“You’d stop?” I turned to look at him.
“Of course I’d stop. I did today, didn’t I? We go together, Babe, or we don’t go at all.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“What part of ‘I love you’ are you not getting?”
So I was a little slow. I was trying as hard as I could to catch up. I was not going to repeat my mistakes and let my life go on without me. One thing I knew for sure. If I had to choose between thirty extra years of life and sharing life with Tim, I’d give up the thirty years of life to have Tim.
“Trust me, Babe, I’m here to stay.”
Trust. “That night, after James . . . I decided then and there that I would never, ever trust anyone to take care of me again.”
“Care to revise that choice?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
At the moment I couldn’t think of one. I was too tired to think. Settling into the crook of Tim’s arm, I fell asleep.
Friday afternoon came all too soon. Tim drove the two of them to the airport, returned the car, went with Tara to check her bag, and then walked through security with her.
As elated as he’d been the morning before when he’d flown into Atlanta, he was sad that afternoon. He was on his way back to Ohio and sending Tara back to her life in Albuquerque.
He’d had her in his arms since they’d passed through security forty-five minutes before.
“I don’t know how this is going to work, me in Albuquerque and you in Ohio, I just don’t see the logistics.”
“Tara, don’t worry about it. What I know about life is that it will play itself out. An opportunity will present itself, and we’ll know what to do. Okay?”
She nodded, but he worried, too.
“Promise me you won’t back up on us.”
“Okay,” she said, as he’d known she would, but he also knew that deep down she was coming apart and he wouldn’t be there to help hold her together. He was sending her off alone to deal with the ending of her marriage, finding a home, and trying to deal with all of the memories they’d just brought to the surface, with the aftereffects of what that monster James had done to her. Talking about the incident had brought it out of a thirty-year deep freeze. He didn’t kid himself into thinking that there wouldn’t be fallout.
“Babe, just remember that I’m only a phone call away and it only takes four hours to fly to Ohio if you start to lose it. I can be out there in that amount of time, too, if you need me. And you can text me any time of the day or night.”
His flight was called. He pulled Tara behind some columns and kissed her. Really kissed her. Reminding her who they were and what they had together.
“Goodbye, Babe,” she said. “Call me when you land.”
“I will.”
He turned to go, but turned back. “Tara,” he called to her.
“Yeah?”
“I have something to tell you.”
She stepped closer with a worried look on her face. “What?”
“I love you. I’ve loved you since I met you on that cold rainy day in October of 1977. I just didn’t know how to get the words out. I just want you to know that. It’s always been there, and it always will be there.”
“I love you, too.”
“We’re going to make it.”