She smiled. "That was sweet." Her eyes met mine and seemed to linger a bit longer than usual. "Would you mind if I shower before we eat? I'm kind of sweaty. We were in and out of the car all day."
"Not at all," I said, waving a hand.
A few minutes later, I heard water moving through the pipes. I sauteed the vegetables, reheated the bread from the night before, and was setting the table when Jane entered the kitchen.
Like her, I had showered after returning from Noah's house. Afterward I'd slipped into a new pair of chinos, since most of my older ones no longer fit.
"Are those the pants I bought for you?" Jane asked, pausing in the doorway.
"Yeah. How do they look?"
She gave an appraising look.
"They fit well," she remarked. "From this angle, you can really tell you've lost a lot of weight."
"That's good," I said. "I'd hate to think I suffered this past year for nothing."
"You haven't suffered. Walked, maybe, but not suffered."
"You try getting up before the sun, especially when it's raining."
"Oh, poor baby," she teased. "Must be tough being you."
"You have no idea."
She giggled. While upstairs, she too had slipped into a pair of comfortable pants, but her painted toenails peeked out beneath the hems. Her hair was wet, and there were a couple of water spots on her blouse. Even when she wasn't trying, she was one of the most sensual women I've ever seen.
"So get this," Jane said. "Anna says Keith is thrilled with our plans. He sounds more excited than Anna."
"Anna's excited. She's just nervous about how it'll all turn out."
"No, she's not. Anna never gets nervous about anything. She's like you."
"I get nervous," I protested.
"No, you don't."
"Of course I do."
"Name one time."
I thought about it. "All right," I said. "I was nervous when I went back for my final year of law school."
She considered this before shaking her head. "You weren't nervous about law school. You were a star. You were on the Law Review."
"I wasn't nervous about my studies, I was scared about losing you. You started teaching in New Bern, remember? I just knew some dashing young gentleman was going to swoop in and steal you away. That would have broken my heart."
She stared at me curiously, trying to make sense of what I'd just said. Instead of responding to my comment, however, she put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. "You know, I think you're getting caught up in all this, too."
"What do you mean?"
"The wedding. I mean, making dinner two nights in a row, helping me out with all the plans, waxing nostalgic like this. I think all the excitement's getting to you."
I heard a ding as the oven timer went off.
"You know," I agreed, "I think you might be right."
I wasn't lying when I told Jane that I was nervous about losing her when I went back to Duke for my final year, and I'll admit I didn't handle these challenging circumstances as well as I might have. I knew going into my last year that it would be impossible for Jane and me to maintain the kind of relationship we'd developed over the past nine months, and I found myself wondering how she would react to this change. As the summer wore on, we discussed this a few times, but Jane never seemed worried. She seemed almost cavalier in her confidence that we'd manage somehow, and though I suppose I could have taken this as a reassuring sign, I was sometimes struck by the thought that I cared for her more than she cared for me.
Granted, I knew I had good qualities, but I don't regard my good qualities as extraordinarily rare. Nor are my bad qualities extraordinarily dire. In fact, I consider myself average in most respects, and even thirty years ago, I knew I was destined for neither fame nor obscurity.
Jane, on the other hand, could have become anyone she chose. I've long since decided that Jane would be equally at home in either poverty or wealth, in a cosmopolitan setting or a rural one. Her ability to adapt has always impressed me. When looked at together--her intelligence and passion, her kindness and charm--it seemed obvious that Jane would have made a wonderful wife to just about anyone.
Why, then, had she chosen me?
It was a question that plagued me constantly in the early days of our relationship, and I could come up with no answer that made sense. I worried that Jane would wake up one morning and realize that there was nothing special about me and move on to a more charismatic guy. Feeling so insecure, I stopped short of telling her how I felt about her. There were times I'd wanted to, but the moments would pass before I could summon the courage.
