‘The Longest Ride’ Chapters 16-18

Ira

Evening again, and still I am here. Cocooned in silence, interred by the white hard cold of winter, and unable to move.

I’ve lasted more than a day now. At my age and considering my plight, this should be cause for celebration. But I’m weakening now. Only my pain and thirst seem real. My body is failing, and it is everything I can do to keep my eyes open. They will close again in time, and part of me wonders whether they will ever open again. I stare at Ruth, wondering why she says nothing. She does not look at me. Instead, I see her in profile. With every blink, she seems to be changing. She is young and old and young again, and I wonder what she is thinking with each transformation.

As much as I love her, I admit that she has always remained somewhat of an enigma to me. In the mornings, as we sat at the breakfast table, I would catch her staring out the window. In those moments, she looked the same as she does right now, and my eyes would often follow hers. We would sit in silence, watching the birds as they flitted from one branch to the next, or gaze at the clouds as they slowly gathered shape. Sometimes I would study her, trying to intuit her thoughts, but she would offer only a slight smile, perfectly content to keep me in the dark.

I liked this about her. I liked the mystery she added to my life. I liked the occasional silence between us, for ours was a comfortable silence. It was a passionate silence, one that had its roots in comfort and desire. I have often wondered whether this made us unique or whether it was something that couples often experience. It would sadden me to think that we were an exception, but I’ve lived long enough to conclude that what Ruth and I had was an uncommon blessing.

And still, Ruth says nothing. Perhaps she, too, is reliving the days that we once shared.

+++

After Ruth and I returned from our honeymoon, we began the process of creating a life together. By then, her parents had already moved to Durham, and Ruth and I stayed with my parents while we looked for a home to buy. Though a number of new neighborhoods were springing up in Greensboro, Ruth and I wanted a home with character. We spent most of our time walking through homes in the historic district, and it was there that we found a Queen Anne that had been built in 1886, with a front-facing gable, a round tower, and porches gracing the front and back. My first thought was that it was far too large for us, with more space than we would ever need. It was also desperately in need of renovation. But Ruth loved the moldings and the craftsmanship and I loved her, so when she said she’d leave the decision up to me, I made an offer the following afternoon.

While the paperwork with the bank loan was being finalized—we would move in a month later—I went back to work at the shop while Ruth threw herself into her teaching job. I admit that I was nervous for her. The rural school where she’d been hired largely served students who’d grown up on farms. More than half of them lived in homes without indoor plumbing, and many wore the same clothes day after day. Two arrived in class on the first day without shoes. Only a handful seemed to care about learning, and more than a few were fundamentally illiterate. It was the kind of poverty she’d never before experienced, less about money than a poverty of dreams. In those first few months of teaching, I’d never seen Ruth more frazzled, nor would I ever see her that way again. It takes a teacher both time and experience to formalize lesson plans and to become comfortable in even the best schools, and I often saw Ruth working late into the evenings at our small kitchen table, thinking of new ways to engage her students.

But as harried as she was during that first semester, it became plain that teaching such students, even more than the artwork we eventually collected, was not only her calling, but her true passion. She took to the job with a single-minded intensity that surprised me. She wanted her students to learn, but more than that, she wanted them to treasure education in the same way she did. The challenge she faced with such disadvantaged students only fired her enthusiasm. Over dinner, she would talk to me about her students and would recount to me the “little victories” that could make her smile for days. And that is how she would describe them. Ira, she would tell me, one of my students had a little victory in class today, before she proceeded to tell me exactly what had happened. She would tell me when a child unexpectedly shared a pencil with another, or how much their penmanship had improved, or the pride that a student demonstrated at reading her first book. Beyond that, she cared for them. She would notice when one of them was upset and would speak to them as a mother would; when she learned that a number of her students were too poor to bring lunch to school, she began to make extra sandwiches in the morning. And slowly but surely, her students responded to her nurturing ways, like young plants to sun and water.

She had been worried about whether the children would accept her. Because she was Jewish in a school that was almost exclusively Christian, because she was from Vienna and had a German accent, she wasn’t sure whether they would regard her as alien. She had never said this directly to me, but I knew it for certain one day in December, when I found her sobbing in the kitchen at the end of the day. Her eyes were swollen and raw, frightening me. I imagined that something terrible had happened to her parents or perhaps that she’d been in an accident of some sort. Then I noticed that the table was littered with an assortment of homemade items. She explained that her students—each and every one—had brought her gifts in celebration of Hanukkah. She would never be sure how it had come about; she hadn’t told them about the holiday, nor was it clear that any of the students understood the meaning of the celebration. Later, she would tell me that she heard one of the students explaining to another that “Hanukkah is the way Jews celebrate the birth of Jesus,” but the truth was less important than the meaning of what the children had done for her. Most of the gifts were simple—painted rocks, handmade cards, a bracelet made of seashells—but in every gift there was love, and it was in that moment, I later came to believe, that Ruth finally accepted Greensboro, North Carolina, as her home.

