a dozen simple truths, part 2

December 28, 2083 - Leila Watts is 28, Corbin Gray is 32.

* warning: 1st person narration, Leila speaking ;) *

Soundtrack: "Sweet and Low," by Augustana.

Nessa and I served the wine. I drank half a glass, trying to soothe my nerves but it only made my face flush hot. Corbin was here still. We made our way around each other at the party, keeping a respectful distance, wanting to talk, clearly wanting to talk, but I didn't know how. He was the only one at this party I even wanted to talk to at all.

He stepped up to the tray of wine where I was standing - he didn't drink, and so he grabbed a plate of snacks instead. We brushed past each other like this, making eye contact in haste over that bowl of pretzels again and again.

I set down my wine glass, and while Jack and Nessa were still entertaining guests in the kitchen, I followed Corbin out into the living room. We weren't alone there, but we didn't know these guests either - or maybe they knew us, but I didn't care. I couldn't care. He was surprised when I took his hand and pulled him outside the front door to the street.

I led him around the side of the front stoop, but we were still in view of the large front windows. He stared at me, the streetlights in his eyes, wide and stunned. It was cold, and my breath puffed out in front of me. "Please talk to me," I said. "You're leaving? Weren't you going to tell me?"

"What was there to tell? You said it was over."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was wrong."

He crossed his arms tight over his chest. I would have liked to say it was because of the cold, but it felt more like a barrier. "And your marriage? You said you had to try for your family."

"It didn't work," I said. "I couldn't forget you." But even that wasn't the whole truth. "I didn't want to forget you."

"I needed a breather," he said. "It's a semester. I want to see my parents. Amelia and Drew are having a baby this fall, and I told her I'd be back before September. I promised her dad I'd look out for them."

"You're coming back for Amelia?"

"Yes," he said. "I am. What do you want me to say? I heard nothing from you. All that time, and I had nothing except this letter, and you said it was over. What did I have to stay for?" He demonstrated wildly with his hands, pointing at me, pointing back to himself, raising them to the sky and letting them fall exhausted to his side. " All I knew," he said, "Was that you were the one with the husband, and the family, and you have all these choices to make. I have no choices. I just love you. I didn't know what I was supposed to do with that."

"You don't hate me?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Not hate." He blushed a bit and said again, calmer this time, "I love you."

I reached out to his hand first, and he took my naked ringless hand into his own. He held it in his palm, his thumb finding the spot where my ring used to be.

"We're getting divorced," I said.

"I didn't know that."

"And you wouldn't be going, if you knew that?"

He didn't answer my question. "It's already done," he said. "The paperwork is filed. I have someone subleasing my apartment."

"How long do you have?"

"Nine days," he said.

I started to cry then. Maybe I should have cried sooner, because it seemed to soften his resolve. "But I do love you," I said. "And I feel like I haven't been able to be myself my whole life, I don't even know what that self is at all, but I feel like you know her, somehow, and when I'm with you, I can be her. And I just miss you. Every day I miss you. I miss you so much. I want to promise you something, but my promises are no good."

"You don't have to promise me anything," he said.

He folded me into his arms like he was holding a damaged bird - nothing at all like the awkward and clumsy hugs I used to steal from him after yoga class. I sniffled into his chest, breathing in the scent of him, warm lemongrass. He bent his face to my hair, and I felt him kiss the top of my head. I closed my eyes and it filled me. I let it fill me, all those voids, all the gaps, all the spaces left unreached, he filled them. He never even had to try.

My teeth chattered from the cold. Or maybe it was from the crying.

"It's okay," he said. "It's just a semester, it's just five months. It's not forever."

He looked away from me then, and I followed his gaze to the front door. By the time I'd looked, I could only see Jack's form walking away from the windows. "We should go somewhere," Corbin said. "Anywhere. Not here."

We had to go back inside to say goodnight. Our coats, and my purse and car keys were inside anyway.

