long term, open to short

“let’s jump,” he says. “just once.”

they met 2 months ago, on hinge. he liked her profile first. she never liked anybody’s profile unless they had liked her own profile first.

now they’re together in tahoe, staring down at upper angora lake. her voice is thin and girlish, like polypropylene ribbons. “i’m scared.” 

and indeed the distance from the cliff to the water is so terribly long, and the water so dark below, bottomless.

she does sales at accenture, and he’s a full-stack engineer at who gives a shit. some consumer fintech startup, or a boutique consulting firm specializing in remote work culture. both are fluent in the modern language of romance, which traffics heavily in the language of mental health, which traffics heavily in business. their therapists have confirmed that they are each “ready for love.”  

in truth he’s also terrified, and he doesn’t want to jump, but making fun of her fear allows him to exorcise his own. 

“come on. you can do it. yes you can. good girl. come on.” he takes her hand, trembling, and on the count of three they fling themselves into the big wet darkness.

as they fall, wind whistling past their ears, their firm bodies, he says in a low quiet voice: “i love you — ” 

the water is freezing and the shore is far. by the time they get back to land, the girl is out of breath. “i’m never fucking doing that shit again.” she says. “i literally - i fucking died - do you understand - i could have genuinely died!”

a little while later her heart rate recovers and she begins to nurse a new set of worries. did he really say those three words (i-l*ve-you), or did she imagine them in the delirium of the moment, the noise of the wind? alternatively, is it possible that he was simply making an exclamation of general delight — aaaawwawwoooooooo — like a dog?

was “i l*ve you” said or not? said or not? it’s a question of weight, of import, of real substance. it’s the lightest question in the world. she looks at him, stutters, stops, waits for him to speak. 

he stands besides her, looking away and scratching himself. 

“you know what?” she says, not looking at him either.

“what?”

“let’s jump again.” 

they climb to the top of the cliff. again she is afraid, again he takes her hand, again they go flying into the generous & terrible water, again the wind sings to them, and again at the most fleeting moment he says in a low voice: i love you! 

this time, when they get out of the water, she looks up at the cliff they just jumped down, then back at him expectantly. they walk slowly across the sand. she’s waiting for him to say those words again. and yet, at the end of the afternoon, all he says is:

“what do you want to eat for dinner?”

“i like jumping,” she says in response. “can we do it again sometime?”

they begin spending their weekends and vacations together, at tahoe, red rocks, crater lake. they become accustomed to the feeling of freezing water, of each other’s sweaty palms, of falling, failing, flying. and yet each time it’s different. when he emerges from the water, opens his eyes, and sees her, the colors of the afternoon seem to become more clear, and the little droplets of water on his arms feel cool and crystalline and new, as if they’re little pieces of stars which joined the lovers in their descent. at night, with his hand on her breast, he’s reminded of the air pressure of his hand against the wind. 

one weekend as they’re coming up upon 5 months, he goes back to tahoe with his friends. she's not invited. which is fine. it’s genuinely fine! but then on instagram stories she sees him jumping down the same cliff. with one of his friends. female. a former hookup. they’re holding hands. they’re laughing.

he swears there’s no romance. or if there is romance, it’s only the amount of romance required to sustain any platonic connection. “i know it sounds insane but you have to believe me”. it does sound insane but she should believe him. she should know that a good deal of the fun, for him, is in convincing a terrified girl, is in being told by her that he’s crazy!, and in telling her in return: “come on. you can do it. yes you can. good girl. come on.”

but they’re holding hands! they’re laughing!

she did value him. he did value her. but in some strange way, somewhere inside themselves, both the man and the woman always believed that if they lost each other, they could go out and re-create the exact experience, or even a better experience, with another man and woman. neither of them understood, then, that people are not apples. people are not like stars in the sky. there are not you-s of varying quality and complexity stacked up in the grocery store or scattered throughout the darkness. when you lose someone you love, you never find them again. you may find another smart high-sexual-value deeply-individuated irregular polygon, but what you have lost is always lost forever.

she did find her husband, though. on hinge. and within two years she had moved out of the city to his hometown in the middle of the country. long plains of low dry land.

as for the man, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to marry, he went to live on a mountain overlooking a lake, partially to show (who?) that he could do it (what?) alone. 

in the low land of the valleys and also at the peaks of the mountains, when you hold your hand out in a good breeze, it feels almost like the palm of a person, the palm of a person you once loved, wrapping their hand around yours, and applying a little pressure.