“And…you don’t quite reciprocate, I gather by your look?” Jake asked.
“Jake, I’m not there just yet.”
“Emily, are you really not there? I think you’re just afraid to admit it.”
He was probably right. Somewhere in my heart, I loved this man and would tell him when I worked up the courage to admit that I loved someone with all my heart again.
“To me, when I tell someone I love them, it’s a forever kind of word. I can’t take it lightly. Forever is not in my vocabulary just yet with us.”
Jake looked frustrated again. “Why do you keep saying that? Didn’t you tell Max you loved him? Why are you so negative about us all the time? Do you think I take the words ‘I love you’ lightly? The words ‘love’ and ‘flippant’ do not coexist in my vocabulary either. This appears to be a weekly argument with us.”
“I’m sorry, Jake. Can we not argue about this again? Just give me a little more time? Please?” I placed myself on his lap, put my arms around his neck, and attempted to coax him out of his ire.
“You can’t admit you love me, and you refuse to have sex with me. Why am I still here with you?” he asked with an irresistible smile.
“Because you love me,” I answered with kisses.
Max called several times during the week, and I purposely evaded him. Instead, Sarah kept me apprised of his life. She told me he was moping around, trying to rally our friends to help win me back. I, in turn, focused my attention on Jake. He stopped by every morning before work and every night after work. In the short hours we had together, we talked about our lives past, present, and future. When he wasn’t with me, he attempted to call, but his patients had other ideas.
Tuesday night Jake came over early, and after dinner, I told him stories about my parents. Happily, I started with their college years where they met and fell in love. I pulled out all my photo albums and Jake repeated the same words I’d heard all my life.
“Your mom was stunning!”
“I know, isn’t she beautiful? When I was younger, I used to hate it when people told me how pretty she was. Unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate her till I got older.” So many years I’d wasted thinking of her as competition rather than a companion.
“Why would you hate someone telling you your mom was beautiful?”
“Because I was jealous. No one ever said anything remotely complimentary about me. The comment I got repeatedly was, ‘I hope you grow up to look just like your mom.’ It bugged me. Plus, my mom had such a vibrant personality, and I was so shy. She was always the life of the party, and I was the wallflower in the corner.”
“Love, girls don’t come much prettier than you…even your mom.” Jake did his best to reassure me but I wasn’t convinced.
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen my mom in person.”
“I’d say it regardless. So how’d your dad get so lucky?”
I laughed, thinking about my parents telling me this story back in middle school. Jake was in for a great story. “My dad told me when Mom got to college she was the talk of her Texas campus. Every guy wanted to date her. She was in some sorority and every frat and non-frat guy had visited her house to ask her out.”
“So did your parents meet at a frat party?”
“No, my dad was the antithesis of my mom. He was awkward and extremely shy. He was a senior when Mom was a freshman, and they became friends only because she needed help in calculus, and he was her school-appointed tutor. He tutored Mom her entire freshman year.”
I kept looking through the photo album. It had been months since I’d visited my parents or really thought about them. Jake had consumed my mind and heart. I felt guilty that I had forgotten what they looked like back in college. My last memory of each of them was their peaceful faces lying in their caskets.
“She was really beautiful, huh?” Wistfully, I touched her face in the picture. What I would do to be able to touch their faces or hold their hands one more time.
“So my mom was dating some hotshot guy on campus but spending loads of time with my dad, because her math skills were so pathetic, and they developed a friendship during these tutorial sessions. My dad was probably one of the very few men who was more attracted to my mom’s heart than her face. Do you know what he told me he loved most about her?”
“What did he love most about her?” Jake was as into this story as I was into telling it.
“Dad said that Mom was the most caring and attentive person he’d ever met. Every time they were together, she’d bring him a little something to thank him for working with her. She’d bring him lunch if it was lunchtime, or a piece of chocolate she knew he liked, or buy him poetry books. My dad was a bit of a poet. He devoured the attention. Oh my gosh…” I’d just had an epiphany.
“What?”
“I’m dating my mother. You remind me exactly of my mom. You’re both attentive and outgoing and exceedingly sure of yourselves. Oh gosh…” I said one more time.