"The great offense was that he looked through her, made it clear that he would rather spend his time with other people or alone." Taylor watched her profile as she talked and her face puckered as if she had tasted something sour. "How could you look through a person like Ursula? She's made of starlight and warmth. She's the funniest person I know, the smartest. She's interesting and kind. Andthenadd in her looks." She turned to look at Taylor. "She's beautiful, right?"
"She's a beautiful woman, yes." His face was soft as he listened to this woman describe her closest friend. He marveled at how she saw her, how she spoke such lovely things about her. He marveled at this love.
She shook her head and turned again to stare straight ahead. "Idiot. Who allows someone like her to slip through his fingers?"
"Men aren't that complicated," he replied. "I'm not sure if you actually want an answer to that, but it's simple: he became complacent and passive and probably didn't understand the weight of what he was doing or more likely not doing. Most men don't."
"Why is that? Why do men stop trying?"
He sighed. "Because we think our part is done, I guess. We chased and wooed and caught."
"But you have to take care of something to keep it."
He nodded thoughtfully, lips pursed. "Yeah, you do."
It was her turn to study his profile. It was strong, his nose was a little large but also fit his face perfectly to lend him a rugged look. His jaw was a work of art and his cheekbones were highand perfect. His dark golden eyebrows were thick and almost harsh, but the way he smiled or tilted his head with his clear blue eyes lit everything up. Right now she couldn't see his eyes, but she knew they would be a study in calm and insight.
"Do you ever..." she bit her lip to hold back her words wondering suddenly if they would be insensitive. She wondered if they would dance around what they hadn't yet talked about.
He looked at her as if he knew what she was about to ask. "Do I ever what?" The way he asked was gentle and told her she could ask him anything.
"Do you ever look at a man and envy them their love? Or think that they take their relationship for granted?"
"All the fucking time." How deeply his words hit her was astonishing; how fiercely he said them without hesitation and without qualm, like they were pulled from the depths of him. "There are so many little things I have thought of that I will never have, things that men don't even think about."
"Like what?"
He gave her a look. She smiled.
"Give me a couple," she pleaded.
"You might laugh," his dimple flashed but he looked anything but embarrassed. She liked that about the detective; he strode through life comfortable in his skin.
"I can give a woman a bouquet of flowers, but they'll never mean I love her. I'll never be able to say the words and mean them and I've tried lying before but it's like lime and vinegar on my tongue. It actually settles inside of my belly like a weight if I say the words. I could get married to someone I admire or deeply like," he paused, the words finding her like they were thought of with her in mind. "But I could never look at her with that immeasurable feeling of love."
As he talked her heart filled with such sadness that it felt like something was splintering inside of her. He would never havewhat everyone could, even if they chose not to or didn't find it, or worse, had what too many threw away.
Being in love was like asking underneath your words and inside of all the small and large things, the important and the mundane, "do you really love me?" And the answer is always "yes." It's extraordinary, that kind of love and he would never have it. She could never fathom not having that possibility in her life.
And he could never give her those things.
"And love letters. I'll never write one. I don't know why, but that one has always struck me as," he heaved a heavy sigh, "fathomless. Want to know something pathetic?"
"Always. I love pathetic things," she said.
A quick smile. "Every now and then I write a love letter. To no one. I just have these feelings inside of me, and I don't know what they are but I wonder sometimes if it's all the love I can never give to someone. It's like I have it in me but it can't go anywhere. I can't give it out. I can't give it away." He punctuated his words with a tight fist beating against his chest where the love in his heart that he couldn't give was trapped.
And her heart cracked. A sliver of a cool breeze lifted a few of the willow's branches and slid into their warm space. It carried on it his smell of oranges, not as sweet, and hickory. Next to her was a man who was cursed to never love a woman; cursed to know what love could be, but unable to let it out. She wondered if love wrapped around his bones like climbing roses looking and reaching for a place to bloom.
"How did you come to be cursed?"
His sad smile looked like it weighed him down. He hung his head shaking it slowly and she sat next to him, not pushing the question, as the steady sound of the tree crickets and the breeze pushing against wands of the willow rocked them into a gentle peace.
She suddenly felt, as the world softened around them, that everything was going to be alright.
Sitting here with him and the night speaking loving whispers she felt a well of peace she hadn't felt in days.
"My dad passed away." He lifted his head and she quickly added, "It was a few years ago. Actually, a month before Ursula and I had our falling out and I left for Florida. I have never been able to talk about it." She swallowed a roughness in her throat. "I'm still not sure that I can. Something gets caught," she pressed light fingertips against her collarbone as she watched the sway of the willow branches, as words dried out and turned to dust in her mouth like they did every time she tried to talk about him. "Maybe I'm cursed too," she said with a tremulous smile. Ursula's words wove through her mind. "I've been running from facing my grief."
