Love Stories is a series about love in all its forms, with a new story published each day during the week of Valentine’s Day. For this year’s installment, Vogue partnered with the publisher 831 Stories on a collection of essays and excerpts celebrating the art of romantic fiction. So break out the chilled red wine and silky pajamas, and read on.
I spot Henry making introductions for an older woman wearing a necklace featuring a pear-shaped rock that would rival even the Taylor–Burton Diamond. Henry’s head swivels, scanning the ballroom, and I get the feeling he’s looking for me. Geoffrey gives me a sidelong glance. “You wanna get some fresh air?”
“You couldn’t have better timing.”
“On my count, we head for that door.” He points to one in the opposite corner.
“You think it has an alarm?”
He shrugs. “Only one way to find out.” Geoffrey looks over at Henry, whose back is to us. “One, two, three, let’s go.” Before I can fully comprehend what’s happening, he takes off on a brisk walk toward the exit. And for the second time in twenty-four hours, I decide I’ll follow this man anywhere.
Geoffrey pushes through the door just as I catch up. The alarm doesn’t go off. It opens into a stairwell, and Geoffrey grins down at me from a few steps ahead.
“You knew that wouldn’t go off.”
He smirks. “I may have used my journalistic observational skills and noticed a few people sneak out this way.”
“You could have told me.” There’s no heat behind my assertion, just a fondness I feel growing every time I’m around him. We end up on the rooftop we’re not supposed to have access to. Other than a little cluster of the waitstaff vaping on one side, we’re on our own. We stand by the dome, looking out onto the city.
“Y’know,” I tell Geoffrey, “I was dreading coming tonight. But you did a pretty good job as Replacement Wendy.”
“Only ‘pretty good’? Where did I need improvement?” He shifts his gaze to me with a small smirk.
I pretend to think it over. “She would have given me more talking points for that guy from the mayor’s office.”
Geoffrey shakes his head, “You were a natural. Didn’t need them.”
“Really? I felt like it was obvious I was scrambling for things to say.”
“See, this is something I’ve noticed about you. You’re so good at lifting up others but you downplay your own skills a lot.”
My first instinct is to brush his comment off. But I know he’s right, and something about him makes me want to stop turning away from uncomfortable truths.
“It feels like a reflex at this point.”
“You’ve always been like this?”
I pause, searching for the truth. Have I? For as long as I can remember. Since living here, at least. “Pretty much.” I look across Market Street. “But you’re right that it doesn’t serve me. Probably hasn’t for a very long time. If ever.”
Geoffrey nods. “Good.” His eyes crinkle like he’s pleased to be standing next to me as I have this mini-revelation. “And I’m glad you’re having a good time. I am, too.”
“Did I say I was?” I gently tease him.
“I can read between the lines.”
“Nothing gets past you.” I raise my brows at him and take a sip of my cocktail. “I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun at one of these events.” I pause, giving myself the chance to draw inward again. Then proceeding anyway. “It makes me sad.”
“Since Alex, you mean?”
“Even with him.” It’s a heavy truth, one I wasn’t planning on talking about. But if I know anything by now, it’s that I can’t keep these truths from spilling out around Geoffrey Campbell. He waits for me to say more. He’s dangerously good at staying quiet. His eyes are warm and encouraging, and I feel the steadying force of the foundation of the trust we’ve already managed to build.
“We’d grown apart in those last couple of years together.” I can’t look at him when I say this. It feels almost traitorous.
“Did something happen?”
“Yes and no. There was nothing big. No infidelity, midlife crisis, or anything. We just grew apart. He was so concerned about finding the next big app or tech development to get involved with. He had sold OneK years before, and I think he was restless.”
Geoffrey nods. “A lot of entrepreneurs are like that. You strike gold once, and it becomes a challenge to do it again. To prove that you’re the driver of your success and it wasn’t just some perfect circumstance, some combination of timing and luck the first time around.”
“Exactly. He acted like he had something to prove, and I just wasn’t a part of that, and couldn’t help him. Not that I had all that much going on. Which was kind of the problem.”
“In what way?”
“Alex and I…” I shift in my shoes, leaning into the discomfort of being in heels for hours instead of the discomfort of being in my head for my whole life. “We had been together since we were nineteen, and so much of my identity revolved around that relationship. I wish I’d tried harder to be more independent. I think the last chance of that was when we broke up—”
Geoffrey’s brow shoots up in surprise, and I realize that this is new territory. He senses my hesitation to continue and takes a step closer. We hold eye contact, and it’s as if he’s reached out and taken my hand. It gives me the courage to continue. “I didn’t say any of this before because I didn’t want it in the story. It feels too personal. And honestly, it feels a bit disloyal to talk about the low points of our marriage now that he’s gone.”
