Page 41 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Twenty-Four

I wake with an empty feeling. When my eyes open to the sight of Sam’s small, blue-curtained loft window, I remember where I am.

I remember what happened last night and how lonely it had felt to try to sleep after our argument.

I remember the restful sound of his breathing as I lay tossing and turning, only able to drift off after assuring myself we’d work it all out in the morning. Now, I reach for him—

But he’s not there.

“Sam?” I call, sitting up in the bed, drawing the sheets around me because it’s cold in this cabin and I’m naked.

There’s a stillness in the air that tells me right away he isn’t here.

Not downstairs burning toast. Not out on the porch finessing his one-armed pull-up.

He’s somewhere else. I don’t know where, but I know he’s gone before I can prove it.

And the hollow I feel in his quiet bedroom is heavy.

I get up to search for my clothes, and that’s when I see the note Sam left on his pillow. I sink back onto the bed to pick it up. I’ve never seen his handwriting before. It’s quick and blocky, confident, all caps but not aggressive. Very much the way he speaks.

Fenny,

I’m sorry about last night. I wish I was better at explaining.

Wanted to give you some space this morning. If you’re not still mad when I get back, we can go cliff-diving this afternoon?

Love,

Sam

Each of the three times I read Sam’s words, they make less and less sense. If I’m not still mad? Is the duration of my anger what the rest of our weekend rides on? Whether I get over his bullshit before he deigns to come home?

So we can go cliff-diving ?

Moreover, is his simply phrased wish that he was better at explaining all he needs to let himself off the hook? And how magnanimous of him, by the way, to give me some space this morning! Where the hell does he get off, tacking on the word love at the end of such a useless excuse for communication?

There’s nothing loving about this note. It’s a goddamned middle finger.

It’s a gesture that holds me and my emotions at so great a distance, I might as well have stayed home in Venice this weekend.

Wait a minute. Is this the kind of note a guy writes when he’s started dating someone else since you last slept together but he’s too scared to say so?

I hate the thought of this—of Sam giving someone other than me those bone-deep orgasms—but it’s also the most reasonable explanation. Why else would it be such a nonstarter for him to go into town with me today? He doesn’t want anyone to see us together and report back to his new girlfriend.

I crumple the note in my fist, recalling how Jude crumpled the note he was going to leave for me not thirty-six hours ago.

What had his note said? Something less infuriating is a safe bet.

I never should have kissed Jude. Or perhaps, I should have kissed Jude but also already have figured out what was going on with Sam.

If only I’d known then what I know now. Sam’s total disinterest in developing anything real with me.

I should have known better. The signs were all there the first time I left Two Harbors. Now I’ve tainted everything with Jude. Our working relationship. Our friendship. And whatever else that kiss might have become.

What might that kiss have turned us into?

And why didn’t I tell Jude that it felt like more than a kiss to me, too?

I throw on my clothes and climb down the loft ladder.

This empty cabin is making me claustrophobic.

I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. It still smells like hickory and cloves—Sam’s very pheromone-friendly aftershave—and his razor still leans against the green bar of soap in the dish next to the sink.

The cap of his floss is open. I click it closed, just like I did a month ago.

I look at myself in the mirror and shake my head.

“Cliff-diving,” I mutter.

There’s no way I’m diving off a cliff, probably ever, and definitely not until Sam and I have gotten a few things straight.

Why do men default to giving women such a wide berth when we get pissed off?

What is it about our anger that sends them scuttling into shadows like rats?

At work for the past five years, Rich has whined to anyone who’ll listen that I’m “still mad at him for some reason,” but has he ever once tried to talk to me about it directly?

Now Sam seems to think that space is the ideal solution to my moving past our conversation last night.

It feels like it’s all on me to get through this rough patch, and nothing more is required of him.

I stand in his kitchen, staring down his toaster, not hungry exactly, but hungry to prove something. To myself. Or to Sam’s absence. I don’t know. I take two slices of bread from the bag of whole wheat, the same brand Sam had the last time I was here. I slip them into the toaster and press Start.

