Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’m not scared of flying. I’m scared of sharks, hurricanes, and false imprisonment. I’m scared that I will never do anything of value with my life. But I’m not scared of flying.

“Hey, Hannah,” he says. “Yeah?” “I’m glad you decided to come home.” I laugh. “Well, I was running out of cities.” “I don’t know,” he says. “I like to think you’ve just come to your senses.”

Looking at him now, recalling what it used to be like between us, how I liked myself around him, how I felt good about the world and my place in it with him by my side, how I ached when he left for college, I remember what it feels like to truly love someone. For the right reasons. In the right way.

Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do.

“Maybe all of this time,” I say to Ethan, “I’ve been looking for home and not realizing that home is where the cinnamon roll is.”

“From experience, I can tell you that if you go around trying to figure out what’s fair in life or whether you deserve something or not, that’s a rabbit hole that is hard to climb out of.”

And then I wake up in the morning to the sound of Gabby’s voice. “Where did this chocolate pudding come from?”

I know that I should believe him. I know that he’s telling the truth. But the fact of the matter is that I worry that I’ll believe him too much, that I’ll become too easily swayed into believing what I want to believe about him. I don’t want to do what I would have done before. I don’t want to believe what a person says and ignore what he does. I don’t want to see only what I want to see.

“A Hannah Savannah sentiment if there ever was one,” my dad says proudly. “If that doesn’t describe you, I honestly don’t know what does. ‘I don’t know, I felt like it.’ ” He laughs to himself. This is exactly the kind of stuff I’m trying to change about myself.

I kept telling people, “My family is in London, my family is in London,” but I should have said, “I also have family in Los Angeles. They live on a quiet, tree-lined street in a Craftsman-style house in Pasadena.”

The difference between life and death could be as simple and as uncomfortably slight as a step you take in either direction. Which means that I am here today, alive today, because I made the right choices, however brief and insignificant they felt at the time. I made the right choices.

“It’s a hard thing,” he says. “To admit you have failed your child. You know, so many of my friends nowadays are empty-nesters, and they say that the day you realize your kids don’t need you anymore is like a punch to the gut. And I never say it, but I always think to myself that knowing your kid doesn’t need you may hurt, but knowing your kid did, and you weren’t there… it’s absolutely unbearable.”

I open it. It’s a cinnamon roll from Primo’s. The glaze is stuck to the box, and the dough has started to unravel. “You remembered,” I say. It’s such a thoughtful gift, such a tender gesture, that I know I’m going to start crying again if he doesn’t leave this minute. He winks at me. “I’d never forget a thing like that.”

In general, I find that when you are doing something you are not supposed to be doing, the best course of action is to act as if you are absolutely supposed to be doing it.

“If you love cinnamon rolls as much as I do, then I’ll bet you also love churros. Have you had a churro?” I give him an indignant look. “Are you kidding me? Have I had a churro? I’m from Los Angeles. I’ve had a churro.” “Oh, well, excuse me… Sassypants.” I start laughing. “Sassypants?” He laughs, too. “I don’t know where that came from. It just popped out of my mouth. I’m as stunned as you are.”

“Of course,” I say. It’s nice seeing him. I may have gotten a bit infatuated with the idea that he and I have something romantic left between us, but I can see now that we don’t. I will probably always love him on some level, always hold a spot for him in my heart. But dating again, being together, that would be moving backward, wouldn’t it? I moved to Los Angeles to put the past behind me, to move into the future.

“We are going to handle this, and we are going to be fine.” “We?” “Well, I’m not going to let you go through this alone, you moron,”

Hahaha

“You are going to love this baby,” she says. “You know that, right? You are such a loving person. You have so much love to give, and you are so loyal to the people you love. Do you have any idea what a great mom you are going to be? Do you have any idea how loved this kid is going to be? The love it will have from its Aunt Gabby will eclipse the sun.”

Because that is truly all I want in this world. I want to try to do something myself, knowing that when I have nothing left, someone will take me the rest of the way.

Life is just a series of breaths in and out. All I really have to do in this world is breathe in and then breathe out, in succession, until I die. I can do that. I can breathe in and out.

When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future.

I don’t believe that being in love absolves you of anything. I no longer believe that all’s fair in love and war. I’d go so far as to say your actions in love are not an exception to who you are. They are, in fact, the very definition of who you are.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences. We have to face those consequences head-on, for better or worse. We don’t get to erase them just by saying we didn’t mean to. Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I’m starting to think that when we don’t own them, we don’t own ourselves.

“It’s just that I ruined things with the only man I think I’ve ever really loved. I’m pregnant with a baby I didn’t plan for, as a result of sleeping with a married man, who won’t even be in my child’s life. I’m fatter than I’ve ever been. And my dog is still peeing inside the house. And yet, somehow, I feel like my life here is so good I couldn’t possibly leave it. For the first time in my life, I have someone I feel like I can’t live without.” “Is it me?” Gabby says suspiciously. “Because if it’s not, this is a weird story.” “Yeah dude,” I say to her. “It’s you.” “Awww, thanks, bro!”

It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.

She starts crying again, and she squeezes. And at that moment, I realize that if I have taken away a fraction of her pain, then I have more purpose than I have ever known. I’m not moving to London. I’m staying right here. I found my home. And it’s not New York or Seattle or London or even Los Angeles. It’s Gabby.

“Because if I’m not his soul mate, then that means he’s not mine. There’s someone else out there for me. If he found his, maybe I’ll find my own.”

So this morning, while Gabby is taking Charlemagne to the vet, I have found myself Googling nursing schools.

“Timing seems like an excuse. Extenuating circumstances is an excuse. If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.”

“All the cinnamon roll joints in all the world, and you had to walk into mine,” I say. He laughs. “By design, actually,” he says. “What do you mean?” “I figured if I was ever gonna meet you again, run into you, and start a conversation like two normal people, I knew my best bet was a place with good cinnamon rolls.”

“It made my day when I found out about it.” “It did?” I ask him. “Are you kidding me? Prettiest girl you’ve ever seen rolls herself through a hospital desperately trying to find you? Made my week.”

If Jesse is right and there are other universes out there, I’ve probably met Henry before in one of them. We might work together somewhere. Or we would have met in Texas years ago. Maybe in line for a cinnamon roll.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you,” I say. “Some way or another.” “Yeah,” he says. “Or maybe in another life.”

“And I suppose you won’t be having any?” Gabby says, looking at my belly. I’m seven months pregnant. It’s a girl. We’re naming her Isabella, after Henry’s sister. Gabby doesn’t know that we’ve talked about naming her Isabella Gabrielle, after her.

One Saturday night in my late twenties, I was hit by a car, and that accident led me to marry my night nurse. If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is. So I have to think that while I may exist in other universes, none of them are as sweet as this.