+++

Despite Ruth’s workload, we were slowly able to furnish our home. We spent many weekends during that first year shopping for antiques. In the same way she had an eye for art, she had a gift for selecting the kind of furniture that would make our home not only uniquely beautiful, but welcoming.

The following summer, we would begin renovations. The house needed a new roof, and the kitchen and bathrooms, though functional, were not to Ruth’s liking. The floors needed to be sanded, and many windows had to be replaced. We had decided when purchasing the house to wait until the following summer to begin the repairs, when Ruth would have time to supervise the workers.

I was relieved that she was willing to assume this responsibility. My mother and father had cut back further on the time they spent at work, but the shop had only grown busier in the year that Ruth had begun teaching. As my father had done during the war, I again took over the lease on the space next to ours. I expanded the store and hired three additional employees. Even then, I struggled to keep up. Like Ruth, I often worked late into the evenings.

The renovations on the house took longer, and cost more, than expected, and it went without saying that it was far more inconvenient than either of us imagined the process might be. It was the end of July 1947 before the final worker carried his toolbox to the truck, but the changes—some subtle, others dramatic—made the house finally seem really ours, and I have lived there for over sixty-five years now. Unlike me, the house is still holding up reasonably well. Water flows smoothly through the pipes, the cabinets swing open with ease, and the floors are as flat as a billiard table, whereas I can no longer move from room to room without the use of my walker. If I have one complaint, it’s that the house seems drafty, but then I’ve been cold for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel warm. To me, the house is still filled with love, and at this point in my life, I could ask for nothing more.

“It is filled, all right,” Ruth snorts. “The house, I mean.”

I detect a note of disapproval in her tone and glance at her. “I like it the way it is.”

“It is dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous.”

“No? What if there is a fire? How would you get out?”

“If there was a fire, I’d have trouble getting out even if the house stood empty.”

“You are making excuses.”

“I’m old. I might be senile.”

“You are not senile. You are stubborn.”

“I like to remember. There’s a difference.”

“This is not good for you. The memories sometimes make you sad.”

“Maybe,” I say, looking directly at her. “But memories are all that I have left.”

Ruth is right about the memories, of course. But she is also right about the house. It’s filled, not with junk, but with the artwork we collected. For years, we kept the paintings in climate-controlled storage units that I rented by the month. Ruth preferred it that way—she always worried about fires—but after she died, I hired two workers to bring everything back home. Now, every wall is a kaleidoscope of paintings, and paintings fill four of the five bedrooms. Neither the sitting room nor the dining room has been usable for years, because paintings are stacked in every spare inch. While hundreds of pieces were framed, most of them were not. Instead, those are separated by acid-free paper and stored in a number of flat oak boxes labeled by the year that I had them built by a carpenter here in town. I’ll admit that there’s a cluttered extravagance to the house that some might find claustrophobic—the journalist who came to the house wandered from room to room with her mouth agape—but my home is clean. The cleaning service sends a woman to my house twice a week to keep the rooms I still use spotless, and though few, if any, of these women over the years spoke English, I know that Ruth would have been pleased I hired them. Ruth always hated dust or mess of any sort.

The clutter does not bother me. Instead, it reminds me of some of the best days of my marriage, including, and especially, our trips to Black Mountain College. After the renovations were completed, when both of us were in need of a vacation, we spent our first anniversary at the Grove Park Inn, the place we’d honeymooned. Again, we visited the college, but this time we were greeted by friends. Elaine and Willem weren’t there, but Robert and Ken were, and they introduced us to Susan Weil and Pat Passlof, two extraordinary artists whose work also hangs in numerous museums. That year, we came home with fourteen more paintings.

Even then, however, neither of us was thinking of becoming collectors. We were not rich, after all, and the purchase of those paintings had been a stretch, especially after the renovations on the house. Nor did we hang all of them right away. Instead, Ruth would rotate them from room to room, depending on her moods, and more than once I came home to a house that felt both the same and different. In 1948 and 1949, we found ourselves returning yet again to Asheville and Black Mountain College. We purchased even more paintings, and when we returned home, Ruth’s father suggested that we take our hobby more seriously. Like Ruth, he could see the quality in the work we’d purchased, and he planted in us the seed of an idea—to build a true collection, one that might one day be worthy of a museum. I could tell that Ruth was intrigued by the idea. Though we made no official decision one way or the other, we began saving nearly all of Ruth’s salary, and she spent much of the year writing letters to the artists we knew, asking their opinions about other artists they believed we might like. In 1950, after a trip to the Outer Banks, we traveled to New York for the first time. We spent three weeks visiting every gallery in the city, meeting owners and artists whom our friends had introduced us to. That summer, we laid the groundwork for a network that would continue to grow for the next four decades. At the end of that summer, we returned to the place where it had all begun, almost as though we had no other choice.

