The One That Got Away (22 page)

And then it's like a doorknob I didn't even know I'd been holding in my hand just suddenly turns, and I realize. That photograph of John and my mother felt so familiar because it reminded
me of another one. The one of me and Eamon, at Jay's wedding reception. Me with my face buried in his shoulder, him with his head thrown back, both of us helpless with laughter. I'd made some joke and then he'd flipped it back on me; and I don't even remember what it was now, but I remember that moment of being lost in laughter with him and just…sparkling with joy.

All of a sudden it is so perfectly clear that I'm in love with him, that I can't understand how I didn't know it before now. He means everything to me—absolutely everything. Even these last few, terrible days, he's been my first thought in the morning, my last thought at night. Eamon—not Noah.

I think back to the night Noah gave me the necklace, telling me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me; and I think about our talks about kids, about our future. And I feel so hollow that I'm ashamed. I never intended to mislead him. Every word I said, I meant at the time; but now I don't understand how I could ever have thought that what I felt for him was enough. Because this, this is making my head spin. Emotion is churning inside me like boiling water.

I have to break up with Noah. Right away. And when I get home, Eamon will get the chance he asked for. If he still wants it. I hope—and I think—he does.

The old farmhouse sits on the side of a mountain, looking west across a broad valley, with the waves of the Blue Ridge in the distance. I used to stare at those mountains from the kitchen window and wonder what lay on the other side. Of course I knew—it was just West Virginia, followed by Kentucky—but sometimes I'd send my mind out farther than that, to the unknown, mysterious west. The land of the dusty cowboy tunes the Pickers would sometimes mix in with their bluegrass; the land of big sky, stretching
huge and endless over the flat horizon. When John and my mom and I would go on our weekend driving excursions, I used to beg to head southwest, into Tennessee, far enough that it would be flat, that it would actually feel like a different part of the country. But to my dissatisfaction, none of our road trips ever took us to the other side of those mountains.

I remember this as I realize that, for the first time in my life, I'm going to drive over and beyond them. I've made the trip a dozen times before by airplane, but flying isn't the same; this time I'll be driving across the vast expanse of everything in between Virginia and Texas. My two homes.

I did not sleep last night. I didn't even want to; I just wanted to think. I thought about how many times during my first six months with Noah I had wished I could pick up the phone to tell my mother about something wonderful he had said or done. Something generous or loving or sweet. Because I finally understood what she had tried to explain to me so many times when I was eye-deep in the morass of my high school relationship, or my college one: kindness only mattered when it came naturally. Not when it was handed out with my vagina as the reward, or my forgiveness for some selfish transgression.

And I thought about how, maybe, the wonder of that had kept me from realizing there could be even more.

And then this morning, strung out on coffee and fatigue, I called Noah. The call went to his voice mail. I decide to try once more before I hit the road, but with the same result. I stare at his contact page on my phone, with my favorite photo of his crinkle-eyed smile. I click it off with a sigh.

And then, that's it.

The van is packed, the place is spotless; there is literally not
one thing left to do here except leave. The house, empty of everything except a few pieces of furniture, is so silent that the sound of my breath seems to echo. I push up from my spot on the bottom step of the staircase, and rest my hand on the well-worn wood of the newel post that supports the banister. I already know the shape of it, the texture, by heart, but I relearn it now. I walk to the front door, open it, and lock it behind me. Tears blur my eyes as I walk to the van, and I swipe them away and start the engine. The van bounces down the driveway, lurching from side to side on the uneven terrain. When I reach the bottom of the hill, I pause. Then, with a deep breath, I turn left, toward the highway.

By the end of my first day on the road, I've decided that if we ever
had
made it as far as the flat part of Tennessee when I was a kid, I would have been pretty damn disappointed. By the time Route 81 leaves behind the long spine of the Appalachians and turns due west, the terrain bears the same featureless appearance that stretches of interstate almost everywhere in the country share. It might have been anticlimactic once; now, I'm just glad to be on my way home.

That night, I call Eamon from a roadside motel outside Nashville. I think about what it will be like to talk to him, now that I Know. Will he sound different? Will
I
sound different? It feels utterly unbelievable to me that I am on the verge of a relationship with him, so many years after I'd relegated my feelings for him to some sort of childish self-delusion. Except now it'll be better than it could ever have been before. This is not me idolizing the idea of him; this time I am in love with the real thing.

When he answers, his voice is warm as sweet Virginia cider. He asks me if I want to talk about it, or if I'd rather not; but as always with him, I want to. Even though every muscle in my body is screaming with the need to sleep. I tell him everything: Janet's phone call in the middle of the night; making it to the hospital too late; packing up the house; the wake. I lose track of time as I lie
there in the overbleached motel sheets, staring at the ugly white popcorn ceiling, cellphone hot against my face as the batteries drain down. I realize, as I talk, that the last six days have been so surreal, so foreign in every way from my normal existence, that I hadn't yet accepted them as part of the narrative of my life. It all just felt like a bizarre performance, featuring someone else in the role of Sarina, while the real me waited in the audience until I could go back to Texas, where everything would be normal again. But telling it to Eamon makes it real. And permanent.

