CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - CHRISTINE
It’s true, what he’s saying.
There is no us without Alec. I think that’s the part that scared me after I lost the baby. I always knew Danny was there. Even when he was thousands of miles away, we were tied together somehow. And one tug from me, or one tug from him, would rewind that link and we’d be back to who and what we were.
Christine and Danny.
But that’s not how it felt with Alec.
I turn a little in Danny’s lap so I can look him in the eyes. “I fell in love with you the moment you came up to me in that foster-home back yard. You were this incredible older man—”
He laughs. And everything inside me gets hot with pleasure at this laugh. “I was fourteen.”
“Like I said, older man.” We take a moment to smile at each other. I’m acutely aware that this must be uncomfortable for Alec, since he was not in our world back then. But I don’t know that I care. “Anyway. I fell in love with your looks first. You were wearing those faded jeans and that white t-shirt. And you had boots on.” I look down and find his boots. “Not like those. These were brown.”
“You remember the color of his boots when you were ten?”
“I only had the one pair,” Danny says by way of explanation. “And I wore them every day for almost two years.”
It’s true. But it’s not why I remember them. I remember the leather bracelet he wore on his wrist too. And the rip in the hem of his t-shirt. And the flavor of ice cream he ordered when he dragged me out of that back yard and took me under his protection.
“I remember everything about that first day with Danny because I loved him instantly.” He smiles at me. He knew this but I suppose it’s nice to hear all the same. I smile back and then lift my head so I can stare at Alec.
“So when did you fall in love with me?” he asks.
“Which time?” I ask.
That earns me a confused look.
“Because I’ve fallen in and out of love with you, Alec van den Berg, several times already in this life.”
Danny holds his breath. Alec says, “Fair enough.”
And I feel like telling him everything.
So I do.
“There used to be a time when I was infatuated with you. That came early. Like the night we first stole our first diamond.” I look down at Danny, smile at him and say, “But it wasn’t love.” Danny tilts his head. I continue. “I didn’t fall in love with you for real until after Danny left.”
Alec nods and says. “Go on.”
“By that time we were sleeping together. Not sex. I mean we were sleeping together. In the same bed.”
Danny is tense beneath me. He’ll relax once he sees where I’m going.
“And I used to think to myself… God. I cannot wait for it to be night again so I can crawl under those covers and slip my body up next to his. And he would put his arms around me or slip his fingers between my legs. But I didn’t really care what he did next because I knew we had hours and hours alone together in that bed before he’d leave me again.”
When I glance at Alec he’s leaning forward, elbows on knees, staring down at his feet.
“I was in love with you back then,” I say.
“And when did that end?” Alec asks. He looks over at me. Eyes bloodshot and tired. “The first time?”
“When I lost the baby.”
He nods and resumes looking at his feet.
“When I lost the baby,” I say again, this time with the intention of going on. “I lost everything. I lost my joy, I lost my hope, I lost my love. And I don’t understand why. Well, I understand parts of it. But I don’t understand why, all of a sudden, the thought of climbing into bed with you at night suddenly felt… well. It felt like nothing. I had no feelings about it at all. And that scared me. Because just a few months before it was all I thought about. I craved the night. I craved our connection.”
I look down at Danny, who is frowning up at me.
“I lost my love, Danny. It just disappeared one day.”
He swallows hard now. Nodding.
“But then I noticed Alec wasn’t coming home as much and I started to miss him. I started calling him during the day. I started thinking I’d go out. Go do things. Get back to work.”
Alec sighs. He knows where this is headed. Because he was there.
“And there was one night when Alec came back and took my hand, and took me to bed, much the same way he’d done many times before—and I felt it again. That old excitement. That flutter in my stomach. And I thought… OK. I’m getting better now. So for one night I fell back in love with you, Alec.”
“And then you found out about Eliza,” he says.
“And I fell out.”
Alec looks at me with those same bloodshot and tired eyes and asks, “Do you love me now?”
I nod. Because it’s true. I do. “But it was Danny who caused that love to come back.”
“Of course it was,” Alec murmurs.
“It was watching Danny fall in love with you, for the first time, I realize now, back on the yacht as we made our way to the Cook Islands that made me see what we had, and what I was missing, and what we could be again.”
I look down at Danny. “You were so sad, and it wasn’t because you loved me or the idea of us. It was because you thought Alec was dead. It was because you thought you were too late. You thought you’d never get another chance to see him and tell him how you felt.”
Danny just nods.
“And I realized that there’s no time for regrets. There’s no time for grudges. Because life is short, and it could end instantly, at any moment. And I didn’t want to die feeling like Danny. Like I had love to give and I lost my chance. So yes, Alec van den Berg. I love you again. And I’m sorry for my betrayal. I’m sorry I hurt you. And if you can’t forgive me, I’ll understand. But either way, I want you to know… that I forgive you.”
I want to say more. Poetic things like… this triangle we’ve been making was always precarious. Always skewed in one awkward direction one moment, then another the next.
And it wasn’t until now that we had the chance to make all the sides equal. Make all the love equal.
But only if we let it.
I want to say… We control the shape of our love. We decide what it looks like. We can put all this back together again if we really want to.
But I can’t say that. Because I’m not the glue. Danny isn’t the glue. Alec isn’t the glue.
Our shape can’t pull itself together until we’re all on the same page.
It’s a mutual decision that we must all make together, and I don’t know how that could possibly happen after all we’ve been through and everything that’s left to be considered.
So I don’t say anything.