“You haven’t seen him in two years,” she says. She hands me the glass of wine. “That’s a long time when you still love someone.”
“I want him to still love me.”
“Just get down there,” she says. “You’ll get your answers when you’re with him.”
When the plane lands in Tucson, I powder any shine off my face. I reapply lip gloss and fluff up my hair. Then I walk with the other passengers into the terminal. Everyone hugs and exclaims. But Leif isn’t there. I walk toward baggage claim. I look out the doors to see if he’s waiting in his car. But he’s nowhere. After everyone else on my flight is long gone, I go to a pay phone and dial his number, but there’s no answer. I sit against the wall and try to decide what to do. Just as I stand to try to call him again, I see him loping up the stairs. The same goofy walk he always had, his dark hair shining under the airport’s fluorescent lights. Soon after we first got together he told me he was a human “L” because of his long feet and short stature. My heart fills.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I ran a little late.”
I hug him, his scent, that same familiar scent, surrounding me.
“You look good,” I say. “I like the hair.” I rustle his hair, which is cut short now.
“Yeah?” He touches his hair, and I see in the gesture his insecurity. He feels like I do, nervous and uncertain about how this will go.
I follow him out to his car, not the one he had when I left him, but a van. I watch him as he drives, my Leif, no longer mine with his new hair, his new van. At his apartment, where he lives with one other guy who isn’t there this weekend, he pulls me into another hug. We hold each other a moment, just feeling that after all this time. In his bedroom, there’s a framed photograph of him and a girl. A pretty girl. They’re both tan, their smiles big. Another photo shows him and the same girl from behind as they run hand-in-hand into the ocean.
“That’s in Nogales,” he says. “It’s only an hour’s drive from here.”
“Who is this?” I ask. I don’t look at him, not wanting him to see me. Jealousy’s such an ugly emotion.
“Sarah,” he says. “We went out for a year after the girl from the band.” I watch him look at the picture, trying to gauge what he feels.
“Were you in love with her?”
“Yeah.”
I sit on his bed and take off my shoes.
“Let’s have sex,” I say.
“What?” He laughs, uncomfortable, but his eyes are on me now, not the photo.
I lift my shirt and I set it aside. Underneath I’m not wearing a bra. Then I stand and unbutton my jeans. “Come here.”
He does, and I reach for him. I yank off his shirt, and then his pants. I pull him on top of me, my mouth on his. He gets inside of me, but still it’s not close enough. I want to feel him again. To know him, like I used to, the last two years—and that girl—erased. I want things back to what they were, when I didn’t question whether he was mine. But it’s different. Little things. The way he touches me down there. The way he moves. I don’t recognize our sex as ours. I used to feel so bored with the predictability of our sex, but now I long for its familiarity, to feel that we still know each other so intimately. Late in the afternoon, we drive up into the Catalina Mountains.
As the road ascends, saguaro cacti give way to Arizona oak and Douglas fir trees. In the distance, the range’s sandy slopes, lined with wind and water erosion, look like a woman’s curves. The afternoon sun sends shoots of orangey light onto the road. This is where I had planned to live, among the southwest’s dusty, airy landscape. Ever since my father and I traveled to Taos, I was sure I belonged here. Now it belongs to Leif. For the first time I see the meaning. Leif applied to the school here after he knew I wanted to come. He came out here to be with me.
We set up camp on a raised ridge where we watch the sun sink into a ravine. It’s too warm for a fire, but he makes one anyway, and he opens a bottle of beer for me.
“So, here you are,” he says, and he raises his bottle.
“Here I am.” I clink his with mine.
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back.”
I take a breath. “Sometimes I wish I never left.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I watch him, wanting to say the right thing.
“I was confused. I needed to get out of here for a while and find something else.” He looks up at the star- filled sky while I talk. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I want to make this better, to tell him the truth after all this time, but I’m not even sure what that is. “It wasn’t about you. I was empty, and no one, not even you, could have filled me.”
He looks back at me now, and I see he’s crying. After all this time, he’s crying. “You just left me.”
My throat clenches. I see what I’ve done, how much I’ve hurt him, this man I care for. “Oh, God, Leif,” I say. “I’m so sorry.” I get up and hold him, and he sobs like a little boy in my arms. “I wish I could take it back.” I really, really do.
The next night I watch his band perform at a bar, and I see how settled he is here. He has friends and flirtations. People know him as Sarah’s ex, not my ex. They don’t know me at all. The following morning, Leif drives me to the airport and we hug good-bye. I’ve been a fool in the past. That’s for sure. But I’m not disillusioned enough to think we’ll be together now. He has a whole life he’s happy in, and his life no longer includes me.
At the end of July, I fly across the country to attend an artists’ colony in Vermont. I fly into New Jersey, where I’ll see my dad for a day and pick up a car. Then I’ll drive to the Berkshires to see my grandmother, who is alone since my grandfather passed, and finally to see Bevin before I head up to Vermont. On the flight over, I sit next to a handsome, well-groomed boy. Three hours into it, we make out. I can see by the little tent in his pants that he’d like us to do more. I briefly consider jerking him off under the tiny airline blanket, but he doesn’t push for it, so I don’t offer. We exchange numbers, but he lives in Philadelphia, and I’m on a tight schedule this trip. I know I won’t see him again.
Dad takes his new girlfriend and me out for dinner at an Italian restaurant we went to often when I lived here. Perhaps it’s the familiarity of the place that leads me to tell his girlfriend about the things Dad did when I was a teenager. Or perhaps it’s been brewing inside me too long. Over dessert and coffee, I tell her how he used to make sexually suggestive comments about my friends, be inappropriate in front of me with his girlfriend, and smoke pot with my friends. With each debasement I mention, she slaps Dad hard on the arm.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says with play anger. He laughs uncomfortably. “It was years ago.” And then, “Check, please.”
“You can’t run from your past,” I tell him, and smile.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But I don’t have to sit here and take this abuse.”
“Yes, you do,” his girlfriend says.
The waiter places the check on the table.
“Everything was OK?” he asks.
“Everything but the food and company,” Dad says, his standard joke.
“And you have to pay for our dinner after we abuse you,” his girlfriend says after the waiter walks away. I smile, thinking of Nora and her list of what men are good for. I guess Dad likes this sort of teasing from his women. I know inside he believes it’s true. He has to do things for the women in his life to be worthy of them, to make up for all his mistakes.
Dad gets his wallet out. He shakes his head and laughs while he pulls out an American Express. “That’s right,” he says. “I’ll never be paid up, will I?”
I just laugh and raise my eyebrows. That’s for him to determine. His girlfriend goes to bed early, and Dad and I sit in the living room. He turns on the TV and lights a cigarette, his two biggest vices. He’s too old to still be smoking and though I shouldn’t encourage him, I light one too.
“What really happened with Nora?” I ask.
Dad sighs. He leans back and blows out smoke in a thin stream. “A lot of things happened,” he says. “You know how relationships go.”
I do. “What sorts of things?”
“For one, she drank too much.”
