The day we left the east coast for the middle of the country, I drove down to the beach house at sunrise to say goodbye. I'll never forget that day. Poetic in its sadness, some days I wish I could have it wiped from my memory and some days I wish I could have wallowed in it longer.
When I came up the stairs, Jacob was sitting on a chair on the deck, baggy jeans hiked up to his knees, his feet up on the railing, tilting the chair back while he worked through Incubus' Drive, a song I hear now and wallow for the entire three minutes and fifty-two seconds that it plays.
It's driven me before and it seems to be the way
that everyone else gets around.
But lately I'm beginning to find that when
I drive myself my light is found
Whatever tomorrow brings
I'll be there with open arms and open eyes
Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there
I'll be there.
Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive
He stopped playing in the middle of the song and put the guitar down, standing up and turning to face me. Forever I wanted to remember that Jacob never wears shoes, if he can help it. He hates shoes. Then I wondered why I was searching for such unremarkable details to remember when the remarkable one was standing right in front of me.
I stood riveted to one spot, the wind whipping my hair around my face, stinging my eyes, exposed to the elements in hopes that they would consume me. It was a moment of truth. Inevitable.
He stood in front of me, leaning on the rail, his pale blue shirt worn around the edges of the collar, the brand new sky reflected in faded cotton to match his endless eyes. He was angry but we were still formal enough to be civilized in what had to be the most shameful and gratifying moment of our relationship, where he would finally step forward to confirm what I knew, that it wasn't goodbye by any means, and it never would be.
I looked down, unable to meet his eyes. Hoping he wouldn't see the tears that had welled up in my eyes when he turned around as I tried to tightly clutch every last detail of him to my heart.
He refused to allow me that one small grace, instead lifting my chin with his hand to meet his pained expression, his thumb tracing my bottom lip in a gesture I knew was meant to soothe me and bring me comfort but instead it caused wracking pain that radiated right through me, to the bottom of my soul. And I shook my head and refused to divulge my emotions, for once. Out of fear of so many things, I stood my ground.
If I told you all the things he did to me, you'd never touch me like that again.
I would touch you, Bridget. I would die for you, princess. That's how much I love you.
I love you and that's why I need to go. I can't do this. I can't be here anymore.
You need to be here. How can you tell me you love me and then leave here to go with him? Is this fair? How can you stand here and make this choice when, if you're telling me the truth, you don't love him as much as you love me?
I need to go. I don't have a choice.
You're killing me, Bridget.
I'm sorry.
I whispered it as I pushed past him and he grabbed my arm but I wrenched it out of his grasp and ran, down the stairs and then out on to the boardwalk and down the beach, where I found my car and drove home recklessly, gasping for air, every breath searing my lungs, matching the agony in my heart. I couldn't see.
I didn't touch him, hold him, kiss him or look at him.
I ran instead.
I didn't see him for close to a year. He missed Ruth's birthday and Henry's too, he got married in what had to be the grandest effort ever to forget about me after being dealt a blow that was only surpassed by the one Cole dealt, the one in which he packed us up and moved us far away to a new place. With no Jacob, no Caleb, no Lochlan, no family, no familiarity at all and we started over again in a last ditch effort to make things work. I didn't want things to work but I was told that they would, if we were away. I was terrified, and Jacob was beside himself with fear but somehow we all swallowed it down and did what we had to do to survive and what we needed to do to hurt each other so that it would be easier to get on with our lives.
He lasted ten months, having instantly regretted that route. So he packed up his life and moved here, buying a house a few blocks away from us. It was the best news I've ever heard.
And now just about every week or so we have an argument that degenerates into one of those ugly conversations in which you drag all the issues in and invariably this is the biggest one that remains outside of my issues with being sexually depraved, or maybe it's all related anyway because Jacob wanted to know how Cole was able to control me and how he hurt me so that I ended up this way and I still can't tell him very much at all.
I'm hoping it will just go away, that time will fade it to the point where I can no longer read my own memories and that it will become a fog that I have few details about, and that he will relax and breath deeply and not feel as if he must somehow conquer time-travel in order to return to our past, prevent the pain, prevent whatever happened that changed Bridget forever, and then bring us forward into the future without fracturing our intact lives as we know them. What I wouldn't give to take the moment where I snapped and became less of a person and rewind it so that it never happened.
The moment was when I ran from Jacob. He doesn't realize.
This isn't a time-traveling world and instead the planet spins on and we try to digest the past, consume the present and prepare the feast of the future, in hopes that it will be the best repast of our lives.
And for some reason known only to us, that moment in which he said he would still touch me became a golden shining moment of joy for me. That he would willingly take a broken, injured, flawed and bruised Bridget anyway, no matter what had happened, no matter what she had done or what had been done to her, he wanted her anyway. She said goodbye and he refused to accept it as a permanent gesture, working towards their reunion instead, however long and difficult the trip back proved to be, we made it.
This kind of love doesn't happen very often, of that I'm sure.
