Love After All?

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Three years had passed since the last time I had seen Erik. This would be inter­est­ing, I thought, as I fin­ished draw­ing the black eye­liner on my upper lids.

I slid into a just-tight-enough pair of black pants and declared the match­ing vio­let sweater set win­ner of the “I want to look good, but not too good” con­test. My bed was made for the first time in weeks, its invit­ing pur­ple and red che­nille cov­ers set­ting a serene and sen­sual mood.

It was time to present myself as the suc­cess­ful baby pho­tog­ra­pher. Time to show that I was a together 26 year-old woman, some­one who learned from her mis­takes, some­one will­ing to take respon­si­bil­ity for her actions. Time to apol­o­gize for all of the crap I put on Erik when we broke up.

I gath­ered the clothes that were habit­u­ally flung across the room and piled them in my closet. Out of sight, out of mind.

I had just got­ten out of a rather rocky rela­tion­ship with some­one Erik had never met, and I was ashamed of it, ashamed of telling Erik that I had been with some­one who was so emo­tion­ally dys­func­tional. I lifted the bangs out of my eyes with a crys­tal but­ter­fly clip. Noth­ing like hav­ing din­ner with dam­aged goods.

The door­bell rang and I ran down the stairs, more ner­vous than I had expected to be.

Sure, Erik and I had once been engaged, but it had been three years since I had seen him. I fig­ured it was about time we finally became friends.

“Com­ing,” I yelled. I re-adjusted my push-up bra and downed the last drops of Mer­lot in my glass. Shit, shit. OK, everything’s fine, no big deal, calm down, check your­self in the mir­ror. Bet­ter yet, check your­self in. 6:58pm. Good old Erik. Right on time.

“Hi,” I said, as I opened the door. “Come in.”

“It’s great to see you. How are you?” Erik asked with an open smile. Deep brown eyes, small glasses, clean cut black hair speck­led with hints of gray, defined jaw with the begin­ning of a five o’clock shadow, fit­ted black wool sweater and loose jeans. He reached to give me a hug and it seemed a nat­ural thing to do. I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t believe how hard my heart was strug­gling to get out of my chest.

“Guess this is what hap­pens when you don’t plan,” I mum­bled. I had no idea I would be this attracted to him. See­ing Erik in a roman­tic way again had seemed impos­si­ble, a closed chap­ter in my book.

“What?” he asked, as he closed his arms around me.

We held each other for the first time in three years, his face nes­tled in my neck.

“Never mind,” I whis­pered. I felt his back with my hands, rubbed it slowly, let­ting him know this was exactly where I wanted to be. His shoul­ders were strong under his soft black wool, more filled out, more like a man than a young col­lege stu­dent. I was com­forted by his smell—a clean sub­tle scent—something I didn’t know I had missed.

We sev­ered our per­fect align­ment after what seemed like a ten minute embrace. Three years was longer than I had thought. So much had hap­pened. So many dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences, all hold­ing secrets I had not been privy to when Erik and I were a couple.

I brought him into the liv­ing room and pointed to the wall. “These are my friends.”

Erik stud­ied the black and white pho­tographs, all women, all nude.

“Well, most of them are my friends, some are me.” I gig­gled uncomfortably.

“You took these. They’re unbe­liev­able,” He sounded impressed and gen­uinely interested.

“Yeah. Except for the ones of me. That one and that one.” I stopped my foot from tap­ping and pointed to the photo of me sprawled out, face down, on a large rock. Just me and that rock on a cold, rainy Feb­ru­ary day. My first time bare in front of a cam­era. “Pretty extreme from shoot­ing babies.”

“They’re amaz­ing. Incred­i­ble works of art.” Erik engaged each pho­to­graph with his full atten­tion. “They’re more than amaz­ing. I don’t even know how to artic­u­late how beau­ti­ful they are. This one.”

He pointed to the photo of my preg­nant friend danc­ing on the beach. “The con­trast of the cliff next to her cur­va­ceous body. And the way her hands are up, still in motion. What a way to doc­u­ment a pregnancy.”

