“You. Because this changes things. New York instead of Boston. A different life than the one I’ve been building.” A pause. “I don’t want to make a decision like this without knowing where we stand.”
The question hung in the air between us, heavy with implication. Where did we stand? What were we building? Was this the moment where I was supposed to say something definitive—stay with me or go follow your dreams or some perfect combination of both that I couldn’t quite articulate?
“Jack,” I said. “Take the meetings. Hear what they have to say. And when you get back, we’ll figure it out together.”
“Together?”
“Together.”
I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Processing.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Together.”
We talked for another few minutes—logistics, flight times, the details of his success—and then he had to go, more meetings,more handshakes, the machinery of his new life already beginning to turn.
I hung up the phone and sat very still at my desk.
New York.
Jack was going to take a job in New York. I knew it as certainly as I knew anything. He’d been dreaming of this his whole career, and no one turned down the Times. The question wasn’t whether he’d take it. The question was what I’d do when he did.
In the first timeline, I’d let him go. Had stood in Rosetti’s on Valentine’s Day and told him I needed space, and he’d nodded, and we’d walked away from each other into separate futures. He’d gone to the Times eventually—I’d followed his byline over the years, watched his career from a distance—and I’d stayed in Boston, building a life that was safe and successful and utterly, suffocatingly empty.
This time could be different.
This time, I could choose differently.
But choosing differently meant leaving Boston. Meant building a new life in a new city. It meant risk. It meant faith. It meant trusting that what we were building could survive a thousand miles and a hundred new challenges.
Can you do that?I asked myself.Can you be someone who follows instead of runs? Someone who chooses love over safety?
I didn’t know.
But I was going to find out.
That evening, Diane announced she was staying at Robbie’s.
“You’ll be okay alone?” she asked, already halfway out the door.
“I’ll be fine. Jack might call.”
“Ah.” She grinned. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“That leaves a lot of options.”
“Exactly.”
The door closed behind her, and I was alone with the apartment and my thoughts and the endless ticking of the clock on the wall.
Jack called at eight.
“They want to talk salary tomorrow,” he said. “And start dates. It’s getting real.”
“It’s been real since four o’clock this afternoon.”
He laughed. “Fair point.” A pause. “Could be Wednesday before I’m home. They keep adding meetings.”
“Wednesday.” My heart sank. The thirteenth. The day before Valentine’s Day.
