One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“Think of all the people in the world,” he said, tucking my longest hair behind my ear. “And I was lucky enough to find you twice.”

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

Goosebumps all over my body

“I don’t know if this is exactly the right time but . . . I want to make sure you know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don’t know if I’ve properly conveyed it but I am committed to this, to us. I’m in, you know? For life. I want you forever. My only concern is that I don’t want to pressure you.” “I don’t feel pressure,”

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

I decided to no longer wonder what would have happened if things had worked out differently. And instead, I would focus on what was in front of me. I would focus on reality instead of asking myself questions about fictions.

What I was not thinking was, Jesse is alive. He’ll be home in two months. Look what I’ve done.

Ooh god nooo

“Don’t stay with me if you want to be with him,” he says. “Don’t do that to me.” My dreams, the rope and the knots, I know exactly what they mean. You don’t tie yourself to something unless you’re scared you might float away.

I’m sidetracked by a text from Sam. I love you. It’s the sort of thing we text to each other every day, but seeing it now, it is both life-affirming and heartbreaking. I

It doesn’t matter; even if she did acknowledge it, I know there’s no way she could possibly understand what I mean. I feel awful for giving up on Jesse. For thinking he was dead. For moving on. For falling in love with someone else. I’m actually furious at myself for that. But I’m also really angry at myself for not being loyal to Sam, for not remaining steadfast and true in my devotion, like I have promised him I would be. I am mad at myself for being unsure, for not being the sort of woman who can tell him he’s the only one, for not giving him the kind of love he deserves. I’m mad at myself for a lot of things.

“You are a sight for sore eyes.”

“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 look at him, and at first the smile is

When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel. “I

have to let you go and I have to hope that you come back to me.”

Omfg

“I don’t deserve you,”

“It’s not selfless,” he says. “I don’t want to be with a woman who wants to be with someone else.”

“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.”

It breaks my heart to be loved like this, to be loved so purely that I’m capable of breaking a heart.

“We might not be getting married. I think I have a date with Jesse tomorrow. I don’t know. I honestly . . . I don’t know.” My dad puts the bat down.

“Do you think you can love two people at the same time?” I ask her. “That’s what I keep wondering. I feel like I love them both. Differently and equally. Is that possible? Am I kidding myself?”

think. I think the problem is that you aren’t sure who you are. You’re a different person now than you were before you lost Jesse. It changed you, fundamentally.”

“I don’t think you’re trying to figure out if you love Sam more or Jesse more. I think you’re trying to figure out if you want to be the person you are with Jesse or you want to be the person you are with Sam.”

You helped me understand that. You kept me sane.”

It is hard to be so honest, so vulnerable, so exposed. But I find that it always leads you someplace freer.

Can you ever put things back the way they were? Can you chalk the intervening years up as a mistake and pick up as if you never left each other?

Jesse.

....I undersdnd... But i dont? Aaaah

“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.”

Ufff...

“I’ll call you when I’m ready. But . . . don’t call me. I know it probably makes the most sense for you to tell me what you’ve chosen after you’ve chosen but . . . I’d rather you tell me once I’m ready to hear it.”

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 feel like my old self with him, the carefree version of me that died when I thought he did. But it would be a lie to say that I am so entranced with our conversation that I forget the cold. The cold is impossible to forget.

But then I stop counting. I just enjoy the view and the company, a sight I never thought I’d see again with a man I thought I’d lost.

“Yeah,” Jesse says. “Now. Life is too short to be sitting in some restaurant drinking wine we don’t care for, eating a lobster we don’t like.” That is absolutely true.

By loving the two of them, I am no longer sure about either. And by being unsure, I might just lose them both. Romantic love is a beautiful thing under the right circumstances. But those circumstances are so specific and rare, aren’t they?

He’s so confident about everything. He always has been. He’s always the one who believes everything is going to be fine. But he’s wrong, isn’t he? Everything isn’t always fine. Terrible things happen in this world. Awful things. You have to do your best to prevent them.

I don’t mention that I’m not sure I was ever really comfortable changing my name to Emma Lerner in the first place, that I am and have always been Emma Blair.

This isn’t me. I’m not this person.

“I changed my name back to Emma Blair because Blair Books is my store. I love it. And I’ve built a life around it. I am a Blair.”

Yassss girl you goo

“Everything is going to be OK,” he says to me before I fall asleep. But I’m not sure I believe him anymore.

It’s a good life, the one he never imagined for me. It’s a great life. I miss it.

Sam knows I can’t eat cheese. And he knows that I never want to change my last name from Blair again. He knows how important the store is to me. He likes to read. He likes to talk about books and he has interesting thoughts about them. He never drives without a license. He never attracts police officers. He drives safely in bad weather. Sam knows me, the real me. And he has loved me exactly as I am, always, especially as the person I am today.

I am not her. Not anymore. No matter how easy it is for me to pretend that I am.

“It’s not that simple.”

Exactly !

“I love you, Jesse, and even when I thought you were gone, I loved you. But I couldn’t spend my life loving a man who was no longer here. And I didn’t think that’s what you’d want for me, either.”

“What do you want to know, Emma? For crying out loud.

That....is rought omg poor guy

People aren’t stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and our pains. Jesse is a different man than he was before. I am a different woman. And what has confused me ever since I found out he was alive is now crystal clear: We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love.

I don’t think I was ever afraid that loving both of them made me a bad person. I was afraid that loving Sam made me a bad person.

“I don’t think I can be with you,” I say. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think we’re right for each other. Anymore.”

Omg she did it!shes so strong

After all of this, all we’ve been through, we aren’t going to grow old together.

Why say thisb tho tjr whyy dont you just end with my pain now :'(

Dear Jesse,

This letter.. Goddamn it

“Do you realize that we were both looking out at the same ocean looking for each other?”

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” he says. “But, right now, all I can see is that it’s not like it used to be.”