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For JJ, falling in love was always easy.
The first time, she was in kindergarten. A boy named Oliver chased her around the playground. She laughed and screamed and when she tripped and scraped her knee, he helped her get a band-aid from the nurse.
In second grade, the boy who sat behind her in class gave her a drawing. It was in crayon, two stick figures— “JJ AND BOBBY”, with a big pink heart between them. At recess, they got married with rubber-band rings.
On her first day of fifth grade, she bumped into a boy named Mark in the lunch line. When she dropped her pizza on the ground, he gave her his slice. They held hands under the lunch table.
In eighth grade, she bet a boy named Jack that she could run faster than him. Their friends timed them while they sprinted laps around the gym. She finished five seconds before him, and when he breathlessly called for a rematch, she kissed him on the cheek.
In ninth grade, she got lost trying to find her way to her science class. When she walked in five minutes late she took the very last seat in the back, next to a redheaded boy named James. He whispered everything she’d missed into her ear. They dated until he broke up with her to ask another girl to the winter formal. She cried over him for weeks. It was her first real heartbreak.
Eleventh grade was the first time JJ realized that a girl could love another girl. Her name was Macy, and she was a senior. She had long blonde hair like JJ’s, but Macy had streaks of blue and purple through hers. She wore big clunky boots and ripped fishnets. When JJ kissed her under the bleachers after soccer practice, she tasted like cigarettes.
Throughout college and grad school, JJ fell in love with no less than ten people. They faded in and out like pictures on a TV changing channels— a short girl named Ingrid with an explosive, contagious laugh; a quiet, somber boy named Carson who came to all of her soccer games; a willowy computer science major named Veronica; a sandy-haired boy named Stephen who took her bowling; they all blurred together in a colorful smudge of warmth and love and, eventually, heartbreak. Despite the frequency of JJ’s relationships, she fell truly and deeply in love with every person she dated. Sometimes it took her a little while— days, weeks, months— to fall for someone, but sometimes all it took was a look— a shared glance, a blush, and she was in deep. But she had never loved two people at the same time before.
Until Emily.
JJ had been with Will for a year and a half. Falling in love with him had taken nearly the entirety of the first year— flying back and forth from Virginia to New Orleans, missing calls after work, it had all been so difficult— but when she had kissed him at the police station in Miami, had made the decision to stay with him, it had felt right. And then, there had been two lines on the strip, and JJ felt as if her life would flip upside down. Will was thrilled, of course, and his enthusiasm lifted her spirits a little. She was grateful for his optimism and his commitment to making their relationship work, making their... family work. Because they would be a family now.
But when he asked her to marry him, her words rose in her throat, yes and no tangled together, choking her. She couldn’t do it, didn’t know why. She loved him. They were going to have a child together. She should marry him. Right?
When Will showed up in New York unexpectedly and told the team everything, Emily had hugged her and congratulated her like everyone else. But in the hotel room, Emily perched on the bathroom counter while JJ washed her face and asked her how she really felt. JJ broke down, face still dripping, and Emily gently patted her face with a towel and held her while she cried. JJ told her how she couldn’t marry Will, how she didn’t know if she was ready to be a mom, and could she have a kid and still work at the B.A.U., and did she even love him if she couldn’t say yes?
Emily gently pushed the hair away from JJ’s face and calmed her down. First of all, she said, JJ would be an incredible mother. Kind, and loving, and dedicated— that kid would be the luckiest kid in the world. Second, she said, just because JJ wasn’t ready to get married didn’t mean she didn’t love Will. It just meant that it wasn’t right quite yet. JJ had listened, eyes closed, letting Emily soothe her with soft words and soft hands.
After that, Emily was always by her side. It felt good to be supported, felt somehow different than Will’s pep talks and platitudes. When JJ felt her baby kick for the first time, Emily was there, one hand on her stomach and eyes wide in wonder. When JJ was so tired after a particularly long day that she could barely keep her eyes open, Emily drove her home and picked her up for work the next day. When JJ found herself needing to talk or cry or laugh in the hotel room after a case, Emily listened and held her and laughed along with her. When Henry was born, Emily loved him as if he were her own, and he loved her right back. She came around so often that Henry called her ‘Auntie Emily,’ and she took up a near-permanent residence on the couch when Will was away. JJ noticed the traces Emily left— coffee mugs with lipstick prints all over the rim; post-it notes crowded with her messy, spiky handwriting stuck on desks, fridges, and whiteboards; echoes of her woodsy, rich perfume drifting through the air. It felt so natural to have her around, felt so right, that JJ didn’t even realize she had fallen. Sharing a bed in a tiny hotel room, JJ turned over and saw Emily’s face so close to hers, eyes wide and lips barely parted. It hit her in full force then, and she hadn’t even taken a second to think before leaning over and kissing her.