I had for­got­ten how sup­port­ive he was of my pas­sions. He wanted to be so help­ful when I first started my busi­ness and I resented him for it.

“It’s a really intense expe­ri­ence,” I said, hop­ing I sounded more relaxed than I felt. “None of these women have ever been pho­tographed nude. They all have to go through their own thing, feel­ing fat, not feel­ing free. There’s this thing in all of us that makes us think we should some how pose or suck in. I try to relax them enough on our hike down to the beach and fig­ure out what’s going on in their lives, you know, where they’re at, what they’re ready for, what they need to work through. I like to think of the shoots as a sort of rite of pas­sage, at least they have been for me.”

Our eyes fixed on each other for an extended moment. Were we both think­ing the same things? He stepped closer to me so he could get a bet­ter look at a pho­to­graph of my friend lying on her back in the sand. Her face was shad­owed, her right nip­ple stroked by the light. He seemed drawn to this one. I was aroused by his appre­ci­a­tion and his smell.

“You’ve always had this way of putting peo­ple at ease,” he said. “I remem­ber watch­ing you pho­to­graph that lit­tle girl when you first started your busi­ness. That lit­tle blond two-year-old who wouldn’t take her thumb out of her mouth.”

“I remem­ber. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.”

“You had her fooled. She came in all shy. It didn’t look like you were going to get any good shots. And I’m think­ing, how the hell is Hyla going to pull this off? She wouldn’t even get in front of the lights. And the lit­tle girl started crying—a sure sign that you were going to have to re-shoot her, as far as I was con­cerned. Then you pulled out this multi-colored bub­ble gun, and that was it. You started blow­ing bub­bles over the back­drop, pop­ping them with your nose. She was intrigued just enough to walk in front of the lights.”

Erik removed his tita­nium rimmed glasses, looked at me, and then put the glasses back over his dark, sin­cere eyes. “I imag­ine you’re one of the few peo­ple I know who has the abil­ity to make a woman feel com­fort­able enough to run around naked on the beach. That requires tremen­dous trust.”

“Oh, that pic­ture there … see that big rock to the right? That’s Ten­nessee Val­ley beach. Remem­ber when we went there when we first came to Cal­i­for­nia? I’ve always had such a con­nec­tion with that place. I go there all the time.”

“I wasn’t in the best mind­set then.” Erik put his hands in his jeans pock­ets and looked down at the car­pet. “I feel badly about the way things ended with us. I just want to say that, while I have this opportunity.”

“I do, too. I’m sorry it got so ugly.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time think­ing about it, what I did wrong. Over three years. I didn’t want to break up. I should have left our apart­ment way before I did. I was freaked out about hav­ing moved across the coun­try. I felt alone. I just want to say that I am really sorry about any destruc­tive part I played in our break-up.”

I thought about our drive across coun­try together, just after grad­u­a­tion from Florida State Uni­ver­sity. Erik was good to me and I pushed him away. And here he was now, being so vul­ner­a­ble and open.

I walked toward my plush, green vel­vet couch. “Let’s sit down for a minute.

We sat at oppo­site ends of the couch, our knees fac­ing each other. I was tempted to move closer.

“It was a lot to just pick up and move across coun­try,” I said. “Not hav­ing any fam­ily out here. I appre­ci­ate you being so open about it—the world would be a bet­ter place if every­one were as open as you—but I’m the one who made it really hard. That, I know now. I mean, I know it takes two. I know our dynamic was off there for a while, but it was so easy for me to blame you for every­thing. I was just dump­ing all my inse­cu­ri­ties on you. I wasn’t ready to be loved the way you loved me. I had so many things to prove to myself.”

I recalled my mind­set when we moved to Cal­i­for­nia. I had all of these issues. Feel­ing unsta­ble, unwor­thy of suc­cess, unde­serv­ing of hap­pi­ness. I wanted to blame every­one but myself.

Erik stretched his left arm towards me and rested it along the back of the couch. “Some of the ways I tried to help you weren’t the best.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t move back to Miami,” I said.