Nessa was the first to see us together. Then Jack soon after. Jack wasn't so much startled at that point, but was speechless instead. I imagined he must wonder how he would tell Matt, because no doubt, he would. He looked at the two of us as the pieces came together. He stared mostly at Corbin. "It was you?"

I hadn't thought about it, what this would mean to his friendship with Jack. And as he stood next to me, in front of Jack, I didn't know what he would do. It hadn't been the scandalous affair they were all thinking, but it had been something. Would he deny it, or shrug it off? Would he say it was nothing, or that it wasn't what they all thought? All the faces in the room started to turn, one by one, and I felt like shrinking. All those eyes felt like heat.

But Corbin reached out to touch the small of my back. "Yes," he said.

There were whispers in the room. There were eyes on us, I was sure of it, but I couldn't feel their heat. I only felt his hand on my back, holding me there, rubbing with his thumb. His voice was hushed. "Get your keys, Leila."

Nessa brought over our coats and my purse. Her eyes were far kinder than they needed to be. "You don't have to go," she said.

"I'm sorry, I think we probably should," I said. "Thank you for having us."

***

Drive somewhere, I thought. Anywhere to get us out of there. He had walked to the party, so he got into the passenger side, and we drove. Really we just wanted to sit and talk, so I parked in the lot of his building.

We sat in my car and I reached over to hold his hand. I turned his palm over and traced the lines. I remembered all of their names at one point, but I'd forgotten what they all meant. "Your head line is stronger than your heart line," I said. "Do you believe that stuff?"

He picked up my hand and kissed it lightly. "What do you think it means?"

It meant I was scared. Because this, running away, is just what he did. So he said he was coming back? But a promise is only best intentions with no ground to rest on. He might intend to come back - right now, he might. He could say it and mean it, but any number of things could happen. Any number of reasons might change his mind. I knew better than anyone that people change their minds about promises all the time.

But I didn't want to think about that. So I just smiled. "Are you going to take me in there or what?"

"Are you sure?" he asked. "You know what happened the last time we were in there together?

"Yes, I know," I said, grinning wide.

He reached out a fingertip, ran it along my smiling lips. "I missed this," he said.

He leaned over to kiss me. Not like the first time we kissed, like we might have drank each other alive, but slow, like we might stretch it out forever, like we might actually stop time after all. Time could go on, if it must, and we would ignore it.

But we stopped kissing long enough to get ourselves inside his apartment, and we started kissing again.

We stood in the middle of his living room, barely able to stand. My knees felt weak - and that, I learned, wasn't just a saying after all. It really does happen.

His fingers gathered the shirt at my back, his warm hands snuck underneath. I should have been nervous, but I think I was too heartbroken to be nervous. It felt like heartbreak anyway, and I wasn't sure if it was exactly. It might have been more like so much emotion, so much ache, so much love that it hurt.

I knew now, that feeling was my heart. It was a tiny voice coming up from that place I had stuffed down so far. It was screaming at me, This is your life, and it's the only one you have.

My head had been so full of all the whys and why nots, the shoulds and the shouldn'ts, all the reasons and rules and expectations. But right here, a dozen simple truths all faded into the background. In my heart, there was only ever one truth, and around it, all the other truths just crumbled.

The way we made love was like we might actually stop time. Not like the first time we tried - in so much haste, like we were starved. This time, I didn't feel starved. I felt like if we kissed slow enough, if we took our time sliding off his shirt, if he took his time unbuttoning my pants, if we came together so slowly right now, if we could make it last, then maybe we might actually put this night on pause, and that the next nine days might never come to take him away.

But time did not stop, even as much as I tried, because after so many months of stolen touches, now we were here, together, with his hands pressed firm to my skin, my mouth on his and the ache of so much love filled us to the point of bursting.

We collapsed together, slid apart only enough to lay side by side.

He traced vague shapes with his fingertips on my hip. "How do you feel?"

