Chapter Nine The Guardian of My Soul
Chapter Nine
The Guardian of My Soul
When Jacob and I fell in love, I was barely seventeen. Right away, there was friction with my parents because they worried about me moving too fast with an older boy, and they still saw me as a child. They set strict rules and curfews, which resulted in some sneaking around.
Looking back on it, I suppose that was probably part of the excitement.
You know what they say: What is forbidden is coveted, and I definitely coveted time alone with Jacob.
Whenever my parents dropped me off at the mall to meet friends, I would instead meet him in the parking lot, where we’d clutch on to each other, kiss passionately, and drive off together to a park or a hiking trail for privacy.
I recall one memorable evening when we found a picnic table in a deserted playground and we sat talking, holding hands, watching the sunset.
When it grew dark, we stretched out on the grass, stargazed, snuggled, and talked more about our hopes and dreams for the future.
To this day, I consider that night to be the most romantic experience of my life.
I leap forward in my mind to the present day.
It’s Christmas Eve, and Jacob has been dead for years.
The fact that I’m reliving that night under the stars with him as I sit on the sofa in my parents’ house—looking across the living room at Nate—fills me with confusion and guilt because I’m definitely falling in love with Nate.
But it’s different from how I felt with Jacob.
This doesn’t feel as earth shattering. It’s a quieter kind of love.
There’s no sneaking around to be alone together.
Nate and I sleep together every night. It’s easy and comfortable.
But sometimes I worry that it’s not the real thing because it’s too comfortable.
Or maybe this is how true love is supposed to feel. Hence the guilt and confusion.
Tonight, Nate is helping my father hook up a new thermostat with a timer that will help cut down on power bills in the future.
My parents invited him to spend the holidays with us because he’s been shut out of his own family gatherings.
He still talks to his brother, Arthur, on the phone, but he hasn’t seen his nephew or nieces since the disastrous Birthday Brunch when he stood up to his father.
His mother occasionally reaches out to him with a phone call.
Twice, she has sent money in the mail—cash that can’t be traced to her bank account.
Nate told her it wasn’t necessary, but I know he appreciated it.
He set it aside for culinary school next fall.
So here we all are. I’m sipping rum and eggnog on the sofa, and Scooter and Dolly are sleeping on the cushion beside me. Mom’s in the kitchen puttering, snow has just begun to fall outside the window, and the weatherman has promised that we’ll wake up to a white Christmas.
I bend to kiss Scooter on his cheek and inhale his familiar dog scent. “You’re my favorite sweet boy,” I softly say in his ear. “And, Dolly, you’re my favorite girl,” I add, not wanting to leave her out.
As I straighten and watch Nate and my father discuss the instruction booklet for the thermostat, I feel content, as if all is right with the world.
My company is growing and thriving, and I know in my heart that Nate is wonderful.
I can’t imagine my life without him—which again fills me with confusion as to why I was thinking about Jacob earlier. Making comparisons I shouldn’t make.
Absently, I stroke Scooter behind his soft ears, and I wonder if there will ever come a day when I don’t think about Jacob at all.
Will I ever cease to compare everything in my life with how it was when he and I were together?
And what about all the years still to come?
Will they stack up against the vision that Jacob and I, as a couple, had imagined for ourselves?
“This is so strange,” I whisper to Nate as we climb the stairs to my bedroom, with Scooter and Dolly following close behind.
“Why?” he asks.
We reach the second floor, and I continue to whisper as I take his hand in mine and lead him down the hall. “Because my parents are okay with us sleeping together in my bedroom.”
He chuckles. “It’s cool that we’re whispering. It makes things feel kinda naughty.”
I smile as we enter my room, which hasn’t changed much since I moved out after high school.
Same bed, same comforter, same pictures on the walls.
I close the door and immediately pull Nate into my arms for a proper kiss—the kind that makes me wish my parents weren’t sleeping on the other side of the wall.
He holds me close, and I arch into him and the heat of his kiss. Somewhere outside, a snowblower revs its engine. I’m only vaguely aware of the colorful, flickering candolier on my windowsill.
