Here at Last (38 page)

After our tour, Nicholas and I spent some time on the beach. There we learned
that St. Maarten
, along
with its closest neighbors – Anguilla, St. Marteen, and Dog Island –
are located
in a
2
,500-
acre marine reserve
that
was created in 1999 to protect vulnerable habitats, including coral reefs and aquatic species.
It was so beautiful here that we
were comforted to know that the
area’s ecology was protected.

That evening, we had dinner before returning to the house. It had been a long day, and we went to bed early.





When
Valentine's Day
arrived the following day, we
went
hiking on Morne Vitet, the
island’s
highest peak. Passing several stone walls, we hiked along the road that led
from the mountain slopes
to the grand cul-de-sac where we could see the entire coastline. It was breathtaking.

This had been my “first” Valentine’s Day since the passing of JT. Although I had thought of JT several times throughout the day, being outdoors had provided a distraction. Nicholas had been especially attentive without being cloying, and I was able to move through the day with relative ease.

After dinner that evening, we returned to the house and sat out on the veranda
h
to
enjoy
the sunset. Having pushed our chairs together, we held hands and watch
ed
the colors change in the sky before the stars
were visible.

Nicholas turned to me. "Is there anything you want to talk about?" he asked softly.

I
looked
a
t him and shook my head. "No."

“Are you okay?"

I smiled a little and nodded, and we went back to watching the sky. When we made love that night, he was sweet and tender
, and I didn’t think of JT again
.





Over the
next several days
,
Nicholas and I toured both the
exterior areas along the coast
line
and
some of the
island’s
interior. We spent a lot of time outdoors hiking and exploring beautiful areas
and
began to feel
like we
were getting to know
the island
well
. We knew where everything was, and we were tanned and relaxed.

With t
he anniversary of JT’s death
on February 17
th
,
everything changed
. It fell on the day before we departed St. Barts.
W
hen I
a
woke that morning,
Nicholas was already out of bed and in the sho
wer. Before I opened my eyes,
I knew that I could be
partly
to blame
for JT’s
accident
. I closed my eyes, replaying the memory of the phone call that I
’d
received from Denise, who had been sobbing so hard that she
’d
throw
n
up right after telling me that JT had died.
Although
I knew that I wasn't
the
drunk driver who had crossed the median and slammed into his car, I wondered for the thousandth time
if he would have been able to steer
clear
if I hadn’t called him just then.

After Nicholas emerged from the shower, some time
had passed
before I realized that he'd been watching me. He walked over and sat down on the bed beside me and reached out to
touch
my face. "Why don't we stay in today?"

I nodded.

He dressed and went to get breakfast for us.
When he returned to the bedroom with a t
ray of food, I wasn’t hungry and
didn’t eat
anything
. Around noon, he told me that he was going to go out
to pick
up
some groceries for lunch. After he left, I put on my swimsuit and walked out on the veranda
h
, getting into the pool for the first time since we
’d
arrived. There had been so much to do and see that we hadn’t spent much time at the house. However, it was warm outside, and I just wanted to sink
down
into something
comforting
.

I lay on my back and floated in the water. As the sun beat down on my body, I remembered my time with JT. At first,
the
memories
came to me in vignettes – kissing under the mistletoe, the way he’d looked at me in the hallway at the hotel in Las Vegas,
spending Christmas with his family, the first time we made love
. My heart ached for him, and I was overcome by a wave of grief. I convulsed in a sob and accidentally inhaled water. As I began to cough, I heard Nicholas walk through the door and into the house. By the time he reached me, I was holding onto the side of the pool
weeping
.

“Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you out of there.”

He reached down for my hand, and
I walked up the
pool
steps where he stood waiting for me
. He
took me in
to
his arms
and
h
e
ld me while I cried. “It's not your fault," he whispered.

I
totally unraveled in his arms.
“I don’t know that.”

He
held me while my body shook and stroked
my hair.

As the breeze picked up, goose
bumps covered my body. With his arm wrapped around my shoulders,
Nicholas led
me back inside the house and into the bathroom where he turned on the
hot
water in the shower.
He removed my bathing suit and his
wet
clothes and shepherded me in
before following me into the shower
.

