Chapter 20
It was Saturday evening, less than twenty-four hours before Sadie would return, and for the first time in years, Anne was beginning to inhabit a sense of purpose.
Oh, sure, she’d had Conserve Malibu for a long time, since well before the divorce.
They’d done some impactful work, too, from animal protection to landslide mitigation.
But she’d chosen to volunteer for them because it seemed like a good cause, not because she had any passion for conservation work.
Something she did to do something. She’d never really been able to feel what she’d done there.
Anne could already feel the floral arrangements for the center spreading beneath her fingers.
She grinned, a happy little glow heating her chest, and rested her elbows on her office desk, chin in hand.
Creating flower arrangements for a small, underfunded LGBTQ community center wasn’t exactly the kind of action that transformed lives.
But it was a first step, and it did matter.
Anne could bring a bit of beauty into a space that needed it. A sense of luxury, of plenty.
She could make a tiny corner of the world a little brighter for people who were like her.
And then she would do more.
Her laptop pinged with the sound of a new email. Anne clicked back to her inbox, expecting some corporate promotion or a reply from the woman who was organizing next month’s sweep at Escondido Beach.
It was from Sadie.
Instantly, Anne’s heart rate doubled. Why would Sadie need to email her if she was coming back tomorrow?
Some thoughts, the subject line read, and before Anne could let herself spiral into worry about what the email might hold, she clicked the subject line.
My Anne,
Tonight, I’m collecting every bit of my scattershot attention and packaging it up very carefully. Here’s the best Sadie I know how to offer. She’s yours, assuming you still want her, and I won’t ever stop giving her to you.
Maybe I should wait to tell you this in person tomorrow.
I nearly did. But what I want to say deserves the best packaging, and for me that’s writing—where I can arrange my words as carefully as possible.
I’ve already written and deleted a first draft of this email.
But then, that’s how it always is with me.
The first draft is never the final one; I have to make my mistakes first, stumble along, get it wrong.
It’s not until the second draft that I can start to find a way toward what’s right and true.
Barnard called me yesterday. The job’s mine, if I want it. So I’ve been thinking about that, too, at the same time I’ve been thinking about everything else. Do I really want to move to New York? Do I want to make a life somewhere else? And the thing is, I can’t answer that. Not by myself.
Not without you.
You see, at some point in the last four years, you worked your way into me, put your feet up inside my ribs, took over my heart’s tenancy.
And so it would be dishonest to pretend I could do anything alone.
It’s not just that I want you to go with me, beloved.
It’s that you go with me. Whether that’s to New York or to my fantasies or to dinner or to my front porch—anywhere. Everywhere.
When I realized last year what I felt for you, I was convinced you’d never reciprocate, and—be honest, Sadie!—I preferred it that way. If I stayed silent and impenetrable, I could still have wonderful, remarkable you. And I wouldn’t have the terrible risk that always comes with more.
I wanted to make sure I’d never break again. It turns out that’s the surest way to live half a life.
To love someone without guardrails means you broaden the capacity of what you feel.
You say to your beloved: In opening myself to you I’m giving you the chance to hurt me horribly.
You say: I’m choosing a life where, by death or dissolution, what we have together will end.
You say: I know that to be yours means I share your grief, too, and your pain, and your suffering.
But you say, too: the joy you give me is worth any devastation.
I love you, Anne, and I choose you over my fear.
I love you. You must know that by now, don’t you?
And not only in the way I’ve told you I love you before.
I love you like perfume loves skin, like towels love water, like an itch loves the scratch.
I love you with capslock. When I wake up, there’s a smile on my face because I know you’re next door.
When I write a poem, you’re the feeling that presses down my pen.
I love the foggy mornings best because I’m surrounded by the color of your eyes.
Did you know any of that? I’ll tell you again. I’ll tell you so much more.
I didn’t know another person could have room for me the way you do.
I’m still scared that I’m too much for you. For anyone. But I am strong enough to do this scared. And when pain comes, and it will, I’ll find more strength to barrel through. Right now, though, I can pick happiness and love it—love you—with everything I am.
And what I am, forever and always, is yours.
Sadie
PS: If, by any chance, you’d be open to a phone call before our reunion tomorrow, I’m craving your voice. That low, golden voice of yours. Let bells crack and chimes rust—it’s the loveliest sound in the world. If you lead, sweetheart, I’ll follow.
