Still not feeling well, I took it easy. After we finished our drinks and ordered new ones, the music got louder, and I pulled Jake out onto the dance floor. He wasn't the best dancer I'd ever been with, but he also wasn't the worst. He held me close and smelled wonderful, a familiar scent, like he belonged to me. I loved it.
At midnight, we gathered to watch the ball drop on the television screens at the front of the restaurant. As we all counted down the seconds to the new year, I really felt excited for the new year with my new boyfriend. It was going to be a good year.
When the clock struck midnight and the restaurant played "Auld Lang Syne," Jake leaned down and kissed the hell out of me, lifting me up and swinging me around at the end. I saw Ryan catch his eye appreciatively, like, "Dude, nice one."
Getting tired, I made my way to the restroom to leave. As I left, I saw Jake pull his cell phone out of his pocket and answer it. The first time all night that I'd seen him do it.
When I got back from the restroom, I couldn't find him. I called over to Georgie, "Where did Jake go?"
"He said he had to go, it was an emergency, and he left you some money for a taxi."
Wait, what?
"What was so important that he had to leave?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Georgie, "but he looked panicked and said he had to go immediately, and to apologize to you."
There had to be an explanation for this, right? I hoped that he was okay, or that whatever had happened, was going to be alright. But if it was work-related, I was going to be pissed. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was seriously worried about whatever his emergency was, and how he had just left without saying goodbye. It was weird-I wanted a reason for his rudeness, but I also didn't want him to have a real emergency.
Ryan called a car for me and sent me home in style, and I went to my bed and undressed, slowly. I'd texted Jake in the restaurant and in the car, to no answer. Finally, I just texted, "Whenever you get this, call me or come by. I need to see you." And then I tried to go to sleep.
My phone pinged, waking me up, at the same time that someone knocked hard on my front door.
Jake.
Grabbing my phone as I crawled out of bed, I glanced at the time. Five in the morning. And a text from Jake, saying that he was outside. Ignoring my robe and my sleepy face, I ran down the hall and flung open the door.
My boyfriend stood there, exhausted, serious lines etched on his forehead, his hair completely disheveled.
"What happened?" I asked. "Come in, come in." Instead of waiting for him to move, because he seemed to be made of granite, I grabbed his hand, closed the door and locked it behind him, then pulled him down the hall into my bedroom. He followed me, looking defeated, not saying anything. We got to my room and looked at each other. Poor guy was completely lost. "Are you okay, cariño?" I whispered.
He let out a breath. "My dad. He had a heart attack and went into cardiac arrest. It's bad. He was up here in Santa Barbara visiting friends, so he's at Cottage Hospital. Luckily, he was at a restaurant that had a defibrillator. They acted fast, and managed to save him."
"Oh no," I gasped. "I'm so sorry. Did you go see him?"
He nodded. "They made me wait. When I finally got to see him, they didn't let me in the room for very long, and he was asleep. I'll have to go back tomorrow, I mean today, at visiting hours."
"Okay." It was so late. He needed to rest. "Nene, come to bed." I started unbuttoning his shirt. "You need sleep."
He nodded and just stood there, tired and done, in my bedroom, letting me undress him, while he rubbed his eyes and ran his hand along the back of his neck. I did this simple act with as much care as I could, easing the clothes off of him, helping him with his shoes, getting him down to his light blue boxers. I got under the covers and made room for him.
He crawled into bed next to me and wrapped me in a fierce hug, front to front, shoving his face in my hair. He shook, and I held him, trying to squeeze all the pain out of him, let it transfer to me, let me help him.
"Lucy," he choked. "What's going to happen to him?"
"I don't know. But the doctors will take care of him. The thing you need to do is get some sleep so that you can be rested to go see him tomorrow."
He didn't respond verbally. Instead, he just held me tighter. He was struggling to keep it together.
"It's okay to let it out," I whispered into his chest.
Shaking his head into my hair, he refused to say anything. But that was okay.
After a while, his arms relaxed around me, and I could tell that he'd fallen asleep. I wiggled so that I was comfortable and fell asleep, too.
The next morning, I awoke with a start, coughing still, but Jake was already up and out of bed, putting on his pants.
