by Megan Hart
No such luck.
Her skirt fell to her ankles but her panties were still bunched around her thighs as she snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”
Behind her, Nick blew out a long, slow breath. She didn’t look at him, but cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder as she eased up her panties.
“Bess?” He sounded as if he’d expected someone else.
“Andy.” The scrape of a chair behind her distracted her, but Bess kept her eyes on the refrigerator and the takeout menus hung there by magnets shaped like flip-f lops. “What’s up?”
“It’s about the boys.”
Bess stifled a groan. That long-ago summer when she’d talked with Andy on the phone, she’d sometimes stretched the cord as long as it could go in order to speak to him with some semblance of privacy. She was tempted to do that now, too, but didn’t.
“What about them?”
“They’re going to have to come to you earlier.”
“But…I thought you were going to take them to the Grand Canyon!” The words slipped out, sounding more petulant than she’d intended, and Bess cursed herself for giving Andy any reason to use his favorite patronizing tone with her.
Which of course he did. “Bess, c’mon. You know they’ll have a better time at the beach.”
“That’s not the point, Andy.”
Andy gave a deep, long-suffering sigh. “What is the point?”
Bess dug her fingernails into her palm and mentally counted to five before answering. “The boys are going to finish out the school year with you and then you’ll take two weeks for that rafting trip. Then they’ll come here, with me, after the Fourth of July. That’s what we talked about, Andy.”
“Yeah, well, about that…”
Bess waited as anger boiled up her throat like bile. Worse than bile. Worse than acid.
“I was thinking they could get out early. Skip those last couple of days. They’ve only got half days anyway.”
“Absolutely not!” Bess forced her fingers to uncurl. “Whose idea was that? Theirs or yours?”
His silence told her it was neither, and her stomach lurched along with the anger. “Never mind. No. The boys will finish school there. Connor’s got his graduation, Andy. You’re not going to take that away from him, are you? What might be his last chance to see his friends?”
Andy sighed. “Fine. But the trip will have to be postponed. I got offered the chance to go to a conference in Palm Springs, and I really need to go.”
“Need to? Or want to?”
“Bess, be fair. What do you care, anyway? I thought you’d love to have the boys earlier.”
Bess glanced at Nick, who watched her without expression. “They’re looking forward to that trip, Andy. You can’t disappoint them that way.”
“I already talked with Connor about it. He’s fine. Says he wants to get down there and start earning some money.”
“And Robbie?” Robbie was the more sensitive of her sons, the one who strove more valiantly and with less success for his father’s approval.
“He’ll be fine with it, too.”
Of course Andy hadn’t talked to Robbie about canceling the trip. And it would be canceled. Bess knew her husband too well to know any different. She put the phone against her forehead for a moment while she tried to keep her cool.
“Obviously you’ve made up your mind,” she said after a moment. “Fine. The boys will come here to me after Connor’s graduation party instead of the end of June. You’re right. I’ll love to have them.”
“Good. I’ll let you talk to Robbie.”
Before Bess could protest she heard Andy yelling Robbie’s name. A minute after that, her son said, “Mom?”
“Hey, honey.”
“What’s up?” He sounded worried. He sounded that way too much, and Bess’s heart hurt at having to disappoint him again.
“Honey, Dad just told me he’s got to go to a conference in Palm Springs. So you and Connor are coming to me right after school lets out.”
Silence. Robbie breathed into the phone. Bess tapped her forehead with the phone again, fighting the thickness of emotion in her throat.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m sure Dad wouldn’t cancel the trip if this conference wasn’t important.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t cancel our trip if she wasn’t going to the other one.” Robbie’s voice dripped acid.
That her son knew about the “her” was worse than Bess finding it out herself. Her fingers clenched into her palm again, finding the grooves left from her nails still there. “Robbie—”
“Never mind, Mom.” His voice shook a little bit, but he got it together. “It’s okay. Me and Conn’ll be down after school. Right. Fine. Cool.”
Bess forced her voice to brightness. “Hey. Remember I told you about the place I used to work? Sugarland? Well, I know the owner and he said he’d be glad to give you and Connor jobs this summer. So how about that?”
Robbie made an effort at sounding pleased that didn’t fool her. “That’ll be good. Conn was worried about finding something if we didn’t get there right away this summer. Me, too. You know, for college and stuff.”
“Don’t you worry about college, Robbie. Connor, neither. Okay?” Bess glanced at Nick again, but he’d left the table with the chair pushed back. Her stomach dropped, but in the next second she heard him moving around in the living room. So he hadn’t completely gone. “Sorry, honey?” Robbie had said something while she was distracted.
“Never mind.”
“No, Robbie. Tell me. It’s just there’s a storm here and I didn’t hear you.”
“I said, can’t I come earlier? Like Dad wants. Can’t I skip the last few days of school?”
“No, Robbie. You can’t.” Bess glanced into the living room and saw Nick’s shadow stretching long. “You have to finish up.”
Another long beat of silence moved through the telephone line, until Robbie sighed loudly. “Okay.”
“I miss you,” Bess said. “You and Connor both.”
“How about Dad?” Robbie asked astutely. “Do you miss him?”
