Love the one you're with

twenty-eight

Despite the near-constant urge to do so, I manage to go the rest of the weekend without calling or e-mailing or texting Leo. Instead I do all the right things-all the things I'm supposed to do. I reframe our wedding photos. I write Stella a cheerful, almost-completely-sincere thank-you note. I go to church and brunch with the entire Graham clan. I take nearly one hundred quality black-and-white photos of Webb and Margot and her belly. All the while, I squelch any uprising of anger, reassuring myself that I'm not taking the assignment out of spite or revenge or to revisit the past. Rather, I'm going to New York for the work-and to spend a little time with Leo. I have a perfect right to work-and to be friends with Leo. And neither of these things should, in any way, detract from my marriage or my friendship with Margot or my life in Atlanta.

So, by Sunday evening, as I hunker down at the computer to buy a nonrefundable airline ticket to New York, I am fully convinced that my intentions, if not entirely pure, are pure enough. Yet when I find Andy in the family room watching golf on television and casually mention that I have a shoot on Coney Island for Time Out, my heart fills with familiar guilt.

"That's great," Andy says, his eyes glued to Tiger Woods.

"Yeah… So I think I'll fly up the week after next… do the shoot… then stay for a night… maybe catch up with a few friends," I say as if I'm thinking aloud. My heart pounds with worried anticipation. I cross my fingers, hoping that Andy won't ask too many questions, and that I won't have to lie about how I got the assignment.

But when he only says, "Cool," rather than inquiring about any specifics, I can't help feeling somewhat slighted, if not downright neglected. After all, we constantly discuss his cases, as well as the interpersonal dynamic in his office-interactions with his father, the secretaries, and the other junior associates. He routinely practices his opening and closing arguments in front of me. And, last week, I went to watch the climax of testimony in an insurance-recovery case, getting gussied up and sitting in the front of the courtroom to silently cheer him on as he led the purportedly very injured plaintiff, sporting a full-body cast, down a path of lies before showing video footage of the guy playing Frisbee in Piedmont Park. Afterward, we laughed in the car, high-fiving each other and gleefully repeating, "You can't handle the truth!"-our favorite line from A Few Good Men.

And yet-this is the best I can get when my work is involved? One word of generic praise. Cool?

"Yeah," I say, picturing working alongside Leo. "It should be good."

"Sounds good," Andy says, frowning as Tiger attempts a long putt. The ball heads straight for the hole, drops in, but then pops back out. Andy slams his fist on the coffee table and shouts, "Dammit! How does that not go in?"

"So, what, he's like one shot behind now?" I say.

"Yeah. And he really needed that one." Andy shakes his head and bends the rim down on his green Masters cap, which he superstitiously wears to bring good luck to his idol.

"Tiger always wins," I say as the camera zooms in on his doting, gorgeous wife.

I find myself wondering just how solid their marriage is as Andy says, "Not always."

"Sure seems like it. Give someone else a chance," I say, and although I'm somewhat annoyed with Andy, I'm also disgusted with myself for trying to drum up a debate about something as uncontroversial as the universally adored Tiger.

"Yeah," Andy says, as if barely hearing me. "I guess so."

I turn my head to look at him, studying the faint, sexy hair growth along his jaw, his ears that seem to jut out a bit when he wears a cap, and the soothing blue of his eyes-a dead match for the azure stripes in his polo. I sidle closer to him on the couch, so there is no space between us and our thighs are touching. I rest my head on his chest and intertwine our arms. Then I close my eyes and tell myself to stop being so irritable. It's not fair to put Andy on trial-particularly when he has no clue he's being judged. Several minutes pass and we stay in that cozy position, as I listen to the lulling sound of the commentators and the occasional ripple of applause from the otherwise respectfully silent crowd and tell myself, over and over, that I am happy.

But, a few minutes later, when something else goes awry for Tiger, and Andy is up like a shot, waving his arms and talking to the television, offering more support than he has given me in weeks-"C'mon, buddy. You never miss these when they matter!"-I can't help feeling a fresh wave of indignation.

No wonder we're having trouble, I think, now putting an official label on what seemed to be only a one-sided undercurrent before. My husband shows more passion for golf-even golf on television-than he does for our relationship.

I watch him for a few more minutes, stoically observing the domestic scene that single-handedly assuages any guilt I have for going to New York. Then I stand, head upstairs, find my cell phone, and call Leo.

He answers on the fourth ring, sounding slightly out of breath, as if he ran to get the phone.

"Don't tell me you changed your mind," he says before I can say hello.

I smile and say, "No way."

"So you're coming?"

"I'm coming."

"For sure?"

"Yes," I say. "For sure."

"When?"

"Next Monday."