"Sorry to wake you," he said.
"Where are you going? Stay."
"Visiting hours are soon. I gotta go."
I nodded. "Can I come?"
He paused. Then finally he said, "Yeah. But they don't allow kids. Rob can't come."
"I'll call my parents. They'll love a few extra hours with their grandson."
An hour later, we walked into Cottage Hospital, hand in hand. When we were finally allowed into Mr. Slausen's room, I was struck by how much Jake looked like his father. Even though he was sleeping, the elder Mr. Slausen had the same distinguished face as the younger. Something to look forward to.
"Hey, Dad," Jake said, reaching out and holding his father's hand. I noticed how Jake's artist's fingers looked next to his dad's older hand. They had the same shape, just Jake's were younger, the skin smoother.
His dad didn't respond. "I just wanted to come and say hi, you know. I hope you're feeling better."
He let go of his dad's hand and pulled over a chair by the bedside, then reached out and held it again. "Dad, it's incredibly rare that you survived what you went through. Incredibly rare. I am so grateful they got to you fast. So now you gotta do it, you know? You gotta get better. Because you survived it and it's like six percent of people who do. So don't let me down, Dad. I know you'll get better."
I'd never heard Jake talk like this. He sounded earnest, almost like a kid. He also had almost an East Coast accent that I had never picked up on before. Slipping into a pattern from his youth.
But then he looked over at me. "Dad, this is my girlfriend, Lucy. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me. You gotta get better so you can meet her, okay, for reals now."
We stayed until visiting hours were done. Then, instead of going home, I asked if we could go to the beach.
Once we got there, we took off our shoes and walked along the water, watching the waves crash and feeling the cool sand from the winter day. New Year's Day. A day of new beginnings.
Neither one of us talked as we ambled the entire length of the cove and then headed back, hand in hand, looking out at the water. But when we passed by a group of intrepid January sunbathers, Jake spoke suddenly.
"I'm not going to do it anymore," he declared.
"What?" I had no idea what he was talking about.
"I'm not."
"Not going to do what?"
"Wait until I have a wakeup call like him to do what I really want to do."
Yay, I thought. But what I said was, "Oh?"
"I'm not going to be a slave to my job anymore. I don't like it that much."
"No?"
"No. I like some parts of it, but no."
"'Kay." So happy he figured this out. So happy he did it without me pushing him too hard. So happy he came to this decision on his own.
He stopped walking and grabbed me. "You'll help me, right?"
"Of course. Help you how?" We stood on the beach, feet buried in cool sand, the waves crawling in. Then we didn't move in time, and a low wall of water got us. Feet all wet but we didn't move.
"Help me figure out what I'm going to do. You remind me of a dream I had. A dream that I could do my art, and, well, I don't want to scare you, but have a family, and just live. Alive. Not be holed up in an office. Not be so irresponsible that my family suffered. But just be able to have a normal life, the kind that I didn't get growing up."
"That doesn't scare me."
He moved his head to the side and his eye color flicked to a deeper blue than I'd ever seen it, like all of a sudden he was alive. And he looked at me with a passion I'd never seen before from anyone, let alone him. "Good."
Jake leaned over, wrapped his arms around me tightly, and kissed me on the beach, a desperate, giving-taking-needing kiss, the kind that you remembered afterward, not just because your lips were kiss-stung and swollen, but because you remembered the way it made you feel. This kiss made me feel essential to his life. Like I was a requirement for him to be able to breathe or to function. No other world existed except the world that I was creating with him.
A phenomenal kiss. I loved it.
And I admitted it-I loved him. I'd tell him soon enough.
The vast ocean spread before us, murky but nevertheless sparkly in the early January sunlight. I thought about the primordial soup that made up the contents of that water-all of the kelp and plankton and sea life living within it. So many creatures coexisted in the ocean, but we normally just looked out and saw water and surface waves, nothing more. The waters of this earth looked so deceptively simple and beautiful from above, almost monolithic, but underneath, and within them, one found peace and terror, creation and death, activity and entropy. It was complicated, but if you paid attention, you learned that within the waters, there was a constant source of growth and expansion and a whole lot of astonishing beauty.