These Are the Moments (21 page)

Chapter 54

Then

“
I can’t do this. If you’re asking me to do it now, then the answer is no.”

Wendy was on her bathroom floor. She’d sunken down to it, swaddled in her bathrobe, her phone exploding in her lap. Simon didn’t get to do this. He didn’t get to create rise and fall, to pick and choose, only to wreck it all over again.

“Really?” she texted him. “You’re going to stay with Lizzie, even though you’re still in love with me. ‘I think we could work this time, Wendy.’ ‘I want to be better for you.’ It’s bullshit, Simon.”

“You think this is what I want? No. I’m not staying with her because I don’t love you. I meant what I said. But Lizzie . . . she’s a good person. I can’t just destroy her like that.”

“Funny. You’ve never had that problem with me.”

They were back and forth again. After formal, Simon had talked to Lizzie, just as he said he would, telling her they wanted different things and that they needed to slow down. It wasn’t until a few days later, when the reality of their situation hit him, that he had this newfound realization.

He couldn’t do it.

“If you’re going to do this,” Wendy told him now, the cold floor chilling her bare feet, “you can’t do it over a lousy text message. Call me. You owe me that much.”

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll come over, instead. When’s a good time?”

Come over?

She tugged the robe around her, stood up and headed into the bedroom. She hadn’t expected him to be so . . . agreeable.

“Okay?”

“Yes. When?”

“Tonight,” Wendy said, her teeth chattering.

“All right,” he said. “What time?”

Wendy tugged a pair of yoga pants over her damp legs. There was a moment where it was just her, the pounding of her heartbeat and the question of what was to come.

“Now.”

Wendy bent over her sink, fixing her mascara in the mirror, waiting for Simon.

She used to imagine what it would be like to be totally, completely and wholly out of love with Simon. She’d gotten pretty close there, a few times. Months would go by that she wouldn’t even think of him anymore, and it had been years since she actively missed him. She was good. Really good, actually.

Maybe Simon should stay with Lizzie.

Maybe she could finally move on.

Over him.

The end.

Wendy couldn’t be still if she wanted to. She wanted to say everything she’d never gotten the chance to. She wanted to let him know how much it sucked that he didn’t try when he went away to college. How much she hated him for sleeping with Sarah. The email, and every ounce of feeling it caused her.

He needed to know that no matter what happened, then or now or somewhere years away, she might love him, a little or a lot, but that didn’t mean he got to have her.

Three solid knocks on the door.

She didn’t look at him as he walked into the apartment.

He paused in the kitchen. Looked around. “This is nice.”

“Yeah,” she said, searching for something to stare at. “I like it.”

“Reese here?”

“No, she’s with a guy.”

“Cool, so you wanna go . . .”

He pointed to her room.

Her room. With the bed. And barely anything else.

“Uhh, yeah, okay.”

She sat down first on the bed, board straight, right at the edge. Her bed was made for the first time in months, the clothes were off the floor and her room smelled like the candle she’d just blown out. He wasn’t in any photos. He’d never seen this furniture before. They were two different people, leading completely separate lives.

And yet.

“So.” She clenched her teeth.

Wendy had a hard time looking angry. It was easy to channel into words, but it didn’t sit right on her face.

“Right. Let’s get into it then,” he said, realizing she wasn’t going to small talk with him. “I meant what I said. Everything. But I can’t drop Lizzie right now, and turn around to make things happen with you. You’re in the same circles. Do you know what that’ll look like?”

“Why is it that you always care what things look like for other people? Everyone except me?”

He took a deep breath. “I understand why you feel like that, but really, I am thinking about you. People will talk. I don’t want to put you in that position.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“Do you even want to be with me?” he asked her. “Honestly? Do you think I am the person for you?”

In truth, she wasn’t sure. Wendy knew exactly how she felt about Simon. She loved him the way that you love your favorite part of yourself. But when she thought about the scope of him, raw and real, she couldn’t help but wonder:
Is this really what’s best for me?