“I miss you and Connor,” Bess repeated, and when Robbie hung up she wondered who’d taught him to be so cruel. If he’d learned it from Andy…or from her.
CHAPTER 12
Then
It was Andy’s turn to call Bess, but so far the phone hadn’t rung. She’d told him what time she’d be home from work, and warned the family members staying in the house that week she was expecting a call, but though she’d kept her shower brief and dressed quickly, the phone hadn’t rung. He was only twenty minutes past the time she’d expected him, but that was long enough.
Bess joined the rummy game and played without paying much attention, thus actually coming out ahead in the end. Since they were only betting pretzel sticks it wasn’t a big deal, but her uncle Ben kept calling her a card shark and that led to many impressions of the old Saturday Night Live skit “Land Shark,” which in turn led to more recent imitations of Chris Farley’s “in a van down by the river!” which in turn had Bess laughing so hard she snorted soda through her nose and had to leave the table.
She really had a wonderful family, and it was great she didn’t have to pay rent, she thought as she washed her face in the kitchen sink. But she did wish there weren’t always so many of them. She was waiting for the day when they told her she was going to have to share her room and bed with someone because of overflow, but so far it hadn’t happened.
She went to sleep when they all did, even Uncle Ben, who claimed insomnia and liked to fall asleep in front of the TV instead of in bed. Andy still hadn’t called. She’d left three messages over the past two weeks. She’d sent a letter, too, and a postcard. Andy had sent nothing.
When the phone did at last ring, Bess had fallen into a sleep so deep she dreamed about alarms blaring, and knocked her clock from the nightstand trying to turn it off. Blinking, she rose up in the darkness, muttering, and tore herself free from the tangle of s
heets and blankets to get to the phone before it woke anyone else.
“Bess?”
“Andy, what time is it?”
“You sound out of breath.” Andy…giggled?
“You sound drunk.”
“Nah. Naw. No.” Andy snuffled into the phone.
“I thought you were going to call me earlier.” Bess wound the cord around her finger as she pulled it out onto the deck and closed the sliding-glass door behind her. She shivered and yanked up a blanket from a deck chair. Bundling herself, she tried not to think about what time it was.
“Me-n-Matty went out.”
“I can tell.” Bess yawned. “Where did you go?”
“Persia’s.”
“Is that a club? Or a person?”
Silence.
“Andy?”
“I meant we went to Hooligan’s. Hooligan’s, Bess. You know. Pool and stuff. Me-n-Matty.”
Andy was fucking a girl named Persia. Bess tried to laugh, but all that came out was a strangled snort. Who the fuck named their daughter Persia? And what was worse, the fact that Andy was cheating on her or the fact that his brother, who Bess had thought liked her, knew about it and wouldn’t tell her?
“I left messages for you. Why didn’t you call me back?”
“I’m calling you back right now.”
Bess listened to the ocean’s purr, which was more soothing than the snorting sort of snuffle Andy had going on. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I couldn’t wait until morning. Had to talk to you.”
She wanted to believe that, but couldn’t quite manage. “You’re drunk, Andy.”
“I’m not drunk,” he said, which meant he was.
She heard more shuffling. “I have to go to work in a few hours. I’m hanging up—”
“Don’t!”
She paused, halfway out of her chair, and sank back into it. She waited for Andy to speak, but he wasn’t talking. Bess closed her eyes, throat tight, and wondered if he was going to tell her the truth now. If this was it.
The end.
“I love you,” Andy said. “Do you love me?”
She could say yes, but knowing she was not the only girl to love Andy kept her mouth from cooperating. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Don’t hang up,” he pleaded. “I want to know.”
Bess had twisted the phone cord so tight around her fingers they’d gone numb. She released them and rubbed them against the blanket to get some feeling back. “Yes.”
Andy laughed. It wasn’t his normal hearty chuckle, but a sort of sly, slippery, smirking sound that turned Bess’s stomach. “When’m I gonna see you?”
“When are you coming down?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Andy said. “You said you’d come home.”
Which made no sense at all to her and hadn’t when she’d agreed to it. “Andy, you’re the one with weekends off.”
“Come up during the week, I don’t care.”
“So I can do what? Hang around your parents’ house while you work? Come down here on the weekend. At least you can go to the beach.”
Andy grunted. “C’mon, Bess.”
She wanted to yell in frustration, but kept her voice down. “Let me guess. Your weekends are all tied up.”
The silence went on so long she was sure he’d passed out.
“Bess, Bess, Bess,” Andy slurred, finally. “‘M gonna go to bed.”
“You do that,” Bess said, voice tight. “Tell Persia I said hi.”
More silence. Maybe Andy wasn’t drunk enough to miss her clear message. She heard him breathing, hard.
“Don’t be like that, Bess.”
“Like what?”
“Jealous like that. You’re always so jealous.”
“Do I have a reason to be jealous?” She ground out the words.
“No, no. No, Bess.”
She didn’t believe him. There had been others. The letters, for one. Photos of him with his arm around a girl whose name she didn’t know. Maybe that was Persia. The real question was, why shouldn’t she be jealous?
