Page 43 of Love Walked In

The roomful of people got louder and louder, but Mari got quiet, her smile no longer reaching her eyes. If I touched her, would she shatter? Or would she bolt?

After ten minutes of watching her nod and smile and her shoulders tense around her ears, I couldn’t take it anymore. “We need to get back to town,” I called to Jamie over the ruckus his family was making. “We have plans tonight.”

His mouth turned down, but he said, “Of course.” He turned to Mari, tugged her out of the chair she’d been pinned in, and wrapped his arms gently around her. “I’ll come see you at the shop. We could go for lunch, just the two of us.”

“We’re really busy,” Mari said, not meeting his eyes. “I’m not sure I’ll have the time.”

Jamie looked momentarily stricken, then recovered. “Oh yes, your festival, Graham said. Listen, I’ll message you later. We’ll sort something out before you go.” There was a thread of something desperate in his earnest voice, a desperation I’d felt when Mari pulled away.

“That would be nice,” she said quietly, but the word didn’t go with her downcast expression.

But then the rest of the Becketts wanted to say their goodbyes, and she endured their hugs and cheek pats and chatter for another five minutes before I could tug her out the door.

We walked silently back to the station. Mari’s arms wrapped around herself. She didn’t say a word as we waited for the train, or as we found seats in an almost empty carriage, or as the train started to move.

“How was that?” I asked, trying to make eye contact with her.

“Weird,” she said bleakly.

And then nothing. She turned to stare out the window, and I quietly took my phone out and refreshed my emails, then pretended to read the paper, ignoring the fact that every muscle in my body was screaming to fix it .

To put the smile back on Mari’s face, to pull her out of the cold absence she’d disappeared into.

But I knew I couldn’t change Mari’s past, and I couldn’t be part of her future.

Why not? a small, plaintive voice inside me asked for the first time. Why can’t I have what I want, for once?

I let myself dream of summer. Of waking up with her under a sheet in a pool of sunlight, of sitting in the grass in London Fields surrounded by picnics and ball games, of kisses sticky-sweet with Pimm’s and lemonade.

I dreamed of a life where Mari wasn’t distant, physically and emotionally, but right beside me, there for me to touch, to talk to, to learn everything about.

“How do people deal with that?” Mari asked in a rush.

“Deal with what?” I asked, slowly putting my phone back in my pocket.

She curled her fingers, knitting them in and out of each other. “Having so many people around you, wanting to talk to you and touch you and know you.”

Love, I wanted to say. But how to explain that kind of love? It was like trying to explain a synagogue to someone who didn’t even know what religion was.

“They don’t know me,” she continued, her voice high. “They’re only acting like that because they think they have to. How can they believe in me, just like that?”

“Because they think you’re one of them. That you belong with them.”

She let out a hopeless laugh. “I don’t know what to do with that. I’ve never belonged with anybody.”

That last phrase cracked my heart just a little. “Your mum loved you, for starters. I’m sure she did.”

Her hands knotted together more tightly. “Maybe.” The fracture grew. “But she loved Greg more. She cared more about his feelings than about telling me the truth.”

Suddenly she put her head in her hands, and her back shuddered. “I have a family, and I should be happy, but I’m so scared. What’s wrong with me?”

An older man was staring at Mari as she rocked in her seat, and I glared at him until his eyes found his phone again. I sat down next to her and pulled her close, letting her tears soak the front of my coat.

“I’m all messed up,” she whispered shakily.

At that moment, I would have cut my chest open so she could climb inside.

“You’re overwhelmed, darling,” I murmured into her hair.

“It’s been a big day. You don’t have to try to make sense of it now.

They’re just thrilled to have you.” When I’d seen how they’d embraced her with such joy, their missing daughter-sister-niece-cousin-grandchild, I’d felt so proud, that they could see what I saw. Her spark and her sweetness.

And maybe I was a little jealous, too, of that unabashed welcome.

Mari shook her head. “I’m a bad bet, Leo. I’m not lovable, and I don’t know how to return it. No one showed me how.”

The urge to fly to America and scream at Greg surged back.

“I know what we have is temporary, but listen to me. I…” My brain flailed, overwhelmed by my craving, seeking heart.

What was a word I could use that wasn’t the bloody l-word?

“I adore you. If I had it my way, we wouldn’t be working on the festival at all; we’d be naked in our bed and I’d be discovering all the different ways I can make you come.

But I’d also be learning how to make you laugh. How to make you smile.”

“That sounds nice,” she said, her eyes shining through tears.

I pressed my forehead to hers, trying to communicate my feelings without saying the whole truth. “You’ve made me so happy. I’ll never forget it. Long after you’re gone, I’ll still remember.”

Forget the stupid unspoken rules about kissing in public. Her mouth tasted sweet from cake and salty from tears, and she kissed me back hungrily, looking for as much reassurance as I could give her.

“Let’s go home,” she whispered when I released her, and the words sang through me. Yes, I’d make a home for her. We’d make a small heaven that would keep cold reality away for a little longer.

I held her hand the whole way back to the flat, and she seemed a little better once we were inside the quiet blank space, especially once I’d made a nest for her on the sofa with a duvet and a mug of hot chocolate.

We ordered Thai takeaway, and I put on an episode of a silly game show Graham had told me about, savoring Mari’s laughter as a hapless comedian tried to fire a rubber duck out of a trebuchet made of dry spaghetti.

When the credits rolled and she nestled into me, I took her to our bed and kissed and fondled and cherished her until she sighed with pleasure.

“Sex is so much better with you,” she said softly, trailing her fingers through my hair. “It’s never felt like this with anyone else.”

Because I’ve fallen in love with you . But I couldn’t be certain she was anywhere close to feeling the same, not until she said the words aloud. And some dark, empty part of me knew she wouldn’t before she left me. “I know,” I finally said, a minuscule fragment of the truth.

She kissed my mouth with the sweetest urgency and tugged me on top of her.

Our clothes melted away and her sighs turned into moans as I slid my fingers inside her. As she begged for me, I knew I didn’t want to let her go.

But she’d said she didn’t do love, and any dream I had of the future was just my fantasy, not hers.

We only had this bed, this moment, and I forced myself to be present, to engrave this memory into my mind with crisp lines and deep shading.

Afterward, when our eyes had closed and our breaths had evened, sleep creeping up on us, I felt the mattress shift.

“Maybe I could love you,” Mari whispered.

I tensed, suddenly full of adrenaline. My heart didn’t know what to do with that.

The word I prized above anything, but all the mitigation so close to it.

Did I accept it as a gift, a step forward?

Did I push back, ask her what it would take to forget “maybe,” to transform that “could” into a “can”?

I turned over. “Mari?” I whispered. But she’d already closed her eyes, and didn’t respond.