I’m not sure when we first began to hear the rumors that Black Mountain College might close—1952 or 1953, I think—but like the artists and the faculty we had come to think of as close friends, we wanted to dismiss them. In 1956, however, our fears came true, and when Ruth heard the news, she wept, recognizing the end of an era for us. That summer, we again traveled throughout the Northeast, and though I knew it wouldn’t be the same, we concluded our travels by returning to Asheville for our anniversary. As always, we drove to the college, but as we stood by the waters of Lake Eden and stared at the now vacant buildings of the college, I couldn’t help wondering whether our idyll at the college had been nothing more than a dream.

In time, we made our way to the spot where those first six paintings had once been displayed. We stood beside the silent blue water and I thought of how appropriate the name of the lake had been. To us, after all, this spot had always been like Eden itself. I knew that no matter where our lives took us, we would never leave this place behind. Surprising Ruth, I offered her a letter I’d written the night before. It was the first letter I’d written to Ruth since I’d been in the war, and after reading it, Ruth took me in her arms. In that moment, I knew what I had to do to keep this place alive in our hearts. The following year, on our eleventh anniversary, I wrote another letter to her, which she read under those very same trees on the shores of Lake Eden. And with that, a new tradition in our marriage began.

In all, Ruth received forty-five letters, and she saved every one. They are stored in a box that she kept atop her chest of drawers. Sometimes I would catch her reading them, and I could tell by her smile that she was reliving something she’d long since forgotten. These letters had become something of a diary to her, and as she grew older, she began to pull them out more frequently, sometimes reading them all in the course of a single afternoon.

The letters seemed to give her peace, and I think this is why much later, she decided to write to me. I did not find this letter until after she was gone, but in many ways, it saved my life. She knew I would need it, for she knew me better than I ever knew myself.

But Ruth has not read all the letters I’ve written to her. She couldn’t. Though I wrote them for her, I also wrote them for me, after all, and after she passed away, I placed another box beside the original. In this box are letters written with a shaking hand, letters marked only by my tears, not hers. They are letters written on what would have been yet another anniversary. Sometimes I think about reading them, just as she used to, but it hurts me to think that she never had the chance. Instead, I simply hold them, and when the ache becomes too great, I’ll wander the house and stare at the paintings. And sometimes, when I do, I like to imagine that Ruth has come to visit me, just as she has come to me in the car, because she knows, even now, that I can’t live without her.

+++

“You can live without me,” Ruth says to me.

Outside the car, the winds have died down and the darkness seems less opaque. This is moonlight, I think to myself, and I realize that the weather is finally clearing. By tomorrow night, if I last that long, the weather will begin to improve, and by Tuesday the snow will be melting. For a moment, this gives me hope, but as quickly as it comes, the feeling fades away. I will not last that long.

I am weak, so weak that even focusing on Ruth is difficult. The inside of the car is moving in circles, and I want to reach for her hand to steady me, but I know that’s impossible. Instead, I try to remember the feel of her touch, but the sensation eludes me.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks.

I close my eyes, trying to make the dizziness stop, but it only increases, colored spirals exploding behind my eyes. “Yes,” I finally whisper, a dry rasp in the volcanic ash of my throat. My thirst claws at me with a vengeance. Worse than before. Infinitely worse. It’s been more than a day since I’ve had anything to drink, and the desire for water consumes me, growing stronger with every labored breath.

“The water bottle is here,” Ruth suddenly says to me. “I think it is on the floor by my feet.”

Her voice is soft and lilting, like a melody, and I try to latch on to the sound to avoid thinking about the obvious. “How do you know?”

“I do not know for sure. But where else can it be? It is not on the seat.”

She’s right, I think to myself. It’s likely on the floor, but there is nothing I can do to reach it. “It doesn’t matter,” I finally say in despair.

“Of course it matters. You must find a way to reach the bottle.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I’m not strong enough.”

She seems to absorb this and remains quiet for a moment. In the car, I think I hear her breathing before I realize that it is I who has begun to wheeze. The blockage in my throat has begun to form again.

“Do you remember the tornado?” she suddenly asks me. There is something in her voice imploring me to concentrate, and I try to figure out what she’s referring to. The tornado. It means nothing at first, and then, slowly, the memory begins to acquire shape and significance.

I’d been home from work for an hour when all at once the sky turned an ominous shade of grayish green. Ruth stepped outside to investigate, and I remember seizing her by the hand to drag her to the bathroom in the center of the house. It was the first tornado she’d ever experienced, and though our house was unharmed, a tree down the street had been toppled, crushing a neighbor’s car. “It was 1957,” I say. “April.”

“Yes,” she says. “That is when it happened. I am not surprised you remember. You always remember the weather, even from long ago.”