"Cool," Leo says-the exact same way Andy ended our conversation downstairs.

I stare up at the ceiling, wondering how the very same word can sound so different coming from Leo. How different everything feels with Leo.

The next morning, I catch Suzanne on her morning commute to the airport, and fill her in on the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending Leo saga. When I come to the part about Margot, she is predictably outraged.

"Who does she think she is?" Suzanne demands.

I knew my sister's focus would be on Margot, and I feel simultaneously riled and defensive as I say, "I know. She should have told me… But I really do believe she had my best interest at heart."

"She had her brother's best interest at heart," Suzanne says, sounding disgusted. "Not yours."

"They're one and the same," I say, thinking that in the best relationships, both interests are perfectly, inextricably aligned. And, despite our problems, I like to think that Andy and I still have such a bond.

"They're never one and the same," Suzanne says adamantly.

As I reheat my coffee for the second time, I consider this statement, wondering who is right. Am I being too idealistic-or is Suzanne just bitter?

"Besides," Suzanne says, "who is she to play God like that?"

"I would hardly call it 'playing God,'" I say. "This isn't euthanasia… She simply spared me-"

Suzanne cuts me off and says, "Spared you? From what?"

"Spared me from Leo," I say. "From myself."

"So you would have picked Leo?" she asks with a note of jubilance.

I feel a pang of frustration, wishing she could be more unbiased in moments like these. Wishing she could be more like our mother, whose first instinct was always to see the good in people, look on the bright side. Then again, maybe our mother's death has made Suzanne the way she is-why she always seems to look for the worst and never really believes that things will turn out well. I push these thoughts aside, realizing how often my mother's death complicates things that really have very little to do with her. How much she colors everything, even in her absence. Especially in her absence.

"I like to think I would have told him the same thing," I say, struggling to be honest with my sister-and myself. "But I don't know… I also might have… revisited my feelings enough to screw things up with Andy. I could have made a horrible mistake."

"Are you sure it would have been a mistake?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, as I think of an ancient journal entry I recently read-an entry that I had logged around the time Andy and I started to date, right when Leo came back. I hesitate and then tell Suzanne about it. "I was so happy to be in a healthy, stable, even relationship."

"You wrote that?" she asks. "You used those words?"

"More or less," I say.

"Healthy and stable, huh?… That sounds… pleasant," Suzanne says, clearly implying that pleasant isn't something to strive for in the hierarchy of relationships. That passionate is better than pleasant, every time.

"Pleasant is underrated," I say, thinking that half of America would kill for pleasant. These days, I'd take pleasant.

"If you say so," Suzanne says.

I sigh, and say, "It's better than what I had with Leo."

"And what was that?" Suzanne says.

"Turmoil," I say. "Worry… Insecurity… Everything felt so different with Leo."

"Different how?" she asks automatically, relentlessly.

I open the back door and settle down on the top step of our back deck with my cup of coffee, struggling to answer her question. But every time I try to put it in words, I feel as if I'm selling Andy short, somehow implying a dichotomy of passion versus platonic love. And it really isn't that way. In fact, just last night, Andy and I had sex-great sex-which I initiated, not from a sense of guilt or obligation, but because he looked so irresistible in his boxer briefs, stretched out in bed next to me. I kissed him along his golfer's tan line, admiring his ripped stomach that looks like it should belong on a teenager. Andy kissed me back as I thought of how so many women complain that their husbands skip the foreplay-and how Andy never forgets to kiss me.

"Ellen?" Suzanne rasps into the phone.

"I'm here," I say, glaring across our hazy backyard. It is not yet nine o'clock, but already approaching one hundred degrees. Too hot for coffee. I take one sip and pour the rest of the mug into a bed of mulch.

"Different how?" Suzanne asks again-although I have a feeling she knows exactly how it's different-that all women know the difference between the one you marry and the one that got away.

"It's like… the mountains and the beach," I finally say, grasping at straws for some sort of adequate analogy.

"Who's the beach?" Suzanne asks as I hear an airport trolley beeping its way through the terminal followed by a blaring gate-change announcement.

I have a sudden pang, wishing I were at the airport about to fly somewhere. Anywhere. For the first time, I feel a bit envious of Suzanne's job-her physical freedom, her constant motion. Maybe that's the appeal to her, too-why she sticks with a job she often describes as waitressing without tips.

"Andy is," I say, looking up at the scorched white sky. It's almost as if the relentless heat wave has blanched it, stripping the blue away, leaving a colorless expanse of nothing. "Andy's a sunny day with calm, turquoise waters and a glass of wine." I smile, feeling momentarily buoyed by the thought of us lounging on a beach somewhere. Maybe a good vacation is all we need. Maybe I need to get on a plane with Andy-rather than flying away from him. But deep down, I know a romantic boondoggle would not fix our problem-and that I might be screwed no matter what.

