Page 29 of You Only Live Once
‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Now I’ve upset you.’
‘No, really, you haven’t. I’m glad you told me.’
Jack looked at me, a question in his eyes.
‘It’s been such a long time. Mike’s been gone over ten years now and sometimes I worry that the memories are fading. That they’re no longer as sharp in my mind as they once were.’
‘You’ll never forget him. Clearly he’s on your mind a lot, even when you’re asleep.’
‘Yes. Do you believe in soulmates?’
‘I think I do, yes.’
‘Do you think you only get one per lifetime?’
‘No. I don’t. And I think they can come in all forms as well. I think you can have platonic soulmates as well as romantic ones.’
I studied him for a moment.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t really expect to hear that from you.’
‘That’s because you still think I’m the person I was, or at least pretended to be, when I went away. I guess, at that point in my life, I hadn’t thought too much about soulmates or settling down. Like I said before, I thought I was doing what I should be doing, but looking back now, I think perhaps I was searching for the attention that I didn’t get at home.’ He gave a dry laugh as he dragged his hand across his forehead. ‘God, that sounds pathetic when I say it out loud, but hopefully you won’t judge me too harshly.’
‘I’m not going to judge you at all. As you said, we do what we think we should do at the time. It’s easy for others to tell us what they think we should be doing or for us to look back with hindsight, but we don’t have all the information at the time, and we just have to act with what we have. Perhaps you needed to get all that out of your system for you to meet the right person and have something meaningful when you went abroad.’
‘Yeah, maybe. Why did you ask about soulmates?’ The lighting was soft, and Jack’s voice matched the setting.
‘I don’t know. Mike and I used to talk about it occasionally.’
‘And what did he think?’
‘He was very logical. Scientific. He didn’t really believe in anything that you couldn’t explain, or touch, or see.’
‘But he was madly in love with you. Anyone who saw you together could see that.’
I lifted my gaze from where I had been playing with the corner of the napkin. ‘Thank you.’
Jack shrugged. ‘I mean, he obviously believed in love, even though that’s not tangible. It’s a feeling.’
‘I never thought to ask him. I guess he felt he could make an exception for that.’
‘I think he knew a good thing when he saw it and he wasn’t about to let science or logic get in the way.’
I smiled to thank him for the kind words, twisting a lock of hair around a finger. ‘It’s always afterwards you think of all the things you wanted to talk about, or ask, isn’t it?’
‘I think, a lot of the time, we assume we still have plenty of time to ask those questions.’
‘That’s true. But we never really know how much time we have, do we?’
‘No, we don’t,’ he said. ‘I guess that’s why, if we really want something, we just have to find a way of getting it, or at least of trying to get it. Then you’re never left with the what if.’
‘Is that what brought you back to England?’
‘Partly, I think. And partly I just wanted to come home.’
‘And how do you feel now you are home?’
