The One Who Got Away: A Novel by Bethany Bloom Page B

at
your word. But really, Olivine,” he laughed, “how many more men like this am I
going to meet?” He looked at her sideways, his grin spreading across his face.
“Do you leave a trail of heartbroken men? A wake of pining guys? Is this to be
my fate as well? Am I one of many?”
    “Well, I am pretty hot,” she said,
grinning.  
    “Indeed you are.”
    She winced a bit, just as she did
whenever he used that word. Indeed. So pretentious. So affected.
    “And we’re engaged,” he said. “And
I love you. And I need you. You know that, don’t you? We have a lot of big,
important plans together. Big, important things to do with our lives.”
    She looked down at her hand, where
her ring should have been. “I love you, too.”
    *****
    Later that night, Olivine
burrowed into her down comforter and kicked a leg across the cottony expanse of
her sheets. Her mind was racing, and she tried to ground herself by consciously
feeling each place where her body met the bed. Paul snored softly beside her.
    Henry’s lips. When she closed her
eyes, she could remember exactly the way it felt to kiss them. She rolled onto
her side to face Paul, but he was lying on his side, as well, and facing away
from her. His body was bare, except for the white cotton sheet tucked around
his middle. His shoulders were broad and muscular, tapering just the slightest
bit to his waist. He was strong and capable and able to handle anything with
rational, composed thought. Olivine smiled as she thought about how Paul could
handle even the toughest relationship issues in the short distance of a car
ride. In fact, each of the monumental events of their relationship had happened
in the car. On his way to get somewhere. On their way to get somewhere.
    Paul’s breathing was calm and
measured—even in sleep. She was lucky to have found a man who loved her and her
alone. Who knew how to talk to her calmly, how to soothe her with his words,
how to fix people, how to fix anything. A man who could detach from personal
problems and live an important life. To do what needed to be done. Paul had
many things to show her and he would give her a good life, a solid life, a
secure life.
    And then her thoughts turned to
Henry. To a moment a week or so before he had left. They had been sitting in
her car, an older model Jeep than the one she drove now, and he had kissed her,
and then she was sitting astride him, on the passenger’s seat and he had told
her she was the most amazing thing he had ever laid eyes on and then she kissed
his lips, his cheekbones, his forehead, his neck, and each earlobe, kissing all
the way down his neck and then to his lips once more. He began to laugh and he
pointed at the windshield and she turned to see that all the glass in the car
had fogged up so completely they couldn’t see out, and they giggled together and
he leaned over, and with his index finger, he wrote, “Henry loves Olivine” in
the steam on the windshield. Giant letters that covered the entire view.
    And then—after he had
disappeared, after he had left her—on any cold or wet morning, when she would
need to use the defroster, Henry’s words would appear again. A phantom message
reminding her of a time that had once been, but was no longer.  
    Olivine fell asleep, finally, to
the sounds of Paul’s hushed and gentle breathing, and she dreamt that she was
in a room with shiny white walls and royal blue trim and Henry was lying on the
bottom bunk of a three story bed. One hand was propped behind his ear and he
was grinning at her.
    “Don’t worry,” he kept saying,
“We have time. We have all the time in the world. If not in this life, then in
another.” And in the dream, as he said these words, a weight lifted from her
and a sense of freedom, open and tickling, rolled through her. His lolling gaze
melted over her where she stood and she felt like she had turned to water, and
she was overflowing from her arms, her legs, the top of her head.
    And in the dream, Henry