"And Leo?" Suzanne says.

"Leo." His name rolls off my tongue as my heart beats faster. "Leo's an uphill hike in the mountains. In a cold drizzle. When you're a little disoriented and hungry and nightfall's approaching."

Suzanne and I laugh together.

"No contest," she says. "The beach wins."

"Every time," I say, sighing.

"So what's the problem?"

"The problem is… I like it out there in the middle of the woods. I like the dark… the quiet. It's mysterious… thrilling. And the view at the top, overlooking the evergreens, down into the valley…"

"Kicks ass," Suzanne says, finishing my sentence.

"Yeah," I say, shaking my head as I picture Leo's strong forearms and bulky shoulders. The way he looks in a pair of worn Levi's, walking slightly in front of me, always in control. "It really does."

"Well, then," my sister says. "Go ahead and enjoy the view…"

"You think?" I say, waiting for her to prescribe exact parameters-tell me what I can and can't do.

Instead she only says, "Just don't get too close to the edge."

I let out a nervous laugh, feeling more anxious than amused.

"Or you just might jump," she says.

And yet, in the days leading up to my trip, despite Suzanne's advice and my vigilance to keep Leo at arm's length, I find myself standing way too close to the edge and getting sucked back into his orbit. Our formal e-mail exchanges graduate to a flurry of familiar-even flirty-banter, that in turn gives way to a steady stream of longer and increasingly more intimate texts, e-mails, and even phone calls. Until I'm full-blown obsessing, just like old times, all the while trying to convince myself that I'm not obsessing. That it's not like old times.

Then, suddenly, it's the morning before my trip-which also happens to be the day of Margot's baby shower, an event I was already dreading on some level, at least to the extent that Ginny had hijacked the planning, making it a formal, ostentatious affair rather than good, close friends celebrating a beloved soon-to-be-born baby. But now, more than ever, I view the party as something to endure, get over with, so that I can escape to New York, pick up where Leo and I left off on our red-eye flight, and get down to the heart of the matter-whatever that is.

I stretch out under the covers, having just kissed Andy good-bye and wished him a good golf game, when my cell phone rings on high, vibrating its way to the edge of the nightstand. I reach for it, hoping that it's Leo, hungry for my morning fix of him. Sure enough, his name lights up my screen.

"Hello," I answer groggily, happily, my heart beating faster as I anticipate his first words.

"Hi," Leo says with sleep still in his voice, too. "You alone?"

"Yeah," I say, wondering for the hundredth time whether he's still with his girlfriend. Based on his occasional abrupt hang-ups, I have the sense that he is, and although the jealous, possessive part of me wants him to be single, in some ways, I like that he's in a relationship, too. Somehow, she makes the playing field more even, gives him something to lose, too.

"What're you doing?" he asks.

"Just lying here in bed," I say. "Thinking."

"About what?"

I hesitate before offering what feels to be a confession. "About tomorrow," I say, brimming with simultaneous elation and fear. "About you."

"What a coincidence," he says, and although his words are coy, he is speaking very plainly, directly. "I can't wait to see you."

"Me either," I say, tingling everywhere as I picture the two of us together on Coney Island, walking along the water, snapping photos in the golden, romantic hour before sunset, laughing and talking and just being together.

"So what do you wanna do?" Leo asks, sounding as giddy as I feel.

"Right now?" I say.

He laughs his low breathy laugh. "No. Not now. Tomorrow. After the shoot."

"Oh, I don't care. What are you thinking?" I say, instantly regretting my response, worrying that I sound too much like my former wishy-washy self-always letting him make the decisions.

"Can I take you to dinner?" he asks.

"Sure," I say, yearning for tomorrow to come as quickly as possible. "That sounds really nice."

"You sound nice," Leo says. "I like your voice all scratchy like that. Brings back memories…"

I smile, rolling away from Andy's side of the bed, his scent still lingering on the sheets. Then I close my eyes and listen to the thrilling, intimate silence. At least a minute ticks by like that-maybe even longer-as I drift back to our shared past. A time before Andy. A time when I could feel the way I'm feeling, with no remorse, no guilt. Nothing but pure, in-the-moment pleasure. Until I finally give in to the welling inside me, the physical longing that has been building for the longest time.

Afterward, I tell myself that he doesn't know what I've just done-and that he certainly wasn't doing the same. I tell myself that I had to get it out of my system, and that we will be all business in the morning-or at most, just close friends with an incidental romantic past. And most of all, I tell myself that no matter what happens, I love Andy. I will always love Andy.