Page 104 of The Spirit of Love
“I didn’t mean it when I called you that.”
“Yes, you did. And you were right. I changed everything about myself after the accident. I changed my name. I changed my career. I changed my lifestyle and all my plans for my future. I never wanted to look back at the kid who made that reckless mistake. I threw him away. Ilethim die that day.” He looks around the cabin sadly. “And the worst part is, I didn’t think I missed him. I didn’t know I was missing anything—until I met you. This past month. You’ve got me seeing everything differently. You’ve got me wanting…”
“Wanting what?”
“To reinvent myself yet again. To turn into someone you’d want to be with.” He smiles, sadly. “I didn’t see you coming, Fenny. I didn’t know that the part of me that died that day was the part of me you would have liked best.”
“Jude.”
“I came to Catalina to find Sam again. But somehow it seems you found him first.”
“Oh, God,” I breathe. “And now he’s gone because of me?”
“No,” Jude says. His fingers brush my cheek. He’s smiling. “No, I don’t think he’s gone.”
“But this cabin, this place, it’s all so…” I look around, and my eyes land on the kitchen counter. Where I’d left Sam that note saying goodbye. Saying we were over. The note is gone, but something else remains.
The adder stone.
“Wait a minute,” I say, drawing Jude over to the counter.
Jude studies the necklace and then picks it up. “I used to have one just like this,” he says, draping it over my head. “But this one’s yours, I think.”
“You believe in this stuff?”
“Today I do.”
He leaves me with the necklace, walking toward the side door of the cabin, stepping out onto the porch that faces the ocean. It’s stopped raining, but it looks like it could start again at any moment. The sky is pocked with blue breaking through thick clouds. In the distance, near the mainland, shimmers an almost invisible rainbow.
Sam’s pull-up bar is still here, welded between two wooden posts. Jude reaches up with his left arm, precisely the way I used to love watching Sam reach up. Just before he grabs the bar, he pauses, tosses his head. Then, with his back to me, he whips off his shirt, letting it drop at his feet.
“For continuity,” he says as my eyes feast on his back, slightly leaner, ten years older, and quite possibly even more beautiful. “Whenever you’re ready,” he tells me, “say action.”
He’s telling me without telling me to frame the shot with magic. I hold up the adder stone to my face and look through the hole at the man who straddled life and death and time and space and ended up whole, right here, with me.
“Action.”
Slowly, straining, Jude pulls himself up to the bar. I watch his muscles flex. I watch them swell in size. Jude’s chin crests the bar as the sun explodes from behind a cloud. Its rays reach like angels to lift him even higher.
He lowers his body until his feet touch the planks. He turns around to face me. I let go of the stone.
“Wow,” I say.
“Did it work?” he asks, touching his arms, his face, his chest.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I think I need to check under the hood.”
Jude grins and moves toward me. He gazes down into my eyes. He looks different, but exactly the same. His eyes are open yet discerning. He puts his hands around my waist, and his touch is boyish smooth but also lit with the confidence of a man.
“Samuel Jude de Silva,” I whisper, drawing him close.
“Yes, Fenny?”
“Kiss me.”
His lips touch mine, and that’s when I know. He’s everything I want. He’s all he’s supposed to be. He can reinvent himself as many times as he wants or never again, as long as he doesn’t stop kissing me.
A blast of horns startles us both. It’s coming from the ocean, and we force ourselves to break apart.The Midlife Crisisis sailing past Sam’s cabin, and ant-sized Olivia and Masha hold binoculars to their eyes, jumping up and down on the deck and waving. A voice calls over the loudspeaker.
