Chapter 35
At the end of the night, Abby is fifteen dollars richer.
She won every hand of Texas Hold ’Em, heckling us with each victory.
I suspect Caleb let her win, which is very un-Caleb-like.
He typically counts cards like a shark. But it was a relief to hear her laugh, to see the light return to her smile, to watch Caleb forget his anger, and to pretend it wasn’t our goodbye.
I collapse into bed at midnight, trying not to think about Caleb shirtless on my couch. Although he’s just down the hall, he feels miles away—and tomorrow, he’ll be gone.
After three months of a star-filled sky, the sounds and lights of the city keep sleep at bay.
But I must fall asleep at some point because I wake to a dim beam of light pouring in from the hall and a blurry figure in my open doorway. I scoot up against my headboard as Caleb closes the door and sits on the edge of my bed, facing away, his elbows on his knees.
He doesn’t speak at first, and I suspect I’m hallucinating, so I don’t utter a word.
If it’s a dream, I don’t want to wake and risk losing another moment with him.
My instinct is to touch him—to press him against my skin and cotton sheets and say goodbye by pulling him inside me one last time.
When we meet next—if we meet—we’ll be strangers again, and that realization lands like a blunt knife in my gut.
I focus on the long curve of his back as he sits bowed beside me and listen to him breathe. And I wait.
He clears his throat, but his words come out gravelly. “I wanted to tell you that I understand. It hurts like hell, but I get it.”
But suddenly, I don’t. Why couldn’t I have found a solution that didn’t propel me to the other side of the state? Why didn’t I tell Mom that I was serious about staying? Why couldn’t I tell her that I found my soulmate?
“Can you remind me? Because it’s hard to remember my noble intentions when you’re this close to me.”
He chuckles and turns, and my skin flushes at the sight of his smile—warm and wistful in the half dark. Caleb tangles his fingers in mine, and I hold on like I’m hanging from a cliff and he’s the rope.
He exhales a shaky breath. “Shit, I’ve missed you.”
My emotions are churning, need and loss and regret and panic threatening to topple the house of cards I’ve built on my flimsy resolve.
I don’t want to go back to being strangers.
I’ve never felt so comfortably myself as I have with him.
And I worry I’ll become a stranger to myself, too.
“I think I might miss you forever,” I admit.
Caleb closes the space between us and cups my jaw in his palms. “So let’s figure this out.”
It’s too easy to get drunk on him. When he looks at me like this, I believe in fanciful things. When he puts his hands on me, I believe in miracles. He’s the magic of Grand Trees that Sonny sang about.
“I want to,” I choke out as hope bubbles up in the tide of impossibility.
He leans in, brushing his mouth against mine like we’re sealing a promise.
But I fear it’s transient. I chase it, threading my fingers in his hair and pulling him closer, begging his kiss to convince me that nothing else matters.
Every sensation colludes to persuade me—the scratch of his beard, the rough texture of his hands, the uneven bow of his lips, the scent of Grand Trees clinging to his skin.
I draw him into my lungs and map the landscape of him.
I want to make it work because we work. Even when we’re bickering, at odds, driving each other crazy, we work.
But over the last few weeks, I’ve twisted my mind around every possibility.
Our distance will create a gulf too wide to scale.
Physical distance, yes. But emotional distance, too.
I know what life is like in Grand Trees—slow and languid.
And I know what life is like here—frenetic, consuming.
And now I’m Mom’s primary caretaker. Even if Caleb and I can figure out how to see each other regularly—and that’s a big if—I don’t know how we can build a future together when we’re living in different worlds, on different timelines.
Caleb pulls back, pressing his forehead to mine. “I can feel you thinking.”
“I want to figure it out. But I don’t know how.” My words are so quiet. Maybe if he can’t hear me, he won’t be able to confirm my greatest fears.
“I don’t know yet either, but we’re both stubborn enough to do it.”
I laugh, but it sounds like a sob as emotion clogs my throat. “You can’t leave Grand Trees. Abby needs both her parents there. And I can’t leave the city, because Mom needs to be here.”
Caleb traces my bottom lip with his thumb. “So we’ll do long distance. I told you from day one, I’ll take whatever you are willing to give. Vacations, weekends, or a few weeks in the summer.”
I let myself imagine the possibility of surprise visits, Sundays spent in sheets, living in anticipation, late-night phone calls, last-minute cancellations, disappointments, years of stasis.
It sounds like the agreement Sonny and my mom made before chance intervened. Caleb and I deserve more than that.
“And we go on like that for how long? Squeezing in visits around work, Abby’s activities, and Mom’s treatments? Seeing each other less and less, making apologies and excuses until we resent each other?”
He shifts back from where he’s perched on the side of the bed, and I worry he’ll walk away, but he turns, slips in beside me, and wraps an arm over my shoulders. I sink against him, resting my head in the crook of his neck, and he places a kiss on my forehead.
“It isn’t forever. I could move here eventually.”
I can picture Caleb in the city about as well as I can imagine Houdini in the Westminster Dog Show. But even if I could imagine it, it’s not possible.
“In five years when Abby goes off to college?”
