The Light in the Wound (46 page)

“Who’s the architect, I love it!” I try to be lighthearted about it. He seems to want this to be anything but, by the way he’s looking at me.

I walk over to the pictures and point at the magnificent rooftop on one of them. “Is that a Helipad? You have a helicopter? Sweet!”

Did I just say that? How old am I? Fifteen?

He rolls his eyes and nods his head again, obviously very bored with our topic of conversation.

“Yes, I have a boat, a helicopter and a plane. Wanna know what I named them all? Francesca I, Francesca II and Francesca III!” His voice is raised and he’s angry. He bangs his fist on the table, causing the pens to leap off the surface and the papers to fall on the floor. “Jesus! To think I’ve built all this by dealing with all sorts of people and situations and yet YOU have the ability to break me, make me crumble into fucking pieces!”

I am agitated and upset now. “This conversation is over! Have your people call my people, and if the provisions of the deal are not satisfactory, I think I can look somewhere else to invest my money. Don’t start this, Jesse. Please don’t start this!” I immediately stand up and run for the door.

He chases after me and moves in front of me, so I walk right into him. Again.

“No, no, no, Iss. Please no — I’m sorry, please don’t go. I just want to talk. Just talk, that’s all. I can’t help that you make me feel this way, but I’ll try to calm down. Please.”

My eyes are full of tears and I’m shaking my head at him. “Jess, what’s there to talk about?”

“A lot of things. Please. Let’s sit back down, okay?” He leads me back to the table. This time I take a seat on the other side while he sits right next to me.

He does the Jesse thing where he holds his hand palm side up and waits for me to slip my hand in his. I do. If this is going to calm him down, I want to help him. He grasps my hand tightly and looks straight at me.

“Eddie could’ve been mine, you know.” He smiles as he’s saying this.

I laugh nervously. “Actually, he’s the spitting image of his dad.”

“Yeah, yeah I know. I’m kidding. When I saw him a few weeks ago, all that regret felt so new again.”

“I hear you’re dating someone. That’s good, right?” I ask.

“I guess. It took all these years to open up to someone again. She’s kind and loving and she doesn’t expect anything from me.”

“At some point in time, she’ll need to start expecting things from you. That’s just how it goes. And you’ll want to give her more. You’ll love her enough to do that.”

“You think so? She knows all about you and understands how long it’s been taking me to heal.” We’re still holding hands. I try to pull away, but he won’t let it go.

“I do. I’ve learned that giving your heart away to someone is the bravest thing you can ever do. The one moment that it’s cherished, no matter how brief, can help it to survive a lifetime.”

“You smoked the whole time we were together.” His statement sounds as if he’s revealing a fact I don’t already know. I smile tenderly at him and squeeze his hand.

“Ryan?” I ask.

“Ryan.” He nods.

“It was the only part of me I kept from you. The only secret I had. The only remnant of the old me,” I say softly. There’s a long pause. I know it’s because we’re both trying to compose ourselves.

He continues. “When did you stop loving me, Iss? Was it after that incident with Katrina Edwards?”

“I never stopped loving you, Jess. Alex stepped in and loved me so much more. If he didn’t show me how it is to be loved the right way, who knows? I really just got tired of waiting. You didn’t love me enough at that time and I didn’t want to force you into it. Does that make sense?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I guess. All these years I was so sure you would wake up and come back to me. I would’ve taken you back in a second. But you never did. And I was unable to grasp the importance of the seven years and why we would go through that only to walk away.”

I think about that for a moment. “Maybe it’s made us better as people and that’s all we can really expect from it.”

“I loved you so much.”

“I loved you so much too,” I reply.

“I still love you.” He’s getting bolder by the minute.

“You can’t. If you don’t give it up, you’ll never find happiness.”

“Are you truly happy?” He’s still holding my hand and looking closely at it.

“I am. Since this is the last chance we might ever have to talk like this, I’m happy in a different way. I’m content. You can never replicate the feelings of a first love, Jesse. The passion, the elation, the sorrow, the pain. When it’s the first time, everything is so much more magnified. You feel like it’s the end of the world when you’re not together. A second love is more subdued. It’s more careful, more cautious. But it’s still love and when it comes with respect and admiration and friendship, it trumps passion and elation any time.” I choke up a couple of times. My wound is still open. I guess it will always be here.

He is silent for a while and a tear escapes from his eyes. He doesn’t try to wipe it, so I reach my free hand over to do so. As soon as my hand touches his face, he rubs it against him and kisses my palm.

“Jess? Where were you when you called me on the phone one night many years ago?” I ask.

“In Chicago. On the way to a business meeting in LA. I stopped over, hoping we could see each other.”

“Well, let me tell you. It’s a good thing you hung up that night! I was waiting for you to rescue me, but it was all in my head.”

“Glad to hear it wasn’t just all in mine.” He laughed. “Iss? How did you walk away from me after that last night?”

“Oh Jess. That night took so much from me. I had nothing left to give to Alex. We wouldn’t have survived if we hadn’t left for the States. You had me even after I got married. I had to slowly retrieve myself back so I could fully deserve the love that Alex had for me.”

“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad that you still loved me.” He still held my hand.

“Know that what we had was something special. It wasn’t just a fling. It was seven years of growing up together. No one can take that away from us.” Wow. I’m amazed at myself. I’m not crying. I continue, “Who knows? One day we’re going to have daughters and sons who’ll experience the same thing. We’ll be there to tell them to hold on to what’s real and true. That disappointments in life only make you stronger.”

He nods his head in agreement.

I have to ask him this question. Years ago, I would never have realized how this particular event affected me. But looking back, it most certainly did.

