I walked out of the chapel alone.
I tore the veil from my hair in the courtyard and sat on the stone steps.
Don’t miss
A few minutes later, Jake came outside.
He stayed several feet away.
“I will leave,” he said.
“Why didn’t Leo contact me himself?”
“He tried.”
I looked up.
“He never had your address. He found an old one, but you had moved. Later, when he got sick, and he knew he wouldn’t make it, he made me promise to find you.
Jake wiped his eyes.
“He made me promise I would tell you what happened.”
“You broke his final promise too.”
He flinched.
“Yes.”
I stayed away from Jake for four months.
During this time, I grieved Leo properly for the first time.
I also grieved the man I thought I had loved for two years.
Jake kept his distance as I asked him to.
I needed time to process everything that had happened.
He only mailed one letter, introducing himself to me properly.
“My name is Jake. I am 28 years old. I am a web designer. I hate olives, I am a poor cook, and I am not the boy who taught you to ride a bicycle. I am the man who lied because I fell in love with you, and then I became too afraid that you wouldn’t love the real me. I will answer any question you ask, but I will not ask you to forgive me.”
I kept the letter.
Months later, I agreed to meet him in a public park.
He looked tired.
Or perhaps I was finally looking at him without seeing Leo first.
“What was real?” I asked.
He answered every question.
The coffee he made me each morning was real; the way he listened when I worried about work was real; his love of old buildings was real; his fear of deep water was real, but the childhood memories were not.
Our beginning was also not real.
“Do you still want to marry me?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
His face tightened.
“I understand.”
“I do not know whether I will ever want that.”
He nodded.
