One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

if my thirties have taught me anything so far, it’s that I’m ready to try to be myself with no apologies.

What else could you want in a person other than kindness and humor? I’m not sure anything else really matters to me.

There are always studies to prove I should hurry and studies to prove that I shouldn’t and I’ve decided that I will have a baby when I’m goddamn good and ready, no matter what my mother reads on the Huffington Post.

I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own timeline, there’s a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life, more than the others. A moment that creates a “before” and an “after.”

I was madly in love with him and had been for as long as I could remember. We had a deep and meaningful history together.

You read all the way through to the end of one, only to find out that the husband dies. You hurl the book across the room, breaking the bedside lamp. When your mom comes home that night, you tell her what happened. You ask her for books to read where no one dies.

You wonder how it’s possible Marie got everything she ever wanted and you . . . ended up here. You know this is called self-pity. You don’t care.

You know that you will never truly be free of the grief. You know that it is something you must learn to live with, something you manage.

You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it’s more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can’t simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.

You are happier to have known him than you are sad to have lost him.

I hope you know how beautiful and freeing it was to love you when you were here. You were the love of my life.

“I think it’s a good sign, though,” he said, “that I was crazy about you at sixteen and I’m still crazy about you now.”

“What I’m saying is that loving you—even if I’m not sure you love me—it’s familiar territory,” he said. “I’ve picked it right back up like riding a bike. And I can do it for a little while longer, if that’s what you need.”

I wasn’t ready to let go of the word “wife” and grab on to the word “girlfriend.”

I had found a man who understood who I was and accepted me entirely, who was strong enough to make peace with the tender spot in my heart for the love I used to have.

I don’t know how I got so lucky to have both of you. My two true loves.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Because I have to be honest. I’m ready to cash in. I’d commit to you for the rest of our lives without a single doubt in my mind. I have never been happier than I have been during this year with you. And—the way I see it—you’re it for me. You’re everything.”

“Emma Blair, if you ever decide that you want to marry me, please tell me. Because I would like to marry you.”

Sam is my life. My new, beautiful, wonderful, magical life.

“I’m saying that I have spent the last three and a half years of my life hoping with everything I have in me to see you again. And if you think that you being engaged to someone else is going to stop me from putting our life back together, you’ve lost your goddamn mind.”

I love him. I love this man. No one knows me the way he knows me, no one loves me the way he loves me.

“I feel like my entire body is an open wound and I’m standing next to someone that may or may not pour salt all over me.”

“I don’t want your pity and I don’t want your loyalty. I want you to be with me because you want to be with me.”

“I have to let you go,” Sam says. “If we have any chance of surviving this and one day having a healthy, loving marriage.”

“I want to be with someone who lives for me. I want to be with someone who considers me the love of her life. I deserve that.”

I feel like maybe both options are equally right and wrong.

“Homer slept in the bathtub,” Sam says. Before I had a cat, before I loved those two little furballs, I would have thought someone saying, “Homer slept in the bathtub,” was boring enough to put me to sleep. But now it’s as fascinating as if you’d told me he’d landed on Mars.

“I’m not going to perform for you,” he says. “I hope you change your mind and realize that you love me and that we should be together for the rest of our lives, but . . . I’m not going to audition for the part.”

Sometimes I worry Jesse could lead me into hell and I’d follow along, naively saying things like, “Is it getting hot to you?” and believing him when he told me it was fine.

Do you ever get over loss? Or do you just find a box within yourself, big enough to hold it? Do you just stuff it in there, push it down, and snap the lid on it? Do you just work, every day, to keep the box shut?

I could make myself fit for him. He could make himself fit for me. But that’s not true love.

I’ve waited so long to be here with you; it seems silly to squander it just because it won’t last.”

“You’re a lot of the reason why I am who I am,” he says. “Oh, Jesse,” I say, so much tenderness and affection that my heart is soaked, “there is no me without you.”

It is the last time I will tell him I love him by the way I sink my hips and touch his chest.

It’s been rough going but I have finally figured out who I am and what I want. In fact, never has my identity felt so crystal clear. I am Emma Blair. Bookstore owner. Sister. Daughter. Aunt. Amateur pianist. Cat lover. New Englander. Woman who wants to marry Sam Kemper.

“You were a wonderful person to love,” I say. “It felt so good to love you, to be loved by you.” “Well, it was the easiest thing I ever did,” he says.

I’m a man now. And it’s not enough for me to hope for you. I have to fight for you. So here I am. That’s what I’m doing. I’m putting up a fight.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” I say to him. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I’m so sorry that I had unfinished business. But it is finished now. It’s over. And I know that you are the man I want to spend every day of my life with. I want our life. I want to marry you. I’m sorry I was lost. But I’m so sure now. I want you.”

It was real. And now it’s over. And that’s OK.