Before things get out of hand, I peel myself away from Nate’s warm body, smile coquettishly at him, and move to my open suitcase on top of my desk. “Just so you know, I left my black silk nightie at home and only brought my flannels.”
“Totally understandable,” he replies as he pulls his cashmere sweater off over his head and begins to unbutton his shirt.
Relaxed and easy, we get ready for bed, which should feel normal, but it doesn’t because this is the room where, in high school, I wrote in my diary about my love for Jacob, which I vowed would last forever.
It’s also the place where I grieved the loss of him after Cape Split.
A part of my heart died that day, and I never imagined I could love again, but here I am.
Yes, I still think of Jacob. Maybe I always will.
Scooter stretches out on the carpet at the foot of my bed while Dolly sniffs the perimeter of the room, taking in all the unfamiliar scents before she finds a cozy spot to lie down under my desk.
Wearing my flannel pj’s, I slide into my double bed and hold the covers up for Nate to join me. He sits up against the pillows, and we snuggle close.
“I have to be honest,” he says. “When we first arrived, I snooped around a little.”
With sudden unease, I lift my head. “What do you mean?”
“I looked at a picture of you and Jacob with Scooter. It’s on a shelf in your closet.”
I know the picture. Of course I do. Becky took it when she came to visit, when Scooter was just a puppy. I had it framed, and it sat on my desk until recently. I only put it in the closet a few weeks ago when I was home and knew Nate would be here for Christmas.
“Did you see anything else?” I ask, because I still have everything from those years with Jacob—all the love letters we wrote to each other every day in class when we didn’t have cell phones to communicate.
I held on to ticket stubs to movies. I even kept his short stories from English class in high school.
He’d wanted to throw them out when he graduated, but I demanded he hand them over so that we could read them together in rocking chairs on our back porch, when we were old and gray.
Nate looks down at me. “I saw a box on the top shelf that said Memories, and I was curious, but I didn’t look inside.”
I sit up. “I’m glad, because it’s full of . . .” I’m not sure how to say it. “It’s full of Jacob memorabilia, and I don’t want you to see that stuff.”
“Why not?”
I glance uncomfortably around my room, lit by the pink ceramic lamp next to my bed. “I don’t know . . . I guess I don’t want you to feel hurt, or jealous.”
He strokes my hair away from my face. “I can’t lie, I did feel a pain in my gut when I saw that picture of the two of you . . . with Scooter. You looked so happy.”
“We were, but it was a long time ago. And he’s gone now.”
“Yes, but . . .” Nate’s gaze lingers on mine, his eyes heavy with concern. “You never talk about him. And it’s not like I’m blind to the fact that I’m the first person you’ve dated since then. Obviously, it took you a long time to get over him. So it must’ve been a pretty serious relationship.”
I sit back. “It did take a long time because it was a very traumatic experience, and I’m not just talking about the physical scars, which you’ve seen, or my fear of heights. His death was a huge loss for me. But I don’t want you to think that I’m not over him. I am.”
I’m cognizant of the fact that my words are only half truths. Yes, I’ve begun to move on, but I’ve always believed that if heaven exists, Jacob and I will be together again. I’ve been imagining that happy reunion since the day he died.
“Sometimes I feel like you’re hiding a part of yourself,” Nate carefully says.
For a moment I can’t speak. It’s as if my secret has been discovered.
“He’ll always know a part of you that I can never know,” Nate continues, “because I don’t know anything about your relationship with him, what he was like, or if you ever had arguments. I assume you lost your virginity to him . . . or maybe not. I don’t know, but I want to know.”
Suddenly, I feel splayed wide open and vulnerable.
But maybe this is a good thing because Nate’s curiosity is touching something deep in my heart, a place that’s been covered up for a long time.
And this is what I’ve been trying to drill into my brain over the past few years in therapy.
I don’t want to believe that nothing can ever be as good as it once was, or that I’ll never feel that kind of love again.
I have been feeling it, and I want to open myself up to this man in my bed. I want to love him.
I cup Nate’s cheek in my hand and speak with purpose. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. All you need to do is ask. And I love that you want to know, because I want us to be close.”
“I want that too.”