“I remember because I was frightened.”

“But you remember the weather now, too.”

“I watch the Weather Channel.”

“This is good. There are many good programs on this channel. There is sometimes much to learn.”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“Because,” she says to me, urgency in her tone, “there is something you must remember. There is something more.”

I don’t understand what she means, and in my exhaustion, I realize I suddenly don’t care. The wheeze grows worse and I close my eyes, beginning to float on a sea of dark, undulating waves. Toward a distant horizon, away from here. Away from her.

“You have seen something interesting lately!” she shouts.

And still, I drift. Outside the car. Flying now. Under the moon and stars. The night is clearing and the wind has died, and I’m so tired I know I will sleep forever. I feel my limbs relax and lose heft.

“Ira!” she shouts, the panic in her voice rising. “There is something you must remember! It was on the Weather Channel!”

Her voice sounds far away, almost like an echo.

“A man in Sweden!” she shouts. “He had no food or water!”

Though I can barely hear her, the words somehow register. Yes, I think, and the memory, like the tornado, also begins to take shape. Umeå. Arctic Circle. Sixty-four days.

“He survived!” she shouts. She reaches for me, her hand coming to rest on my leg.

And in that moment, I stop drifting. When I open my eyes, I’m back in the car.

Buried in his car in the snow. No food or water.

No water . . .

No water . . .

Ruth leans toward me, so close I can smell the delicate rose notes of her perfume. “Yes, Ira,” she says, her expression serious. “He had no water. So how did he survive? You must remember!”

I blink and my eyes feel scaly, like those of a reptile. “Snow,” I say. “He ate the snow.”

She holds my gaze and I know she is daring me to look away. “There is snow here, too,” she says. “There is snow right outside your window.”

At her words, I feel something surge inside me despite my weakness, and though I am afraid of movement, I nonetheless raise my left arm slowly. I inch it forward on my thigh and then lift it, moving it to the armrest. The exertion feels mammoth and I take a moment to catch my breath. But Ruth is right. There is water close by and I stretch my finger toward the button. I’m afraid the window won’t open, but still I stretch my finger forward. Something primal keeps me going. I hope the battery still works. It worked before, I tell myself again. It worked after the accident. Finally my finger meets the button and I push it forward.

And like a miracle, bitter cold suddenly invades the interior. The chill is brutal and a dab of snow lands on the back of my hand. So close now, but I am facing the wrong way. I must lift my head. The task seems insurmountable, but the water calls out to me and it is impossible not to answer.

I raise my head, and my arm and shoulder and collarbone explode. I see nothing but white and then nothing but black, but I keep on going. My face feels swollen, and for an instant, I don’t think I’ll make it. I want to put my head back down. I want the pain to end, yet my left hand is already moving toward me. The snow is already melting and I can feel the water dripping and my hand keeps moving.

And then, just when I’m on the brink of giving up, my hand meets my mouth. The snow is wonderful, and my mouth seems to come alive. I can feel the wetness on my tongue. It is cold and sharp and heavenly, and I feel the individual drops of water trace a path down my throat. The miracle emboldens me and I reach for another handful of snow. I swallow some more and the needles vanish. My throat is suddenly young like Ruth, and though the car is freezing, I do not even feel the cold. I take another handful of snow, and then another, and the exhaustion I felt just a minute ago has dissipated. I’m tired and weak, but this seems infinitely bearable by comparison. When I look at Ruth, I can see her clearly. She’s in her thirties, that age when she was most beautiful of all, and she is glowing.

“Thank you,” I finally say.

“There is no reason to thank me.” She shrugs. “But you should roll up the window now. Before you get too cold.”

I do as she tells me, my eyes never leaving hers. “I love you, Ruth,” I croak.

“I know,” she says, her expression tender. “That is why I have come.”

+++

The water has restored me in a way that seemed impossible even a few hours earlier. By this, I mean my mind. My body is still a wreck and I am still afraid to move, but Ruth seems comforted by my recovery. She sits quietly, listening to the chatter of my thoughts. Mostly I am preoccupied with the question of whether someone will ever find me . . .

In this world, after all, I’ve become more or less invisible. Even when I filled my tank with gasoline—which led to me getting lost, I now think—the woman behind the counter looked past me, toward a young man in jeans. I’ve become what the young are afraid of becoming, just another member of the nameless elderly, an old and broken man with nothing left to offer to this world.

My days are inconsequential, comprising simple moments and even simpler pleasures. I eat and sleep and think of Ruth; I wander the house and stare at the paintings, and in the mornings, I feed the pigeons that gather in my backyard. My neighbor complains about this. He thinks the birds are a disease-ridden nuisance. He may have a point, but he also cut down a magnificent maple tree that straddled our properties simply because he was tired of raking the leaves, so his judgment isn’t something that I consider altogether trustworthy. Anyway, I like the birds. I like the gentle cooing noises they make and I enjoy watching their heads bob up and down as they pursue the seed I scatter for them.