Looking at me tenderly, he squeezed some shampoo into his hands and washed my hair, following it up with conditioner.
Then, h
e
repeatedly
rubbed
the
bar of soap between his hands and
lathered my
arms and legs before
slowly
soaping up
my
back and front.
I closed my eyes and let the
warm
water run over me
and was grateful for
Nicholas’s
gentle touch
. Finally, I reached up for his wrist, and he turned off the water.

“I'm sorry," I said looking at him.

"Don't be." He reached for a towel and wrapped it around me before getting one for himself.

"I didn't want our last day to be like this," I told him.

He shook his head. "You can't always control grief.”

Placing his arm
around me
, he led me back to the bed, and we both climbed in. He covered us with the bedspread before sliding his arm beneath my neck.
Feeling his warm body next to mine,
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. I thought about
all
that Nicholas had done for me and how much we loved each other
, and I hated to put him through this
.
He’d already spent so much time grieving that I didn't want to weigh him down with my occasional bouts of sadness.

JT had meant the world to me, and, if it hadn't been for his death, I was sure that we would have spent the rest of our lives together. At least, that's what I believed.
Yet,
that wasn’t the way that things
had
worked out, and that was a fact that I had to live with every day. There was no reason that I c
ouldn't move ahead with my life
remembering sweetly my time with JT while deepening my love for Nicholas. That was just the way it was going to have to be.

Reaching my arm across his chest, I opened my eyes and looked at Nicholas. “
I won't let this ruin our last day together."

"Sophia, it's not always something you can control."

“I have to."

"Why?"

I sighed. "Because I don't want to hurt you anymore. Every time I grieve, I end up hurting you.”

He shook his head. "Don't worry about me. I
can
take care of myself."

I sat up.
"Why shouldn't I worry about you? The last time I gave you news about JT, it tore you apart."

He
looked
up
at me
.
"I don't think you’re done with this."

“Why?
” I asked.
“
You said that everyone grieves differently.”

“Because
I know you're still in love with JT. And if he hadn’t died, you would have
gotten
engaged
in Paris six weeks ago
.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way until Nicholas said it. Immediately, my chest tightened,
and
I
looked away.

He
sat up beside me.
“Sophia,
please let me in. When I got home, you were
crying alone
in the pool."

I shook my head. I knew that it would be better for both of us if I handled my grief alone. I
began to get out of bed
, but
Nicholas caught me by the wrist. “
Don’t walk away from this.
"

"Let me go
,
"
I
pleaded
, and he released me
.

“
Sophia, p
lease. You’re never going to feel like you can b
reathe until you deal with this.
"
I couldn’t look at him, and he
reached for my hand and gently
pulled me back down beside him
.
"
Sophia,
I love you. Please."

“I don’t want to hurt
you
anymore," I whispered.
“I think it’s better if I
just
deal with this myself.”

“
No. All you’ve been doing is dealing with this yourself. I
won’t let
you go through this alone
anymore
."

I shook my head
and didn’t know what else to say
.
He lay back down and held the cover
up, and
I lay down beside him again.
H
e wrapped his arms around me, and we lay face to face. “What do you miss
the
most about JT?" he asked.

"No
,” I shook my head
.
“
I'm not going there with you."

“
You have to."

"Why?"

"Because I love you
Sophia. Talk to me.
"

As I learned later, the reason that Nicholas was pushing me so hard was because he was terrified that if I didn't deal with the grief as it came up, it would snowball until it was so large that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
As difficult as it was for him to hear, b
y working through it
in
pieces, he
’d
hoped to spare me an avalanche down the road.

As h
e continued urging me to tell him about my time with JT, I
gradually
began to open up.
I explained how private JT had been when I’d met him in San Diego.
Though I hadn’t realized that he’d loved me at the time, I described how tuned into me JT had been, asking on several occasions if I was okay when I wasn’t or trying to offer me time to work things out with David.
I told him about how JT and I had run into each other at the tapas bar and about the white roses
that
he
’d
brought
for
me before the office
holiday
party.
I told him about the mistletoe and spending Christmas with JT's family and all of the
extravagant
gifts that he'd given
to
me. I explained the challenges of the long-distance relationship and how both of us would travel to see each other when we could. Then, I told him about our last Valentine's Day together when we had walked on
Mission B
each and JT had asked if I wanted to live in San Diego or Chicago
and
told me
that
he’d
been looking at jobs in Chicago just in case. Of course, the rest was history.