Twenty-Four Years Ago

Twenty-Four Years Ago

"This is not going well," Liam said.

"Well, who on earth asked you?"

Liam laughed, Cory flicking a paintbrush in his direction. They were at Windbreak, at the end of a rainstorm. They had both been in Los Angeles for work and they found an excuse to meet here for a couple of days. (Didn't it always end with them finding an excuse to meet here for a couple of days?) Cory was hanging wallpaper in Windbreak's living room. Bird-patterned wallpaper.

She didn't want his help, so Liam was standing beneath the ladder, watching her work, watching that wallpaper go up. He didn't particularly like it. The birds seemed wild, dangerous. And hadn't his mother always said that birds inside a house were bad luck? Nevertheless. Cory loved it, so up it was going.

Cory stepped up higher on the ladder, readjusted the level. "I think that looks pretty good."

"That makes one of us."

She smiled at him, reached for her razor knife.

"You know," he said, "the books, the views, the ugly birds… This seems like a perfect room for you to write in."

He felt her body tense. "It would be, I imagine. But it's not my room."

"The wallpaper says otherwise."

She let out a laugh.

"Do you ever think about writing?"

"Liam—"

"What?"

"Don't think that I don't see where this is going," she said. "Just because Sylvia is spending a suspicious amount of time with her personal trainer…"

"He's not her personal trainer. He's her friend's personal trainer."

"Forgive me. Just because Sylvia is being Sylvia, that still doesn't mean you get to question my life choices."

"I love your life choices. I love every choice that has brought you to still be standing here in this room, on this ladder, in those very adorable overalls and old lady glasses… somehow and miraculously not done with me quite yet."

"Oh, believe me, I'm getting closer."

He smiled at her. He knew he needed to tread carefully. Her work was a source of contention for them. He wanted to remind her that when she interviewed with Sally, it was supposed to be temporary. The corporate world, the long hours, the stress her job put on her—that was never supposed to be the long-term plan. She'd made plenty of money now to do what she wanted to do. Why wasn't she doing what she wanted to do?

"I think someone might say that I'm hitting a nerve," he said.

"Don't give yourself so much credit," she said. "Besides, who says I'm not still writing anyway?"

That stopped him. "Really?"

"Yes. Really."

"How did I not know that?" he asked.

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me."

He put his hands on the ladder. She stepped down several rungs and turned toward him, so that his hands were right over her head, encircling her. His face inches from her face. Just the two of them breathing in that air, like a halo, like a safety valve.

"I pray every day that's not true," he said, sincerely.

"Okay. Well." She met his eyes. "Do you remember Mrs. Dixon?"

"Mrs. Dixon?"

"Sophomore English. Had lots of turtle paraphernalia in the classroom."

He never had her as a teacher, but he searched his memory to properly place her. Fidelity is who you tell your stories to. He could feel how important it was that he really showed up for this one.

"With the red hair, yeah?" he said. "She made Joe join the literary review or she was going to fail him?"

"Exactly. She had a New Yorker writer come into the class to speak to us, a short story writer, and he sat on the floor in front of the class, and he told us that when he's writing his stories, they're each a love letter to one person. A love letter that other people are just peeking in on." She shrugged. "I still think about it when I write and it takes it away."

"Takes what away?"

"Any idea that I should be writing for anyone but me."

"And the person."

"Yes. And the person."

"Who's the person?"

She smiled, not answering. "Don't miss the point."

"Fair enough. Tell me the point."

"I know that it's your favorite pastime, to focus on what should have been, but I don't like to focus on it. It's a waste. And to be honest, it feels like just another thing that gets in the way of you finding it. Holding on to it."

"What's that?"

"Happiness."

"How did this become a referendum on me?"

"You interrupted my wallpaper install."

"So you don't ever think about the alternative life?" He shrugged. "The one where I get to be with you every day and all the babies we've had running around, we are raising them together. And you write in this room all day and at night, I bring us some tea, and sit in that chair there. And watch you work."

"I like my life," she said. "Plus, you're watching me now. And I'm finding it quite annoying."

"That's not an answer," he said.

He pushed the hair out of her face, her thick curls. His fingers running the length of her cheek.

She leaned into him, into his fingers. "The sunset's going to be beautiful when the rain clears. Why don't you go save a spot on the cliff, and when you're annoying me less, maybe I'll come meet you out there."

"You're exiling me? Into the rain?"

"You have boots."

She kissed his wrist, the edge of his palm. Then she turned away from him, headed back up the ladder.

He looked up at her. "For what it's worth, I am happy," he said. "I'm happy whenever I'm with you."

"Good to hear, out you go."

"I'm serious, Cory. How long has it been? Almost thirty years now and there's still nothing that makes me happier than you."

"Oh please. You always get like this when we're here together."

"Well, that's because it's our place."

"It's not."

He started to walk to the porch and the sunset, to give her what she wanted. "If that's true, then I'm taking the wallpaper down as soon as you leave."