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I was going over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal. I pulled on my shirt, grabbed my coat and wallet and Lieutenant Dan’s leash. I clipped it to his collar faster than I’ve ever moved in my life and then started running with him the quarter mile to the restaurant. As soon as I made it to their patio, their Wi-Fi connected to my phone and her message pinged.
THAT IS SO FUCKING ROMANTIC
Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.
lol right 🙃
“My dad was gone by the time I was eight. I never teleported again after that. There wasn’t anyone strong enough to carry me.”
I never had a word for teleporting but omg 🥺
“You know that it’s not your fault that you don’t like that stuff, right? There’s nothing wrong with you.”
crying
“Have you ever heard that quote if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it’s stupid?” “Yeah…” “Sounds like Amy really likes hanging out in trees.” I laughed a little. “I will never judge you for how you climb a tree, Jacob. And you should know that you are an exceptional fish.”
you are an exceptional fish 😭
“You know what I think about? I think about perfect matches. You know how with an organ donation a perfect match isn’t really perfect? There’s still a chance of rejection, even if all the stars align like they did for you and Benny. Nothing is ever perfect. There’s just matches that have a higher chance of working than others. Maybe you guys were like that. It could have worked, but you’d spend your whole life forcing it.”
well damn
His life was made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny choices, each thing in it selected by him and only him, so it was exactly what he wanted.
yesss this is how I feel about my space (minus the clutter)
“Un hombre que puede mantener viva una planta tiene la paciencia de aguantar tus mierdas. It means ‘A man who can keep a plant alive has the patience to put up with your shit.’”
I actually LOLed so hard, never heard this one before
“I can’t work the word motherfucker,” I said, lowering my voice on the last word, “into a casual conversation.” “Why? Jafar does it all the time.”
hahaha
I could still smell her perfume on my shirt. I could still feel where she’d been pressed into my body, and I couldn’t ignore how much I liked it. How beautiful I thought she was today, how nice she smelled. How grateful I was that she was doing this, for whatever reason. And all this strengthened my desire to return the favor that was a favor to my favor. All I wanted to do these last few weeks was to show her how much I appreciated her and valued her friendship. My brain had broken off from worrying about the wedding and all that situation entailed, and it had moved on to how I could look
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“Damn. Double homicide,”
“You think I’m a ten?” “You’re an eleven.”
“Love shows up. That’s how you know when it’s real. And what a beautiful way to show up for someone, Jacob.”
if you’re with someone who doesn’t speak your language, you’ll spend a lifetime having to translate your soul? Amy
She’d known I needed the details. I didn’t have to ask her, I didn’t have to explain it to her—or not explain it and just deal with not having it. She understands you, even when you don’t say anything at all… This is what Mom meant. This is what she saw.
“Well, I still wouldn’t punch you in the face,” I said. “But I would work hard enough so you’d always have everything you need. I’d go hungry so you could eat.”
I’ve had three different last names in my lifetime and it’s all been to carry on some stupid patriarchal tradition. I will never do it again.”
“Because being around her that much wore me out,”
“I’m sorry someone made you feel like it’s hard to love you,”
how could I give away even a moment of seeing her and talking to her? I couldn’t justify it. I would have come no matter where she was, or what she was doing. I would have met her at a party. Or a busy bar or a nightclub. My desire to see her overrode my own self-preservation instincts—in more ways than one.
“There’s nothing about me that I’m afraid for you to know.”
“Okay. And just so you know, I don’t ever change my password,” he said. “Okay.” “That means that you’ll always have access to my phone.
“There. I changed my password. Now it’s the same one as yours.” “Jacob!” “What?” He was laughing. “Now you won’t forget it.” “Why would I need to know your password?” “To check a text for me while I’m driving, to open my phone to take a picture, to look at my calendar to see if we’re available on the same day—”
“You and me?” he said gently. “We’re different. We agree to be harmless to each other.”
“I want to have the kind of living room you like.”
I wanted him to see all my ugly parts and my dirty secrets. Like, here’s all my neurotic shit. Here’s me on a two a.m. rabbit hole, Googling psychic mediums after I saw a TikTok that said one solved an unsolved murder in Alabama. And look! Instead of going to bed after, I searched for some little plastic dicks I wanted to put on the light switches in Benny’s room as a prank. What do you think of that? Is it weird enough for you? It’s like I wanted to see if he still wanted me around after he knew me. The unscripted me. The real me. The messy me. Maybe because at some point Nick knew me like
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I liked seeing what Jacob did when no one was watching because it was exactly what he said he did.
I think, subconsciously, that was what I was hoping for. I wanted him to disappoint me. I wanted to get past the façade that everyone shows the rest of the world and see who he really was unscripted.
two beers and a puppy litmus test?” I shook my head, smiling at her. “No.” She rubbed her nose. “You ask yourself would you have two beers with this person and let them watch your puppy for a weekend? Some people are a yes/yes. Some are a no/no.