I know that most people consider me to be a recluse. That’s how the journalist described me. As much as I despise the word and what it implies, there is some truth to what she wrote about me. I’ve been a widower for years, a man without children, and as far as I know, I have no living relatives. My friends, aside from my attorney, Howie Sanders, have long since passed away, and since the media storm—the one unleashed by the article in the New Yorker—I seldom leave the house. It’s easier that way, but I frequently wonder whether I should have ever talked to the journalist in the first place. Probably not, but when Janice or Janet or whatever her name was showed up at the door unannounced, her dark hair and intelligent eyes reminded me of Ruth, and the next thing I knew, she was standing in the living room. She didn’t leave for the next six hours. How she found out about the collection, I still don’t know. Probably from an art dealer up north— they can be bigger gossips than schoolgirls—but even so, I didn’t blame her for all that followed. She was doing her job and I could have asked her to leave, but instead I answered her questions and allowed her to take photographs. After she left, I promptly put her out of my mind. Then, a few months later, a squeaky-voiced young man who described himself as a fact-checker for the magazine phoned to verify things that I had said. Naively, I gave him the answers he wanted, only to receive a small package in the mail several weeks later. The journalist had been thoughtful enough to send me a copy of the issue in which the article appeared. Needless to say, the arti-cle enraged me. I threw it away after reading what she’d written, but later after I’d cooled down, I retrieved it from the trash and read it once more. In retrospect, I realized it wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t understood what I’d been trying to tell her. In her mind, after all, the collection was the entirety of the story.

That was six years ago, and it turned my life upside down. Bars went up on the windows and a fence was installed that circled the yard. I had a security system put in, and the police began making a point to drive past my house at least twice a day. I was deluged with phone calls. Reporters. Producers. A screenwriter who promised to put the story on the big screen. Three or four lawyers. Two people who claimed to be related, distant cousins on Ruth’s side of the family. Strangers down on their luck and looking for handouts. In the end, I simply unplugged the phone, for all of them—including the journalist—thought about the art only in terms of money.

What every last person failed to see was that it was not about money; it was about the memories they held. If Ruth had the letters I wrote her, I had the paintings and the memories. When I see the de Koonings and the Rauschenbergs and the Warhols, I recall the way Ruth held me as we stood by the lake; when I see the Jack-son Pollock, I am reliving that first trip to New York in 1950. We were halfway through our trip, and on a whim we drove out to Springs, a hamlet near East Hampton on Long Island. It was a glorious summer day and Ruth wore a yellow dress. She was twenty-eight then and growing more beautiful with every passing day, something that Pollock did not fail to notice. I am convinced that it was her elegant bearing that moved him to allow two strangers into his studio. It also explains why he eventually allowed Ruth to purchase a painting he’d only recently completed, something he seldom, if ever, did again. Later that afternoon, on our way back to the city, Ruth and I stopped at a small café in Water Mill. It was a charming place with scuffed wood floors and sun-drenched windows, and the owner led us to a wobbly outdoor table. On that day, Ruth ordered white wine, something light and sweet, and we sipped from our glasses while gazing out over the Sound. The breeze was light and the day was warm, and when we spotted the occasional boat passing in the distance, we’d wonder aloud where it might be headed.

Hanging next to that painting is a work by Jasper Johns. We bought it in 1952, the summer that Ruth’s hair was at its longest. The first faint lines were beginning to form at the corners of her eyes, adding a womanly quality to her face. She and I had stood atop the Empire State Building earlier that morning, and later in the quiet of our hotel room, Ruth and I made love for hours before she finally fell asleep in my arms. I could not sleep that day. Instead, I stared at her, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, her skin warm against my own. In the dim surroundings of that room, her hair splayed over the pillow, I found myself asking whether any man had ever been as lucky as I.

This is why I wander our house late at night; this is why the collection remains intact. This is why I’ve never sold a single painting. How could I? In the oils and pigments I store my memories of Ruth; in every painting I recall a chapter of our lives together. There is nothing more precious to me. They are all I have left of the wife I’ve loved more than life itself, and I will continue to stare and remember until I can do it no more.

Before she passed, Ruth sometimes joined me on these late-hour wanderings, for she, too, enjoyed being drawn back in time. She, too, liked to retell the stories, even if she never realized that she was the heroine in all of them. She would hold my hand as we wandered from room to room, both of us reveling as the past came alive.

My marriage brought great happiness into my life, but lately there’s been nothing but sadness. I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can’t be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the trade-off is fair. A man should die as he had lived, I think; in his final moments, he should be surrounded and comforted by those he’s always loved.

But I already know that in my final moments, I will be alone.

 

Chapter 18

Sophia

The next few weeks were one of those rare and wonderful interludes in which almost everything made Sophia believe nothing could be better.

