Chapter Fifty
Jenna
I wait three more months before I break-up with Chris, wanting to give it a chance once we're back in the real world, wondering if it was just being at the resort that tainted it for me.
But it doesn't work. He doesn't want to be friends and that is upsetting, but not as much as being loved by someone who isn't Marty.
Still waiting on my editor’s feedback, I find myself volunteering at Battersea Dog Park two afternoons a week, and training for an amateur weightlifting competition that I get a PB from but no awards.
Then, as summer fades into autumn, my manuscript is sent back to me and long hours of research and edits help me count down the weeks until my brother's season ends, and he moves in again.
It's on his second visit to the dog shelter with me that Jake points out a Jack Russell mix with what he calls Bi Dick Energy and he practically insists on me adopting him and calling him Marty. I succumb to one of those requests and take home the little troublemaker a few weeks later, but I keep his name as Rocky because I can’t bare the idea of hearing Marty’s name even more times than it already echoes through my mind.
That little hyperactive dog and I break up my relentless days of edits by going on long daily walks.
I find myself welcoming the change of season, and almost feeling excited about heading up to the Edinburgh for Christmas and watching Rocky terrorise my dad's dogs, which he does at every opportunity.
I think about Marty often - every time I catch the sunset, whenever I hear an Irish accent, and solidly for weeks and weeks when I'm editing the chapter on grief for my book - but slowly and surely I start to notice that he's no longer my first active thought in the morning, nor is he always who I think about when I glide my hands over my own body.
It's back in London on New Year's Eve, tipsy on expensive champagne bought by my brother and his wonderfully eccentric friends, when I realise that I am halfway through the five years. We are halfway there. I search for the pride I should feel, but it’s out of reach, and so is Marty, by at least two and a half years.
The next day I stay in bed until midday, trying to cry away my hangover, and when that doesn't work, Rocky and I walk eight miles to Hackney Marshes and back before picking up supplies for the most epic dinner for my brother and his friends.
As their laughter fills my house for the second evening in a row, I feel full and happy and like maybe I am doing okay.
That is how I spend most of the rest of winter - walking and cuddling Rocky, cooking for Jake, and keeping my house and mind as full as possible - and finalising my book edits.
I hand over the updated draft the day before my fortieth birthday in March and to celebrate these two milestones, a week later my brother and I head off to the Maldives for two weeks to a resort he gets generously discounted.
I start as I mean to go on by doing next to nothing apart from an hour in the gym each day.
That is until the fourth day when the gym manager asks me if I'd like to go snorkelling with him, just the two of us. Intrigued by his jet-black eyes and a little dizzy from his thick, defined quads, I push aside the sting that comes from remembering my snorkelling date with Marty, and I go with him. We see turtles, manta rays and baby barracuda sharks. Then he takes me off the resort to a private beach on the other side of the island that the staff use on their days off. Drinking cocktails out of plastic bottles with straws, we sit on the smooth white sand and watch the sunset while the sea water dries crisp and tight on my sun-tinged skin. A couple of hours later, he licks the salt of it off my body before we take a shower together, an experience that brings Marty’s image so vividly to my mind when I close my eyes, until the gym instructor's hairier chest jolts me back to where I am.
I pull the man in front of me closer and I take and give pleasure as much as I possibly can.
And it is good - he ravishes me and caresses me in equal measure.
He takes instruction well and surrenders his body to my touch in a way that reminds me of Marty but not in a distracting way, more as encouragement.
It's bittersweet having that reassurance; that sex can still be good after Marty. If it has to be...
I only get two postcards from Marty this year, but that makes them even more precious. I read them just as often as the others and they are dog-eared and creased in no time.
Because of that Maldives trip, and my brother's resort being booked out a year in advance, I wasn't going to go to back to Crete this year, but then he has a cancellation and I get a phone call from Jake telling me that he may or may not have slept with someone he shouldn't have and he needs me there.
The next thing I know, I'm on a plane to Crete again.
Four days later, I send Marty a postcard.
Dear Marty, Happy 27th Birthday! I look for the green light every time the sun sets. I promise you always. Everything will be okay. Jenna x
I kiss his name twenty-seven times.