Where My Love Never Reached Chapter 07
The next day, as soon as I arrived at the gallery, I saw Jeremiah standing outside the entrance. He was holding a thick document envelope. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his lips were dry and cracked.
I didn’t slow down. I walked straight toward the gallery’s glass doors.
“Gigi.” He stepped in front of me. “Give me ten minutes. Just ten minutes.”
I looked up at him. “Jeremiah, this kind of persistence isn’t your style. You used to hate people wasting your time. If a meeting started three minutes late, you’d walk out.”
“My time is yours now.” His eyes were bloodshot as he held out the envelope. “These are copies of my resignation papers from the Geneva headquarters. I’ve resigned as Chief Translator.”
Chief Translator at the Geneva headquarters. The position he had held since he was twenty-eight. The position he had always been proud of. The same position he had used countless times as an excuse to brush me aside.
“I’m busy.”
“I have a deadline.”
“This meeting is important.”
“You know how much this job means to me.”
Resign from it? The idea would have been unimaginable before.
I quickly regained my composure and made no move to take the envelope.
He pulled a velvet box from his pocket. His fingers trembled as he opened it. Inside was a diamond ring.
Not some cheap ring bought on impulse. It was a limited-edition design from a prestigious jewelry house. Two years earlier, when I had seen it in a magazine, I had folded down the page.
“You once said you wanted to choose a ring together in person.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry. I always thought it was too much trouble. I said picking a ring was a waste of time. I said we could keep the wedding simple. I said we’d take our honeymoon later when I wasn’t so busy.”
“Gigi, I’ve given up everything in Geneva. I’ve come to Paris for you. You’re a curator here now. I can be your translator, your assistant, whatever you need. Just let me stay by your side.”
I looked at the diamond ring. Then I looked at his face, so haggard it was almost unrecognizable. The whole thing felt absurd.
“Jeremiah,” I spoke quietly. “Do you think you’re trying to win me back, or are you just trying to move yourself?”
He froze.
“You resigned. You bought a ring. You flew to Paris and humbled yourself like this.” My voice remained calm. “Do you think that because you gave up such an important job, because you bought such an expensive ring, because you’ve made yourself look this miserable, I have to forgive you?”
“No!” His voice suddenly rose. “That’s not it, Gigi. I truly want to make it up to you—”
“You can’t.” I cut him off. “The Georgina who swallowed her tears late at night because you said, ‘Work isn’t a game,’ is already gone.”
He looked as though he couldn’t breathe.
“The Georgina who went to the hospital alone with a high fever, who called you seventeen times while sitting in the infusion clinic, only for you to answer none of them, is already gone.”
His hand began to shake violently.
“The Georgina who held herself together at your mother’s funeral and handled everything while you left early for a work call is already gone.”
I pointed at the envelope.
“You resigned because, in that position, you finally realized your interpreting speed wasn’t what it used to be. Because the younger talent had caught up to you. Because you discovered you could no longer maintain the image of the flawless chief translator.”
Then I pointed at the ring.
“You bought this because you finally felt the terror of losing something. Because you realized that this time I won’t quietly swallow my feelings, pretend nothing happened, warm you a cup of milk, and wait for you to come home.
“Jeremiah, from beginning to end, the only person you’ve ever loved is yourself. Your career. Your pride. Your schedule. Your guilt. Even this moment of self-indulgent emotion. Those are all your problems. They have nothing to do with me.”
It was as if he had been struck by lightning. He stood there motionless, the hand holding the ring box frozen in midair.
I pushed open the gallery door. The familiar scent drifted toward me.
“Your ten minutes are up.” I didn’t look back. “Please leave.”
Over the next few days, Jeremiah never appeared again.
Not until I was preparing to return home to take care of some paperwork. That afternoon, a light rain began to fall as I stepped out of the gallery.
Jeremiah stood in the rain without an umbrella. He was completely soaked. His hair clung to his forehead, and he looked utterly worn down.
“Gigi.” He walked up to me and carefully pulled out a letter from the inside pocket of his trench coat.
The love letter I had once photographed and sent to him. The one I had begged him to translate into French. The one he had refused because he was busy with a “two-thousand-page draft.”
“I translated it.”
His voice trembled as he handed me the paper.
Written across it, in his own hand, was elegant French script: “Je t’aimais, dès le premier instant où tu m’as souri…”
“I loved you from the very first moment you smiled at me…”