“That wasn't a relationship,” I said, rolling my eyes as I remembered her on-and-off fling from the previous year. He'd come to a bunch of events and things like that with us, but he'd wanted that to be a relationship more than she had. And as soon as he had started hinting toward something more, Mina had cut him loose.
“I kind of admire your ability. So, tell me, what do you need out of a relationship?” Mina asked. “Sex, right? You can get sex without being in a relationship.”
“There's more to a relationship than that,” I protested. “There's intimacy, and-”
“You can't get much more intimate than sex,” Mina interrupted.
“Maybe not, but there's also support, and, I don't know.” I didn't know what I was looking for in a relationship. Maybe that was why they never really seemed to work out for me.
“But anything that you can get from a relationship, you get from friendship,” Mina pointed out.
“Yeah, but plenty of people say that that's what a relationship is,” I reminded her. “They say that it's like being with their best friend. Plus, you get the added intimacy of sex and everything else. Living together for a long time. Sharing the same life path.”
“But that doesn't mean that you love one another,” Mina said. She scanned the waves and pointed to one. “Not to cut this short, but I'm going to catch that one.”
I laughed and watched her go, thinking things over.
I never really knew what to think about love and relationships. I got a lot of people in the massage parlor who were in Hawaii on their honeymoons or their anniversaries. And they all seemed happy. At the same time, like Mina said, that didn't mean that they wouldn't have been perfectly happy with someone else. Maybe it did all come down to how much work you were willing to put into maintaining the relationship. But in that case, it came back to you, rather than your connection to the other person. You could make that sort of commitment to anyone.
“You're still thinking about it, aren't you?” Mina asked as we finally dusted the sand off our feet and loaded our surfboards into the back of her truck.
“About what?” I asked.
“I'd love to say that you were still thinking about the whole true love thing, but I guess the crux of it is probably that you're still thinking about running into Lino the other night at the luau.” I must have looked guilty because she shook her head. “Gretchen,” she said critically.
I spread my arms in a wide shrug. “I can't help it,” I said. “What if he was the one and I just wasn't willing to work hard enough at it?”
Mina shook her head. “See, things like this are exactly why I refuse to believe in the notion of true love,” she told me. “Because then people delude themselves into thinking that they have to stay in relationships that are really toxic for them. You know that what you had with Lino wasn't true love. Even if you believe in the idea of true love, you must realize that what the two of you had was nothing like what you read about in those books that you love.”
“I don't know, though,” I said uncertainly. “He wasn't always such a gentleman, and-”
“Not always such a gentleman?” Mina interrupted angrily, her voice laden with disbelief. “Do you remember why he left you? You can't tell me that you're ready to forgive that, for the sake of true love. That would defeat the whole purpose of love.”
I shook my head. “But if I'd been-”
“No,” Mina said before I even really knew what I was about to say. “Don't say that you should have been something different and that things would have worked out between the two of you if you had been. In that case, he should have been with someone else the whole time.”
“I guess,” I said. That did make sense. “I just can't help thinking about the connection that we had,” I told her. “That we still have. That's the thing, Mina. I know you think I'm crazy, and I know you probably don't understand since you've never been in a real relationship before. But standing there last night, even though I know that we're not in a relationship anymore, I felt like he was a magnet, drawing me in.”
“That's lust, nothing more,” Mina said. “You haven't had sex in too long, and your lady parts are wishing for it.” She pulled up outside my house. “Seriously, Gretchen, I want you to promise me that you're not about to get back into things with Lino, of all people. You could do so much better than that, and I hope you know it.”
I sighed. “I don't think I'm going to get back into things with Lino,” I told her.
“Good,” she said fir
mly. “And forget all that nonsense about finding your true love. That stuff only exists in books. Maybe those books make a nice escape from reality, but they're just that: an escape from reality. In real life, things work differently. Trust me.”
I shook my head. “We'll have to agree to disagree, I guess.” I smiled at her. “I'll see you tomorrow morning.”
“See you tomorrow,” Mina said, smiling back at me.
I walked slowly up to my porch, thinking over the conversation. I glanced over at my book, which was still sitting there next to my hammock, waiting for me to get back to it. “Maybe Gretchen is right,” I murmured to myself. “Maybe true love only does exist in those books.”
Chapter Seven
Christian
With so much travel in my life over the past ten years, I had my system down pat at this point. I could sleep through nearly everything on the flight, but I somehow always managed to wake up just before the wheels touched down.