Chapter 57 Jillian
JILLIAN
“You’ll never know, dear / How much I love you / Please don’t take my sunshine away”
— “You Are My Sunshine” (traditional folk song)
Have you ever fucked your love goodbye?
Night has fallen. I’m on top of Kir, hands flat on his chest. I’m moving slow on purpose.
His penthouse is dark except for the city through the windows.
All those little lights scattered across the water.
His hands are on my hips but he’s letting me lead, and I’m taking my time because I need to remember this.
The flat plane of his stomach.
The press of his thumbs into the divots above my hip bones.
That little sigh that leaves his lips when I sink all the way down onto him.
So many things I want to catalog to last me through the days and weeks and months ahead, because they’ll be sad and lonely and I’ll need some fire to keep me warm.
He doesn’t know any of that, of course. He thinks this is just us. A good night after a good day. Cappuccinos and croissants. The rest of our lives stretching out ahead of us, uncomplicated and bright.
I know better. Doug’s face on Bleecker Street is burned into my brain, and no amount of sex, sunshine, or I-love-yous is going to scorch it out.
So I move slow. Accumulate more little details like snowflakes landing on my tongue and dissolving to become part of me. Gray eyes in the gloom. Beard stubble. That mountain ridge line of his nose.
No one has ever looked at me like this. I can’t believe I’m throwing it all away. I wonder again, for the millionth, billionth, trillionth time, if I’m doing the right thing.
When it’s done, he pulls me against his side, both of us sweaty, heaving, and glistening with each other’s juices, and he starts to talk. He paints a picture so vivid I feel like I could step right into it.
He talks about a house upstate. Nothing crazy, he promises.
Simple stone and wood, set back from the road, with a porch that wraps around the whole thing.
A kitchen big enough to cook in. Candles on every surface and YouTube chicken every night, forever.
A yard with old trees and maybe a garden if I want one.
He talks about mornings where neither of us has anywhere to be.
Coffee on that porch. Snow in winter. He talks about a dog.
He’s never had one but always wanted one, and he wants one with me especially.
He talks about a wedding. A white dress, somewhere sunny and warm, no one else but us. Who needs others? Slow dancing, cake frosting in a kiss, running straight into the ocean once the vows are exchanged, still dressed in our finest. A veil floating in gentle waves.
He talks, worst of all, about a baby. How he’d dote, and dote, and dote, and dote. A squalling, bright-eyed bundle of blankets on a mother’s tired chest. A chubby wrist with a hospital bracelet. Ours. Ours. Ours. Ours. Ours.
I listen and I can’t help but mournfully weigh the distance between the woman he’s describing and the woman he’s actually holding. I had a child and I gave her away. I have a love and I’m about to do the same thing to that. I ruin things because I myself was ruined. I know no other way.
Maybe once upon a time, he made me believe that I could get past the scars that shape me, but I don’t believe that fantasy anymore. There’s no happy-ever-after here. There’s only An Exclusive Investigation by Jillian Pierce, and a window that stays closed, and a long, solitary life to follow.
That’s all there’s ever been. Anything else was simply delusion.
Little by little, the spaces between his sentences grow.
He pulls me closer and mumbles something into my hair, and then his breathing goes deep and even.
Just like that, he’s out cold. He sleeps so easily now.
He didn’t used to. I remember the first night he stayed over, how he jerked awake over and over before dawn, hand already reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Now, he just holds on to me and drops.
I wait. Five minutes. Ten. His arm gets heavier as sleep takes him all the way down.
When I’m sure he’s out, I lift his arm off my waist, one centimeter at a time, and set it down on the warm sheet where my body was. He groans but doesn’t stir.
My phone is on the nightstand. I pick it up, open the drafts folder, and there it is. The email to Doug. Subject line, attachment, everything.
My thumb hovers for a long, long time.
Then I press Send.
The little whoosh as it vanishes into the ether, final and irretrievable, is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.