Now he leaned in, and their lips met. Jane felt a yearning from deep inside flooding her entire body. Laughing, they stumbled to the bedroom.
Chapter Twelve
Lauren
It wasn’t only a new year. It was a new decade. 2020. The symmetry of the number might augur good things. Jane loved dates with some kind of pattern, even though she knew it was silly to endow them with meaning. They were simply numbers on a calendar. Still, that was Jane’s life’s work: imposing order on an arbitrary, chaotic world. But maybe the meaninglessness was the meaning.
Life was a gift. It was luck. Incredible luck, if she thought about the odds of being conceived, of the millions of sperm and the thousands of eggs, all desperately trying to become zygotes. She couldn’t imagine her parents had ever gotten conjugal with any frequency, making the likelihood of conception that much more improbable.
Jane was keeping a diary this year. She’d found a beautiful one, leather-bound and covered in Italian marbled paper. She hoped writing some of this mental detritus down would stop itfrom whirling and fluttering in her mind. It would be like pinning butterflies to a board, though she hoped not as gruesome. She also wanted some new objectives.
The first thing she wrote was:
BE GRATEFUL. BE GRACIOUS. BE LOVING.
So trite, Jane almost blushed. Yet, it also seemed profound. And it reminded her of her vow to:
OPEN YOUR HEART.
If she was leaning into clichéd aphorisms, she might as well go whole hog, so next was:
BE IN THE MOMENT.
She sighed as she wrote that. But yet again, it seemed appropriate and constructive. Jane knew her perseverations about everything got in the way of everything. Next:
BE MORE PRODUCTIVE.
Was she going to consider herself a chronic underachiever forever? What exactly was she trying to achieve? No, more important to:
RELAX MORE.
This was completely at cross-purposes with her previous resolution. Clearly she needed to look for:
BALANCE.
So far, her objectives were all very lofty and general, and Jane needed some tangible things as well:
DO MORE CARDIO.
DO MORE YOGA.
GO TO THE FARMERS MARKET.
TELL PEOPLE YOU LOVE THEM (even if you aren’t sure you do).
DO A SMALL ORGANIZATIONAL TASK EVERY DAY.
CLEAR SPACE, CLEAR MIND.
DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE!!!
There. A to-do list for the new decade.
Three weeks into the New Year, Jane had been diligently rereading these resolutions daily and scribbling in her diary. She was impatient with it, but she forced herself to do it. It was good mental hygiene.
In the spirit of good mental hygiene, Jane had messaged Jake on Bumble. She wanted to let him know that although she really liked him, she was still figuring out things with her ex, and she didn’t feel like it was fair to try dating when she still didn’t feel entirely emotionally available. She would be turning off her dating apps for the time being and didn’t want him to think she was ghosting him.
Jake was courteous and respectful in his response.