“Jesse, I need to ask you a question. Please be honest with me, okay?”

“Of course, Iss, what’s wrong?”

“The first time we made love, you never talked about it with me. I always felt like maybe in some way, you lost respect for me then? You never said a word after that, you never comforted me, and I was too embarrassed to bring it up. Why, Jesse?”

“Oh my God! Isabel! I’m so sorry if I hurt you in any way or made you think that you had done something wrong! No! I was, first of all, embarrassed about, you know, finishing so quickly. And then, with all the plans I had in my life, I was mad at myself because it placed me at the point of no return. Once I had you, I couldn’t go back to not having you. And I was afraid of getting you pregnant and ruining our future.” He moves closer to me to make sure I hear every word he says. He lets go of my hand and cups my face instead. “Oh, Isabel. No. I never lost respect for you. The times I cursed and yelled and got angry were nothing but bad temper on my part. I always felt horrible afterwards. It had nothing to do with you but everything to do with me.”

“Okay.” I smile. “Thank you for being so honest.”

“In retrospect, years after that, when you ended up with Alex, I wished I had gotten you pregnant. I wished we had a baby together. I thought if I wasn’t so careful, we’d be married with kids by now. All these years, I was bent on claiming you back. Taking you from Alex, believing that he stole you away from me. But during your mom’s funeral, as I watched how he treasured you, I realized that Alex actually saved you from me.”

“Alex brought me back to life.”

He shoots me a look filled with shame. “Do you regret anything that happened between us, Issy? I mean except for the no makeup, no skirt thing. I can’t believe how crazy jealous and controlling I was.” He tried to lighten things up by letting out a forced laugh.

“I am who I am now because of everything I went through in my life. No, I don’t regret a single thing.”

We spend more time talking about his business, his life now, and the new house he bought for his parents. Before I know it, it’s 6:00 P.M. and I know that Alex will be worrying about me. There must be a few text messages on my phone by now, but I don’t want to distract Jesse by pulling it out of my purse. I stand up to get the goodbye process going. I’m afraid I’m going to cry. This is going to hurt.

“Jess, I have to go now, okay? I’m so glad we got to have this talk. Let me look at the rest of the paperwork, and I’ll call your lawyer from Chicago.”

He mumbles quietly, “I don’t care about that. Pick whatever property, Isa. I don’t care about that. I don’t care about anything.”

He steps up to me and holds me close while he takes my face in his hands.
In this instant, I swear I’m that same sixteen-year-old girl who is hopelessly in love with this boy.

“Isa, when we see each other again, whether it’s tomorrow or next week or years and years from now. Whenever you see me. Look into my eyes from across the room wherever I am, wherever you are, and know that I LOVE …
YOU
. That’s never going to change. Look into my eyes now and feel it. It will always be only you, no matter what, no matter when.”

I wrap my arms around his waist and hold him close. “Thank you, Jesse.”

I take a step back and turn away from him, afraid to hurt him more than I already have.

As I reach for the handle of the sliding door, I pause as he calls out to me. “Isa? I just want you to know, there was never anybo-- there will never be. Nothing, not all this, everything I have, I’d give it all up-”

I cut him short and smile. I know I’ve smiled before, but this time it feels different. I don’t hurt. I don’t bleed. I love him. But it no longer threatens my love for Alex. My wound is finally healed. There may be a scar but it serves its purpose to remind me of the undeniable love that we once had. A love I’ll never forget.

“I know, Jesse. I know.”

“Those beautiful words we said to one another are hidden in the secret heart of heaven.
One day, like the rain, they will pour our love story all over the world.”

—Rumi

It’s been a year since my mother passed away and six months since we moved back home. Life is slowly getting back to normal. Eddie is enrolled in the same school as the rest of his cousins and is even learning the language. I work part time now, three days a week to attend board meetings for both my grandfather and my mother’s businesses. The rest of my days are spent doing what I have always loved to do. I’m almost done with my first manuscript and am getting ready to submit it to my critique partner. She knows I’m doing it more for therapeutic reasons, and it’s helped a lot to get everything written out on paper.

Alex is in full swing with his father’s business and still making sure that his travels don’t take him away from his family for very long. I think about my mom every single day. Even if she was never really a permanent fixture in my life, her persona influenced who I became and what I wanted out of life. Somehow those moments, despite being brief episodes, left a mark enough to inspire me to change the course of my family’s history. I truly believe that it takes a concerted effort to thwart some tendencies to make the same mistakes your parents made, and I was just lucky to find someone like Alex to inspire me to make the right decisions. Evie and Alicia were not as fortunate, but they too, are embarking on new beginnings. Sometimes, people take for granted the closeness that they share when life is good and there’s no need for friendship or support. The four of us sisters share a love because of what we went through during our childhood. Another reason to be grateful for my mother.

I’ve run into Jesse at public events a few times since our meeting at his office a year ago. He’s kept his promise — no matter where we are or how far we are from each other, his eyes search for mine and he holds the stare just like he’s sending me a message. This time, it’s different though. After a few seconds of that, his face breaks out in a warm and genuine smile. And I hold his gaze and smile back. We both get it now. It’s not so much an acknowledgment of love but a kindred
knowing
that we once shared a beautiful past together. He’s engaged to be married and he’s going to love her more than he’s ever loved anyone before. Life isn’t perfect. You take things one day at a time.

Today, I’m celebrating what it means to be in love. And yet once in a while, when I think of thunderstorms and barns and empty baseball fields, I’m not afraid to admit that my heart will always remember. Whether it was the right way or the wrong way, I’ve been loved more in my life than most people can ever dream to be.