mouth. I hate the way I let myself start to believe in this thing.

I don’t deserve Dan—I know this—but I miss him in a visceral way. It’s been one day, and I am already desperate to hear his voice. I could call him and test the waters. I could tell him that I loved his movie—everyone likes compliments.

“It was beautiful. So are you going to pine over this guy forever?” “That’s my current plan, yes.” She smiles at me.

I close my eyes and hear a car pull into my driveway. I imagine Dan getting out and knocking on my door. I imagine myself jumping into his arms. He’d reel from the impact but smile at me and pull me close. Stubble scraping my cheek, lips catching my ear.

“I think I might have fallen in love? And it’s more beautiful than you described. But I wrecked it before it could wreck me.” “Why?” I let out a breath and shove my hands in my pockets. “Because I can’t actually believe someone would stick around for me.

“I guess I panicked and left before he could see the part of me that’s so easy to walk away from.”

“I liked it,” I say. “Falling in love, like actually falling. It’s sort of effortless, you know?” “I do.” She smiles. “But also terrifying. If I got any closer to Dan and he changed his mind…I don’t know how people recover from stuff like that.

Of course I think of Dan. Dan, who feels my smile in his chest. Dan, who is always at the tip of my tongue, the ends of my fingers. All he has is his talent, his ability to follow his heart. What’s inside of me is all I have too, the good and the bad.

The evidence of my time with Dan is in how clear I feel for the first time in decades. I don’t know anything about what’s going to happen in the future, but I know that I have spent a lot of time lying in the past, pretending that I didn’t want to get invited to the ball because I never thought I could be invited.

When I was with Dan, I jumped in without a mask or a script or best-practices bullet points. I was vulnerable with him, if just for a little while. I felt what it was to be loved, and I don’t know how to turn away from that.

“Everything,” she says. This makes me smile because this is a thing I’m starting to understand. Everything. A look, a kiss, whipped cream in my coffee. Standing on a hilltop together looking out at a pond. His hand possessively behind my hip on a catamaran because he wanted me to be his. A little girl dancing for her grandparents. It’s everything.

“I fell in love, and I chickened out,” I say. “Oh, Jane. Don’t let that be the end of your story. You’re braver than that.”

But Dan is a once-in-a-lifetime person and I am having once-in-a-lifetime feelings. I know how much I hurt him. I broke this beautiful thing, and I might not be able to fix it, but I want to try. Or at least explain.

I cannot accept the fact that this is over. Every night I imagine myself back in the cave of that bunk bed with him.

And I also know that I don’t care about looking stupid anymore. I am lovesick. I am putting myself out there, for him. I know what it feels like to have something wonderful, and I want it back.

“Crazy,” he says. He’s in sweatpants with a tear in the knee and a slightly too-small white T-shirt. His hair is a rat’s nest. He looks perfect.

He still says nothing, but he’s looking at me like he agrees that I am entirely unleashed. I have no place to hide, so I just keep going.

“And it’s funny that I’m such a mess with you and that you actually liked me. Because when I date, I have all these rules about how guys should look and act and how I should look and act.

And I walked out of that limo so small and there you were so perfect. I thought I had to be the stupidest person in the world to think you might love me.”