“You hurt me,” she said, her voice breaking, “and I don’t know how I’m going to get over that. When you told me, ‘I don’t feel the same way. Sorry,’ it broke me. Sarah. Lizzie. You did everything you possibly could to hurt me.

“But I know you. I know that underneath all of that, there’s a person who wants to be better. And it’s like you said, I want to explore what we are capable of being.
Jesus
, Simon, I’m still in love with you.”

“Wendy.” He said her name like a prayer, taking a seat beside her, close enough for her to feel his skin. “I’m never going to not love you. That’s a promise.”

“So what now?”

Chapter 55

Now

Now was perfect
.

That’s what she’d told Raven when she’d asked to meet.

Raven liked to burn incense in the gallery, which seemed a little odd to Wendy, but she didn’t complain. The furniture was constantly being moved around, the layout arranged and rearranged so that Wendy could hardly recognize it each time she stopped in.

They posed themselves around Raven’s desk. Wendy, her feet clumsily tucked beneath her, crossed at the ankles and feeling like she might fall over, cleared her throat. Raven labored over her agenda, highlighting and flipping through pages.

“Is everything going well?” Wendy asked, casually.

Raven tilted her head upward, her eyes cutting. “It’s fine. Busy. Steady. Good for business.”

“That’s great,” Wendy said, her throat dry. “You wanted to talk to me about?”

“A show, yes.”

Raven had never mentioned a show. This was another thing about the woman. Her mind was always elsewhere, planning for the next thing.

“I’m sorry. What show?”

Raven sat up, one vertebrae at a time. “I’d like to host you for a show. A series. Your pieces are selling extremely well. My most profitable line, yet. And I’d like to expand. A show will do that for us. You have fifteen, twenty or so pieces, yes?”

Wendy nodded, somewhat involuntarily. The nod just happened. Her mind tried to catch up.

“Excellent, I’ve got you booked three weeks from today. Does that sound doable?”

The nod. It happened again.

“Great,” Raven said, rounding her pen in a giant circle around the date. “Any questions?”

“Umm, yes. I think so.”

Raven waited.

“This is my show?
Just
my show?”

“Yes, we’ll need a name for your series. We’ll need to hire a caterer. Bartenders. That kind of thing. Marketing, of course. Round up your friends, family, anyone available. I’m thinking we need a good headshot. Do you have one? I can schedule.”

“Oh, uh, no?”

“How about next Tuesday,” Raven asked, “There’s that photographer on the corner.”

“Okay,” Wendy said. “Yeah.”

“Excellent,” Raven said, curling her pen around next Tuesday. “What else?”

“A name, you said?”

Raven pinched her lips. “Yes. Something to connect all the pieces. An overarching theme or something you believe wraps it all together. Let me know, so I can plan. We’ll work around it.”

Something to connect all the pieces
.

If Wendy knew what that was, she wouldn’t have had to create them in the first place.

Wendy said her thanks and left in a blur. At home, Dad made dinner. Mom folded towels. Wendy floated into her bedroom, into her closet, and pulled out the pieces, one at a time. She leaned them against the walls, so they made a train around her room, in order, everything fitting into its time. Thematically, they all fit together. Subject-wise? Not so much.

She thought about naming it something simple. Something that wouldn’t give too much away. Spanning the room, she imagined seeing all of them up on the wall, the people walking past them, taking a trip through her life.

These were the moments that defined her.

These were the moments that were still defining her.

These are the moments
.

Around her, surrounded by all of the moments of her life, she couldn’t help but wonder:
what will Simon think?

Chapter 56

Then

They were together. Happy. Together. A dream plucked out of their own imaginations and splattered right onto real life.

The beginning had been slightly rocky, with being around Lizzie, being in public, being in the sorority. But Lizzie was dating someone new now, and the pressure was lifted.

Simon and Wendy couldn’t get enough of each other. Every spare second was reserved for time together, even if it was doing nothing at all.

And then it was Christmas. Simon was back. She was happy. They were good, like a real, honest-to-God couple.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked, calling her after class one day.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hadn’t thought that far.”

“Of course not,” he teased. “Okay, your night is booked.”