“Yeah.” His earnestness—his certainty—pierces me right in the heart. I want to ski behind the wake of his confidence, but I know how these things play out. Good intentions collide with reality. And I’ll miss out on a real life while waiting for the fairy tale.
“I’ll be over forty by then.” It’s a risky endeavor to wait that long to try to start a family. What if I can’t conceive right away or at all? I would have to sacrifice the last years of likely fertility and wait for a man to be ready—again.
He laughs. “So?”
“Caleb.” I exhale and sit upright, turning to face him. I need to put some distance between us to think straight. The tempting warmth of his skin will make me promise a future neither of us can deliver. “I want kids. I want a family. I gave that up for a man before, and I can’t do it again.”
“I’m not asking you to give up anything. I want more kids someday, too.” Caleb reaches for my hand.
“Women don’t have the luxury of someday.”
We sit in silence for a while, my hand in his, and I watch his brain working. Perhaps he’s hitting a brick wall in the labyrinth, turning back, trying to find a new way forward, but I’ve walked every path, and I’m just waiting for him to meet me at the dead end I’ve been stuck at for weeks.
“If you want to make this work, it’s going to feel like jumping off that platform. You need to trust we can figure it out.”
Trust requires hope, though. It requires faith that the future will be better than the past. Nothing in my life has shown that to be true. And nothing can top the perfect months I’ve spent with this man. I don’t trust it can get better than that.
“When I broke my leg,” I begin, tentatively, “I was determined to dance again. But the first time I tried, I realized I’d never be able to, not the way I wanted to, and it killed the love I had for it. I think that was the worst part—the lost hope.”
Caleb swipes his thumb across my cheek, catching a tear. “You told me once that it’s not about perfection. The magic is in the attempt.”
I wrap my hands around his neck and pull him close.
It’s too tempting to believe that we can make us work.
But I’m not sure even he believes it. He wants it, but want isn’t faith.
He skates his mouth across my cheekbones, erasing my tears as they escape.
His lips brush over my eyelids, down the bridge of my nose, and finally land on my mouth as it trembles.
“Yes, but with you, I don’t want to just sway to the music. We’re so much more than that. I don’t want to become some mediocre version of us.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“If we’re always waiting to see each other, waiting to start our life together, it will be.
We can’t make each other our priority because we’re both responsible for other people.
With the miles between us, I don’t see how we can make it work without resenting each other eventually.
I want to remember us like this. I don’t want to ruin us by fighting a losing battle.
” I can’t wait for him for another five years.
The only commitment we’d be making would be to break each other’s hearts slowly.
The pressure in my chest is rising, and my body is too small to contain the pain. He told me the key to surviving heartbreak is to fill your life with people you love more than the person who broke it. But I’m afraid I’ll never find someone I love more than him.
I thread my fingers in his hair and draw him to me, begging him to give me one more night, to leave his scent on my sheets, to imprint his memory here.
“But if the world was ending, you’d come to me, right?” he says.
“If the world were ending, I’d run to you.” It’s the only promise I can make, the only one I’m sure I’d keep. My mouth opens on his, suddenly frantic, and I climb into his lap, sinking close until I can feel the way his body fits against mine—begs for mine.
We lose ourselves in a kiss, and instinct takes charge.
Over the last few months, we’ve learned and cataloged each other, and we know where our souls meet our bodies.
I know he’s sensitive at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and he loves it when I sink my teeth into his collarbone.
He’s learned that I love to be tempted and teased.
And all these intimacies are about to gather dust. Maybe I can let him go if I have him one more time and snap my mental camera shutter on each perfect frame.
But when I reach for the hem of his shirt, he captures my hands in his shaking fist—stopping me. “I can’t, Eden.”
My body bursts into flames, sparked by rejection and humiliation. I scramble off his lap, but he reaches for my hands, scooting closer as I retreat. He presses his forehead to mine when I drop my head to hide my anguish.
“I need you to do something for me.” His voice is tight, and I realize I’m tasting his tears, too.
“Anything.”
He squeezes my hands. “I told you I’d take whatever you’re willing to give, but I won’t survive nothing.
If we can’t try to make us work, I need you to really let me go.
I can’t be your acquaintance, and I can’t be polite.
When I visit your mom, I’ll have to stay somewhere else and try not to run into you, because I can’t exchange ‘how are yous’ in the kitchen or handshakes on the porch.
When I need an update on your mom’s health, I’m gonna talk to your dad or Cassie.
It’s not because I won’t be thinking of you, or missing you, or dreaming of you.
I just know my limits. And you’re mine.”
And this—this is the impact after the fall that I’ve been fearing. His request breaks me. But this time, it’s my rib cage that shatters. Shards of bone are piercing my heart and lungs, making it impossible to catch my breath through my sobs.
I have to let him go. I have to do what he’s asking, but this loss may be my undoing.
When he captures my mouth in a featherlight kiss that tastes of salt and sorrow, I know it’s goodbye. “I love you,” he whispers against my lips.
“I love you,” I say for the first—last—time. The words inflate like a balloon in my throat, and I’m choking on all the love waiting to be punctured.
He unfolds my hands from his and shifts away, his weight lifting from the bed like an anchor coming loose at sea. When I catch my breath and open my eyes, he’s gone, his shape already absorbed by shadow.