STRONGER (20 page)

“Hey, Jasmine,” she called. “Got your book in here.”

“Which book is that?” I asked. I’d also started reading all of the books I could get my hands on. The bookstore gave me a discount, but I’d also discovered the public library. There were lots of books that I’d consider “my book.” I couldn’t pick a favorite.

“Check it out,” Anne said. She tossed me a copy of the book in question, titled “A Message to Jasmine.”

“Very funny,” I called back, then choked on my words when I saw the name of the author.

Nate King.
Nate. King.

Maybe it was just some screwed up coincidence, I told myself, my hands trembling as I held the book. It couldn’t be
my
Nate King. Well, certainly not the Nate King that had been mine. Could it?

I opened the book to the first page and gasped.

“To the real Jasmine,” the dedication page read, under which was the photo of me holding my arm up below the Statue of Liberty and grinning. I remembered that day well. Lady Liberty had been closed to visitors, but we still milled around her island home. I had always meant to go back to see if she was open.

My God. It really was Nate’s book. I was holding the culmination of all of his sleepless nights in my grasp. The book he was rushing to finish before he died of cancer.

This was it.

Compulsively, I turned to where the narrative began. The book was classified under fiction even though it was called “A Message to Jasmine” and dedicated to me. What did it contain? I started reading.

This is a story about a girl who was cursed. From the beginning of her life, she was doomed to die. She had to accept her fate, just like her parents, her parents' parents, and her parents' parents' parents.

Or so she thought.

As soon as she was old enough to understand her grim destiny, Jasmine began to prepare for death. She started by giving everything she owned away. Jasmine wouldn't need material things where she was going.

When all she had left were the clothes on her back, she went to the sea to wait for the curse to exact itself on her. If she was going to die anyway, what was the point of doing anything at all? She was the last living member of her family. Everything would end with her.

While she was sitting there, waiting for death, a stranger happened by. He took one look at her glazed stare and plopped down beside her.

"You're a girl who's waiting for something, I can tell," the stranger said. "Is it a parade?"

"No," Jasmine said. "I'm waiting for death to find me."

"Death!" the man exclaimed. "Why, death will find us all, soon enough. No need to sit around and wait for it."

"I am going to die because I am cursed," she said calmly. "There is nothing I can do about it."

"Well, of course there is!" the stranger said. "You can live your life. That's the best anyone can do, really."

I looked up, blinking rapidly. This was like the first time Nate and I met, the time I was ready to throw myself off the cliff. Only it was strange—I had found him sitting, not the other way around. Who was the one waiting to die in this story?

I thought back to that time, remembering actually laughing with Nate about strange ways to die. I remembered him being particularly interested when I said death by a curse. He took notes on that ever-present pad of paper.

In fact, I remembered him taking lots and lots of notes on that pad of paper. Had he been constructing this story even as we built our life together? What was the end he saw for us? I had to know before reading anything else. Had we ended the way Nate King thought we would?

I flipped to the end of the book, gobbling the words with my eyes. There was a line of customers waiting for me to ring them up, but I couldn’t stop.

Jasmine looked down at the swirl of marks on her body. They had covered her since she was born, evidence that she was to die. They were physical evidence of the curse.

"I always thought they were from the curse," she said, voicing her thoughts.

"Wrong," the stranger said. "They were the answer to lifting the curse this whole time."

"I don't understand," she said. "How are they the answer?"

"Only you can read their message," the stranger said. He began to walk away.

"Wait!" she called after him. "Who are you? How do you know all this?"

"I am the Messenger," he said over his shoulder, continuing to walk away. "My purpose was to help you realize that you didn't have to remain cursed. Now that you know, my task is over."

"But I don't know how to read the marks!" Jasmine cried, but he was too far away to hear her.

She looked down at the marks covering her body and found that, suddenly, their shapes and language made sense to her. All she had to know was that she could read them, and they made their message clear to her.

"Let go," they said simply. "Let go."

Jasmine understood. "I am not cursed," she said, closing her eyes.

When she opened them, the marks were gone.

I wept, my tears dotting the open pages. All I had to do was let go. Maybe I’d bear the scars of my past forever. Maybe the physical reminders would fade.

But all I had to do to move forward was let go.
Let go.
I knew what I needed to do.

“Are you okay?”

I looked up, tears coursing down my face. The customer at the counter looked at me in concern.

