I've Heard That Song Before

We talked for over an hour, him on his cell phone, listening through an earpiece while driving around San Francisco, stopping at a drugstore, walking along the water, and then, finally, getting into an elevator; and me, lying in my bed in the dark, three thousand miles away, crying.

I hate to cry. I am not a crybaby.

We may never go dancing again. He might never pick me up and swing me around again. But when you've got nothing, a little bit of something is everything, and Jack, for me, is in that box on the wall with the sign that reads, In case of emergency break glass.

"What was it that you wrote once, about how one of us doesn't want to need the other, and the other doesn't want anyone to need them?" he asked. "I suspect I'm the latter of that equation."

"I don't want to need anyone—but I do. And you don't want anyone to need you—but I do."

"That's gotta suck."

"Yeah, it does."

"Say goodnight Jack."

"Goodnight, Jack."

"Goodnight, Sassafras."

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

A couple of months ago Jack told me I was part of his past, and that he was moving into the future without me. It's not the first time he's said that, and this won't be the last time he'll be borne back to me, because he's not Jay Gatsby. And because we always, somehow, eventually, end up together.