86 Ginger
86
Ginger
It was a fine night. We went to the movies to see a flick we’d heard about everywhere—the poster was even plastered all over the bus stops. We shared a medium-sized bucket of popcorn, had lots of laughs, held hands during the tense parts. Then we walked, fingers intertwined, through the city, crossing Hyde Park.
“Have I told you how much I like being with you?” he asked, pulling me close.
I smiled. I could smell the fabric softener on his jacket. Summer had arrived, and every branch on the trees around us was bursting with leaves. I stared into the sky as we walked to the park’s exit, and looked at the shimmering moon, which seemed to gaze down at me from above. It’s funny how something so simple, something that’s always there, can remind you so much of another person. For me, the moon would always be Rhys. Waning, full, shielded by clouds, it always remained, fixed in the heights.
“What are you thinking about?” James’s breath tickled my cheeks.
“Nothing. Just how calm the night is.”
I didn’t want to talk about Rhys, the moon, or anything that even reminded me of him. Not when James had taken it so hard after I told him Rhys wasn’t just some friend, that our relationship was full of forks and dead ends. Rhys was acting weird lately, sometimes calling me drunk in the middle of the night, arguing with me in bitter emails. The bitterness was spreading. As much as we were trying to pretend otherwise, things would never be the same after the summer we’d spent together. Those months had been beautiful, more magical than anything I’d ever lived, but they’d also produced new versions of us that didn’t fit together as well as before.
“You hungry? Should we grab a bite?”
“Sure. I know a pizzeria close to here.”
“Let’s do it.” He smiled.
We sat down and ordered a pizza with salmon and cream cheese to share, plus a couple of appetizers. He grabbed my hand whenever he had the chance. I liked that. His attentiveness. How he couldn’t stop looking at me and didn’t bother to hide it. With James, things were simple: no darkened windows I had to try and peek around, no fears, no risks.
“How long have we been going out, Ginger?”
“Why do you ask?” I laughed, because he seemed so serious all of a sudden, staring at me as if there were no one else there.
“No reason. Just wondering…”
“Come on, spit it out!” I was still smiling.
“It’s just that, since your sister and Kate are serious now, I was thinking maybe it wouldn’t be such a crazy idea if you brought some of your things to my place. After all, you spend almost every weekend there; you’ve already got a drawer in the dresser…”
My heart was beating fast and hard. I bent over the table.
“Are you asking me to move in with you, James?”
“It’s crazy, right? After just a few months…”
“No! No! I mean, no, it’s not crazy.” But he’d made me nervous. It was too soon, wasn’t it, but what the hell? I liked James. I liked the way I felt when I was with him, without tension, without a flood of emotions battering me back and forth. He was sweet. Caring. Attentive. In all the time we’d been seeing each other, we hadn’t argued even once. And he was right, I was spending more and more time at his place, which was just ten minutes from my office on the Tube. “It’s not like we just met each other, right?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Sure. It was years ago when we first met at that party, remember? You asked me to tell you a joke in exchange for a beer.”
“How could I ever forget that?” He smiled, looking excited. “Then I kissed you on the porch swing right there at my parents’ house. I was dying to do it. The same way I’m dying to build a future with you now. Don’t you feel like it’s fate almost? Not that I believe in that, but…we’re looking for the same thing, we have similar goals. Every night when we say goodbye, I wish we didn’t have to.”
His words moved me. And I thought—I wished, but just for a moment—if only Rhys had known what he was looking for before. Then our paths might have crossed forever, but softly rather than like a collision. With James, it was so easy, so natural to talk about my dreams, my goals, my plans, my future.
And I wanted that. I wanted to move forward. I wanted more.
I looked at our hands, holding each other.
“Let’s do it,” I whispered.
James smiled and gave me a kiss.