Her classes were stimulating, her grades were excellent, and even though she hadn’t heard from the Denver Art Museum, her adviser recommended her for an internship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She would interview there over Christmas break. It wasn’t a paid position and she would probably have to commute from home if she got it, but it was MoMA. Never in her wildest dreams had she considered it a possibility.

In the limited time that she spent at the sorority house, she’d noticed that Marcia was developing a prance in her step—the same one she got whenever she’d focused on someone special. She was in a perpetually good mood, despite her denials that a guy had anything to do with it. At the same time, Mary-Kate had significantly reduced her responsibilities at the sorority—other than attending mandatory meetings, Sophia was for the most part exempt from sisterly obligations. Granted, this was probably the result of her own perfunctory attitude, but hey, whatever worked. Best of all, she hadn’t run into Brian around campus—nor had he texted or called—making it easy to forget they’d ever dated.

And then, of course, there was Luke.

For the first time, she felt she understood what loving someone really meant. Since their weekend in the cabin— aside from Thanksgiving, when she’d gone home to visit her family—they’d spent every Saturday night together at the ranch, mostly in each other’s arms. In between kisses, the feel of his bare skin electric against her own, she reveled in the sound of his voice telling her over and over how much he adored her and how much she’d come to mean to him. In the darkness, she would gently trace her finger over his scars, sometimes finding a new one that she hadn’t noticed before; they would talk until the early hours of the morning, pausing only to make love once more. The passion they felt for each other was intoxicating, something entirely different from what she’d felt with Brian. It was a connection that transcended the physical act. She’d grown to appreciate the quiet way Luke would slip from the bed first thing on Sunday mornings to feed the animals and check the cattle, trying his best not to wake her. Usually she would doze again, only to be awakened later with a cup of hot coffee and his presence beside her. Sometimes they’d while away an hour or more on the porch or simply make breakfast together. Almost always they’d take the horses out, sometimes for an entire afternoon. The crisp winter air would turn her cheeks red and make her hands ache, yet in those moments she felt connected to Luke and the ranch in a way that made her wonder why it had taken her so long to find him.

As the holidays loomed closer, they would spend much of the weekend in the grove of Christmas trees. While Luke did the cutting, hauling, and tying up of the trees, Sophia worked the register. During lulls, she was able to study for finals.

Luke had also begun to practice in earnest on the mechanical bull again. Sometimes she’d watch him atop the hood of a rusting tractor in the rickety barn. The bull was set up in a makeshift ring thickly padded with foam to break his falls. Usually he started off slowly, riding just hard enough to loosen his muscles, before setting the bull on high. The bull would spin and dip and shift directions abruptly, yet somehow Luke would stay centered, holding his free hand up and away from his body. He would ride three or four times, then sit with her while he recovered. Then he would climb into the ring again, the practice session sometimes lasting up to two hours. Though he never complained, she could recognize his soreness in the way he occasionally winced while shifting position or altering his walk. Sunday nights often found him in his bedroom, surrounded by candles as Sophia kneaded his muscles, trying to work out his aches and pains.

Though they spent little time together on campus, they would sometimes go to dinner or a movie, and once they even visited a country bar, where they listened to the same band that had been playing on the night they’d met, Luke teaching her to line dance at last. Luke made the world more vivid somehow, more real, and when they weren’t together, she inevitably found her thoughts drifting toward him.

The second week of December brought with it an early cold front, a heavy storm that blew down from Canada. It was the first snow of the season, and though most of it had melted by the following afternoon, Sophia and Luke spent part of the morning admiring the white-capped beauty of the ranch before hiking to the grove of Christmas trees on what ended up being the busiest day to that point.

Later, as had become their habit, they headed over to his mother’s. While Luke worked on replacing the brake pads in his truck, Linda taught Sophia how to bake. Luke hadn’t been lying about how good her pies were, and they passed an enjoyable afternoon in the kitchen, chatting and laughing, their aprons coated with flour.

Spending time with Linda reminded Sophia of her parents and all the sacrifices they’d made for her. Watching Linda and Luke tease and joke with each other made her wonder whether she’d have the same kind of relationship with her own parents someday. Gone would be the little girl they remembered; in her place would be not only their daughter, but perhaps a friend as well. Being part of Luke’s life had made her feel more like an adult. With only a semester to go, she no longer wondered what the point of college had been. The ups and downs, the dreams and struggles, had all been part of the journey, she realized—a journey that led to a cattle ranch near a town called King, where she had fallen in love with a cowboy named Luke.

+++

“Again?” Marcia whined. She crossed her legs on the bed, pulling her oversize sweater down over her tights. “What? Twelve weekends in a row at the ranch weren’t enough for you?”

“You’re exaggerating.” Sophia rolled her eyes, adding a final coat of lip gloss. Next to her, her small bag was already packed.