“Is the book that moving?” he asked. “If it is, I’ll take it.”

I didn’t know what to say. A sob burst out from between my lips.

“Jasmine?”

Anne came out of the storeroom and stared at me. Maybe I had been an emotional wreck this entire time away from Nate, but she’d never witnessed me crying. I’d been very careful about that.

“Do you need to leave?” she asked. “I can cover for you.”

“It really is my book,” I blurted out, lifting the volume. “My boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend—Nate King—I’m the Jasmine in this book.”

I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop the sobs that wracked my body.

“He wrote this for me,” I said finally. “And I have to go to him.”

“Then you should go,” the customer said, pumping his fist in the air.

“Now I really want to read that book,” another remarked from farther back in the line.

“Good luck,” Anne added. “Better keep that book.”

“Take it out of my paycheck,” I said.

Clutching it to my chest, I grabbed my purse and ran out the door. I flagged down the first taxi I saw and directed the driver to take me to Nate’s condo in East Village.

While I was riding along, I reread some of the most moving passages of the book. I knew that I could let go of the bad things that had happened. The markings on the Jasmine in the book were my own scars. Nate must have rewritten that ending after we’d made love.

I knew my scars would likely be a part of me forever. But not everything else had to. I could let those things go, forget about them. Move on with my life in a positive direction. I didn’t have to be damaged for the rest of my days.

There was one thing, however, that I wasn’t willing to let go of, and that was my love for Nate. I didn’t care how long he had to live. I only wanted to make sure I was there for every single moment.

I paid the driver and hopped out as soon as he pulled up to the building. The doorman waved at me as I jogged by and hopped in the elevator. I bet he wondered what I had been doing away for so long.

At least I found my way back eventually.

I approached Nate’s door and hesitated. What if he wasn’t even home? What if—what if I’d hurt him too badly?

I gulped, trying to get my heart to return to its place in my chest from its current residence in my throat.

What if he was already dead?

This last thought was unbearable. I beat on the door with one fist, then with both.

“Please open the door, please open the door,” I chanted beneath my breath.

I was equal parts terror and relief when the chain rattled and the door opened.

“Jasmine?”

Nate looked disheveled, like perhaps he hadn’t shaved in about a week or so. His hair was messed up, and by the fuzzy look on his face, I guessed that I’d woken him from a nap.

I didn’t care. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

I threw my arms around his neck and he stumbled backwards into the room.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my words tumbling out. “I saw the book, I have it. I’m so sorry. I know how to let go now, I do. I just can’t, I can’t let go of you. I love you too much. I’m so sorry.”

My words were jumbled and confusing in my rush to get them out. They weren’t quite making sense in my mind, but I hoped Nate could understand them. I needed to make him understand.

Nate held me close. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “I never wanted you to feel like I was using you. I was never using you. I loved you from the moment I saw you. You were desperate but utterly beautiful. When we talked that day on the cliff, something inside me clicked. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with someone—no matter how long the rest of it was going to be.”

I was weeping in relief, love, and sadness. How could I waste a single moment without being with this beautiful man?

“You need to have a full disclosure,” Nate said, pulling away a little bit to look me in the eyes. “I want there to be complete understanding between us. The cancer that I have—the survival rate is dismal. I was diagnosed just before I met you. I’d quit my real estate job that day we met each other on the cliff. I was there on that cliff trying to figure my life out at the exact same time you were trying to figure yours out. I thought it … meant something that we were brought together at that very moment.”

Of course, I thought, the story. The Jasmine in Nate’s book represented both Nate and me at the same time. She had been melded with elements from both of our situations, and the stranger—or the Messenger, as he turned out to be in the end—was both of us, as well.

We had both been presented with desperate situations, but with both offered solutions for each other. Solutions and solace. And love.

We truly belonged together. If I had only suspected before, I was sure of it now.

“I’m sorry I ever doubted you,” I said. “I was just so shocked. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. I know you weren’t throwing me away. You are nothing like anyone in my past. I was stupid and mean to say those things. I was so terrible.”

Nate took me into his arms again, rocking me as I cried.

“You were hurt,” he said. “It’s okay. Everyone always says crazy things when they’re hurting inside.”

“How could I have hurt you like that?” I mumbled. “It wasn’t fair. Please don’t be angry with me. Please let me come home.”

Nate sucked in a breath. “You really want to come back here?” he asked. “You honestly do?”