Because sometimes it ends, but it’s never really over.
twenty-nine
WE WIND UP NAKED ONthe couch, staring out at the Chicago skyline, sweaty and sticky with sex. Meanwhile, guilt simmers in the back of my throat. The sex was good, yes. It usually is. And I didn’t imagine JP, per se. I just couldn’t get him out of my mind. Not when I breathedI love youin Donavan’s ear. Not even when he was deep between my legs.
I need a shower and a glass of water. Even still, the unlikeliness of JP and I has always made me wonder. So I ponder aloud...
“Do you ever think about what would have happened if I didn’t get my jacket stuck on the coffee shop door?” I ask.
Donavan laughs, pulling me closer. “We would have missed out on everything.”
Just everything. As in, I am his everything now. A year ago, I would have said there was no way I’d meet someone and fall in love. I was fully prepared to live out the rest of my life single and not ready to mingle. And yet, here I am in a penthouse off of Broadway, wrapped up and in love with a man I met by chance.
“Move in with me,” he says, and I lift myself up on an elbow.
“Really?”
“Really. It’s time.” The coy smile lighting up his face tells me he wants to ask so much more. “I want the life with you, Julia. I want the family. I want to make you a mom—”
“Bonus mom,” I correct, and he smiles wider.
“I want to do this, and I don’t want to wait.”
I nod, unsure of why I’m hesitating. “You ready to have Kevin here full-time?”
“I love Kevin,” he responds, and I narrow my eyes on him. “Mostly. He just licks his feet in the middle of the night and that is quite a grotesque sound to wake up to at three a.m. when I have to pee.”
“You’re so high maintenance.” I laugh out the response, raking my fingers through his thick black hair, and he scrunches his noise.
“Kevin is a part of the package and I can’t wait to have you both here,” Donavan says softly, holding my face in his hands.
I bite my lip, feeling torn. I want to say yes, life is short, and I don’t want to waste another second without you. On the other hand, I can feel the freedom I have being pulled away at the idea of yes. I wonder, too, if Donavan would be asking this right here, right now, if we hadn’t seen JP tonight. Not because he’s jealous, but because he’s a man who is only thirty-two who told us he has a dying wife.
Audrey.
My heart clutches as she dances across my mind like she did across my sister’s living room. Audrey, with her bright red hair and gorgeous smile. Her beautiful personality and stupid dance moves. And JP, and how he looked at her from across the room. He loved her—lovesher—she isn’t gone. She can’t be dying. It feels too unreal to accept that prognosis in the slightest.
“Hey, what do you say?” Donavan asks, breaking me from my thoughts.
“What?” I shake my head. He wipes a rogue tear that fell down my cheek.
“I lost you there for a second. You okay?” His brow is etched with concern.
I press my eyelids closed and sit up. “Fine, I just was thinking...”
“Uh oh,” Donavan groans playfully, sitting up and reaching for his boxers. I grab his button-up and put it on.
“No, it’s not bad. I was just wondering if you’re asking because of JP.” I swallow hard at my own suggestion and all the things it insinuates.
“Julia, I’m not jealous of some Uber driver in a Toyota.”
I grimace. JP isn’t just some Uber driver, and the mention of the kind of car he drives denotes the lack of integrity I see in Donavan right now. “No,” I pause for emphasis. “I mean JP talking about his wife and how she had a horrible thing happen when they should have been planning a wedding, and now he’s barely scraping by so she can get the treatment she needs to survive, and he has to live without the promise of tomorrow.”
My voice clips on the last syllable as I realize how terribly sad and profound the notion is, so I repeat it aloud. “He isloving herwithout the promise of tomorrow,” I whisper.
Donavan reaches out and cups my face, gently brushing away the wetness on my cheek. “Isn’t that what we’re all doing? Loving without the promise of tomorrow?”
“It’s different, though, you know?” It’s painful yet obvious, and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to live through it.