Except she wasn’t, really. She had been, there was no doubt of that, but now, here, Bess only felt tired.
“Go to bed, Andy,” she told him, and hung up the phone.
He didn’t call back.
CHAPTER 13
Now
Nick came up behind her without saying anything, and slipped his arms around her waist. Bess had been staring into the darkness and listening to the ocean. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and she leaned back into his embrace.
She didn’t want to know, but the words came, anyway. “What was it like where you were?”
His fingers tightened briefly on her shirt, bunching it before relaxing. “Gray.”
She turned her head a little, though his face was too close to be more than a blur. “Gray?”
Nick let go of her and stood beside her to lean his elbows on the railing. “Yeah. Not black or white. Just…gray.”
Bess looked across the beach, lit here and there but mostly dark. Beyond lay the waves she could hear, and smell, almost taste…but not see. Nothing about any of it seemed gray to her.
The questions she’d successfully fought down before tried to rise to her lips, and she bit them back again. Ignorance truly was bliss. If she didn’t know the truth of where he’d been, what had happened, she wouldn’t have to wonder how he could be here, now.
“Until I heard you say my name,” he whispered.
Her breath snagged in her throat. She linked her fingers through his, pulling him to her. He came willingly enough. She tucked herself against him again.
“I missed you so much. It was all I could think about once I got here,” she murmured.
“You never came back in all these years?”
She shook her head. “No. I never did.”
Nick’s lip curled and he looked at her with half his face illuminated from the golden light spilling from the kitchen windows, and the other half dark. “You married that asshole.”
Bess nodded.
Nick ran his hands through his hair before turning back to grip the railing. “Why?”
“Because I loved him.”
Nick laughed. “Yeah, I think I remember you saying something like that.”
She rubbed her bare arms and wished for a sweater. “It was true at the time.”
“Sort of,” Nick said with a mocking grin she only glimpsed, since his face was still turned away.
“A lot happened after that summer,” she said quietly. “It didn’t change all at once. We had to work on it, Nick. Andy was there. You weren’t.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” The wind turned Nick’s shout to confetti, but it was still loud enough to attract attention, if anyone else was outside on a deck. Before Bess had the chance to shush him he’d taken her by the upper arms and said, from deep in his throat, “It wasn’t my fault. I wanted to.”
“I didn’t know that,” she told him, without softening or bending. Without apologizing.
Nick let her go and paced the smoothly worn boards of the deck. His hands went to the pockets of his jeans, washed and dried now, but he pulled out nothing. Bess had brought him a toothbrush and toothpaste, clothes, but no cigarettes.
“How long?” Nick asked, his back to her. His bare feet paused on the boards.
“I told you. Twenty—”
“No.” He shook his head but didn’t turn to look at her. “How long did you wait before you decided to marry him?”
“It was six months before we got back together for good.” Then, it had seemed an interminable amount of time, fraught with angst and anxiety. Now it was no more than a blink.
Nick turned, mouth bracketed again by lines. “So you married him? Because you didn’t believe I’d do what I said? You didn’t believe me?”
“Did you ever really give me any reason to believe you, Nick? Did you ever give me anything?”
He flinched. “Don’t be a bitch.”
&
nbsp; “You can call me a bitch if you want, but you know it’s true.” Tears burned her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She didn’t bother dashing them away. “I asked you, flat out—”
“I didn’t mean it!” His voice rose again. “Jesus, Bess, didn’t you know I didn’t mean it?”
“I didn’t know anything!” She still didn’t, actually. “I don’t know anything now! All of this is crazy, Nick. It’s insane!”
He crossed to her in two steps and took her in his arms. It was the action of a man, not a boy, and though she didn’t remember him ever acting that way back then, it seemed perfectly suited to him now. He looked down into her face and brought their bodies close together. As it had since the first night of his return, heat radiated from him like a small sun. Her own personal sun, around which she orbited the way she always had.
“I know I was an ass back then, Bess. I know you hated me.”
She shook her head. “No. I never thought you were an ass. A lot of other things, but not that.”
A small grin touched the corners of his lips. “I know I lied to you, but not about coming to find you. I meant it. And now, this…it’s not crazy. Why do you think I came back? Why was I able to, after all this time?”
She shook her head a little. “I don’t know.”
“Because of you.” He pulled her closer and bent to brush his lips across her cheek and nuzzle her neck. “Because when you went down to the water and wanted me, the gray went away.”
His hands were hot on her, his mouth hotter. When he slid his palms up to cup her breasts through her T-shirt, Bess’s lips parted in a silent sigh. Her nipples tightened at once and the beat of her heart stepped up. Under his touch, she melted again, the way she always had.
Maybe always would.
“This is crazy,” she whispered again, but it didn’t feel crazy.
It felt right. It felt like she had waited her entire life to feel Nick’s hands on her, like she’d been born to fit his touch. It felt like nothing else had ever mattered or ever would but his mouth moving over her skin and his hands holding her.
“Everything was gray until I heard you say my name.” Nick kissed her throat and nudged her backward, his hands guiding her so she wouldn’t fall. “I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t matter anymore because I heard your voice and knew where I wanted to be.”