All Your Perfects

I never ask my mother for favors for obvious reasons. Which is precisely why I called my stepfather to ask permission to use his beach house in Cape Cod. He only uses it as a rental property now and it stays booked up in the summers. But it’s February and the house has been sitting empty for most of the winter. It took a lot to swallow my pride and ask him, but it was a lot easier than if I’d asked her. She has stated numerous times since she met Graham that she thinks I could do better. In her eyes, better means meeting someone with his own beach house so that I’ll never have to ask to borrow theirs for the weekend.

Graham walked around for an hour after we got here, pointing things out with the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning.

Quinn, come look at this view!

Quinn, come look at this bathtub!

Quinn, did you see the fire pit?

Quinn, they have kayaks!

His excitement has waned a little since we got here earlier today. We just ate dinner and I took a shower while Graham built a fire in the fire pit. It’s an unusually warm day for a February in Massachusetts, but even on a warmer winter day, it barely tops out in the fifties during the day and the thirties at night. I bring a blanket to the fire pit with me and curl up next to Graham on the patio sofa.

He pulls me even closer, wrapping an arm around me while I rest my head on his shoulder. He tucks the blanket around both of us. It’s cold, but the warmth from both him and the fire make it bearable. Comfortable, even.

I’ve never seen Graham more at peace than when he’s out here, listening to the sounds of the ocean. I love how he looks out over the water as if it holds all the answers to every question in the world. He looks at the ocean with the respect it deserves.

“What a perfect day,” he says quietly.

I smile. I like that a perfect day to him includes me. It’s been six months since we started dating. Sometimes I look at him and feel such an overwhelming appreciation for him, I almost want to write thank-you notes to our exes. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

It’s funny how you can be so happy with someone and love them so much, it creates an underlying sense of fear in you that you never knew before them. The fear of losing them. The fear of them getting hurt. I imagine that’s what it’s like when you have children. It’s probably the most incredible kind of love you’ll ever know, but it’s also the most terrifying.

“Do you want kids?” I practically blurt the question out. It was so quiet between us and then I sliced through that quiet with a question whose answer could determine our future. I don’t know how to do anything with subtlety.

“Of course. Do you?”

“Yeah. I want a lot of kids.”

Graham laughs. “How many is a lot?”

“I don’t know. More than one. Less than five.” I lift my head off his shoulder and look at him. “I think I would make a great mom. I don’t brag on myself, but if I had kids, I’m pretty sure they would be the best kids ever.”

“I have no doubt.”

I lay my head back on his shoulder. He covers my hand that’s pressed against his chest. “Have you always wanted to be a mom?”

“Yes. It’s kind of embarrassing how excited I am to be a mother. Most girls grow up dreaming of a successful career. I was always too embarrassed to admit that I wanted to work from home and have a bunch of babies.”

“That’s not embarrassing.”

“Yes it is. Women nowadays are supposed to want to amount to more than just being a mother. Feminism and all that.”

Graham scoots me off his chest to tend to the fire. He grabs two small logs and walks them over to the fire pit, then reclaims his seat next to me. “Be whatever you want to be. Be a soldier if you want. Or a lawyer. Or a CEO. Or a housewife. The only thing you shouldn’t be is embarrassed.”

I love him. I love him so much.

“A mom isn’t the only thing I want to be. I want to write a book someday.”

“Well you certainly have the imagination for it based on all the crazy dreams you have.”

“I should probably write them down,” I laugh.

Graham is smiling at me with an unfamiliar look on his face. I’m about to ask him what he’s thinking, but he speaks first.

“Ask me again if I want kids,” he says.

“Why? Are you changing your answer?”

“I am. Ask me again.”

“Do you want kids?”

He smiles at me. “I only want kids if I can have them with you. I want to have lots of kids with you. I want to watch your belly grow and I want to watch you hold our baby for the first time and I want to watch you cry because you’re so deliriously happy. And at night I want to stand outside the nursery and watch you rock our babies to sleep while you sing to them. I can’t think of anything I want more than to make you a mother.”

I kiss his shoulder. “You always say the sweetest things. I wish I knew how to express myself like you do.”

“You’re a writer. You’re the one who’s good with words.”

“I’m not arguing about my writing skills. I could probably write down what I feel for you, but I could never put it into words verbally like you do.”

“Then do that,” he says. “Write me a love letter. No one’s ever written me a love letter before.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m serious. I’ve always wanted one.”

I laugh. “I’ll write you a love letter, you sappy man.”

“It better be more than a page long. And I want you to tell me everything. What you thought of me the first time you saw me. What you felt when we were falling in love. And I want you to spray your perfume on it like the girls in high school do.”

“Any other requests?”

“I wouldn’t be opposed to you slipping a nude pic in the envelope.”

I can probably make that happen.

Graham tugs me onto his lap so that I’m straddling him. He pulls the blanket over us, cocooning us inside of it. He’s wearing a pair of cotton pajama pants, so I get a clear sense of what he’s thinking right now. “Have you ever made love outdoors in thirty-degree weather before?”

I grin against his mouth. “Nope. But funny enough, that’s precisely why I’m not wearing any underwear right now.”

Graham’s hands fall to my ass and he groans as he lifts my nightgown. I rise a little so that he can free himself, and then I lower myself on top of him, taking him in. We make love, cocooned under a blanket with the sound of the ocean as our background song. It’s the perfect moment in a perfect place with the perfect person. And I know without a doubt that I’ll be writing about this moment when I write my love letter to him.





Chapter Twenty-two




* * *





Now


He kissed another woman.

I stare at the text I’m about to send Ava, but then I remember she’s several hours ahead where she lives. I would feel bad, knowing this is the text she’ll wake up to. I delete it.

It’s been half an hour since Graham gave up and went back inside, but I’m still sitting in my car. I think I’m too wounded to move. I have no idea if any of this is my fault or if it’s his fault or if it’s no one’s fault. The only thing I know is that he hurt me. And he hurt me because I’ve been hurting him. It doesn’t make what he did right in any sense, but a person can understand a behavior without excusing it.

Now we’re both full of so much pain, I don’t even know where to go from here. No matter how much you love someone—the capacity of that love is meaningless if it outweighs your capacity to forgive.

Part of me wonders if we’d even be having any of these problems if we would have been able to have a baby. I’m not sure that our marriage would have taken the turn it did because I would have never been as devastated as I’ve been the last few years. And Graham wouldn’t have had to walk on eggshells around me.