The Idea of You

by Robinne Lee

It was so like him to have a Band-Aid for everything. To walk away from commitments guilt-free. Would that I had acquired that gene.

She was fearless, and I loved that about her, envied it even. I liked that she took risks, that she did not wait for permission, that she followed her heart. Isabelle was okay with living outside the lines.

And while three years of accidental celibacy had been oftentimes miserable, I was not going to jump into bed with a rock star barely half my age because he’d winked at me at an after-party. I was not going to be a cliché.

“I play very well. I just don’t share.”

But as long as you’re fucking other people, you’re not allowed to make jokes about being in love with me.”

“He thinks you are beautiful and he thinks you are smart,” he’d surmised about Daniel, that first weekend I’d brought him to Boston, when we had been dating for seven months. “But he has no real appreciation for what you are passionate about, who you are on the inside.”

“C’est vrai, Jérôme?”

“The best artists, they are like this. You don’t shock just to shock. You create beauty, you create art. You don’t do it for attention.”

“because we shouldn’t put limits on ourselves. Remember?”

“There’s so much negativity in the world, sometimes I need art to just lift me.”

“I’m falling in love with you. I’m just going to put that out there, because I can. Because you told me I couldn’t if I was sleeping with anyone else, and I’m not, so there you have it…”

That being a mother did not have to mean no longer being a woman.

“And you have the rest of your life to redefine yourself, if ever you get tired of being ‘Hayes Campbell, pop star.’”

You could have been the one going down, and he could have been the president.”

“Be nice to her. If she makes Hayes happy, shouldn’t that be what matters?”

She nodded then. “I’m trying, Mom. I’m trying.”

I laughed. “I was just making sure it was you, and not the idea of you.”

I thought long and hard about what he’d said. It was just us. Fuck everything else.

It taught me to be a little more selective about who I bring back to my hotel room.”

Love, she said, was not always perfect, and not exactly how you expected it to be. But when it descended upon you, there was no controlling it.

“I love you,” I said. “I wish you were here.” “I am,” he said. “In your heart.”

“How did we get here?” I heard myself say. “This was only supposed to be lunch, remember? This was only ever supposed to be lunch.” “You,” he said, his voice frayed, foreign. “Me?” “You. You let me unfold you.”

“Love is this very precious thing, Izz. It’s this precious, magical thing. But it’s not finite. There’s not a limited amount of it out there. You just have to be open to allowing it to find you. Allowing it to happen.”