Taylor lay in bed, comfortable and spent. The moonlight broke through the bedroom window and fell upon a vase of roses, mixing white tints with the blood red of the flowers. She watched the white light mix with the red as she listened to Gregg's soft breathing and thought that the moment gave a silver tint to the end of each rose.
Rising softly, she gazed down affectionately at her sleeping boyfriend and ran her fingers lightly through his air. Gregg stirred slightly but continued to sleep. Gazing her at watch, she noticed the time: three o'clock in the morning. Her flight for Newport was leaving in five hours and she had to be at the airport in four.
Slipping back down into the bed, she covered herself with the blanket and tried to get back to sleep. What was keeping her up? What had woken her from her sleep? Taylor was drowsy, but her mind was racing with memories and with anxieties about going back home to Newport; her mother was always unpredictable and she wasn't sure if this Thanksgiving her mother would be glad to see her daughter or not.
"I suppose I can sleep on the plane." She told herself as she turned over once more. A car drove through the street and the way in switched into second gear vaguely reminded her of the way Ryan's car sounded when he picked up speed. Ryan. No doubt his ghost would haunt the streets of Newport this Thanksgiving. As she lay in bed, Taylor thought of Ryan and the months of happiness she had received from him. He was Sadie's now; they were still happy and their relationship was strong. She could read it in the emails she received from him; they did not come often, and they were not as long as she would have liked them to bed, but it was good to hear from him and she was glad for his friendship. Still, she told herself, it would be strange and slightly sad to walk the streets of Newport and know that they had both moved on from that time and place that had such a magical meaning to her. That magical past made her anxious because she knew that she could not step back into it anymore then she could return to Paris and find the old magic there. The City of Lights had become cold and empty as well.
That Newport, the Newport of Ryan and Taylor, as was the Paris of Taylor and Henri-Michael, was dead, just as nature seemed to die in this cold New England autumn and winter. Though she had thought these things before, she always felt a small sadness at the realization that it was a dead past, much like the past that Summer and Seth had shared was dead and lifeless. These thoughts and memories recalled to Taylor In Search of Lost Time;
In this respect, and because I preferred not to go there in search of what had given me pleasure in the past, a stroll through Doncieres might have seemed to me a prefiguration of an arrival in paradise. We dream much of paradise, or rather of a number of successive paradises, but each of them is, long before we die, a paradise lost, in which we should feel ourself lost too.
Would then Newport be a lost paradise to her? Would she wander the streets of her old home like a foreign traveler? No doubt she hardly thought of Newport as being home any longer.
She had spent so much time in Paris and then in Rhode Island that her life in California seemed to her to belong to someone else, a stranger that she would not recognize. Gregg rolled his body again and now faced Taylor. He still slept and this offered her the opportunity to study his sleeping figure.
Gregg had called her like he said he would; he had not kept Taylor waiting very long. It was two nights after he had met her that he had called her; she was out with Ryan, Sadie and Seth at the time and so his message went into voicemail. That next weekend they had gone out on a date and it had been going well since then. Taylor wasn't in love but she was happy; he made her laugh and smile and she could see a bright future for the both of them.
Yes, as the weather grew colder and colder, the future seemed to crystallize, like a beautiful snowflake. Summer was happy with the man that had wanted her; Anna was dating Adam, Ryan was happy with Sadie and Taylor was happy with Gregg. Only poor Seth, who had been crushed at Summer's decision to start dating, was not happy. He had left the previous morning for San Francisco while Summer was had left two days previous to see her father in Seattle.
For Seth, the fact that Summer was dating had made him nostalgic of his high school days and his Newport past; he tried one or two sorties to ambush Summer before or after her dates, but it had only ended awkwardly for him, Summer had been furious on both occasions and Taylor had found herself having to play both peace keeper and counselor for the two of them. Seth's sadness and defeat had been the only blight on the past two months in fact, and Taylor hoped that this time in Berkeley with family and friends would be enough to get him to refocus and find more positives in life.
On her side now, Taylor reached out and put her arms around Gregg's waist. She pulled herself closer and sighed at the warmth and strength of his body. As her fingers rested on his hips, she thought of the first time they had made love. Halloween had come and some of his friends at Providence had thrown a costume party; she had worn a French maid's outfit at his request and Taylor smiled to herself at the memory of how his eyes had followed her the entire evening; his hands had been constantly on her the car ride home and when they had finally gotten into the doorway, his body was on her, consuming her. He had devoured her that night and it still made her weak in the knees to think about how he had taken her.
He had been more tender the second time; it had been more candles and rosebuds. The memory of the rosebuds made her look over to the vase of roses that lay by the window. The moon light had shifted now and that silvery tint was off the flowers; she had brought those over when he had been sick the previous week. The cold did that to people, even those who knew how to handle the cold; certainly a year in Paris had groomed her for that because she could deal with it in ways that Summer and Seth could not; at least they had that in common still.
In her memory she could remember how those rosebuds had looked in the candle light, how they had felt in her fingertips. As he had made love to her, sweetly and tenderly, she thought how perfect pleasure was, and that there was really nothing more fine than good food, good wine and good sex. The wine and the beef lingered still on her tongue, just as the memory of his mouth and tongue had felt on her naked and hot flesh was freshly imprinted in her mind.
It would all pass eventually though; the moment of remembering pleasures and sexual ecstasies had past and her thoughts were replaced by images of the past, of with Ryan and Henri-Michael. At times she had thought her life complete then; that with these men life would be perfect and good. They had given her exquisite pleasures that she thought would stay with her forever, but those memories had faded and were simply jumbled. Would these times with Gregg become jumbled as well? No doubt they would; her days and nights with him would too become a paradise lost. Brown and the city that she lived in, all the cafes that she went with Anna and Seth—they would all become lost paradises which would not welcome her anymore—she would not feel welcome in anymore. Brown University would become what Newport was to her now, an old home that did not fit her existence any longer.
Such a realization passed through her body; it was an unfamiliar one, but it was still a sad one. She thought of all the bedrooms and rooms that she had spent so much time in; Taylor would not revisit them any more. All the people that had played an important part in her life, be it in high school or in Paris, they would pass further and further away from her life. Could it be that one day Summer, Seth, Anna or Ryan would die and Taylor would not know? Would they simply fade from her existence, live as dying memories until the day she was old and senile, the past an obliterated slate? The thought of such ripped her heart in two anew.
Gregg's calm and happy face did not soothe her. She was young still; there was nothing to ensure that he would be the one she spent the rest of her life with—in fact, it was a very small chance he would be the one. All this time together, where would it lead? No doubt one day they would break up and she would become just a girl he dated; she would be lost in a sea of other memories and when her last breath passed from her lips, she would be a mostly forgotten figure; her fragrance and her touch and the small nuances of her voice would be forgotten or mixed with those of another girl. Time would break her down in his mind just as time would break him down in hers. When they died, neither would mourn the other, neither would know the other had passed. They would simply be watching the clouds and feel the warm air blow through the world.
Yes, she would need to get some sleep on the plane.