I glance uncomfortably around my room, lit by the pink ceramic lamp next to my bed. “I don’t know ... I guess I don’t want you to feel hurt, or jealous.”
He strokes my hair away from my face. “I can’t lie, I did feel a pain in my gut when I saw that picture of the two of you ... with Scooter. You looked so happy.”
“We were, but it was a long time ago. And he’s gone now.”
“Yes, but ...” Nate’s gaze lingers on mine, his eyes heavy with concern. “You never talk about him. And it’s not like I’m blind to the fact that I’m the first person you’ve dated since then. Obviously, it took you a long time to get over him. So it must’ve been a pretty serious relationship.”
I sit back. “It did take a long time because it was a very traumatic experience, and I’m not just talking about the physical scars, which you’ve seen, or my fear of heights. His death was a huge loss for me. But I don’t want you to think that I’m not over him. I am.”
I’m cognizant of the fact that my words are only half truths. Yes, I’ve begun to move on, but I’ve always believed that if heaven exists, Jacob and I will be together again. I’ve been imagining that happy reunion since the day he died.
“Sometimes I feel like you’re hiding a part of yourself,” Nate carefully says.
For a moment I can’t speak. It’s as if my secret has been discovered.
“He’ll always know a part of you that I can never know,” Nate continues, “because I don’t know anything about your relationship with him, what he was like, or if you ever had arguments. I assume you lost your virginity to him ... or maybe not. I don’t know, but Iwantto know.”
Suddenly, I feel splayed wide open and vulnerable. But maybe this is a good thing because Nate’s curiosity is touching something deep in my heart, a place that’s been covered up for a long time. And this is what I’ve been trying to drill into my brain over the past few years in therapy. I don’t want to believe that nothing can ever be as good as it once was, or that I’ll never feel that kind of love again.
Ihavebeen feeling it, and I want to open myself up to this man in my bed. I want to love him.
I cup Nate’s cheek in my hand and speak with purpose. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. All you need to do is ask. And I love that you want to know, because I want us to be close.”
“I want that too.”
“We’re in a perfect place,” I assure him. “And if you want to go through that box on the top shelf in my closet, I’ll bring it down, and we can look through everything. We can talk about it, because I don’t want to hide anything from you. I want you to know that—for me—the past few months have felt like a new life, in the best way. I feel good about the future. A future withyou.”
The snowblower across the street shuts down, and the silence feels profound. I can almost hear the drumming of my heart.
“I can’t imagine not having you in my life,” Nate says with a glint of wonder in his eyes.
“I can’t imagine it either.” I’m astonished by a sense of awakening that leaves me reeling. Words come fast. They spill past my lips with open sincerity. “I love you.”
He lets out a small breath, then cups the back of my head in his hand and pulls me close for a kiss. Within seconds, we’re undressing each other, and I’m struggling to keep quiet because my parents are in the next room. I quickly switch off the lamp. Nate rolls on top of me, and the bed creaks noisily. We freeze and smile at each other, laugh quietly, and decide we don’t care.
In the slow, steady flicker of the Christmas bulbs on my windowsill, behind the thin fabric of my pink curtains, I let myself go. At long last, I allow myself to fall willingly into pleasure with another man.
A few days later, after a whopping turkey dinner with all the fixings at Aunt Marie’s house—with my grandparents and cousins at two tables stretched end to end—Nate and I usher Scooter and Dolly into the back seat of my SUV and drive home to our apartment.
It’s dark when we pull into the underground garage. We park in our assigned spot, not far from the elevators, which is a good thing because we have boxes of gifts and scores of leftover food to unload.
“I feel like I’m going to burst,” I say with a groan as I open the passenger-side door and roll myself out of the seat. “I shouldn’t have had that second helping of sticky toffee pudding.”
“There was enough food on that table to sink a cargo ship,” Nate replies.
I shut the car door. “It’s like that every year, and Gramma always brings that chocolate mint fudge you loved. It’s her own special tradition, so you can look forward to that next year.”
I reference next Christmas before I realize that I’m voicing an assumption that we’ll still be together a year from now. But since Christmas Eve in my room, everything feels so much deeper and more real.
I open the door to the back seat, and Dolly jumps to her feet, tail wagging, eager to hop out, but Scooter is snoring and doesn’t get up.
“Come on, ya big lug,” I urge him with a gentle shove on the rump. “It’s time for bed.”
He lifts his head, looks at me for a second, and then goes back to sleep.
“Come on, Scooter. Chop-chop. You can’t sleep down here all night.”
He rolls to his side and lets out an enormous fart.
