I kissed him and he wrapped his arms around me. He carried me into the bedroom. It was all white and blue with little accents of sea-foam green.
I didn’t think much more about it. I didn’t think what it meant, that he had admitted it to me. I just thought about the fact that he wanted to let it go. He had, in a moment, decided our future was more important than our past. It was as simple as that.
“Let’s just stay here,” he said to me. We were in bed, naked, our limbs entwined like tree roots.
“We could fish for sustenance,” I said.
“I’d learn the ways of the hunter.”
I laughed. The idea of Tobias hunting anything was comical. He hadn’t so much as had red meat in six months—a fact he thought I hadn’t noticed, but had. He’d left a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma lying around the house. He hadn’t mentioned it, but slowly he’d started to transition his diet. He stopped ordering burgers—not that they were a staple. But he’d started buying vegan imitation meat and roasting portobello mushrooms as a protein.
“I’d gather. Weeds and nuts and seeds. We could build a home of bamboo.”
Tobias raised his eyebrow at me. “A tree fort?”
“Cool in the summer, warm in the winter,” I said.
“Sounds perfect,” he said. He moved his hands on me underneath the blanket. “Just the two of us.”
I didn’t think, but I should have, about his comment. How all our fantasies—his and mine, ours together—revolved around us being alone, somewhere other people, the world with all its politics and societal demands, couldn’t touch us. We were the best when we were separate, uninterrupted. The beach, our apartment, a bedroom with the windows closed. Our problem wasn’t us together, it was us in the world—a world that demanded we reconcile its reality with our romance. If only, I remember thinking, although I wasn’t sure what.
10:17 P.M.
“IS THERE SOMETHING YOU WANT TO SAY?” I ask Jessica. She has been shifting and sighing in her chair for minutes—a sure sign she has an opinion on something.
“You don’t care what I think,” Jessica says. “So why are you even asking?”
“That’s not true,” Tobias says over me. “I care.”
Jessica exhales and rolls her eyes at him. But it’s friendly. I have a flash of them playing gin rummy on the living room floor together, and Tobias throwing his hand to let her win.
Robert busies himself with his cappuccino. From across the table, Conrad and Audrey lean in.
I open my mouth to say something, to counteract her, to tell her I want to know, of course I do, but I think about what she’s said. I didn’t care, not when Tobias and I were together. I felt pressure and then annoyance—mixed with the pain of the fact that she had broken this contract between us. Lifelong friends. Ride-or-dies. I wanted to be where she was, but I also knew Tobias wasn’t ready for that kind of real life. Maybe I resented her for having it.
“I do, too,” I tell her.
Jessica sighs. She tucks some hair behind her ear. “You both thought you loved the other one more.”
If I were honest, I did feel that way. I tracked him down. I bought that photo. I held on to us like we were some kind of guiding star. And then later, I was the one who walked on eggshells when things were rocky, who made concessions and tiptoed around my bedroom and paid our rent and whispered.
“Maybe that’s true,” Tobias says, which comes as a surprise. I didn’t think he’d cop to the imbalance in our relationship in such broad terms.
“I loved you more,” I say. “I don’t blame you—I chose that role—but it was me. Gardener, remember?” I try for a smile.
Tobias runs a hand over his face. His neck muscles tighten. It’s the first time all night I register his annoyance—maybe even anger. It wafts off him like cologne.
“The fact that you think that means it’s not true,” Tobias says. “You didn’t love me more. If anything, I loved you more. I gave up my job to come back for you. You never fully let me in. You always had an escape plan.”
The familiar tilt in his voice makes my stomach turn over. It’s the same tone he used during those mismatched mornings. Next to me, Jessica nods, which makes my irritation match his.
“See?” Jessica says. “You both started to be resentful of all the things you thought you’d given up for the other one, and that resentment took up all the space—it pushed everything good out. It was hard to watch.”
Tobias shakes his head. “I wanted you to be happy so badly, Sabby. It just felt impossible sometimes.”
“It felt impossible to me, too,” I say. I feel stubborn, defiant—this is not what was supposed to be happening now. This is not how we get back.
“So you loved each other too much,” Robert says. “Is that possible? If you love, is there even such a thing as a yardstick?”
I think about that. I would never think my love for Tobias had boundaries, limitation, a quantified amount. It was endless. And I didn’t believe I had a choice in it. We’d found each other again—in New York City!—and against all odds. Our story couldn’t end any other way than us together—even if it made both of us miserable sometimes.
“The person who believes they love more believes they give more,” Jessica says. Her tone takes on a wilting, guru quality reminiscent of our early years. “And that can lead to resentment.”
“No shit,” Conrad says.
We all turn to him, surprised. Conrad hasn’t sworn once all night.
“These things aren’t perfect,” Conrad says. “When I met my wife I was down on my luck. I’d just been fired from the first university I’d ever worked at. I had no money. I wasn’t sure I’d ever teach again.”
“What happened?” Audrey asks. Her tone is breathless and her hand flutters to his forearm.
“Budget cuts to the department. I was a relatively new hire, and so I was the first to go. It wasn’t personal, but I took it hard. Twenty-seven years old, you understand.”
Audrey nods.
“She worked at the local library in Santa Rosa, and I’d go there to work and scan for job openings. This was before the Internet, of course. We were confined to pen and paper.”
Conrad chuckles to himself. “We fell in love over Faulkner and Yeats. She’d bring me new books to read whenever she saw me. Eventually, she asked if she could cook me dinner. I must have appeared a poor sight.”
“Where were you living?” Jessica asks.
“Old tenement housing,” Conrad says. “A bed and a washbasin. I was too embarrassed to bring her there, so I suggested a picnic in the park.”
“How darling,” Audrey says. Her eyes are big and wide.
“She showed up with a basket of cheeses and this strudel she’d made. Still the best thing I’ve ever tasted. She took me in after that. She had an apartment on the outskirts of the city, and I lived there for two years, working odd jobs, before another university position came up. She paid our bills, those two years, with her librarian salary. I could never repay her.”
Conrad gazes off, and I realize the thing that’s been staring me in the face all night.
“What happened to her?” I ask softly.
Conrad looks back at me sharply. “Early-onset Alzheimer’s,” he says. “About five years back now.”
Robert jumps in. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “That must have been very painful.”
“She didn’t want to live too long with it. When she was diagnosed, she made me promise.”
“We didn’t know,” Audrey says. “Oh, goodness. I feel terribly.” She pats his arm where her hand has lingered. It doesn’t now.
“How old was she?” Jessica asks.
“Sixty-four,” Conrad says. “Too young.”
“Much too young,” Jessica agrees.
A lump has formed in my throat, so ripe and full that I’m afraid if I breathe too deeply all will come out are sobs. This man. This man who has sat here all night, listened and given, offered and been patient, has lost someone, too. And the woven web of us, of all of us—of the people who aren’t here but should be—makes my hands tremble.
We’re here with you, Tobias had said. But I understand now. The significance. How big of a sacrifice they’re all making.
“We both loved more,” Conrad says. “We just took it in turns.”