Noah calls the next evening, while I am on the road, just east of Memphis. I pull off at the nearest exit and park in the lot of an Exxon, dread heavy inside me like a cinder block. The only time he called yesterday was a ten-minute break between meetings; not enough time for a conversation like this.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says. I can hear an occasional car horn in the background; he likes to walk home from work, even though he's entitled to take a car service; it helps him unwind from the frustrations of his day.

“Where are you, can you talk?”

“Yeah, I just left the office. I'm so sorry I couldn't call you back before this; you wouldn't believe how insane it is around here with this stupid deal. Anyway, how are you doing? I've barely gotten to talk to you. Are you still in Virginia?”

“No, I…I'm in Tennessee. I'm driving back.” I pause, heart clanging so fast I feel almost out of breath. How the hell am I supposed to open my mouth and say these words that will crush him so badly? “Noah, listen…I'm so incredibly sorry to dump this on you over the phone, but it can't wait until we see each other. I've been doing a lot of thinking, and…we need to break up.”

There is a long, confused pause. “Sarina, what the hell is going on? What are you talking about?”

“I'm sorry, I know it's coming out of nowhere. But I've been thinking about it a lot, and I just…This isn't working.”

“Wait. I'm still not understanding.
Are you actually breaking up with me
?”

I watch a woman hurry across the parking lot, clothes and skin gray under the glaring lights of the gas station canopy. “I am. I'm so sorry.”

He gives an incredulous stutter. “Ree, I know it's been tough with me away for so long, but I'm going to be back in a month and a half. Whatever's bothering you, we can work it out together.”

I shake my head sadly even though he can't see me. “That's the thing, though. I don't think we can. I've thought about everything. Everything that's between us. And I just don't think it's going to work.”

“What?
Why?
”

“I just…these last couple months…I've been feeling like things weren't quite right. For a long time I thought it was just the distance, but I think it's more than that. I think we're just not right for each other.”

“This is insane,” he says. “This is the first time I've heard that you even felt anything was wrong, and you're telling me it's over?”

“Things have not been great for a while. You can't tell me you didn't feel that. But when was the last time we talked long enough to have a conversation about our problems?” I point out.

He sighs. “I know. And I'm sorry. I should have tried harder to make time for you. But I took it for granted that you understood. I just kept thinking that once we made it through this separation, we'd get back on track. I can't believe I didn't realize what a mistake I was making. Especially now, with you losing John. Please, can you try to forgive me for that?”

It's typical of him not to make excuses for himself; one of the
things I've always admired about him is his ability to admit when he's wrong. “Honestly, it's not even that. I wish it were that easy to fix.”

“So what can I do? How can I fix it?” His voice is frantic with frustration, and the sound chokes my throat with grief. This is a man who already lost one marriage, and now here I am destroying his plans for another. The one he thought was the
right
one.

And yet, I wouldn't be doing him any favors by camouflaging the heart of the problem. “I…I don't think you can fix it,” I whisper. “I'm just not in love with you the way I should be. I thought I was, but…I was wrong.”

“I—Wow. I'm literally speechless. Because unfortunately,” he continues bitterly, “I wasn't wrong about being in love with
you
. I was planning to
propose
to you when I got home, do you know that? Right at the goddamn airport! I already bought the ring! My god, Sarina, I want you to be my
wife
.”

Oh god help me, he does have a ring. Was planning the proposal. I am a monster. “I know. I know you do. And I understand what a tremendous honor and a gift that is. But I think…that's one of the things that made me realize. When I thought about it, I didn't feel right, I felt anxious. Which is not how I should be feeling.”

“But why? You never seemed anxious before about us getting married. I thought you wanted that. You
told
me you wanted that.”

“I thought I did,” I say, hating myself. “I truly thought I did.”

“You sure acted like you did. My mother even bought you that dress.”

Somehow, this is a bigger shock than the ring. “She
did
? Oh god.”

“Yeah. The day after she visited you, she went home and ordered it. It's supposed to be ready next month, so she was going to give it to you for Christmas.”

“Noah, I'm so sorry. Please tell Anne-Marie I'll pay her back for the dress, I—”

“Stop. Stop talking. Just…stop. Look, can we at least not make a final decision on this until I'm home? Give us a chance to get back on solid ground, together. I know you said it's more than the distance, but I don't think you'd be feeling this way if we hadn't had this separation.”

I pick at a loose piece of vinyl on the steering wheel as I consider this. What would have happened if Noah had been in Austin these past ten months? If I'd been spending time with him, making love to him, instead of listening to his tired voice from the other side of the equator? “I think it would have taken longer to realize,” I say slowly, “but I think we would have ended up in the same place.”

“But why? What went wrong? Things were so good between us until I left.”

“Things were good. And there's not anything obvious I can point to that went wrong, it just…it stopped feeling right.”

“Is this because of the thing about kids? And your job?”