She smiled into the phone as she crossed the street. “Oh it is? What am I doing that’s got me so unavailable?”

“You’ll see,” he said, and hung up the phone.

As she got ready, she begged him for hints.

“You better stop,” he said. “You know I’m not good at keeping things from you. So shut up and let me surprise you, already.”

She wore her new white coat over her dress, with black gloves and tights, and pretty black boots. Her hair hung straight down her back, which made it look longer than normal. She winged her eyeliner. She wore pink lipstick.

It felt like an important night. It felt like it would be one of those nights that she’d inscribe on folds of her memory, flipping back to it over and over again.

He picked her up at seven and slipped in a Christmas album for her. Then, he pulled out onto the interstate.

“Interesting,” she said. “Should I be blindfolded for this?”

He never let go of her hand. “Not this time.”

“Can I just say something?” she asked, as they kept on I-10, toward New Orleans.

“I assume that was rhetorical?”

“Yes, hush.”

“Understood.”

She watched the trees speed past her window, a haze of green. “I’m so happy right now. Scary happy. The kind of happy that might break my heart right open.”

“I’m not,” he said.

She turned back at him. “Oh, you’re not?”

“Not that sort of happy, no. I’m so happy that it’s fixing things. Mistakes I made. Like everything is falling back into place.”

She sighed. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’m just saying. I’m not going to break your heart. Not again.”

“Good,” she said, pressing her lips to his cheek. “Neither will I. I changed my mind. I’m your kind of happy. You make me happy even when I don’t want to be.”

Christmas Under the Stars, seven years later, was exactly the same. It was as if the whole place just kept spinning along in time, waiting for them to find their way back.

“Oh my God,” she said when he pulled into the parking lot.

“How’s your heart?” he asked.

“In a thousand tiny pieces.”

He stopped the car and looked over at her. It was a knowing look with a whole script of words behind it, and she felt like she could read right over them, without him even opening his mouth.

She leaned over to his side of the car and hovered, her lips just milliseconds from his. And then he kissed her. His lips moved over hers as his hands explored her, touching her like he was trying to remember all of the parts of her he’d missed out on. She didn’t stop to breathe. She kissed him through it.

“We should get out,” he said, pulling back.

Wendy wanted him. She wanted him in whatever way she could have him. But still, she stopped.

“Should we?” she asked, kissing his neck.

He kissed her hard, pulling her as far over to him as the car would allow, then pushed her away. “Yes,” he breathed through a smile. “Let’s go.”

They wanted to see the lights. Hand in hand, they walked among the rose gardens, lit with the bursts of white twinkling strands.

“I think it’s even more beautiful now,” she said.

“I think you’re right,” he agreed.

The path opened up to a flower beds arranged in the shape of a cross. In front of them, there was a scaling wall of roses that formed a small nook, with a bench nestled between. Simon led them over to it, and sitting, Wendy cupped a white rose in her hand.

Everything was white and gold and magical, like the whole place had taken to a gentle fire.

“I have something for you,” Simon said.

“A present?” she asked. “What is it? A pony? A library? The Mona Lisa?”

“All of the above,” he said, his hand fooling with something in his pocket. “Wendy, I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“And I want you to know, that these past few months have proven to me exactly how stupid I’ve been. I don’t want to waste another moment being out of your life. I never, ever want that to happen again.”

Wendy swallowed. This felt like one of those life-changing speeches. The speech before a really big move.

When he pulled the small, velvet box from his coat pocket, she stayed very still. Even her breathing became tiny and unobtrusive.

“This isn’t what you think it is,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts. “That kind of present will come much, much later. But still. I wanted to get you something that will make you think about me and about us. I wanted to get you something to show you I’m serious. I’m not going anywhere.”

It was a ring, but not that kind of ring. The tiny pearl perched delicately on a silver band, and he slipped it onto the ring finger of her right hand. Back in this trove of memory, she realized it was all so perfect. The setting, the boy, the life.

She could see herself being proposed to by Simon.

She could see herself being in love for Simon for as long as it was possible to love someone.