“I understand.” He pauses and appears to be collecting his words. “Right now, I want us to both be two people interested in getting to know each other. Is that okay?”
“More than okay.” A thought sneaks up on me, announcing itself so clearly that I sigh out loud: I trust this man. Fully. Not just to do right by me as a journalist but to do right by me as a person.
“We were twenty-four,” I continue, “thinking about getting engaged but not quite there yet. He’d just quit his job at Google to develop OneK full time. It felt like everything became about the app, the app, the app. His mood was dependent on whether something went right or wrong with it that day. We were fighting a lot. About little things, bigger things. It was exhausting being around him, so I broke up with him.”
“That couldn’t have been an easy decision to make.”
“It wasn’t. It felt like I was walking away from the only man who’d ever love me.”
“How…long?”
“Three months. The longest three months of my life. It was a blessing living far away from my family because I didn’t have to tell anyone. I just went to work, ate, and slept a lot. Had three awful hookups that just made me miss him more. I realized I was depressed but I couldn’t bring myself to make anyone worry about me. Guess I’m still kind of like that. I’m working on it.”
His eyes are filled with compassion as he leans over and runs his hand along my forearm, like he’s unsure how to comfort me with so much of my skin exposed in this dress. It’s a small, almost awkward gesture that fills me up.
“We ended up getting back together after bumping into each other at the grocery store of all places. And I just slotted back into his life like nothing ever happened.”
We’re both quiet as chatter from the street floats up to us. A group of teens walk by, dressed for a night out. One girl struggles to keep up, her platforms too hard to walk in. A boy stops to wait for her. He bends down, and she hops on his back, yelping in the process. They move out of sight.
“You said something at volunteering that stuck with me: That I see where I fit into other people’s lives.”
I nod, remembering.
“It seems like you’ve done the same. It’s easy for me to do it with work because it’s the nature of the job, and I love it. I’ve fallen into the habit with my friends and family, the people I already love. But I’ve never been able to do that with a romantic relationship.”
I can see that he’s tense. He runs his hand through his hair, and I want to replace it with mine.
“I’ve never been married—”
“Red flag for a guy over forty,” I quip. “Or so I’m told.” I hope my joke lands as a balm for his nerves.
Geoffrey sighs, fusses with his hair again. “I don’t have much to defend myself. Just a guy who’s married to his job and bad at communicating.”
I frown. “How can that be true? Your whole job is about active listening and follow-up questions. I’ve witnessed you be good at it.”
“Because I choose to be good at it. I actively work for it. I haven’t done that in my past relationships. My last serious one ended two years ago. Her name is Annika— mutual friends set us up. At the start, it was the easiest relationship I’d ever been in.”
“So, what happened?”
“I went on three back-to-back assignments, opportunities I thought were too important to pass up. I was flying back from Rome on the worst route with three layovers when I got a FaceTime call from her. Turns out, I had missed her birthday without realizing it.”
I grimace. “That’s pretty bad.”
“Yeah, she was more resigned than upset at that point.” He cringes, like he doesn’t want to keep going but plows ahead anyway. “Said I never considered her before I took those jobs. And she was right. She hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
“Seems like we’ve had the opposite problems in the past.”
He nods. “I don’t want that again. I’ve gone to enough therapy to know that I want to actively show up for someone I’m with. The path I’ve chosen is pretty lonely, and I want to see what would happen if I gave things a real shot.”
“And I don’t want to lose myself again.”
We’re dancing around the idea of us. What we want from the other. It feels too serious to directly name, but the real meaning behind our words hangs in the air between us. I know we both can see it there.
When I can’t stand it anymore, I nudge him with my shoulder and he pushes back against me. “Tell me what you’re thinking right now,” he says to my neck.
I lean in a little, even though we’re already closer than what propriety calls for.
“Are you always Geoffrey? Never Geoff?”
He laughs, soft and warm. “That’s not what you’re thinking right now.”
I shrug, hoping I look like one of those nonchalant women from a French noir. “It’s one of the things.” My heartbeat picks up and I find it hard to focus on determining what is the right thing to do now.
“What’s the other?” His eyes spark, and I know he knows the answer. But he’s drawing me out. Making me tell him.
My eyes drop to his mouth, and I remember the feel of his lips pressed against mine. How good it felt, how right. “You know I can’t say.”
“I know you think you can’t.” He turns toward me so our lips are a breath apart.
My mind is racing with a hundred, a billion, reasons why this is a bad idea.
Thoughts of Alex, the story, the public scrutiny, his job, the foundation swim laps in my brain, but for every valid, tangible reason I should walk away, there’s one reason to stay: I want to.
