Love the one you're with

thirty-five

I hang up with Suzanne and put my head in my hands, overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. I am way too confused to describe what I'm feeling to myself, let alone to Leo, who has just returned to the living room and is now standing over me. One thing is for sure, though-no matter what rationalization I might try to conjure in the moments ahead, there is simply no way to recover from my wake-up, gut-checking conversation with Suzanne. No way to pick up where Leo and I left off. The mood is broken, not to be salvaged. Leo obviously senses this as he sits beside me, appearing uneasy on his own couch.

"Are you okay?" he says, his forehead lined with concern, his hand reaching out to lightly touch my knee where it rests for one second before returning to his own lap.

"I don't know," I say, grappling with Suzanne's straightforward, yet somehow still enigmatic advice. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Leo exhales into his cupped hands. "This is really tough… I'm sorry."

I look at him, interpreting his sorry, processing that it is not a contrite, forgiveness-seeking apology, but the sympathetic sort of sorry offered at the feet of misfortune, divorce, death. In other words, he knows our situation is dire-but does not regret our kiss or his own feelings. I'm not yet sure if I feel the same. It's way too soon to tell.

I nod a thank you, or at least an acknowledgment, as it occurs to me that Suzanne never really addressed Leo, or my feelings for him. I wonder why, as I blurt out a question that suddenly seems utterly beside the point. "Do you think we would have lasted?"

Leo looks puzzled and possibly wistful, perhaps noticing my use of would rather than will. "What do you mean?" he asks.

"You know… If we had gotten back together… would we have stayed together?"

"Forever?" he says, his tone answering the question for me. He does not believe in forever. He never has.

But I do-at least in theory. "Yeah. Forever," I say, thinking about marriage and kids, all the things I still want.

"Who knows?" Leo says with a faraway, philosophical look.

I think of our breakup, and then his most recent breakup, wondering if the scenarios were at all similar. I pose the question as casually as I can under the circumstances. "Why did you and Carol call it quits?"

"I told you this morning," he says.

"Not really," I say, feeling nauseous.

He throws up one hand as if at a total loss, and I recall how he pretended to be at a loss about our breakup, too, when the subject came up at the diner in L.A.

"There were a lot of reasons," he says, as I watch him start to shut down. His eyelids become heavy, his expression vacant.

"Like?"

"Like… I don't know… she was a great girl… But she just… wasn't the one," he says.

"How do you know she wasn't the one?" I press, searching for my own answers. Some secret, mysterious litmus test for true love. A definition of soul mates.

"I just know," he says, reaching up to touch a sideburn. "You always know."

"Is that why we broke up, too?" I ask, hearing a needy note in my voice.

Leo sighs and says, "C'mon, Ellen." He sounds weary and vaguely annoyed in a way that ushers in vivid memories-bad memories-of the past.

But I stay on course. "Tell me," I say. "I need to understand."

"Okay. Look. We've already been over all of this… I think our breakup was about timing more than anything else. We were too young."

"We weren't that young."

"Young enough. I wasn't ready for… this," he says, motioning in the space between us, finally admitting the obvious-that it was him, not me. He broke up with me.

I nod, as if I understand his assessment, even though I really don't. Yes, we were young, but in some ways, young love seems the most robust and idealistic, untarnished by everyday hardships. Leo threw in the towel before we were ever really tested. Maybe because he didn't want to be tested. Maybe because he assumed we would fail. Maybe because, at the time, he just didn't love me enough.

"Would staying with me have felt like… settling?" I ask.

The word settling echoes in my head, gnawing at my heart and filling me with trepidation. It is a word I've avoided for months, even in my own, private thoughts, but I suddenly can't avoid it any longer. In some ways, it feels like the scary heart of the matter-the fear that I settled when I said "I do" to Andy. That I should have held out for this kind of love. That I should have believed that Leo would, someday, return to me.

"Hell, no," Leo says, shaking his head with frustration. "That wasn't it, and you know it."

I start to pin him down further, but he offers an unprompted explanation. "Look, Ellie. You were the one… You are the one… If such a thing exists…"

I look into his eyes, his pupils lost in the dark brown around them. My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.

"Okay," I say.

It is a wholly inadequate response, but the only one that feels safe in this emerging moment of truth.

"So… what do you think?" he says. "What do you want?"

I close my eyes, feeling suspended in time and a little disoriented, the way you sometimes feel when you awaken in a strange place and momentarily forget where you are. Then I look at Leo again, and suddenly realize with shock and a dash of terror that this choice, taken away from me years ago, first by Leo, then by Margot, is now mine to make. Finally. I unwittingly imagine myself at a literal fork in the road, the kind that belongs in a spooky Disney animation. Two twisting, dirt paths. Two signs attached to gnarled trees, pointing in opposite directions. This way for Andy. That way for Leo.

I uncross my arms, letting them fall to my sides, my fingertips grazing the buttery soft leather of Leo's new couch. Then I silently replay Suzanne's parting words, wondering if my disillusioned, unlucky-in-love sister is onto something. It's not about what might have been. And it's not about whether I have genuine feelings for Leo now, underneath the layers of nostalgia, lust, unrequited love. It's really not about Leo at all.

It's about Andy, plainly, simply.

It's about whether I truly love my husband.

"I think I should go," I say, the answer, always in my heart, finally crystallizing in my head, too.

Leo returns his hand to my leg, this time with slightly more weight. "Ellen… don't…"

My mind races-as I hear only half of what he says next. Something about not wanting to lose me again. Something about how he knows that I'm married, but that we are too good together. He closes with, "I miss us"-which is more powerful and compelling than merely missing me-especially because I feel the same way. I miss us, too. I always have, and probably always will. Overcome with grief and the sense of impending, final loss, I touch his hand. Sometimes there are no happy endings. No matter what, I'll be losing something, someone.

But maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

I look into Leo's eyes, feeling heartbroken, but resolved, and somehow freed.

"I have to go," I say, standing slowly, methodically gathering my things as if I'm moving in slow motion.

Leo stands along with me, reluctantly helping me into my coat and following me to his door, then onto his porch. As we head down the stairs, an errant cab appears in the distance, drifting toward us, down the otherwise desolate street. An omen to stay on course. I make my way onto the sidewalk, step off the curb, maneuver between two parked cars, and wave to the driver. Leo stands at a short distance, watching.

"Where are you going?" he asks. His voice is calm, but there is something frantic in his eyes. Something I've never seen before. A short time ago, I might have basked in it, feeling victorious, healed. Now it only makes me more sad.

"To my hotel," I say, nodding at the driver as he puts my bags in the trunk.

"Will you call me when you get there?"

"Yes," I say, wondering if I will keep this promise.

Leo walks toward me, puts his hand on my arm, and says my name in one final protest.

"I'm sorry," I say, pulling away and sliding into the backseat. I force a smile that feels brave, my vision starting to blur with tears that I frantically blink away. Then I close the cab door, holding my palm up to the window to say good-bye. Just like I did the morning after our red-eye flight.

Only this time, I don't cry, and I don't look back.