Charmed Thirds (44 page)

“How did you know that I’d take you back after all this time?” I asked, sticking my middle finger through the ring and caressing the delicate flesh at the base of his throat. “When I didn’t know it myself until after I saw you?”

“I had to take that chance,” he said, the words vibrating through his skin and buzzing my fingertip. “The only way our relationship would be worth having is if you knew what you were missing without it.”

When he said that, I was reminded of that time I came home for Christmas break and my mom had put my most treasured possessions in storage. I remember her, then me, questioning their importance. If they were
really
that significant, I would have brought them with me to school, right? I remembered poring over these items—the “Fall” poem on its deeply creased piece of notebook paper, the mosaic portrait Hope gave me right before she moved—wondering why I had left them behind, and wondering if the relationships that these things represented would be in better shape if I hadn’t. But I realize now that if I
had
brought those things with me, if I had surrounded myself with them every day, they would have gradually been downgraded to nothing special, until there was little difference between a once-cherished memory and the light switch. The only way to truly appreciate something’s value is to distance yourself from it for a while.

I
WISH
OUR
LOVE
WAS
RIGHT
NOW
.

It is. It
is.

I kissed him until I heard the tiny hairs prickling on his belly.

“You must be a long phase for me, Marcus Flutie.”

“The longest, Jessica Darling,” he replied.

Yes. Love has the longest arms.

the thirty-first

Hope and I are about to embark on the most haphazard cross-country trip in history.

“Can you believe it’s been six years since I moved?” Hope asks as she inspects our bag of backseat snacks. Fun-sized Baby Ruths. KC Masterpiece Baked Lay’s. Sour Patch Kids.

“Yes and no,” I say, rummaging through my duffel for my sunglasses. I can’t start this road trip-cum-senior thesis without them. Who cares if it’s December and the sun can barely be detected in the dull sky? I’ve always imagined embarking on a cross-country trip with sunglasses. “Sometimes, when I think about six years ago, it feels more vivid, more real than all the stuff in between.”

“I totally know what you mean,” she says, throwing the last of the bags into the trunk.

This trip started as a joke, as most things between us do. In one of our last phone calls before she left for France and we lost touch, Hope reminded me how she’s always been fascinated by a particular road sign en route to her cousins’ house.

“Can you believe there’s a place called Toad Suck, Arkansas, and people actually live there?”

A paper-dodging, time-wasting Google search quickly revealed that Toad Suck was in bad company. Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky. Nipple, Utah. Satan’s Kingdom, Rhode Island. There were just too many ridiculously named towns out there. Pennsylvania alone was host to Muff, Blue Ball, and Dick.

“I wouldn’t mind telling people I’m from Hell, Missouri,” I said.

“I’m feeling very Uncertain, Texas, myself,” Hope replied. “But I’d like to be Yeehaw Junction, Florida.”

Thus, her senior project, “Mental States: A Cross-Country Tour of My Emotions,” was born. For the next month, Hope will take self-portraits next to appropriately expressive town names and use the photos in some sort of multimedia installation that she had yet to devise. She not only convinced her department head to give her class credit for the trip, but somehow got the school to subsidize most of it in some work-study agreement that only Hope could wrangle. When she asked me to ride shotgun a few weeks ago, I didn’t hesitate.

“Thank you, Rhode Island School of Design!” she says now, lifting her Coke can to the sky before popping its top.

“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, for refusing to pay my tuition and making this trip possible!” I reply in kind, actually meaning every word.

“To Virginville, Pennsylvania!” Hope whoops.

“To Virginville!”

And then a voice says, “I’m not sure you two will make it past the Virginville border patrol.”

I turn to see Marcus standing in front of me, holding a red box.

“I thought you didn’t want to say good-bye,” I say.

“I still don’t,” Marcus says. “I’m not here to say good-bye. I have a going-away gift.”

“You already gave me a going-away gift,” I reply, gesturing toward the Barry Manilow toilet seat that we’ve propped on top of our bags in the backseat. Hope has deemed it our good luck traveling totem.

“That was a coming-home gift,” he explains. “This is a going-away gift.” And then he hands me a raw silk box meant for holding photos. It’s heavier than I had expected. I don’t realize that I’m just standing there staring until he says, “Open it.”

