The Guardian of My Soul
When Jacob and I fell in love, I was barely seventeen. Right away, there was friction with my parents because they worried about me moving too fast with an older boy, and they still saw me as a child. They set strict rules and curfews, which resulted in some sneaking around.
Looking back on it, I suppose that was probably part of the excitement. You know what they say: What is forbidden is coveted, and I definitely coveted time alone with Jacob. Whenever my parents dropped me off at the mall to meet friends, I would instead meet him in the parking lot, where we’d clutch on to each other, kiss passionately, and drive off together to a park or a hiking trail for privacy. I recall one memorable evening when we found a picnic table in a deserted playground and we sat talking, holding hands, watching the sunset. When it grew dark, we stretched out on the grass, stargazed, snuggled, and talked more about our hopes and dreams for the future. To this day, I consider that night to be the most romantic experience of my life.
I leap forward in my mind to the present day.
It’s Christmas Eve, and Jacob has been dead for years. The fact that I’m reliving that night under the stars with him as I sit on the sofa in my parents’ house—looking across the living room at Nate—fills me with confusion and guilt because I’m definitely falling in love withNate. But it’s different from how I felt with Jacob. This doesn’t feel as earth shattering. It’s a quieter kind of love. There’s no sneaking around to be alone together. Nate and I sleep together every night. It’s easy and comfortable. But sometimes I worry that it’s not the real thing because it’stoocomfortable. Or maybe this is how true love is supposed to feel. Hence the guilt and confusion.
Tonight, Nate is helping my father hook up a new thermostat with a timer that will help cut down on power bills in the future. My parents invited him to spend the holidays with us because he’s been shut out of his own family gatherings. He still talks to his brother, Arthur, on the phone, but he hasn’t seen his nephew or nieces since the disastrous Birthday Brunch when he stood up to his father. His mother occasionally reaches out to him with a phone call. Twice, she has sent money in the mail—cash that can’t be traced to her bank account. Nate told her it wasn’t necessary, but I know he appreciated it. He set it aside for culinary school next fall.
So here we all are. I’m sipping rum and eggnog on the sofa, and Scooter and Dolly are sleeping on the cushion beside me. Mom’s in the kitchen puttering, snow has just begun to fall outside the window, and the weatherman has promised that we’ll wake up to a white Christmas.
I bend to kiss Scooter on his cheek and inhale his familiar dog scent. “You’re my favorite sweet boy,” I softly say in his ear. “And, Dolly, you’re my favorite girl,” I add, not wanting to leave her out.
As I straighten and watch Nate and my father discuss the instruction booklet for the thermostat, I feel content, as if all is right with the world. My company is growing and thriving, and I know in my heart that Nate is wonderful. I can’t imagine my life without him—which again fills me with confusion as to why I was thinking about Jacob earlier. Making comparisons I shouldn’t make.
Absently, I stroke Scooter behind his soft ears, and I wonder if there will ever come a day when I don’t think about Jacob at all. Will I ever cease to compare everything in my life with how it was when he and I were together? And what about all the years still to come? Will theystack up against the vision that Jacob and I, as a couple, had imagined for ourselves?
“This is so strange,” I whisper to Nate as we climb the stairs to my bedroom, with Scooter and Dolly following close behind.
“Why?” he asks.
We reach the second floor, and I continue to whisper as I take his hand in mine and lead him down the hall. “Because my parents are okay with us sleeping together in my bedroom.”
He chuckles. “It’s cool that we’re whispering. It makes things feel kinda naughty.”
I smile as we enter my room, which hasn’t changed much since I moved out after high school. Same bed, same comforter, same pictures on the walls. I close the door and immediately pull Nate into my arms for a proper kiss—the kind that makes me wish my parents weren’t sleeping on the other side of the wall.
He holds me close, and I arch into him and the heat of his kiss. Somewhere outside, a snowblower revs its engine. I’m only vaguely aware of the colorful, flickering candolier on my windowsill.
Before things get out of hand, I peel myself away from Nate’s warm body, smile coquettishly at him, and move to my open suitcase on top of my desk. “Just so you know, I left my black silk nightie at home and only brought my flannels.”
“Totally understandable,” he replies as he pulls his cashmere sweater off over his head and begins to unbutton his shirt.
Relaxed and easy, we get ready for bed, which should feel normal, but it doesn’t because this is the room where, in high school, I wrote in my diary about my love for Jacob, which I vowed would last forever. It’s also the place where I grieved the loss of him after Cape Split. A part of my heart died that day, and I never imagined I could love again, but here I am.
Yes, I still think of Jacob. Maybe I always will.
Scooter stretches out on the carpet at the foot of my bed while Dolly sniffs the perimeter of the room, taking in all the unfamiliar scents before she finds a cozy spot to lie down under my desk.
Wearing my flannel pj’s, I slide into my double bed and hold the covers up for Nate to join me. He sits up against the pillows, and we snuggle close.
“I have to be honest,” he says. “When we first arrived, I snooped around a little.”
With sudden unease, I lift my head. “What do you mean?”
“I looked at a picture of you and Jacob with Scooter. It’s on a shelf in your closet.”
I know the picture. Of course I do. Becky took it when she came to visit, when Scooter was just a puppy. I had it framed, and it sat on my desk until recently. I only put it in the closet a few weeks ago when I was home and knew Nate would be here for Christmas.
“Did you see anything else?” I ask, because I still have everything from those years with Jacob—all the love letters we wrote to each other every day in class when we didn’t have cell phones to communicate. I held on to ticket stubs to movies. I even kept his short stories from English class in high school. He’d wanted to throw them out when he graduated, but I demanded he hand them over so that we could read them together in rocking chairs on our back porch, when we were old and gray.
Nate looks down at me. “I saw a box on the top shelf that saidMemories, and I was curious, but I didn’t look inside.”
I sit up. “I’m glad, because it’s full of ...” I’m not sure how to say it. “It’s full of Jacob memorabilia, and I don’t want you to see that stuff.”
“Why not?”
