Page 94 of The Spirit of Love
I’m glad we met. I won’t forget our time together. But what you want to give isn’t enough for me, so this is goodbye.
—Fenny
I pack up my things. I take the camcorder and leave the viewfinder. I touch the adder stone at my neck. I consider keeping it, but it’s too special. It belongs with Sam. I take it off and leave it on the kitchen counter next to my note.
I lace up my sneakers, pull on my sweatshirt, and dabsunscreen on my face. I take one last look at Sam’s stunning, mystical cabin, then I walk out the front door. I mount my bike and watch a pelican dive-bomb into the ocean, knowing what it wants and how to get it. I feel suddenly as desperate to get away from this place as I’d been desperate to arrive less than a day ago.
The sun is strong, the wind unfriendly, and the trail steep and narrow. On my left, it’s edged with sheer drops into the ocean; on my right, it’s seasoned with cacti and boulders the size of my bike that must have tumbled down from rockslides past. Every hundred yards or so, I huff past signs warning of the dangers of charging bison.
When Two Harbors finally comes into view below my path, my limbs are burning and my heart feels spent, but I’m relieved to have arrived. It wasn’t a mistake to leave Sam’s cabin. I can tell from the subtle loosening in my chest at the sight of this tiny town. I can miss him and still be clear that I could not have stayed at his cabin any longer than I did. I have one more night on Catalina. I’ll find my friends. I’ll get some food. I’ll stare at the sun-dappled sea until I know what to do about Jude. However long that takes.
I’m approaching Isthmus Cove, Two Harbors’s large east-facing harbor, which is home to the public ferry terminal, the public beach, and the rental offices for all the water sports. This harbor looks out toward the mainland, and on a clear day like today, you can see Marina del Rey across the water and all the way up the coastline to Malibu.
Two Harbors’s other harbor is a few minutes’ bike ride farther west, through the one-street town and minuscule residential neighborhood containing some forty houses. On the other sideof this half-mile-long isthmus sits the west-facing harbor. It looks out on thousands of miles of open ocean and contains the sleepy Del Rey Yacht Club, where my friends are anchored and will hopefully soon anchor me.
I take the last downslope of the trail even faster now that I can see the Harbor Reef. I want to be there on the bar’s worn wood patio, parked under an umbrella, connecting to Wi-Fi and sipping the island’s signature cocktail. The buffalo milk is a nutmeg-dusted frozen Kahlúa concoction, heavy on the whipped cream and good for drowning sorrows.
There’s a ferry docked at the harbor and a crowd of adventure-seeking passengers unloading. Most come here to hike the Trans-Catalina Trail. I remember the last time I was here, how the sight of this ferry broke my heart a little because it meant saying goodbye to Sam. This morning, it’s a welcome sight, a breath of civilization. I see families gathering their gear from the ferry’s hold, friends helping each other cram one more thing into a backpack. I notice a couple huddled close together by the information booth. They’re consulting a map, disagreeing about something as they plan out a future memory. I’m sure they have their own issues to contend with, but I can’t help feeling jealous of the two of them and their map. It’s so simple, but I want that—the mundane, everyday moments in between the high notes. With Sam, it was all about the high notes.
By the time I park my bike in the tiny town square, it’s still only nine forty-five in the morning. Olivia, Masha, Eli, and Jake aren’t planning to meet me here for over an hour. They’re probably still in bed. I think about biking the few extra minutes west toward the yacht club. If any of them are up and on deck, Imight wave them down and they could send over the dinghy to pick me up. But then I decide I could use the solo time to get my thoughts together first. Maybe I can grab some souvenirs for my nephews.
The Harbor Reef isn’t open yet, but next door there’s a small mini-mart where I can get some tea and island trinkets. The market is part bookstore, part pharmacy, part make-your-own ramen station, and part gourmet grocery store, where everything’s three times as expensive as it should be and also expired. I find an iced chai in the refrigerated section and a couple garibaldi stuffies that say “Two Harbors” on the fins. I carry my items toward the front of the store to check out.
I’m heading up the checkout aisle when I see a tall, familiar man with his back to me. He’s wearing a thin gray T-shirt, fitted black swim trunks, and a well-worn pair of New Balance sneakers. His broad-brimmed straw hat shields his head and neck, but I recognize his height, his hands, and the telltale bulge of his deltoid as he reaches for a squeeze bottle of honey on the shelf.
Sam. He’s here. In town. Holding a bundle of firewood because we used the last of his stash last night. What do I do with this new information? Back at his cabin, I’d ended things—but he doesn’t know that yet! He’s at the market, shopping for the missing ingredient of the cocktail he knows I like. Which is sweet. And maybe there’s more sweetness where that came from. Would he come to brunch and meet my friends? Would we talk through last night’s argument? Would that make up for what he’d said in his note?
Is running into him here a sign that there’s something worth salvaging between us? Do I want to salvage it? I can’t tell.
In my heart, I don’t think there’s a future for Sam and me.
But is there one more night together?
I can’t deny that I’m touched to find him here. And so, without fully thinking through the implications, I approach him from behind. I rise on my toes and slip one hand over his eyes. I slip the other around his waist.
As soon as I’ve got my arms around him, I realize my mistake. This man is too thin to be Sam. The knowledge that I’ve just pounced on a stranger makes me rear back, pulling away my hands. Just as the stranger spins around in shock.
“SorryIthoughtyouweresomeoneelse!” I blurt out.
“Fenny?”
I look up and stare. The man standing before me, with the honey and the firewood and the skinny waist…is Jude.
And he’s not happy to see me. He looks horrified.
Which makes two of us.
“What are you doing here?” we both demand at the same time.
“I’m sorry about that handsy moment,” I say, taking another step back. “I swear, I thought you were…”
I stop talking because something is happening, something that makes it hard for me to tell whether I’m actually losing my mind. This is not the first time I’ve mistaken Jude for Sam. I appreciate Lorena, but she was talking out of her ass with that erotic conflation stuff. Something else is going on. Jude is thinner and older and bearded and scarred, but his eyes are Sam’s eyes. I knew it that first day in Rich’s office, but I convinced myself I was wrong. I wasn’t. Staring into them now is a mindfuck I wouldn’t know how to begin to express on film. Real life needsthe ability to jump-cut to another scene, a moment in my future when I’ve had time to make sense of this insensible situation.
“I’m not stalking you,” is the thing Jude decides to say, whipping off his hat so I can see more of his—Sam’s—his—face.
His bizarre defense is so out of step with the whirlpool going on in my head that I begin to laugh.
“Honestly,” he insists, and I laugh harder. “I did not know you would be here. Whatareyou doing here? This is really the opposite of stalking—”