I put both hands on the counter and find myself thinking about Jude.

How each time I’ve been mad at him, he’s followed up about it, in person, engaged, asking to spend time with me until we could work through whatever it was.

It was like my rage had a magnetic effect on him, drawing him to me instead of repelling him.

I’d thought him presumptuous at first, but now I know he was simply trying to get to the bottom of my anger at him.

So that together, we could get to the other side.

And we did.

And it was good. For a minute.

Jude’s confident enough in his own positions to be able to listen to mine.

That is, until I kissed him and fucked everything up. Jude knew I was mad when he left my house on Thursday, but he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And that’s on me.

“There’s nothing going on with Sam and me,” I say out loud, definitively. I’m too late to tell this to Jude, but at least there’s still time to tell it to myself.

My physical chemistry with Sam is every bit as ridiculous as I’d remembered it.

But when it comes to the world beyond the orgasm, to the real, messy the heart of the matter, Sam would rather push that mess onto me.

He doesn’t care whether I deal with it, or choose to let it go, because the issue is mine, not ours.

And that makes me feel the loneliest of all.

An acrid smoke fills my nose and makes me cough. Of course I burnt the fucking toast. I pop it out of the toaster, blowing on a singed and smoking crust before dropping both pieces in the trash. I stare at the smoking embers in the trash can, feeling a freaky sense of déjà vu.

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

I find a pen and paper and break the news to Sam as honestly as I can.

Sam,

I’m glad we met. I won’t forget our time together. But what you want to give isn’t enough for me, so this is goodbye.

—Fenny

I pack up my things. I take the camcorder and leave the viewfinder. I touch the adder stone at my neck. I consider keeping it, but it’s too special. It belongs with Sam. I take it off and leave it on the kitchen counter next to my note.

I lace up my sneakers, pull on my sweatshirt, and dab sunscreen on my face.

I take one last look at Sam’s stunning, mystical cabin, then I walk out the front door.

I mount my bike and watch a pelican dive-bomb into the ocean, knowing what it wants and how to get it.

I feel suddenly as desperate to get away from this place as I’d been desperate to arrive less than a day ago.

The sun is strong, the wind unfriendly, and the trail steep and narrow.

On my left, it’s edged with sheer drops into the ocean; on my right, it’s seasoned with cacti and boulders the size of my bike that must have tumbled down from rockslides past. Every hundred yards or so, I huff past signs warning of the dangers of charging bison.

When Two Harbors finally comes into view below my path, my limbs are burning and my heart feels spent, but I’m relieved to have arrived.

It wasn’t a mistake to leave Sam’s cabin.

I can tell from the subtle loosening in my chest at the sight of this tiny town.

I can miss him and still be clear that I could not have stayed at his cabin any longer than I did.

I have one more night on Catalina. I’ll find my friends.

I’ll get some food. I’ll stare at the sun-dappled sea until I know what to do about Jude. However long that takes.

I’m approaching Isthmus Cove, Two Harbors’s large east-facing harbor, which is home to the public ferry terminal, the public beach, and the rental offices for all the water sports.

This harbor looks out toward the mainland, and on a clear day like today, you can see Marina del Rey across the water and all the way up the coastline to Malibu.

Two Harbors’s other harbor is a few minutes’ bike ride farther west, through the one-street town and minuscule residential neighborhood containing some forty houses.

On the other side of this half-mile-long isthmus sits the west-facing harbor.

It looks out on thousands of miles of open ocean and contains the sleepy Del Rey Yacht Club, where my friends are anchored and will hopefully soon anchor me.

I take the last downslope of the trail even faster now that I can see the Harbor Reef.

I want to be there on the bar’s worn wood patio, parked under an umbrella, connecting to Wi-Fi and sipping the island’s signature cocktail.

The buffalo milk is a nutmeg-dusted frozen Kahlúa concoction, heavy on the whipped cream and good for drowning sorrows.