This is not to say that I kept the fact that I was seeing her a secret. Indeed, while I was working at the law firm over the summer, my relationship with Jane was one of the topics that came up regularly over lunch with the other summer associates, and I made a point of describing it as close to ideal. I never divulged anything that I later regretted, but I do remember thinking that some of my fellow co-workers seemed jealous that I was successfully forging ahead not only professionally, but personally as well. One of them, Harold Larson--who, like me, was also a member of the Law Review at Duke--was particularly attentive whenever I mentioned Jane's name, and I suspected that this was because he too had a girlfriend. He'd been dating Gail for over a year and had always spoken easily about their relationship. Like Jane, Gail was no longer living in the area, having moved to be near her parents in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Harold had mentioned more than once that he planned to marry Gail as soon as he graduated.
Toward the end of the summer, we were sitting together when someone asked us whether we planned to bring our girlfriends to the cocktail party that the firm was throwing in our honor as a send-off. The question seemed to upset Harold, and when pressed, he frowned.
"Gail and I broke up last week," he admitted. Though it was clearly a painful topic, he seemed to feel the need to explain. "I thought things were great between us, even though I haven't gotten back to see her much. I guess the distance was too much for her, and she didn't want to wait until I graduated. She met someone else."
I suppose it was my memory of this conversation that colored our last afternoon of the summer together. It was Sunday, two days after I'd brought Jane to the cocktail party, and she and I were sitting in the rockers on the porch at Noah's house. I was leaving for Durham that evening, and I remember staring out over the river and wondering whether we would be able to make it work or whether Jane, like Gail, would find someone to replace me.
"Hey, stranger," she finally said, "why so quiet today?"
"I'm just thinking about heading back to school."
She smiled. "Are you dreading it or looking forward to it?"
"Both, I guess."
"Look at it this way. It's only nine months until you graduate, and then you're done."
I nodded but said nothing.
She studied me. "Are you sure that's all that's bothering you? You've had a glum face all day."
I shifted in my seat. "Do you remember Harold Larson?" I asked. "I introduced you to him at the cocktail party."
She squinted, trying to place him. "The one who was on Law Review with you? Tall, with brown hair?"
I nodded.
"What about him?" she asked.
"Did you happen to notice that he was alone?"
"Not really. Why?"
"His girlfriend just broke up with him."
"Oh," she said, though I could tell she had no idea how this related to her or why I was thinking about it.
"It's going to be a tough year," I began. "I'm sure I'll practically live in the library."
She put a friendly hand on my knee. "You did great the first two years. I'm sure you'll do just fine."
"I hope so," I continued. "It's just that with everything going on, I'm probably not going to be able to make it down every weekend to see you like I did this summer."
"I figured that. But we'll still see each other. It's not like you won't have any time at all. And I can always drive up to see you, too, remember."
In the distance, I watched as a flock of starlings broke from the trees. "You might want to check before you come. To see if I'm free, I mean. The last year is supposed to be the busiest."
She tilted her head, trying to decipher my meaning. "What's going on, Wilson?"
"What do you mean?"
"This. What you just said. You sound like you've already been thinking up excuses not to see me."
"It's not an excuse. I just want to make sure you understand how busy my schedule is going to be."
Jane leaned back in her chair, her mouth settling into a straight line. "And?" she asked.
"And what?"
"And what exactly does that mean? That you don't want to see me anymore?"
"No," I protested, "of course not. But the fact is that you'll be here, and I'm going to be there. You know how hard long-distance relationships can be."
She crossed her arms. "So?"
"Well, it's just that they can ruin the best of intentions, and to be honest, I don't want either of us to get hurt."
"Get hurt?"
"That's what happened to Harold and Gail," I explained. "They didn't see each other much because he was so busy, and they broke up because of it."
She hesitated. "And you think the same thing's going to happen to us," she said carefully.
"You have to admit the odds aren't in our favor."
"The odds?" She blinked. "You're trying to put what we have into numbers?"