I shook my head, unable to stop myself from laughing. But even if it could have made me feel better (because he clearly wouldn’t have said the whole thing about love and loyalty if he didn’t think his brother and I fell on the love side of the boat), it actually made me feel something else more acutely. It made me feel defensive. Defensive for a girl with beautiful blond hair whom I’d just met for the first time. Defensive for myself too. And for all of us who gave years of ourselves—who gave the best pieces of ourselves—to someone who ultimately decided they weren’t certain enough to fight for us.
“I think it’s more complicated than that,” I said.
Jesse shrugged. “Okay.”
“I think, or I used to think at least, that real love comes over time, once that initial draw you’re talking about takes on a different form. When you get to understand there is something more concrete between you,” I said. “Something that is worth preserving . . .”
He tilted his head, looking at me confused. “And how’s that different than what I just said?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m starting to doubt I have any idea about what makes love work.”
“Comforting, coming from my brother’s wife.”
I gave him a smile, trying to lighten the mood. But I was also thinking about what Jordan said, Jordan whom I’d been trying to avoid calling back, Jordan whom I’d been trying to avoid. Sending her short e-mails, ignoring her hostile ones. What had she said that day? If too much time goes by, men can forget what they have. How much they still want exactly what they have . . .
Is the switch from love to something closer to loyalty really just another name for that very moment—that very challenge—and the inability to meet it? Was that just an excuse for Jesse to do what he did to his wife? How about Nick? How about my new husband?
And what did that say about what I was doing here?
I felt unready to address those questions, especially the last one, and the addendum to the last one, which had started circling around me: What exactly was I going to do here?
I pulled my coat tighter around me, the inside of the rhinestone hearts scratching at my arms.
“So how did it go today, anyway?” I asked, moving us into easier territory. “With your dissertation adviser?”
“Not so good,” he said.
“No extension granted?”
He shook his head, picking up an egg roll. “Nope,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I have eight weeks. Period. Eight weeks before I’m in front of a committee I couldn’t be ready for in thirty weeks. But what can I do? Jude doesn’t have much sympathy for my personal predicament.”
“Jude knows?”
He nodded. “Jude knows.”
This surprised me and made me wonder if he had misundersto
od my question.
“No, what I mean is . . . you’re saying that she knows what’s going on with you? In terms of your personal life?” I asked. “She knows that you got a woman pregnant? Someone who isn’t your wife?”
“You would assume so,” he said, popping the entire egg roll into his mouth, starting to chew. “Considering it was Jude that I got pregnant.”
I didn’t know what to say. In my imagination it had been a graduate student or even an undergraduate student that Jesse had impregnated—a twenty-two-year-old who made him feel young and admired. Who made him new. Who confused being careless with carefree, and got herself involved with a married father of two. But this was shaping up to be something else, something with its own set of complications. Something that might involve optical fields.
I put my hand up to stop him from telling me anymore. “You know what? I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get an extension. I really am. But I can’t exactly deal with this right now,” I said.
“Yeah . . .” He nodded. “That’s what she said too.”
Then, Jesse looked back up at me, something occurring to him.
“Your editor called, by the way, right when I was walking in the door. Some British dude. I think he said his name was Peter W. Shepherd?” Jesse offered up his name in a British accent.
I nodded. “That would be him.”