Imeros

by Paul Hina

was standing between him and his muse. She was always what stood between he and Melissa. But she was also what saved him from the madness of living alone with Melissa's ghost. Without her rescuing him all those years ago, he hates to think where he would be right now.

  She walks over to him and leans down to kiss his forehead. "I love you, you know."

  "I know, and I love you too." As he says it, he knows that he means it. It may not be the most passionate of loves, but it is the kind of love that has kept him tied to the earth all these years. Rachael has always been what keeps him from floating off directionless, and since he has spent these past weeks cut loose from her, he's been flailing all over again.

  He does love Joelle, in as much as she has become a stand-in for Melissa, but Rachael is his anchor, and he needs her more now than ever.

  But he'll never quite be ready to give up the ghost.

  He had started trying to save money as soon as he had taken an interest in Melissa. Even before he knew his feelings for her would be reciprocated, he felt that the spark he carried for her was significant, and that it would only grow. And his bet eventually paid off. By the end of the winter quarter, they were on fire for each other. That spark he'd carried had grown into something that they knew they couldn't control, and they rarely even tried.

  They spent all their free time together. Classes certainly kept them busy, and his jobs were enough to steal whole evenings from them. But they owned the nights. And, to his relief, she was a cheap date. All they usually did was go for walks or make love, and there were even those rare occasions when they might combine the two, making love on the middle of a hike, laying on the cool grass and ravaging each other's bodies. They didn't need anything else. They were so in love, so on fire for each other, that all they wanted was to be near each other, feel the heat of that nearness. And they could still never get near enough.

  Needless to say, he could not imagine going without her for even a single day. So, he was upset when she told him that she was planning on going to her family's vacation house over spring break.

  She didn't ask him to go with her. He had to work anyway, and was in no position to miss a week's work. She did, however, ask him to visit over the final weekend. She wanted him to meet her family, but she had made it clear that she had other matters to attend to before she could introduce Jacob to the rest of her life.

  Melissa's fiancé, Mark, had been put off and given the cold shoulder for weeks now, but she had not officially broken it off with him. He was also going to be visiting La Jolla, flying in with her parents from the East, during spring break. This was when she planned to tell him and her family that the engagement was off and that the August wedding, that had been in the planning stages since the previous fall, wasn't going to happen.

  Jacob had been insecure about the fact that she was still technically engaged to another man, and for good reason. He was constantly asking himself why she hadn't broken it off with this guy from the start. But she hadn't seen Mark since the holidays, and she believed that she owed it to him to end things face-to-face.

  It seemed like a relationship that was full of disfunction anyway. She claimed that it had started to sour even before she met Jacob. They had been together since they were young teenagers. Their families had been close for even longer. Their fathers had worked for the same Boston Law Firm since graduating law school, and had been close friends since their law school days. Melissa knew that ending things with Mark was not only going to be devastating to him, but also to both of their families. Her parents had long ago accepted Mark as a member of the family, but, also, she had grown very close to his family, and disappointing them was going to be painful for her. She had known them since she was a little girl, and this was going to be an embarrassing blow to ask them to endure. These were families who cared about appearances, whose social standing was important to them, and almost everyone who ran in their social circle knew about the engagement, and the upcoming August ceremony. Canceling the engagement was going to cause immediate shockwaves of panic and damage control, and no matter how silly and superficial these reactions might be in the great scheme of things, she still hated to be the reason for unnecessary turmoil in anyone's life, particularly in the lives of those she loved.

  Jacob knew that all this was going to make for an incredibly difficult week for her, and he wanted to do something grand to send her off, something to make her feel better about having to tell all the people in her life that things weren't going to go as planned.

  So, he took the few hundred dollars that he had managed to collect over the past several months, and he bought a ring. His few hundred dollars would only buy a paltry excuse for a diamond, and this was made all the more emasculating since he knew her old ring was worth more than he could save all year long, but it was the best he could do.

  That night he took her on a picnic, having had no money left for a nice restaurant. As they ate, his nerves grew more and more frazzled, and the words he had spent the day rehearsing felt more and more canned rolling around in his head, and his anxiety only grew as one second ticked into another. He had to admit, as much as he loved her, and as much as he knew she loved him, he was still afraid that he wouldn't be able to give her all the things that she had grown accustomed to with her wealth. He'd never be able to fulfill her material wishes the way her current fiancé could.

  But when she looked at him, her eyes ashine with the same love that he knew his eyes shined with, he knew that those things were of minor importance when it came to the bigger things in life, the most important things, the things that truly make the difference between happiness and unhappiness.

  And as she fell into his arms, laying back against his body, looking up and waiting to pluck a kiss from his face, he found a way to reach into his pocket and retrieve the ring.

  "Melissa, I know that this week isn't going to be easy, and I wanted to find a way to assure you that the choices you make this week are worth it."

  "I don't doubt that, Jacob."

  "Well, just in case, I wanted to give you this." He showed her the ring. "I've never needed something the way that my body, my heart, needs you. I love you so wholly and without reservation. I know I don't have the wealth to offer you that Mark has, but I do love you. Will you marry me?"

  "Oh, Jacob. I will. You know I will."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yes. Yes, of course," she said and held her hand out for him to place the ring on her finger.

  "I know it's not—"

  "No, it's perfect. I wouldn't have asked for anything more."

  The memory of that day is so perfectly clear to him. Even that night he can remember how tender their lovemaking was, how perfectly they fit together. He can still remember the shape of her body against his, the warmth of her skin against his, and the way his heart would jump every time he felt the rise and fall of her breathing.

  He can honestly say, and has always known, that that night, the last night he spent with her, was the most whole, the most full he had ever been, and, sadly, the most whole he would ever be.

  Every time he looks back on it, he wishes he had stayed awake, experienced her more. He wishes he might have kept her up late into the night talking about their future, as they had done countless nights before.

  But it was this night, a night that she slept in his arms, so quiet and warm against his body, that he just couldn't resist the comfort of it. It was one of the few nights where any anxiety he might have felt about their future was a distant thing. The peace and quiet of her body embraced his body, and those old voices of self-doubt faded away. And after this new sense of comfort set in, he slept the sleep of the dead.

  He slept so deeply that he wasn't awake when she left for La Jolla the following morning.

  When he did wake up, there was a note on the pillow that read: 'Five days is an unbearably long time to be without you. I'll call everyday. And when you come on Friday, we'll celebrate our engagement with my family. I love you something incredible, and I'
ll be counting the days until I can be near you again. All my love, Melissa.'

  To this day, that note still sits in his wallet. The letters of all the words made nearly unreadable by years and fingers.

  Jacob's plan to resist Joelle sexually is beginning to crumble. They have been spending their afternoons—these soft, spring afternoons—sprawled out on his office floor, fingers stretching over exposed skin, lips playing with lips, and they are getting impossibly close to the brink of the cheat.

  And he is losing his will.

  Everyday they get closer to crossing that line, and everyday it grows more difficult for him to mind the line. They are so physically and emotionally enamored with one another that it is hard to get wrapped up in each other's bodies, get lost in the bliss of a kiss, and not lose the line.

  When he looks at her beautiful face, traces her body's shape with the slightest touch of fingers, he is reminded of passions deeper than rationality. When he tastes her mouth, and breathes the air of her skin's scent, he loses the rhythm of his reason, and something scarier takes over, something harder to control, a craving that he wants to surrender to, lose himself in.

  He watches the chase of her eyes climbing to the back of her brain when he touches her on this place, or that place of her body. He watches the