“Well, I can’t stop staring at your collarbone,” she said. I looked at her amused. “My collarbone?” “I think it’s so sexy.” She lisped on sexy. “And your forearms. I love them.” Well. I was never wearing long sleeves again. Winter was going to be rough.
“You sat in the rain just to talk to me?” I looked at my lap for a long moment before looking back up at her. “I’d do a lot more than that for you.”
I tried to pour all the love I felt into this tiny contact.
Then I picked her up and carried her to bed. And while she was cradled in my arms, she muttered something about teleporting.
I’M FUCKING SOBBING
I gave her an amused look. “You don’t have to bring my dad dead things.” “But I want to be his favorite,” she whined.
I was trying so hard not to cry. I didn’t want him to have to deal with Amy and my feelings too.
“He has social anxiety. You expect him to come to some loud-ass limo party with your verbal-diarrhea husbands, and you wonder why he didn’t suddenly turn into some social butterfly? He should get credit for even trying. You have no idea how hard he has to work to just fucking show up. And he does it because that’s what love does—it shows up. He’s shown up for Amy and his brother since the second this started. He has been a goddamn saint through all of this. He is not the asshole. You’re the asshole.” Jafar squawked, “ASSHOLE!” from somewhere under the kitchen table.
“I don’t care about Amy, Briana. I don’t love her. I don’t think I ever did. I’m glad she’s pregnant, I like being an uncle. And you know what? If you’re only with me for the kidney, I don’t care about that either. Because I am so fucking in love with you, I’ll settle for anything. Even that.” His voice broke on the last word.
“This is real?” I asked. He nodded. “It’s always been real.”
“What socks?” Carter asked. “Alligators. And look what Briana has.” I nodded at her. Briana pulled her hair off her shoulder to show him her green smiling-alligator earrings.
THE MATCHING SOCKS AND EARRINGS I CANNOT
My life was a fairy tale. I didn’t take one second with her for granted. I swore to myself I never would. Being able to hold her while we watched a movie or come up behind her to hug her while she drank her coffee or put a hand on her thigh under a table—it was all a gift. A privilege. And I vowed always to honor that. I wrote about it in my journal—when I had time to journal. I was too busy living the dream that was my life to sit down and document it. But I was so happy.
“Will you still love me when I don’t have any more organs to give?” I asked. “I’d love you even if you were a talking head in a jar,” she said, speaking to my lips. “I’d love you even if you didn’t like dogs.” She gasped. “I’d love you even if I was a gummy bear and you ate me,” she breathed. “I’d eat you even if you weren’t a gummy bear…”
“Every man is him! You are all the fucking same!” Her voice cracked on the last word. “You aren’t until you are.” Her breath was coming out shaky. “You won’t like me once you really know me, or you’ll find someone else or you’ll want something different and then you’ll leave. So just do it now. Save me the trouble.”
I’d learned nothing from Nick. Not a thing. Jacob and I were so new. Of course he loved me now. But what about when I wasn’t fun? When I was sick, or moody, or the sex tapered off, or if I lost the baby because maybe I couldn’t carry one to term in the first place. Would he want me if I couldn’t give him kids?
If I didn’t know Nick after twelve years, how could I possibly know Jacob after just a few months? And no matter how well you know someone, or for how long, you can never be in their head. You can never know what they’re really thinking. Even if it feels perfect, even if they feel perfect—perfect isn’t actually perfect. There’s always the chance of rejection. My heart wanted to believe that maybe Jacob was different. Maybe we were soul mates, and that’s why it had all happened so fast and so easily. But my brain screamed that I was just stupid—making impulsive, irresponsible decisions with a
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you can never be in their head
“You are perfect, Jacob. But I am not. You won’t always want me and I’ll always be braced for it. I’ll never relax. I’ll be waiting for the shoe to drop. I’ll never feel secure. I’ll never really trust you. I’ll just push you away and I’ll be miserable and I’ll make you miserable.”
I wanted to carry her off and put her where I could keep her safe, pack love around her and insulate her from whatever was eroding her. But I couldn’t do that, so I just held her instead. I folded my arms around her, and she clutched my shirt like she was afraid I would vanish. But she was the one who was going to vanish, not me. I felt panicked. I didn’t know how to love her better than I already did. How to show her I wasn’t like her ex or her father. She had all of me—there was nothing else I could give her—and if that wasn’t enough to convince her, what else could I do?
“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”
“I need to be able to see into your soul.”
“She’s it, Mom.” I looked at her. “I think I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her.” I laughed a little. “Even though she was telling me off.”
“I want you to know that watching two complete strangers fall in love has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.”