Anne exhaled, dizzy with wonder, relief, and a brimming, boiling happiness.
It couldn’t be possible to withstand the crush of this much pleasure without bursting into light.
She felt as though Sadie had reached through the screen and stroked her cheeks, held her face, delivered her into a new world where Anne could want desperately, then have.
She pulled off her reading glasses and grabbed her nearby phone, haste making her clumsy.
Sadie answered on the second ring. “Anne?”
At the sound of Sadie’s voice, euphoria, pure and pointed, shocked right through Anne’s body with a strength that seemed impossible. She’d do her best to speak like a person who wasn’t clinging to normalcy with one slipping hand. “You, uh, you said I could call?”
“Yes! That’s a small word to hold such a big feeling.” Faint hesitation laced Sadie’s excitement. “So you’ve already read my email. Do you—was it all right?”
“That wasn’t an email.” Anne couldn’t keep the tremor from her voice. “It was a love letter, Sadie. And it was perfect. Absolutely perfect. I’ll remember every word of it for the rest of my life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
I love you, too. It was on her tongue. But she wouldn’t say it for the first time on a phone call, not when she couldn’t see Sadie, touch her, show Sadie the depths of what it meant. Anne wasn’t like Sadie; she couldn’t bend language to make flowers. She needed Sadie to see her eyes.
“I’ll wait until tomorrow to say more about the letter,” she continued. “What I want to tell you—it needs to be in person. But please know that what you wrote means everything to me.”
Sadie exhaled loudly. “Well,” she said, and Anne could hear the wobble of relief. “It’s an awful understatement to say I’m glad. But I am. I’m so, so glad.”
The phone was already hot in Anne’s hand, or maybe the heat was from her own skin. “What you wrote about risk and picking happiness—I just need to be sure. You’re saying that you’re ready to commit to me? To be with me?”
“I’m all in,” Sadie said firmly. “For as long as you want me, beloved, I’m yours.”
Anne trembled a little. Here it was, in reach at long last: her life.
“What about you? Are you ready?”
The meaning was clear. Sadie didn’t mean ready in the sense that Anne had been ready last Monday, so desperate for the thing she’d always denied herself. She was asking if Anne understood that choosing Sadie meant choosing herself, too.
“I’ve started to make some changes. To be healthier.
No, that’s not the word I want. To be happier.
” Despite Anne’s delight, she still felt a trickle of embarrassment.
Maybe one day it wouldn’t feel so vulnerable to talk about these things.
“Taking a break from drinking, but you know that already. And—and I’m trying to let myself enjoy food, too.
Last night’s dinner was a bowl of macaroni and cheese. ”
“Tremendous.” Sadie sounded far more enthusiastic than a simple meal deserved. “Please tell me you used a box of Kraft.”
“Are you kidding? Have you met me? Aged cheddar cheese, Gruyère, fontina, shichimi-seasoned broccolini, and organic cavatappi noodles.” Anne leaned back in her chair, discomfort receding somewhat.
She’d only been able to bring herself to eat half the bowl, but it still felt like progress.
“If I’m going to branch out beyond my current palate, you’d better bet it’ll be quality. ”
“Don’t knock Kraft mac until you’ve tried it. I remember a certain someone who changed her tune about fast food a quarter second after she bit into a Burger Bliss cheeseburger.”
That hadn’t been the only thing in Anne’s mouth at Burger Bliss. Her face heated with the memory. “If you make it for me when you come home, then we’ve got a deal.”
“It hasn’t been too—awful, everything you’ve started doing? The wine, the food, the coming-out?”
Not horrific, but not pain-free, either.
There’d been reminders that the journey she’d started wouldn’t be linear or easy; you couldn’t erase a lifetime in a week.
Several times, she’d fantasized about driving down to Malibu Liquor and even grabbed her car keys one afternoon before she’d abruptly thrown them across the living room.
And yesterday, after a dressing-soaked bite of her salad, Anne had felt self-revulsion crawl over her; it echoed exactly the sudden surge of shame she’d felt the other night when she’d noticed the shine of arousal and lube on the insides of her upper thighs.
Both times, she’d thought: Who said you could have all that?