The Couple Most Likely To

She laughed. “No, because believe it or not, in a rut or not, I do have a life—one that I find very satisfying, by and large.”

“Tell me.”

“My job, my kids, my friends, my house, my hobbies. I haven’t spent the past seventeen years dwelling on grievances. I’m a pretty positive person. At first, when I saw you and talked with you, I remembered the good times. The connections.”

Oh, boy, did she remember the connections! He’d moved to stand beside her now, and they both watched the fire. Every cell in her body seemed to pull toward him. What was it about this one man? She had to take a breath to steady herself before she could continue.

“Now, though, when you tell me that I’m in a rut, and say that you did love me…Yes, I’m angry. It’s confusing and upsetting. And I really don’t understand.”

She had to wait a long time for his reply. The fire purred faintly, and the room was so quiet that she could hear the whir of the DVD player, which she’d left on the pause setting. Finally, he spoke. If that DVD player had been any louder, she wouldn’t have heard.

“I pushed you away because I felt so damn guilty, Stacey.”

Jake heard the words that came out of his mouth after the long silence and didn’t know if he could follow through with the full truth, even now. Was this what he’d meant by talking? Had he intended to make this much of a confession?

He’d driven here without rehearsing his lines, without much rational thought at all. He’d just known he needed to see her again tonight, not wait for some awkward moment when they ran into each other at the hospital.

As soon as he’d entered her house he’d felt the old attraction flare once again. He’d barely taken in the decor, just a vague impression of warmth and color and quirkiness, the kind of detail you promised yourself you’d take a closer look at next time.

And then the first thing he’d done was apologize, because there was so much he regretted when it came to Stacey and their shared past. But could he talk about it?

“Guilty?” she echoed. “Because Anna came too soon? How was that your fault? The doctors told us—”

“Because it let me off the hook. It opened the door to the original plan, the one we’d had to let go of when we found out you were pregnant. You know the saying. Be careful what you wish for.”

Tears filled her eyes. “You wished for—”

He swore harshly. “No! Of course I didn’t wish for us to lose Anna! But I would never have chosen at that age to get married and be a father and settle down in Portland, Stacey. I wanted you, but I didn’t want the whole traditional package. Not then. Not at eighteen.”

“And now?”

“We’re not talking about now. But, no, I don’t see myself ever going that route, I have to say.”

“Because it’s boring? Narrow?”

“Because it’s…”

Too scary, and too hard.

Anna had taught him this. Most men—boys—have pretty simplistic attitudes to life at eighteen. Love is love. Grief is grief. Freedom is freedom. You want what you want. No ambivalence. No excuses. Until Stacey’s pregnancy he’d never imagined you could tear yourself in two with such conflicting, opposing emotions—emotions that simply had no way to coexist. Loving Stacey became a burden. Loving Anna was a burden, also, and every bit as heavy.

“Because it’s just not for me,” he finished after a moment. “It’s still not. And it definitely wasn’t for me back then. There were times—a lot of times—when I just wanted the whole situation to go away. Like for some superhero to fly up into space—” he mocked himself with words and tone “—and reverse the rotation of the earth so that time would spin itself back to the moment before I didn’t pick up a pack of condoms the night of the prom, or something. It wasn’t logical. It was never logical or rational or thought out, Stacey. I just wanted the situation to go away,” he repeated.

“And then it did.”

“And then it did.”

“And I was racked with grief, while you—”

“I was, too. Never doubt that! Only I didn’t have the right to be, I only had the right to feel guilty, because at some level I’d made it happen. Again, not rational. We were both in a mess. For a while, I tried to pick up the idea of us traveling, going to college together somewhere different. Like New York.”

“I remember you talked about New York.”

“You weren’t interested. You didn’t want to know. You wanted me to stay at Portland State.”

“I needed time, for heaven’s sake!”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I just couldn’t see it then. Of course you did. But even if I’d given it to you, I’m not sure that it would have helped, because I wasn’t ever going to let myself be happy with you after we lost Anna.”

“Because you didn’t think you deserved to get what you’d always wanted—the two of us and the wide horizons.”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, Jake…” She didn’t sound angry anymore.

“I picked the fights. I did push you away. I’m so sorry about that, Stacey, believe me. When you told me we were finished, it hurt like hell, but I felt like it had to happen. It was inevitable. There was a relief, too. Cosmic justice had been served.”

“Jake…”

“I was eighteen. We were eighteen.” To both of them, it sounded so impossibly young.

He put his arm around her and she leaned in, not away. Her head dropped to his shoulder. They stared at the flames. He felt a cloak of peace settle over his shoulders. Peace and trust.

“Tonight, when I said her name…” Jake revealed. “You’re the only one I can say her name to, Stacey. My mom and dad, maybe, but it’s still not the same.”

“No. It wouldn’t be.”

Her bare arm felt warm beneath his hand. Her hip bumped his and he realized their thighs were pressing together, separated only by the fabric of his jeans and her frothy skirt. None of this was about sex, though, it was about shared pain and mutual support.

“I said something about her to my mother, once,” she said quietly, after a minute. “Maybe five years ago? I used her name. After Anna died. Do you know what Mom said?”

“Tell me.”

“‘Who’s Anna?’ Mom had forgotten that we ever named her.”

“She’d forgotten? The name of her own lost granddaughter?”

“I know. It felt like a punch in the gut.”

He turned her into his arms and said against the softness of her hair, “You are a miracle, Stacey.”

“Because I’m not like my mother?” she whispered.

“Yes!”

He couldn’t speak.

He had more to remember.