Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(89)

“Why?”

“Because to help you, I have to believe that what I teach you gives you the world. I didn’t believe that anymore.”

“What did you believe?”

“I believe you’re losing just one version of the world and I wasn’t sure the one I was offering to you, as Evan Carlisle, OT, was better. I had to be sure of that to help you. Instead, I started to become sure of something else.”

“What’s that?”

“You. Just you. Your world. You and your big brain and not just that you fight, but the way that you fight, like a scientist, like someone who will find the answer, no matter what. Like someone who trusts the data as they come to tell you something. Like the world is observable and beautiful both.

“I want to see that world with you. I want you to take me where you’re going, because I can’t even imagine it. All this stuff we haven’t been able to see about each other? Doesn’t it feel like if we just held on to each other we would be—amazed? That’s what I feel like. I feel amazed. I feel like none of this is comfortable but it’s not supposed to be comfortable, if we’re down in it, really living.

“Also, this thing, this thing that happened between C and Lincoln, I feel like it was like, this aperture. Like you couldn’t, at first, handle too much light, you’d be too exposed, so Lincoln was a way to let in just enough, and then maybe, I hope maybe, you can take in more light, and be Jenny, with me, who was always Evan. It was always me. And my amazement is so connected to all of it, to all these tiny moving parts that added up.

“The only thing I can’t imagine is being without you. Everything else, I don’t know if it’s dark or light, but that’s okay. I think that’s okay.”

“In theory,” I say, softly, but my insides are all on alert, interested, circling around how something small, a lot of small somethings, are coming together.

“Yeah?”

I look at him, tall and bulky and graceful, his eyes squinting and blue, his eyebrows mashed together. “Theories aren’t bad. It’s just that, really, it takes a lot of data to make a theory. It takes a lot of data that piles on top of itself, and is the same data, over and over. A theory also has to bear a lot of variation and still come out the same way in the end. Close-up, all the different methods you use to start the experiment could look scattered and chaotic, but as you pull back, you can see how all those different methods are converging into the same conclusion.”

“A lot of data?”

“A lot. For a theory, you basically need all the data.”

He reaches for my face, holds it, and then he’s stepping close to me, and I’m stepping close to him.

I’m so glad to be kissing him, his snowy-mint smell just like he said, amazing. Hard to imagine it’s real because it’s something I want, so much, and that I have.

When do we ever get what we want?

Maybe we do if we’re willing to lose everything, or maybe what we want is so bound to loss, is so inevitably something we will grieve even if we manage to find and hold on to it, that to grab what you want is to accept the grief of losing it.

If I love Evan, I will lose him. If not now, inevitably.

To be willing to love him is to be willing to lose him, to grieve over him.

I have always wanted to see the world, and I have seen so much of it—the small things that make up the whole origin of the beautiful world.

I can’t imagine how it is I will see them, now.

I can’t imagine, but I will, I’m willing to lose, and lose, and lose again and again just to be able to see what it is I can in all the ways I can’t imagine, standing on my porch in the cold, kissing Evan.

“Come in,” I tell him, our breath making clouds around us.

“Okay.”

He follows me in, still kissing me, holding back my hair.

He’s backing me into the sofa, and when my knees hit, the lamp on the end table goes on.

He looks over at it, at us suddenly bathed in light in the room dark from the snowstorm.

I laugh. “I put a little motion detector on it so I wouldn’t have to remember to turn it on in low light, before it was too dark. I can turn it off.”

He looks at me, sparkling again. “No. I do not want you to turn off that light.”

“What do you want?”

“Touch yourself,” he whispers.

“I don’t—” But I can’t finish. I don’t want to? But I do, I feel heavy and tight, like everything’s bigger, open, and a pulse has started.

He runs a finger over the gusset of my pants, soft. “I want to watch you.” He looks in my face. “It’s just—I’ve imagined it.”