Nineteen
Nineteen
Ellie needs to find Jonah. Again.
This is all she thinks about as she buckles her seat belt and shifts her car into gear, leaving her mother—who decided to stay in her pew and pray a little while longer—so she can drive back across town to find him.
The truth is she has no clue if he’ll still be where she left him, hanging out in the coffee shop, maybe still taking that call on his phone, drinking a fresh cup of breakfast blend. They parted ways there well over an hour ago. Plus, it’s late afternoon. She has to guess the shop closes up soon.
Why did she leave him earlier in such a loose fashion? Why hadn’t she made a plan, insisted on some formal time and place for them to meet again? Would you like to meet here again tomorrow morning for coffee? Why, for the second time in her life (lives?), had she allowed her husband to more or less just walk away?
The church in her rearview, Ellie throws on her blinker and pulls back out onto their town’s main drag. Teenagers from the local high school, their sports practices and various cocurriculars complete for the day, walk around carrying smoothie cups from one of the local shops. Some café employees have begun to set the metal tables that line the sidewalks with votive candles in preparation for the evening. While Ellie drives, she peers through her windows, half expecting to see him casually walking up the street. Part of her hopes that maybe, for reasons he doesn’t quite understand, he’s out here, scoping out their town and looking for her, too.
A few minutes later and Ellie turns onto the correct block. She slows the vehicle, cruises past the bookshop. Through the window she sees Gabby behind the counter, in full charge of the place. Across the street, Ellie notes that the coffee shop is still open. She strains her neck to look through the glass. But this is fool’s work. Of course he’s not there, sitting in the window seat, doing nothing. He probably left the shop ages ago. Another car beeps behind Ellie, nudging her to speed it up. She taps the gas pedal, then brakes at the stop sign up ahead. Still, she thinks to herself. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he relocated to a different table in the back.
She turns, ready to loop the car back around the block so she can park, run inside, and double-check. Her entire body tingles. Her hair, her skin, everything is suddenly electric. It’s been so long since she’s experienced this feeling, this flutter in her chest, these pins and needles in her hands, as her anticipation and hope to see him continue to build. She’s reminded of back when they first met, when every time they parted felt like heartache, and every time she saw him felt like coming alive again.
Ellie turns left now, then left again as she makes her way back around the block. She inhales but her breath is jagged, her insides all nerves and suspense and expectation. She wants to see her husband. For the first time in forever, Ellie is overwhelmed by the knowledge that they’re making a mistake. Of course they can’t get divorced. What are they doing? They love each other; they’re just going through a terrible rough patch, like Bunny and Frank. They made a vow, a commitment, an entire life. They can’t throw their world away.
Up ahead, the traffic light turns red. Ellie brings the vehicle to a stop. With the car idling beneath her, Ellie experiences a sense of calm she hasn’t felt in ages. No, they’re not getting divorced. Ellie just needed a minute, a chance to step away and see her world without him, the whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” bit. And it has. She misses him. She misses them. She misses everything—their family, their simple life, their home.
Jonah is still in that coffee shop. Her cells thrum with this knowledge. For reasons she cannot explain, she knows he’s there and waiting for her. Maybe it’s intuition. Maybe it’s just love—this most powerful energy that can transcend time and logic. Or maybe, Ellie considers, this is fate: that idea she gave up on now coming back to find her and reminding her that if she and Jonah are meant to meet again—and they are, of course they are; she knows this now—then they will. That they’ll cross paths as easily and naturally as water flowing down a river. Without much effort, things that are meant to be will just be. They’ll find each other.
Opposite the intersection where she’s currently stopped, Ellie sees a parking space open in front of the coffee shop’s chalkboard sidewalk sign. Perfect, she thinks, as if this whole world—this whole quiet town—is falling into place just for her. Up ahead, the crosswalk signal changes, a blinking warning. The traffic light that hangs overhead turns green. Ellie lifts her foot off the brake pedal, and when she does, she almost stops breathing as she falls so quickly into this all-encompassing feeling of déjà vu.
It’s like she’s looking into a crystal ball. Of course this is how it will happen. Of course! Ellie actually laughs—laughs!—at the situation she knows is about to unfold. It’s so perfect, so brilliant, she honestly might have thought to orchestrate it herself if she’d only known how.
Her knuckles turn white as she grips the steering wheel at ten and two and then waits for it: the feeling of impact, the sound of metal grating, the two of them coming back together like she knew they would.
Behind her, a car horn. A warning. But Ellie ignores it. She smiles and begins a countdown in her head. Three. Two. Any second now. One.
And then— Smash !
Ellie doesn’t move. Instead, she leans back and closes her eyes, knowing when she opens them, he’ll be there, just like always. That they’ll laugh, both of them caught in the knowledge that yes— yes! —they’ve already been here before.
She hears it now, the sound of his fingers drumming the glass. Ellie lets her eyelids rise— showtime! —ready to see him and finally, after all these months of turmoil they’ve lived through together, prepared with what to say.
The afternoon sun beams through the window, creating an impossible-to-see-through orange glare. She squints, presses a button, buzzes down the glass. But even without this transparent, breakable divider between them, nothing about Ellie’s current view, or who stands in front of her, has changed. The peridot eyes. The flaxen hair.
“Jack?”
“Hi, Ellie,” he announces. “Funny running into you here.”
She drops her free hand from the wheel.
No, she thinks. It’s not.