I learned more about love in one moonlight walk than a thousand romance novels. It is a true irony, that the victory of love is found in surrendering to it.
Beth Stilton’s Diary
That night, Lee and I took a moonlit walk along the beach. We held hands. It was cold, and he put my hand in his coat pocket with his.
“Your brother’s really funny.”
“I know. He could do stand-up comedy.”
“I wouldn’t expect that, coming from what I know of your childhood.”
“He has a sense of humor because of our childhood. It was his coping mechanism. In the darkest times, he was always looking for a way to laugh.”
For several minutes we were both silent, listening to the whispering breeze and the break of the surf.
“Was it hard for you when he got married?” I asked.
“No. I was glad for him. I had just come out of school, and I was trying to make it at the PR firm. I was working a lot. I was glad he had someone he loved and who loved him back.”
“How did she die?”
“It was a fluke. She went in for a simple procedure on her knee. It was just an outpatient thing. That night at home she got a pulmonary embolism. She died next to him in their bed.” He shook his head. “He really loved her. Even with all we went through, I think it was the worst thing to ever happen to him.”
“Have you ever been in love before?”
“I thought I was. When I was younger, I would meet a beautiful girl and get excited and think, this is the one. The thing is, I didn’t know what love was, or what a healthy relationship looked like, since I had never really experienced it. So the relationships never lasted.
“There was one woman I dated named Melissa. Everyone called her Missy. She was a goodhearted person, much better than I deserved. I was madly in love with her, at least I thought I was, but still I kept breaking her heart. Then, one day, I let her down one too many times. I remember looking into her eyes and seeing the pain I’d caused her. I felt shameful.
She asked, ‘Lee, do you love me?’ I said, ‘You know I do.’ She said, ‘No, I don’t.’ Then she asked the hard question. ‘Do you know what love is?’ I said, ‘Everyone knows what love is. You know it when you feel it.’ She said, ‘No. Love isn’t something you feel. It’s something you’re willing to give. I hope you understand that someday.’ Then she said goodbye.
“I didn’t realize how much she meant to me until she left. I was heartbroken for a long time, because I knew that I had lost something very special. I finally just gave up. I felt like I was competing in a game where I didn’t know the rules.
“That was a few years before my first book. Then, at one of my early book signings, an elderly couple came in. The man looked like he was healthy, but she was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down. He told me that she had been paralyzed in a skiing accident almost twenty years earlier. He said she liked my books and wanted to meet me. They were celebrating her birthday by coming to my book signing. Then they were going to go home and read together. She looked at him with incredible admiration. People come to book signings excited to meet the author, the star, but he was clearly her star.
“When I opened the book, he had already signed it, To Patricia. In all the ways.”
“I asked him what that meant. He said, ‘Mr. Harper, I thought I loved her forty years ago. But it took me forty years to learn all the ways I could show her.’?”
“That’s really sweet,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s when it occurred to me that he was happy, not because of what she could do for him, but because of what he could do for her. It was a huge epiphany for me. How many ways can you love someone? I remember thinking, these people have it right. That’s what I want.
“From then on, I wanted to be that man. I wanted to learn to love like that. I wanted to learn to love someone in all the ways.”
We stopped walking and he looked at me. His eyes showed his sincerity. “You asked me why I never got married. It’s because up to that point, I dated people I didn’t want to be married to. I was dating people just like me.”
“And me?”
“When I first met you, there was something about you that reminded me of Missy. You look alike. But when I saw your so it goes tattoo, I couldn’t believe it. I wondered if it was fate.”
“Why?”
“Missy and I had this inside joke. When something bad would happen, she would look at me and say in this cute, low voice, ‘So it goes.’ It was like, yeah, bad things happen but it’s okay. We’ll be okay.
“You had that same look in your eyes when you told me about the men who hurt you. Men like me. I thought, maybe there could be a second chance to do it right. To love right. Maybe I could love someone in all the ways.”
We were quiet again. Then I said, “You’re doing a very good job.”
“Thank you.”
We started walking again. I leaned into him, and he put his arm around me as we walked back toward the house. I wanted to be loved like this for the rest of my life. I wanted to love like this for the rest of my life. I wanted to love in all the ways.