And oh, god, it felt right.
When they pulled away from each other, giggling and gasping, JJ felt younger than she had in years. Looking at Emily smiling and blushing and stumbling over her words, she thought that her eyes might have actually become cartoon hearts bugging out of her head. She loved Emily. She loved Emily. She loved Emily.
And Will.
Because she did still love him, she realized. When she came home from shared hotel rooms in different states, stolen moments in the bullpen after everyone else was gone, ‘wine nights’ at Emily’s apartment, she fell into the arms of a man she loved. A man she had almost married. The father of her child, the third member of their little family.
JJ loved both of them with her whole being. She threw herself into it, into the feeling of excitement and giddy laughter. For a little while, it was marvelous. JJ relished in the feeling of warmth and exhilaration and never being without someone she loved.
But nothing lasts forever, and soon JJ’s double life began to take a toll on her. At first, it picked and prodded at her with long, pointy fingers. They were only minor inconveniences— Emily wanted her to stay over, but Will had planned a nice dinner. Will wanted to take her out for her birthday, but so did Emily. They both called at the same time to ask her to pick up a bottle of wine from the grocery store. Then, it started to tug, pulling painfully at her. It got harder to hide. Will consulted on a local case, and she tried not to see the hurt look on Emily’s face when she wrapped her arms around his waist. She hosted a dinner for the team, and Emily had a glass of wine too many and had to stay over. Emily stopped coming to the house so much. Suddenly, she felt as if she was being ripped in two pieces, shredded into scraps of her two lives. She forgot to pick up Henry from school because she lost track of time getting lunch with Emily. She had to buy a last-minute gift for Emily’s birthday because she had stayed out late with Will the night before. She forgot her and Will’s anniversary.
Bad mother. Bad girlfriend. Bad almost-wife.
JJ loved them both, wanted to be with them both, but she had to make a decision. She couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in Will’s eyes when she told him she would be coming home late, or the sadness in Emily’s eyes when she told her she had to leave. JJ had never been one for pro/con lists, so she took a day off of work instead and told Will she was going for a drive. With no destination in mind, with her hands on the steering wheel, and with staticky radio crackling in her ears, her problems seemed easier to confront. She worked through her tangled thoughts with a fine-tooth comb, picking them out and turning them over in her head until they were as smooth as the pebbles lining a riverbed.
She loved Will. She loved Emily.
She loved Emily. She loved Will.
She knew the what the right decision would be. It was a decision she shouldn’t have had to make in the first place. She should have never cheated— because she had been a cheater, even if she loved them both purely and fully— should have never betrayed the man she loved, a man who loved her. She should stay with her family, give Henry the childhood he deserved, with two parents who loved each other. He would grow up in a united home, and they would be happy.
And that was it. She would stay with Will.
With her decision made, JJ released a long breath. It had been an easy choice. She was doing what was right. For Will. For Henry.
For herself?
It had to be. She would tell Emily today. She would go to her apartment and tell her that there couldn’t be anything anymore. No more stolen glances, fingers twined together, shared beds on cases. No more whispered affections or gentle hugs. No more nights spent together, listening to Emily’s soft, low voice as she told stories about living in France and Italy and the Middle East. No more relinquishing herself to the comfort of Emily’s arms after a long day. No more wheezing fits of laughter, clutching each other’s forearms and shaking with joy. No more days just the three of them at the park or the museum with Henry. No more ‘Auntie Emily.’
A sinking sensation tugged at JJ’s stomach as she thought about everything she was about to lose. She tried to remind herself of her decision, her choice to keep her family together, but a yawning, gaping chasm of sorrow was opening up in her chest, threatening to swallow her whole. She tried to remind herself that she could live without Emily, had lived without Emily for years and years and years, and that she would be okay, but the mere thought of it threatened to send her into a tailspin.
She couldn’t leave Emily, because yes, she would be losing her lover, but she would also be losing her best friend and, besides Henry, the best thing that had ever happened to her.
And maybe it was selfish. Maybe it was a terrible, selfish decision to make, maybe she was a bad mother, a bad person. But it wasn’t cowardly. She wouldn’t decide out of the fear of losing her stability, the fear of uncertainty.
Because she loved them both, but if Will had asked her to marry him again, her answer would still be no. But if Emily had asked her…
JJ had to slam on the brakes to avoid rear ending the Honda Civic in front of her. She had stopped paying attention to the road, too deep in thought.
Because if Emily had gotten down on one knee right this very moment and asked JJ to marry her, JJ would have said yes.
And she had her answer.
For JJ, falling in love was always easy. But as she kissed Emily, as they laughed and cried and promised forever forever forever, JJ knew that she couldn’t possibly love anyone more.