“Of course I am. But it’s our last weekend before Christmas break. We leave on Wednesday, and I’ve barely spent any time with you at all this semester.”

“We’re together all the time,” Sophia protested.

“No,” Marcia said. “We used to spend time together. Now you’re at the ranch with him almost every weekend. You didn’t even go to the winter formal last weekend. Our winter formal.”

“You know I don’t care for those kinds of events.” “Don’t you mean he doesn’t care for them?”

Sophia brought her lips together, not wanting to sound defensive but feeling the first hint of irritation in the way Marcia sounded. “Neither of us wanted to go, okay? He was working and he needed my help.”

Marcia ran her hand through her hair, clearly exasperated. “I don’t know how to say this without making you mad at me.”

“Say what?”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“What are you talking about?” Sophia put down her tube of lip gloss and turned to face her friend.

Marcia tossed up her hands. “Think about how it looks—imagine what you’d say if our roles were reversed. Say I was in a relationship for two years—”

“Not likely,” Sophia stopped her.

“Okay, and I know it’s hard, but just pretend. I’m doing this for you. Say I went through a truly awful breakup and was hiding out in my room for weeks, then out of the blue, I meet this guy. So I talk to him and visit him the next day, and then talk to him on the phone and visit him the next weekend. Pretty soon, I’m treating him like he’s my whole world and spending every free minute with him. What would you think? That it just so happened that I met Mr. Right while I was rebounding from a horrible breakup? I mean, what are the odds?”

Sophia could feel blood begin to pound in her veins. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“I’m saying that you could be making a mistake. And that if you’re not careful, you could end up getting hurt.”

“I’m not making a mistake,” Sophia snapped, zipping up the bag. “And I’m not going to get hurt. I like spending time with Luke.”

“I know.” Marcia softened, patting the bed beside her. “Sit down with me,” she pleaded. “Please?”

Sophia debated before crossing the room and taking a seat on the bed. Marcia faced her.

“I get that you like him,” she said. “I really do. And I’m glad you’re happy again. But where do you see this going? I mean, if it were me, I’d be happy to hang out and have fun, just see where it goes and live for the day. But I’d never let myself think for one minute that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with the guy.”

“I’m not thinking that either,” Sophia interjected.

Marcia picked at her sweater. “Are you sure? Because that’s not the impression I get.” She paused, her expression almost sad. “You shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. And every time you’re with him, you’re only making it worse for yourself.”

Sophia flushed. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re not thinking clearly,” Marcia answered. “If you were, you’d be thinking about the fact that you’re a senior in college—an art history major from New Jersey, for God’s sake—while Luke rides bulls and lives on a ranch in rural North Carolina. You’d be wondering what was going to happen in six months, once you graduate.” She stopped, forcing Sophia to concentrate on what she was really saying. “Can you imagine living on a ranch for the next fifty years? Riding horses, herding cows, and cleaning out stalls for the rest of your life?”

She shook her head. “No—”

“Oh,” Marcia said, cutting her off. “Then maybe you see Luke living in New York City while you work at a museum? Maybe you imagine the two of you spending every Sunday morning at the latest brunch hot spots, sipping cappuccinos and reading the New York Times? Is that how you picture your future together?”

When Sophia didn’t answer, Marcia reached over and squeezed her hand.

“I know how much you care about him,” she went on. “But your lives aren’t just on different tracks, they’re on different continents. And that means you’re going to have to watch your heart from here on, because if you don’t, it’s going to end up breaking into all sorts of pieces.”

+++

“You’ve been quiet tonight,” Luke said between sips of hot cocoa. Sophia held her hands around her cup, staring out from their spot on the couch at the snow flurries beyond the window, the second snow of the season, though this one wasn’t likely to stick. As usual, Luke had the fireplace going, but she couldn’t shake the chill she felt.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just tired.”

She could feel his attention, which tonight for some reason left her strangely unsettled.

“Do you know what I think?” he asked. “I think Marcia said something to you and it made you upset.”

Sophia didn’t answer right away. “Why would you say that?” she asked, her voice weaker than what she’d expected.

He shrugged. “When I called you to tell you that I was on my way, I could barely get you off the phone. By the time I got to the house, you’d gone silent. And I noticed the way you and Marcia kept glancing at each other. It was like the two of you had just shared some kind of confession, and neither of you was happy about it.”

The warmth from the cup radiated into her hands. “You’re very perceptive for a guy who can go a whole day without talking,” she said, peering up at him.

“That’s why I’m perceptive.”

His answer reminded her of the reasons they’d become so close so fast. But whether that was such a good idea wasn’t quite so clear anymore.

“You’re thinking again,” he chided. “And it’s beginning to make me nervous.”

Despite the tension, she laughed.

“Where do you think all this is going?” she suddenly asked, echoing Marcia’s earlier question.

“Between us, you mean?”

