“And why is that?” I ask carefully, sensing these are dangerous waters for her heart.
Her blue eyes darken with hurt and anger. “He’s married to my best friend from college.”
12
JO
It’s not a state secret. I don’t keep data like that password protected. My friends know Poppy married my father ten years ago.
But I haven’t yet been on a date where I’ve wanted to share those details. Where I’ve wanted a man to understand more about me.
To see me for who I am.
To know about the part of me that makes me this person.
Except this isn’t truly a date, so maybe calling it friendship made it possible to tell Heath.
“That’s . . . a lot,” Heath says gently, his eyes soft with concern. “I take it that’s not easy for you.”
“It’s fine.” I make light of it since I don’t want to scare him away.
“Jo, it’s not fine. I can tell it’s not fine. You don’t have to paint it over for me.”
Already, he can see through my veneer. No point pretending. My shoulders relax a bit. “You’re right. It’s not fine. But it still just is. It’s life. It’s what happened.”
“How did that come about?”
He clearly asks out of concern for me, not for the salacious details, so I tell him the story.
“I met Poppy my freshman year at Yale. She was an art history major too, and we bonded instantly over a love of Caravaggio and J.M.W. Turner, of Rothko, and de Kooning. She was from England; I grew up on the East Coast. I came from a small family of academics; it was just my mom, dad, and me. She had a big one, with six brothers and sisters. We were from different places, but we became thick as thieves, passionate about art and learning and boys and sex.”
Those words come easily, but they’re only the start. I rearrange my fork and knife, trading their spots at the table, bracing myself for the next part. “When my mother was sick with cancer, Poppy was there with me. She came with me when I went to my mom’s treatments. She was there, too, when my mom died.”
“I’m so sorry you lost your mother, Jo,” he says with sympathy . . . and maybe even a shared pain.
“Thank you. She was amazing. She was my hero.”
“And she believed in you,” he says. He’d been listening when I said my mom told me I could do anything. “What was she like?”
That’s easy to answer. “Vibrant. Curious. She believed in books, and questions, and taking chances, and having faith in yourself. And hard work. Most of all, she believed in the value of hard work.”
“She left her mark on you,” he says, his eyes locked with mine. It’s as if we’re alone in the restaurant. The clinking of dishes from the kitchen, the chatter of other diners, the footsteps of the staff have all faded away. It’s just him and me, and he gets me completely.
“She did.” I shrug, owning it when I say, “I’m a lot like her. I have a photo of her in my flat. I’ll show it to you sometime.”
“I’d like that,” he says.
These little things—showing the picture, meeting TJ—all feel like inevitabilities, even though they can’t be.
Unless we truly do become friends.
And friends share the hard truths. “The first year after was rough. I threw myself into my studies. Mom always encouraged me to pursue my dreams, and I knew I wanted to work in art and that I’d need a master’s degree. But work and learning became so much more for me than just a professional requirement.” I thump my fist on my sternum. “Studying art helped me . . . heal. Maybe that sounds weird.”
“Not at all,” he says, without pause. “Not one bit.”
It’s easy to talk with Heath. He seems enrapt, and I don’t think it’s because I’m a great troubadour, unspooling oral history.
I think it’s him. He likes to listen.
“And as part of grad school, I went to London that summer to study, several months after Mom passed. Poppy lived here then, studying for her master’s. She invited me to stay with her family, and when I dated a grad school student, I told her all about him. We talked about everything, including the guys we saw.
“Soon, she started telling me about a new man she was seeing. She didn’t use his name.” I keep my tone even as I hit the spot where the tale starts to twist. “She was deliberately veiled, and she’d say, ‘Soon, I’ll tell you soon.’ She said she’d fallen for someone and to trust her choices.”
Memories play out in my mind—the days I spent here in London, still trying to find a way out of a cloud of grief, needing my people, like Poppy, my father, and Jacob.