Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [159]
Something wild takes hold of me, something that immediately eclipses every passion I’ve ever felt. It is a vertiginous, irresistible fall. How could I have believed I loved anyone before this? How could I ever have been with anyone else when there is a Tim in this world? I can feel, vividly feel, my heart leave my body. I’d think this mere romantic fantasy if not for everything that follows.
As we tilt back into the cushions, he stops for a minute and takes my head between his hands.
“Promise me,” he says. “Promise me it won’t be the last time.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise you. I promise.”
“Then I promise,” I whisper.
Even after we’ve made love, he doesn’t loosen his grip but wraps me closer in his arms. We stay like that until long past a reasonable hour.
“Why are you leaving?” he says in a pained voice, his arms bruising my rib cage. “Don’t go.”
“It’s a good thing I’m leaving.” I’m trying to talk myself into it. “If I stayed, I would be in terrible danger of falling in love with you.”
“It’s too late,” he says, his fingers digging into my shoulders. “Don’t you know it’s too late?”
I DO LEAVE YEMEN, but not Tim. During my three months in New York, we write every day, unfolding our entire lives. Everything that happened between us in Sana’a happened so fast that I had hardly any time to think about the repercussions. But now, I worry. I worry about feeling so strongly about a man who isn’t mine. I worry that he is toying with me and will never leave his wife. I worry about the pain it will cause his family if he does leave his wife.
I share these worries with him. I also tell him about every past lover, every mistake I have ever made. If anything is going to scare him away, I want to know now. But Tim doesn’t scare easily. Every revelation only brings a new declaration of love from him. Every time I hit send, I worry I will never hear from him again, but every time I check my in-box, he is there.
Tim tells me about his large, close-knit family; his years living in New Zealand, Chile, Austria, and France; that his daughter has been his greatest joy. He tells me about the women he has loved. And finally, he tells me about his wife. There have been problems for years. They don’t share the same values or enjoy doing the same things. He would not have embarked on this relationship had he been happy in his marriage.
Someone once told me that women leave a bad marriage because it is a bad marriage, but that men never leave until they find someone else. Perhaps that’s true. I think Tim felt that he couldn’t leave unless he had a really good reason—his unhappiness alone wasn’t enough to justify hurting someone else.
When I am out with friends in New York, I find myself rushing home as if Tim were actually there waiting for me and writing to him for hours. It scares me how completely I love him. I have made it clear that I cannot continue this, I cannot keep falling in love with him, if there is no chance of a future together. This is what makes him different from other men I’ve loved—I actually want a future with him. I ask to have him all to myself.
“I need to see you,” he says. “We need to see each other, to be sure.” We worry aloud that maybe we’re creating a fantasy relationship and that reality will disillusion us. Tim warns me that he snores. I warn him that I grind my teeth at night. We agree to meet in London.
By then, I have accepted the job training journalists in Sierra Leone. I agonize over the decision, calling my parents, my new agent (the lunch went well!), my friends, and Tim. My parents are not enthusiastic about me heading off somewhere possibly more dangerous than Yemen, but they know better than to try to change my mind. My agent encourages