“Paul was your very openly gay yoga partner,” I said, shaking my head.
“Ben,” Fae suggested.
“Wasn’t he engaged to a girl from Jersey?”
“Well, what about Tom?” she asked, cheeks flushing.
“The security guy at your building?” I elbowed her in the arm. “Pretty sure he doesn’t count either.”
“Fine, so I don’t date,” she muttered, planting her chin in her palm. “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.”
“Besides the fact that you’re theLusterrelationship expert, that is?” I laughed.
“Shut up.”
“Fine, maybe because you insist on settingmeup with every available penis in the tri-state area, but never even attempt to find someone for yourself?”
Fae giggled, but didn’t counter my words. She knew I was right.
“Or, maybe because you’re gorgeous and could have anyone you wanted in this city?” I proposed gently. This wasn’t the first time we’d discussed her lack of male companionship, but usually she just laughed me off or evaded the subject entirely. This time, though, she seemed to take my words to heart — maybe now that she knew a bit about my past, she finally felt free to talk about her own.
Fae was silent for a long time, her laughter subsiding and a sad, reflective expression overtaking her face. “There was a guy, a long time ago. He was…” she drifted off, her eyes distant with memories. “Well, we were too young, and it was too serious.”
“First love?” I asked, treading carefully. I didn’t want to scare her off, not when she was finally opening up to me. Fae was many things — warm, fashionable, funny, beautiful — but forthcoming wasn’t one of them.
“I guess you could call him that,” she said. “People say you never forget your first love, that you carry them with you in your heart for the rest of your days. And they’re right. I just wish someone had warned me about that when I was eighteen.”
“Tell me about it,” I murmured, Sebastian’s face appearing in my mind.
Fae laid her head down on my shoulder and, for a moment, we found comfort in the fact that though we may have lost our first loves, we’d found each other. I didn’t press her for more details; when she was ready, she’d tell me.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Fae whispered. “About seeing him?”
I nodded.
“I’ll miss you at work. It won’t be the same without you.”
“It’s temporary,” I told her. “Sebastian will be gone again as soon as these shoots are done, and I’ll be back on 57thin my cubicle with the rest of the Harding slaves before you know it.”
I wished my heart didn’t ache so much at the thought of him walking back out of my life, with nothing resolved between us. I wished the past didn’t have to stay in the past. And, most of all, I wished I could live the way those two naive teenagers had aspired to all those years ago, and find a way back to him regardless of the odds stacked against us. Unfortunately, without a magic genie or a fairy godmother at my disposal, I was pretty certain my wishes would go unanswered.
When Fae left for the night, I corked the bottle of Merlot and made myself a quick dinner — otherwise known as pouring some Cool Ranch Doritos into a bowl — and texted Desmond back.
Dinner tomorrow sounds great. Call you after work.
I figured when I saw him in person again, I’d know what to do. For now, my mind was too preoccupied by thoughts of a very different man to even consider what was happening with Desmond. Between my boy issues, Miri’s revelations earlier that afternoon, and the fact that I’d just reached the bottom of my final stash of Doritos and would have to restock atSwagattomorrow, it was safe to say that my mind was spinning and I’d been through the emotional wringer. There was only one thing — besides copious amounts of Merlot — that might help at this point.
The Jamie Box.
I pulled it down from its spot on the top shelf of my closet, running my fingers reverently across the carved wood. Flopping down in the center of my bed, I laid the box gently on the comforter in front of me and slowly lifted it open. My eyes immediately caught on the framed photo of Jamie and me embedded on the inside of the lid, then moved down to take in the neatly ordered row of colorful envelopes that sat within the box itself.
The photo had been taken five years ago, when I was a sophomore in college. At the time, Jamie had lived with me in a small apartment near the UGA campus, and I’d planned my course schedule around driving him to treatments and appointments in Atlanta so he didn’t have to be alone. We’d moved away from Jackson two short days after I’d broken Bash’s heart, and we’d never looked back. I hadn’t returned for a single spring break or summer vacation because I couldn’t bear to see the love of my life look at me with hatred in his eyes.
Except for the memories that would always haunt us, Jamie and I were free of our past. Our parents called occasionally under the pretense of checking on us, though truthfully I think they were relieved to be rid of us and the responsibilities Jamie’s illness had piled on them.
And while I’d still been heartbroken two years after leaving Sebastian, you wouldn’t know it by looking at this picture. Jamie and I had been happy — staring at each other rather than the camera lens, with matching grins crossing our faces as we laughed at some ridiculous joke Jamie had cracked. A nurse had snapped the picture just after we’d received the news that his scans had come back clean. He’d been headed toward remission.
As the camera flashed and captured the frame, we didn’t know just how short-lived our relief would be. We didn’t know we’d have only a few blissful months of thinking he’d defy the odds, before the cancer would return with a vengeance. We didn’t know the struggle that lay ahead of us. And we didn’t know that two short years later, that same struggle would claim his life and take him away from me permanently.