Tiny Little Fractures

Chapter Nine

Jon and I did break up one more time, but it was when we were in college. I don’t really like to consider it a breakup, though. I was going to school in San Diego and he was far off in medical school. We were apart anyway because of the distance. It was a mutual decision when we one day realized we hadn’t seen each other for a month and had no way to remedy that. We decided to just try it out so people couldn’t say we never tried.

I went out with one other guy. It lasted a few weeks. He was nice and he was cute. I enjoyed the newness of the relationship, but I thought about Jon a lot. He was still in my life since he was still my best friend. But I didn’t tell him about the new guy. And every time I was with the new guy I thought about Jon. The first time we had s*x was what changed everything, though. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t like it. He didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. And so maybe it was my familiarity with Jon that made me jump in my car immediately after and drive four hours away just to see him.

I got there when he was leaving for a date. I hurried up the lawn toward his dorm when he came out. He was startled to see me there, and once he admitted he was going on a date, I tried to leave. He asked me not to go. So instead we laid out on the grass looking at the stars and talking for an hour.

I told him about the guy I’d been seeing. He told me about the girl. He said he didn’t really like her. I didn’t really like the other guy. I never told him that we’d had s*x and he never said anything about the other girl. But he’d ditched his date with her for me. He said that she complained a lot, about how he talked about me too much. So we turned to each other and he asked me something I heard a lot over the years.

“Do you think it’s just because we’re comfortable with each other?” he’d asked. “Just because it’s easier to be together?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “All I know is that I never want to be without you.”

So he kissed me, and we agreed that we would stay together. And if one day we realized that it was because of comfort and not real love, we would be honest with each other and end it. Only that never happened, because it was love that kept us together.

And after that brief time apart we were never apart again. Even when I went back to school and we would go whole months without seeing each other. He was still mine and I was still his. We stayed faithful. Or at least I had.

So was there a possibility that the card was from him? If he was still alive, why had he taken so long to reach out to me? Part of me knew the truth all along.

It just wasn’t from him.