Holding Out

Holding Out - Chapter Eleven

Isaac looked at me as though he wanted to kiss me but instead he pulled away. "I'll tell you what, how about we play 21 questions?"

"I'm in." I said relieved that we were now out of the seriousness of the conversation. "Me first, how did you know you wanted to be a lawyer?"

"I didn't." he said slightly smiling, "my dad's a lawyer and his dad was a lawyer and his dad was a lawyer."

I laughed, "I get your point."

"I wanted to be a doctor actually. I wanted to cure cancer. I told my dad I wanted to go to medical school and his head literally spun around." He joked.

"I know what you mean. My mom flipped when she found out I quit my job at the hospital to do advertising."

"You're a doctor?" he asked impressed.

"Graduated top of my class at Johns Hopkins." I said bragging.

"So why advertising?" he asked.

"I don't want to do advertising but I'm good at it and it pays the bills. I really just needed a change. So I packed up my stuff, got an apartment in the city, and took the first job offered to me. I didn't think I would move up the latter so quickly though, so now, I'm in advertising." I said leaning over the boat. "Why do you want to go out with me?" I asked curious.

"Isn't that question pretty obvious?" he joked.

"No I'm serious, you could literally have any girl I the world. Why spend so much time on me?"

"Ok. After I met you that day, I went home that night and all I could think about was you. In just 15 minutes you managed to overrun every part of my brain. You're smart, your beautiful, your funny, you're unique. I don't know if you know this but you could have any guy in the world yourself. Every time I'm with you I find myself getting pulled in deeper because you're just so different and real." he shrugged. "It's not you who should be asking that question, it's me." he said slightly embarrassed.

Damn why did he always have to say the right thing, "your turn." I said.

"Hmm have you ever been in love?" he asked rubbing his chin.

I scoffed, "no." I answered honestly.

"Why so harsh." He asked confused.

I shrugged, "I don't believe in love."

Isaac's eyes grew wide and his mouth flew open, "you have got to be kidding me?" he said in disbelief.

"I take it you do?" I said raising an eyebrow.

"With every fiber of my being." He said honestly. "How can you not believe in love?"

"Love is just an idea." I said frustrated. My answer was obviously not registering with Isaac so I continued. "People want to believe that they will find this one person who will make everything in their miserable lives make sense. When in reality, there is no such thing. Nobody wants to accept the fact that love is just a lot of mixed emotions. They don't want to believe the reality, that people will use you and hurt you and let you down time after time. Love is a joke that people play on others to make themselves feel better. You'll give them everything you have in the pursuit of love and when you have nothing left to give they're gone. Then they can use the excuse that they've fallen out of love. And you're left confused wondering what you did wrong to make this person stop loving you. When the truth is it was never love to begin with. Just a bunch of emotions mixed with lies." There was silence and I realized that I said too much. I hadn't meant to let all that slip out. I hadn't meant to let Isaac know my secrets.

"I'm sorry Jade." He finally said.

I laughed uncomfortably, "for what?"

"For whatever asshole out there who didn't realize what a great thing he had?" he said wrapping me in his arms.

I shook my head, "Isaac no, don't, it's fine."

"No, I know how you must feel." He said with sadness in his voice. "About 3 years ago I was engaged to this girl I'd known my whole life."

I felt a trace of jealously overcome me as he said it. Then again I knew that he must have done something to screw it up, men always do.

"I was so in love." He continued, "I did everything in my power to make her happy, and for a while I really thought she was. Then a few months before our wedding she just changed. She started acting cold. She wouldn't talk to me; she didn't want me to touch her. I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong. She shut me out. Then a week before our wedding I walked in on her and my best friend at the time. I was crushed. She told me that she'd had an abortion a few months before and she didn't want to keep it because she didn't know whose baby it was." I looked over at Isaac and saw him looking out into the water as if the story he was telling were replaying across the ocean. His eyes held so much sadness. "She said she'd fallen out of love with me. I knew what she did I knew that it was going on for months but I still wanted her to love me. I begged her to end it. I told her I would forget everything and we could act like it never happened but she left me. She was so cold and mean. Not herself at all. I gave up for a while after that. I couldn't eat, all I did was lay around all day. I lost hope, I even thought of suicide a couple times." He paused and looked at me pitifully. "I just felt so empty inside, until I realized that what Kate and I had wasn't love. It wasn't honest or special. It wasn't beautiful or passionate. It wasn't a miracle. It was just my lesson that needed to be learned on my way to finding true love. Look Jade I know you feel like you should give up on love but you shouldn't. There are days when nothing makes sense and I look at all the happy people of the world and I feel like losing faith. But the thing is when you believe in something, it doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to have rhyme or reason. It's real because you believe in it. So I believe in it. I believe in you too Jade."

I stood motionless taking in everything Isaac said. How could he have gone through so much and still be so optimistic?

My breathing increased. All of a sudden I felt a feeling that I hadn't felt in a long time. I wanted to reach out and hold him. I wanted to help him. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to take away his pain. Seeing him sad and hurt like this, imagining him so broken made me feel like a knife was going through my heart. I felt protective of him.

Before I knew it I was moving closer to him. I locked on to his green eyes. I moved closer until we were inches apart. I lingered awkwardly over his lips and before I got my sense back I crushed his lips to mine. He wrapped his arms around my waist and I ran my fingers through his hair.

The sensation of his lips against mine was unworldly. I knew what people meant now when they claim to see fireworks on the first kiss. However, this was more like an atomic bomb.

It was so good, so perfect, so affirming that it scared me. Isaac begged for entry and after few seconds of protest I allowed it. I wanted the kiss to last forever, I needed his touch more than I needed oxygen at the moment.

It felt right, safe, real, nothing I'd ever experienced with a man before. We pulled away both out of breath and I rested my head on his.

Maybe just for tonight I could forget that I wasn't supposed to let my guard down.

Just for tonight.