“When we first broke up, I sort of flipped out. I put all my stuff in stor­age and drove back to Miami. I was only there for two weeks, when I real­ized that Miami wasn’t home any­more. I got back in my car, drove back across the coun­try, and I’ve been here ever since. Where else can you find moun­tains like this? The views are spec­tac­u­lar. The peo­ple have some­thing to say. And the city … there is so much to do in San Fran­cisco. I’m not going any­where. This is my home. I love California.”

I had been com­pletely wrapped up in my own lit­tle world since Erik and I parted. Wouldn’t have cared where he was. I didn’t even return his phone calls after I met the last train wreck rela­tion­ship. But, in that moment, I knew that I wanted to see him again. I was relieved to hear him claim North­ern Cal­i­for­nia as his home.

“Me too,” I told him. “It’s taken me a long time to make a name for myself as a good baby pho­tog­ra­pher out here. It’s expen­sive, but it’s worth it.”

“How come there are no baby pic­tures on this wall?”

I laughed. “Some­how I don’t see Hyla Molan­der, Marin County’s pre­mier child pornog­ra­pher, as a title that’s going to boost my por­trait busi­ness. I tell only a select few, very cool clients that my liv­ing room wall is smoth­ered with nudes of their baby pho­tog­ra­pher and friends. Most peo­ple don’t see the art in taste­ful nude pho­tog­ra­phy. Besides, I try to keep work and home separate.”

“So, where are you shoot­ing now?” he asked.

“God, this is so weird. I’ve had a stu­dio now for like two years and you’ve never even seen it.”

“Really? I guess I should have known, but I’d love to see it. Your tal­ent already more than impresses me. You started your busi­ness, what, like three weeks after you learned how to load a cam­era, and now your name is all over the place. I’ve seen some of your hand-tinted pic­tures at that photo shop in San Rafael. I never doubted you, but what can I say? I am filled with pride when I look around and see how your work has devel­oped. You are a tal­ented woman.”

“And I hear you’re work­ing for Indus­trial Light and Magic. That is so cool.”

“It’s an amaz­ing place. I’m for­tu­nate that I love my job. I get to be a part of all the spe­cial effects in the movies. I just got my first credit line. I think that’s the first time I actu­ally sat through all the cred­its. The words came rolling up, “Erik Grieve … Com­puter Pro­duc­tion Support.”

“I am so proud of you. I always knew you were a com­puter genius.”

Erik and I were quiet for a moment and I remem­bered how it was when we had sex—somehow dif­fer­ent every time. Mak­ing love with Erik was like explor­ing new parts of my self. I could be who ever I needed to be, feel what­ever I wanted to feel. Erik was the only man I had ever been with who could get another hard-on within 2 min­utes of ejaculation.

Erik nod­ded towards the cof­fee table, at a pho­to­graph of my grandparents.

Watch­ing his face while he stud­ied them, I thought about a future with Erik. Was I really hav­ing these feel­ings? He was so sweet and sen­si­tive and I was attracted to him after all this time. Could we pos­si­bly be right for each other now?

I picked up the gold frame. “I took that pic­ture in the Bahamas, on their 55^th wed­ding anniver­sary. Sweet, huh?”

“I’ve thought about your grand­par­ents quite a bit over the past three years. Lamby and Grand­dad, what a cou­ple. They adore you—not that they have any rea­son not to. Remem­ber our trip to New York, when we went to stay with them, and your Grand­dad gave us his map so we could find our way around Man­hat­tan. And then he waited for the train with us to make sure we got off safely. They made me feel like part of the fam­ily. And they really cared about me, just because you cared about me. I had the best con­ver­sa­tions with your Grand­dad about his inven­tions. To have that many sci­en­tific accom­plish­ments and be such an open, lov­ing man. I could spend weeks talk­ing to him.”

I was reminded of Erik as a lit­tle boy, run­ning for help, when his father died on Miami Beach. “They really liked you.” I gen­tly caressed the glass of the frame, over my Grand­par­ents’ faces.

I could finally tell by the way he kept putting his fin­ger on his chin, that he was as ner­vous as me.