I do what I’m told. Inside are at least a dozen black-and-white-speckled composition notebooks exactly like the one I’m writing in right now.

At first, I think, How did you get my journals? But then I notice that the spaces reserved for Name, School, and Grade, have been left blank, where on my notebooks they have all been inscribed with the start and end dates of the contents within.

I open one. These aren’t my journals. . . . They’re
his.

This realization makes me sink to the curb with the box between my knees.

He sits down next to me and says, “I was wrong the other night in the car, when I told you that I had said all I could say.”

I read the first page of the journal on top. There’s no date. But the first line is addressed in a very specific way:
My dear Jessica . . .

And then pages and pages and pages of words, words, words . . . everything Marcus couldn’t say to me over the past two years, but wants me to know.

“You’re always going to pull stuff like this, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it drives me insane.”

He shrugs. “It’s who I am, Jessica. It’s part of my charm. You wouldn’t want me any other way.”

And I know he’s right.

I almost can’t believe I’m going to make myself vulnerable to him again. But what is love but the most extreme and exquisite form of risk perception? I know that relationships don’t last. And yet, with Marcus, the risk of not being with him is much worse than any other hurt I can imagine.

Marcus’s gaze is fixed on the grass. His face is partially obscured, but I can see his dented brow. And he’s tapping his feet in a twitchy, arrhythmic way. And I think, I’m making Marcus Flutie nervous.

“Will you still be here when I get back?” I ask.

He looks up. The frown fades and a smile arrives in its place, one that starts at his mouth but really comes out through this eyes. It’s a sincere, unsullied smile.

“I want to be.”

And that’s when I stand up, lean in, and kiss him. I kiss him because I know exactly what he means, as much as such knowledge is even possible between two people. Marcus
wants
to be here when I get back, but he’s not promising that he will. All promises are true only until they aren’t, and I appreciate his honesty.

“You’ve changed,” I seethed right before he left me that winter, nearly two years ago. And yes, Marcus
had
changed, but that was my problem, not his. A relationship ends because you’ve outgrown it. It can begin again because you, as two, can fill the new shape.

I thought Marcus was going to be in my life forever. Then I thought I was wrong. Now he’s back. But this time I know what’s certain: Marcus will be gone again, and back again and again and again because nothing is permanent. Especially people. Strangers become friends. Friends become lovers. Lovers become strangers. Strangers become friends once more, and over and over. Tomorrow, next week, fifty years from now, I know I’ll get another one-word postcard from Marcus, because this one doesn’t have a period signifying the end of the sentence.

Or the end of anything at all.

Marcus,

AND

Love, Jessica

Many thanks go out to:

Joanna Pulcini, for telling me that the best was yet to come.

Kristin Kiser, who has always gotten it. Lindsey Moore, for her sharp eye and even sharper sense of humor. Jennifer O’Connor, whose beautiful covers continue to catch buyers’ eyes years after publication. And everyone else at Crown for their innovative ideas and exhaustive efforts.

Columbia University, for withstanding my creative liberties.

Colleen Myers, who confirmed that things haven’t changed all that much at my alma mater in the last decade. (When it comes to male-female relations, I’m sorry to hear that.) Jay Saxon, for his informative tour of Princeton University, but mostly for letting me lurk on facebook.com. (Vote for him when he runs for president in 2024.) Amber-Lyn Kuhl at the College of St. Elizabeth, for moderating the livejournal community devoted to passionate discussions about my books (livejournal.com/community/sloppyfirsts/). And all the other college students who stopped working (hard) and playing (harder) long enough to answer my questions, including Annie Berke, Sarah Downs, and Sara Fuentes.

The creators and contributors to collegehumor.com for making me laugh my ass off while I was conducting “research.”

The ladies—especially Jeannie Kim, Erika Rasmusson Janes, and Monica Ryan—for helping me retain and maintain my mojo.

Alan and Ellen McCafferty, for being the most supportive in-laws
ever.

My parents, Tom and Laurie Fitzmorris, who, for the record, differ from the Darlings in countless ways, not the least of which being that
I
have never walked in on
them
having sex. (Thank God.)

And finally, Collin and Christopher, just for being my boys.