Love the one youre with

'Young enough. I wasn't ready for… this,' he says, motioning in the space between us, finally admitting the obvious-that it was him, not me. He broke up with me.

I nod, as if I understand his assessment, even though I really don't. Yes, we were young, but in some ways, young love seems the most robust and idealistic, untarnished by everyday hardships. Leo threw in the towel before we were ever really tested. Maybe because he didn't want to be tested. Maybe because he assumed we would fail. Maybe because, at the time, he just didn't love me enough.

'Would staying with me have felt like… settling?' I ask.

The word settling echoes in my head, gnawing at my heart and filling me with trepidation. It is a word I've avoided for months, even in my own, private thoughts, but I suddenly can't avoid it any longer. In some ways, it feels like the scary heart of the matter-the fear that I settled when I said 'I do' to Andy. That I should have held out for this kind of love. That I should have believed that Leo would, someday, return to me.

'Hell, no,' Leo says, shaking his head with frustration. 'That wasn't it, and you know it.'

I start to pin him down further, but he offers an unprompted explanation. 'Look, Ellie. You were the one… You are the one… If such a thing exists…'

I look into his eyes, his pupils lost in the dark brown around them. My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.

'Okay,' I say.

It is a wholly inadequate response, but the only one that feels safe in this emerging moment of truth.

'So… what do you think?' he says. 'What do you want?'

I close my eyes, feeling suspended in time and a little disoriented, the way you sometimes feel when you awaken in a strange place and momentarily forget where you are. Then I look at Leo again, and suddenly realize with shock and a dash of terror that this choice, taken away from me years ago, first by Leo, then by Margot, is now mine to make. Finally. I unwittingly imagine myself at a literal fork in the road, the kind that belongs in a spooky Disney animation. Two twisting, dirt paths. Two signs attached to gnarled trees, pointing in opposite directions. This way for Andy. That way for Leo.

I uncross my arms, letting them fall to my sides, my fingertips grazing the buttery soft leather of Leo's new couch. Then I silently replay Suzanne's parting words, wondering if my disillusioned, unlucky-in-love sister is onto something. It's not about what might have been. And it's not about whether I have genuine feelings for Leo now, underneath the layers of nostalgia, lust, unrequited love. It's really not about Leo at all.

It's about Andy, plainly, simply.

It's about whether I truly love my husband.

'I think I should go,' I say, the answer, always in my heart, finally crystallizing in my head, too.

Leo returns his hand to my leg, this time with slightly more weight. 'Ellen… don't…'

My mind races-as I hear only half of what he says next. Something about not wanting to lose me again. Something about how he knows that I'm married, but that we are too good together. He closes with, 'I miss us'-which is more powerful and compelling than merely missing me-especially because I feel the same way. I miss us, too. I always have, and probably always will. Overcome with grief and the sense of impending, final loss, I touch his hand. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone.

But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

I look into Leo's eyes, feeling heartbroken, but resolved, and somehow freed.

'I have to go,' I say, standing slowly, methodically gathering my things as if I'm moving in slow motion.

Leo stands along with me, reluctantly helping me into my coat and following me to his door, then onto his porch. As we head down the stairs, an errant cab appears in the distance, drifting toward us, down the otherwise desolate street. An omen to stay on course. I make my way onto the sidewalk, step off the curb, maneuver between two parked cars, and wave to the driver. Leo stands at a short distance, watching.

'Where are you going?' he asks. His voice is calm, but there is something frantic in his eyes. Something I've never seen before. A short time ago, I might have basked in it, feeling victorious, healed. Now it only makes me more sad.

'To my hotel,' I say, nodding at the driver as he puts my bags in the trunk.

'Will you call me when you get there?'

'Yes,' I say, wondering if I will keep this promise.

Leo walks toward me, puts his hand on my arm, and says my name in one final protest.

'I'm sorry,' I say, pulling away and sliding into the backseat. I force a smile that feels brave, my vision starting to blur with tears that I frantically blink away. Then I close the cab door, holding my palm up to the window to say good-bye. Just like I did the morning after our red-eye flight.

Only this time, I don't cry, and I don't look back.

thirty-six

We cross the Queensboro Bridge in what feels like record time, moving against the heavy flow of commuters, racing toward the lights of Manhattan. Something about our speed, and my driver's haphazard lane changes, makes my departure from Leo's apartment feel like a very narrow escape. One swerve away from disaster.

As I sit in the middle of the backseat and stare through the partition out the front window, I struggle to digest the last twenty-four hours, and especially the past few minutes, feeling my first pang of remorse for crossing that black-and-white, physical line.

I can't believe I cheated on my husband-on Andy.

With a measure of self-serving irony, I reassure myself that perhaps I needed to kiss Leo to really let go of him-and dismiss the notion that staying in my marriage is any version of settling, or that I'm with Andy by default. After all, isn't settling about having no options at all? About taking something because it's better than nothing? I finally had a real choice. And I chose.

This epiphany is followed by another flash of insight, as I realize that for the longest time, I saw Andy as perfect, and our life together as perfect. And in some bizarre way, once Leo came back into my life, this yellow-brick road started to feel like settling. Settling for perfection, for all the things that you're supposed to want. A good family. A beautiful home. Wealth. It was almost as if I discounted my feelings, because surely I couldn't truly be in love with Andy, too, on top of all those check marks in his column. Subconsciously, I think I assumed that any feelings I had for dark, difficult, distant Leo had to be more legitimate. The stuff of sad love songs.

As we navigate our way through Upper East Side traffic, I remember how my mother once told me that it's just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one, one of her many bits of advice that seemed old-fashioned and inapplicable to me-and not only because I was still a kid. We were in the parking lot of the bank, and had just run into her high school boyfriend, a guy named Mike Callas who my mother had broken up with for my father after Mike left for college. Suzanne and I had looked at his yearbook photo plenty of times, deciding that despite dopey-looking ears, he was pretty cute with loads of dark, wavy hair. But upon our meeting, the hair was mostly gone, making his ears look even bigger, and he had faded into just another doughy, middle-aged man with nondescript features. Making matters worse, he had a smile too big to trust-although maybe I just assumed the last part because he drove off in a flashy Cadillac right after kissing my mother's hand and making her giggle. Still, I sensed no real nostalgia or misgivings from my mother-even after her rather unromantic advice-although perhaps I simply wasn't