“Well…that's part of the reason, yeah.”

“So why wouldn't you talk to me before you decided to end things?” he demands. “If the alternative is losing you, I will do whatever you want.”

“Because I'm not trying to force your hand.” I think back to our argument. No matter how many times I tried to brush aside my unease by telling myself we'd find a compromise on the issue, there was one stubborn nugget of hurt that wouldn't budge. “I realized the reason that whole thing upset me so much was it—it made me feel like you didn't even
know
me.”

He is silent for a long time. “So, you're breaking up with me because I can't read your mind.”

It's really bad if
he
is being sarcastic. I rest my head on the bony steering wheel and close my eyes. “That isn't what I meant,
and I think you know it. That is a huge, huge thing not to understand about the person you're with.”

“But I could just as easily say that about you, and about my feelings on it,” he says.

“And if you think that, then it kind of proves my point,” I whisper.

He sighs. “Listen, I don't mean this to put down your feelings, but is it possible this has something to do with losing John? It's been less than a week since he passed. You didn't even call me back for the first two days afterward, and now you're calling me up and telling me we're over. You're pretty unsettled emotionally right now.”

“I understand why you'd say that,” I say, “but the truth is, this whole week, with everything going on…it actually clarified for me that we're not right together. I should have felt close to you, even though you couldn't be here. But it just felt all wrong.”

“So you're telling me there is nothing I can do to fix this? That you don't want to try to work things out?”

It would be so easy to take it back. To tell him we'll try. To wait and see. Except I know perfectly well it wouldn't make any difference. “No. I'm so sorry.”

“You're flushing four years down the drain, just like that?” His voice quivers with hurt.

My silence answers his question.

After a long minute, he speaks again. “Is there somebody else?” he asks in a flat voice.

I am prepared for this. Whatever happens with Eamon, there's no reason to tell Noah about it; it would only hurt him more, and I'm ending the relationship no matter what. So I lie. “There's no one else,” I say, amazed I can manage such a whopper with a steady voice.

“Okay,” he says, believing me, which makes me feel a hundred times worse. Silence stretches long as he struggles to absorb
what I've done to him. “I just don't understand. How can this be happening?” His voice is so broken that my throat constricts.

“I'm so sorry,” I whisper again, barely able to speak. “I hope we'll be friends, after a while.”

“Unlikely,” he says. “Well, I guess that's it, then.”

“Just for now. Please take good care of yourself, okay?”

“You too,” he says, voice wobbling. “Have a safe drive home.”

“I will,” I say. “Okay.” I search for something else to say, to keep the words dripping out of my mouth so each moment that passes doesn't have to mean the end, but then I realize: He's already gone.

Still clutching the phone as if it's a physical link to him, I put my head down on the steering wheel and let the tears go, wailing like an animal. I imagine him resuming his walk through the warm spring night, letting himself into his silent apartment, dropping his keys into their tray on the table by the door. I'm aching, thinking of how much he must be hurting, halfway around the world, and the urge to call him back is overwhelming. But I know,
I know
this was right.

Exhausted, I start the car again and make my way to the Super 8 across from the gas station. For once in my life, I'm not even hungry for dinner; I just lie in a ball in the middle of the bed, unable to think about anything but Noah and how badly I've hurt him. Because at least that's better than thinking of that dark, empty house on the hillside. Or screaming and pounding my fists on the floor like a toddler because neither of the people who lived there is alive to reassure me that crushing the heart of a good, kind man was somehow the right thing to do.

My room is black, except for the rim of light seeping in around the stiff nylon blackout curtain. Now and then I hear the boom of a car door and a scrap of conversation as strangers park outside and make their way to their rooms, scuffing their feet on the concrete sidewalk. I've never felt so desolate and alone.

Not knowing whether I'm trying to ease Noah's pain or my own, I text him.
I'm so, so, so sorry
. I wonder if he's already deleted my name from his phone contacts, so the message will show up as a note from a vaguely familiar-looking but anonymous number. Either way, he doesn't respond.

I'm almost asleep when I realize I never called Eamon today, and I feel a flood of pure need. I have the impulse to punish myself by going to sleep without speaking to him; it's barely been a few hours since I ended things with Noah, and I feel guilty and mean putting in a call to one of the biggest reasons why. But I do it anyway.

The sound of his voice is as soothing as a mug of hot chocolate. He senses right away that I'm upset, so he makes me laugh with stories from when he and his brothers were kids. With only a tiny hint from me, he texts me a photo of the three of them. I stare at it hungrily. Kieran, a rounder-cheeked version of Eamon, is squinting into the camera, bored and pained the way only a seventeen-year-old can look. Colin has a narrow face and heavy glasses, and the beginnings of the kind of bone structure that could drive even a sane woman to paranoia. And Eamon, all of twelve at the time, is already taller than Colin, beaming unselfconsciously around a bristling mouthful of braces.

“You
were
skinny,” I laugh, because I can't exactly admit that I'm swooning. “And geez, your poor ginger dad is outnumbered.”