I think I had made it pretty clear how he just made me feel, so I could only guess he meant, was this worth it? Was it worth all the mess and all the trouble? Could I have known that so soon? All I knew was that in that one stopped moment, I had no regrets. Not a single one.

"I feel perfect," I said.

There was a clock on his night stand behind me that I couldn't see, but I could hear its motors moving, counting the seconds. Time began ticking again. I told Matt I'd be back to take the kids before midnight. I hadn't been out like this, on my own, in so long. Maybe ever. I felt like a girl again, out on a Saturday night, counting down the minutes until curfew. Maybe I could start over, do it differently this time. Maybe I could rearrange history. Except that I wasn't a girl, and my car outside had three carseats in the back, and in nine days he would be thousands of miles away. Time doesn't count back, and it can't be rewritten. It only ticks forward, forward, forward.

I curled myself closer to him, running my fingers along the slight new stubble on his shaved chin.

I wasn't supposed to meet him yet. Sooner, maybe, if I had gone to college. Or maybe later after this was all resolved. Not when we did. I remembered the first night I met him, when he found out I was married, he looked at me like he was disappointed, like why did I have to go and do that? Like I was supposed to wait for him, and I didn't. Did I mess it all up for everyone?

"I wonder sometimes if it was all supposed to work out like this." Not just tonight, I meant, but maybe the whole of the last twelve years.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'd like to say it was more noble than it is, but it isn't. I just needed a breather is all."

"And do you still need a breather?"

"Maybe not like I first thought," he said. "But I think you need one, so this will be okay. I'm booked to teach two philosophy classes in Portland this spring, and you can take some time to heal."

I didn't cry then, but I felt the swell in my throat, the glaze over my eyes and I blinked them dry again.

"The release is good for you," he said. "There's a spot-"

He rolled my body up on top of his, reached around to touch my back. "It releases natural endorphins, they induce happiness." His fingers pressed into my skin and a tingle shot through my muscles, through my back, put goosebumps on my arms and a light shiver through my body.

For me at least, it was him that induced happiness. "Is that why they all keep coming back to you?"

His smile was humble. "I can see you again at spring break," he said. "And you can call me whenever you need to."

"And you'll answer this time?"

"Of course I will," he said. "This will be okay."

He kept saying that - it would be okay. But I knew him, and I knew the world didn't seem as big a place to him as it did to everyone else. People and hearts, he once told me, they continue to exist, whether they're in the same place or not. And hadn't we proven that much already?

But still, my world was very small, and it was here, with my kids, and the house that would be mine next month, and my friends, and my business, and my angry ex-husband. It was all right here. "I need you to come back," I said.

He didn't say it was okay this time. His smile was somber and he touched my cheek. "I will. I promise."

My promises were no good - only best intentions with no ground to rest on, but I knew he didn't make promises lightly. And at a time when I didn't know how much faith I had left in me, it felt like something to believe in.

We dressed and he walked me to my car. He kissed me goodnight there, held my hands as we stood beside the three empty car seats in the back. This mess we made, some day, it would be worth it all. I couldn't promise that, but it was something I felt in my heart. Because if my life was a series of photographs, each one so necessary and important, then I didn't want to regret a single one of them. And I didn't want to regret the ones that should have been there, but weren't, the ones left unfinished because I was too afraid, or too sorry, or because it didn't fall into somebody else's plan for what my life should look like.

The highway back to Bluewater, back to my angry soon ex-husband and our beautiful children and my messed up life, was long and impossibly dark, but it had never felt more refreshing. I didn't think I had any faith left in me, but somehow my skin, my lips, my heart was full of promise again.

So I would pray for us all, even though I didn't know if I believed in God. I would believe in promises again, even if only because I had to. And when our hearts were breaking and we didn't know if we could take it, I knew we would take it anyway. Because all the pain and the panic and the hurt, all those terrible moments that we thought felt like death - they weren't death at all. They were never death.

What we hadn't known was that we were only being reborn.

"Hold me down,
sweet and low,
and I will carry you home."
- Augustana

*******