“I’m going to be graduating in the spring. Just a few months from now. What’s going to happen then? What happens when I move back home? Or get a job somewhere?”

He leaned forward, putting his cup on the coffee table before slowly turning to face her again. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know?”

His face was unreadable. “I can’t tell the future any more than you can.”

“That sounds like an excuse.”

“I’m not making excuses,” he said. “I’m just trying to be honest.”

“But you’re not saying anything!” she cried, hearing her own desperation and hating it.

Luke kept his voice steady. “Then how about this? I love you. I want to be with you. We’ll find a way to make it work.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

“Even if that means you have to move to New Jersey?”

The firelight cast half his face in shadow. “You want me to move to New Jersey?”

“What’s wrong with New Jersey?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I told you that I’ve been there before and that I liked it.”

“But?”

For the first time, his eyes dropped. “I can’t leave the ranch until I know my mom’s going to be okay,” he said with a certain finality.

She understood his reasons, and yet . . .

“You want me to stay here,” she said. “After graduation.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I would never ask you to do that.”

She couldn’t hide her exasperation. “Then, again, what are we going to do?”

He put his hands on his knees. “We’re not the first couple to face something like this. My feeling is, if it was meant to be, we’ll figure it out. No, I don’t know the answers, and no, I can’t tell you how it’s all going to play out. And if you were leaving today, I’d be more worried about it. But we’ve got six months, and things might be different by then . . . Maybe I’ll be riding well and I won’t be so worried about the ranch, or maybe I’ll be digging up one of the fence posts one day and discover some buried treasure. Or maybe we’ll end up losing the ranch entirely and I’ll have to move anyway. Or maybe you’ll get a job in Charlotte, someplace close enough to commute. I don’t know.” He leaned closer, no doubt trying to underscore his words. “The only thing I do know for sure is that if we both want to, we’ll find a way to make it work.”

She knew it was the only thing he could say, but the question of their future still left her feeling unsettled. She didn’t say that, though. Instead, she scooted closer and let him slip his arm around her, his body warm against hers. She drew a long breath, wishing that time could somehow stop. Or at least slow down. “Okay,” she whispered.

He kissed her hair, then rested his chin on top of her head. “I love you, you know.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”

“I’m going to miss you while you’re gone.”

“Me too.”

“But I’m glad you’ll spend some time with your family.”

“Me too.”

“Maybe I’ll drive up to New Jersey and surprise you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not saying you’re not welcome to visit me. I’m just saying it won’t be a surprise. You kind of ruined it.”

He thought about that. “I guess I did, didn’t I? Well, maybe I’ll surprise you by not coming.”

“You better come. My parents want to meet you. They’ve never met a cowboy before and I know they have this crazy picture in their heads in which you walk around with a six-shooter and say things like ‘Howdy, pardner.’ ”

He laughed. “I guess I’ll disappoint them.”

“No,” she said. “That’s one thing you won’t do.”

At that, Luke smiled. “How about New Year’s Eve? You doing anything?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

“Now you are.”

“Perfect. But you can’t show up at night. You’re going to have to spend some time with my parents, like I said.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He nodded toward the corner. “Do you want to help me decorate the tree?”

“What tree?”

“It’s out back. I picked it out yesterday and dragged it over. It’s kind of small and sparse and it wasn’t likely to sell, but I thought it might be nice in here. So you know what you’ll be missing.”

She leaned into him. “I already know what I’ll be missing.”

+++

An hour later, Sophia and Luke stood back and admired their work.

“It’s not quite right,” Luke said, crossing his arms as he surveyed the tinsel-strewn tree. “It needs something more.”

“There’s not much more we can do with it,” Sophia said, reaching out to adjust a strand of lights. “A lot of the branches are already sagging.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s . . . Hold on. I’ll be right back. I know exactly what it needs. Just give me a minute—”

Sophia watched him disappear into the bedroom and return with a medium-size gift box, tied with ribbon. He walked past her and set it beneath the tree, then joined her again.

“Much better,” he said.

She looked over at him. “Is that for me?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t get you anything.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“That may be, but now I feel bad.”

“Don’t. You can make it up to me later.”

She studied him. “You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?”

“It was all part of my plan.”

“What’s in it?”

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Open it.”

She approached the tree and picked up the box. It was light enough for her to guess what was inside before she’d untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. She pulled it out and held it in front of her, examining it. Dyed black and made of straw, it was decorated with beads and a band that held in place a small feather.

“A cowboy hat?”

“A nice one,” he said. “For girls.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Well, I would never wear one with a feather or beads. And I figured that since you were coming out here so much, you really needed your own.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas.”

She put it on and peered up at him coquettishly. “How does it look?”

“Beautiful,” he said. “But then again, you always look beautiful.”

 

From The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks. Copyright © 2013 by Willow Holdings, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY, U.S.A. All rights reserved.