Alice took him out to the mountains she had once driven, and they sat on a pull off in front of a scene that replays in memory.
“He brought me out here, and we hiked,” she started. “He asked if I was considering moving here. And I answered truthfully. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have things I need to finish in New York.’ And I kept walking. But I remember pausing under the trees, and smelling the pine, and seeing his white cap placed backwards on his head as he drove, and the music that carried us up and over the mountains. ‘But then again, how could you not love this?’ I said as I spun around under those trees. What I meant was how could I explain that I had loved him enough to move, but really the winds were telling me that this is my land. That my soul had been here before, and that I had to return here. He is a love that propelled me to the things I needed to go to. And that was all that ever would be. I am grateful for that love that convinced me to move west, even if it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Even though that was never the love that was meant to be.”
She turned to him.
“But what I was meant to say at that time, and the times before to that love and chose not to, was that I loved him. And I couldn’t say it then, because I didn’t have the vocabulary to say what needed to be said.
What I mean to say to you now, new love, is that I feel softer when you are around. I have felt softer around you than I have felt in a long time around someone. I am grateful to know you, and to have known you as I have. And I may not be the love that you are looking for, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been happy to include you in my story, as I had with old love before. We are tapestries of that love, and somehow it is all tied together in ways we could never imagine.”
“How do you mean?” He asked.
“Oh well when I was home with Old Love for the first time, and woke up in the morning, we watched Indiana Jones and made food. A lot like what we did the other night. And you couldn’t have known where that film rested in my heart, but for some reason that is the one you had chosen to watch with me and make food.
So it felt familiar, like that feeling of slowly opening again. And on the way home I saw a coyote in the middle of the city, running around, telling me that it was a story that I had to revisit again.
The weavers of the universe are weaving some great story, and we sometimes just have to wait for the threads to continue to play out. I don’t know why our paths in particular have crossed, or if it’ll be greater than it already has. But don’t turn away from your story, just yet.”
The pair sat and listened to the wind blow across the valley, and watched as a spider dropped from a tree in front of them. A sports car flew around the corner, waking them from their reverie. Neither said anything more, but got back in the car and went back to their own beds.