Eric nods, his gaze steady, intense, his expression unreadable. Then he clears his throat and straightens, sticking his hands in his pockets.
I’m not sure what else to say, so I say nothing. And then we just stare at each other, the common courtesies behind us, silence filling the space between us. I take the opportunity to study him. His eyes are still green like olives; his brown hair, though streaked with a little more gray, still sticks out at weird angles, begging to be mussed by a grandmotherly sort. He’s grown a beard, but it doesn’t look purposeful—more as if his razor is just on strike. I stare at the beard—everything else is too familiar, too heart-wrenchingly congruent with my memory.
Suddenly the silence becomes unbearable and I blurt: “Where’s Aja?”
At the same time that he says: “How are you?”
We both laugh, breaking the tension. “You first,” I say.
“Aja’s at Connie’s house. We’re helping her move to the city. I just came into town for more boxes, actually.”
I nod. “And how is he?” I ask, though it’s more a perfunctory question. A few weeks after they moved back to New Hampshire, Aja emailed me. I still don’t know how he got my email address, but we kept in touch, sending funny articles, facts, and jokes back and forth every couple of months. I always wanted to ask him about Eric, especially in the beginning, but I knew it wasn’t fair to Aja. To put him in the middle like that. And anyway, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know—especially if Eric had moved on.
“Good.” He grins. “Really good. Starts college this fall.”
“Dartmouth, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m glad you were able to keep in touch. He missed you so much when we left.” His face goes solemn and the word “missed” hangs in the air. It’s a silly word, not nearly big or grand enough to encompass what it really means. You can miss a pitch in baseball, but a person . . .
“I missed him, too,” I say, a lump forming in my throat.
His eyes track down from my face, taking me in. I close mine, but it doesn’t make a difference. I can still feel his gaze burning into my flesh. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t fantasized about this moment—seeing Eric again. Once, years ago, I ran into Connie at the drugstore. We exchanged short pleasantries, but I was shaken for the rest of the day, wondering how I would have felt if Eric had been with her. If I would have felt. When you love someone—and it became clear to me, as the months passed after Eric left, that that’s exactly how I felt about him—where do those feelings go? I realized the answer that day—they don’t go anywhere. Even now, as much as I care for Michael, it’s almost as if I have two different hearts, and the one that’s been housing my feelings for Eric all these years is now beating loud and clear in my chest.
“Where are your gloves?” he asks, and my eyes snap open.
“I don’t . . . I don’t wear them anymore.” I thought maybe Aja would have told him back in February, but now I wonder if Eric bought into the same philosophy as I did—that it was better not to know.
He searches my face. “Are you . . . does that mean that you . . .” He swallows.
I nod. “Yes.” There’s something on my cheek, a trickle—and I look up to see if it’s started to rain, but the air is dry.
As I reach up to feel what it is, Eric’s hand shoots out like a bullet from a gun and he grabs my wrist. A puff of air escapes my lips. He’s touching me. Our eyes lock as his fingers encircle my skin, the warmth of them like sunlight on a temperate day. The perfect amount of heat.
And part of me thinks how unfair, how unspeakably cruel, life can be. How this moment—his skin on mine—is all I ever wanted, all I ever thought about for weeks, months, years of my life. But it’s been seven years. So why now? Why is he standing here, making me feel this way, just when I thought I had everything sorted out?
But then, I think of my mom and of Madison and Donovan, and even of my deepening relationship with Michael, and I know that if I’ve learned anything, it’s that love is messy. It doesn’t come to us in a perfect box all wrapped up in a bow. It’s more like a gift from a child, crayon-scrawled and crumpled. Imperfect. But always a gift just the same.
It’s just that not all gifts are meant to last forever.
Michael’s face flashes in my mind and I’m conflicted. He loves me. And I—well, part of me—cares for him, too. But the other part . . .
I look at Eric standing in front of me and I can’t help it—I smile at him with abandon. He cocks his head, grinning back. With his other hand, he palms my face, using the pad of his thumb to gently catch the drop of water and then swipe it across my cheekbone.
“Jubilee,” he says in wide wonder, as if my name is a secret he’s held on his tongue for years and at last, he gets to tell it. “You’re crying.”
Frozen, we stare at each other, his hand glued to my face, his other still holding my wrist. With my free hand, I grab his arm and we stand there, clutching each other, a bizarre puzzle of limbs.
I lean toward him, until the flats of our foreheads are touching and my eyes are swimming in his and his sweet breath is warm on my face. But it’s not close enough. I reach up and grab the back of his neck, pulling him closer until his lips are firmly on mine.
And we’re kissing.
Finally, we’re kissing.
We’re kissing to make up for the hundreds of kisses we never got to share, and maybe for the hundreds of kisses we never will.
We’re kissing to beat the band.
And then, we’re laughing. Our mouths open wide, our cackles traveling out into the street. We don’t care who hears or how ridiculous we look. We’re laughing as hard as I’m crying. And as I concentrate on the heat of his hands on my face, my wrist—his skin on my skin—something bursts free inside me like a wild animal escaping from a cage.
It’s the humming of one thousand Tibetan monks.
An electric current.
It’s everything.
Author’s Note
WHILE THERE IS no evidence that Jubilee’s allergy exists, many of the stories contained within this novel, along with the day-to-day fear that Jubilee endures, are all-too-real scenarios for people and families battling severe and life-threatening food allergies. The immunotherapy and Chinese medicine used to treat Jubilee’s affliction are based on the research and lifework of pioneering allergy experts Dr. Kari Nadeau at Stanford University and Dr. Xiu-Min Li at Mount Sinai Hospital, respectively. Their treatments have shown great promise in the still largely mysterious world of food allergies. As part of my research, the New York Times Magazine article “Allergy Buster” by Melanie Thernstrom (March 7, 2013) and “Inside the Search for Chinese Herbal Food Allergy Treatments” by Claire Gagne for AllergicLiving.com (February 18, 2015) proved immeasurably helpful.
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, thank you to the readers who read, loved and championed Before I Go. Your emails and messages are what made me think I could write another book, so essentially, this is all your fault.