by Katie Cross
Once again, the dream wasn't quite the same as reality.
“Th-that,” I drawled and leaned back. “I . . . I’m n-n-not entirely s-sure.”
He nodded. “Well, let me know if I can help.”
“Th-thank you.”
We sat so close that, for a moment, I thought he’d reach over and put a hand on my knee. Our proximity was close enough that it would be so easy for him to do it, but there was no reason to pretend here. At least, not for him.
Last night’s dinner with Hernandez had been easy because I finally wasn’t pretending. For the first time since my freshman year of high school, I was allowed to let my life roll out the way that I wanted it to. With Jayson’s attention riveted on me. My fingertips on top of his skin. His voice mixing with mine in quiet conversation. The bold assumption I’d had last night that he’d still want to pretend to be a couple was so unlike the normal Dagny: the scared Dagny that strove to be invisible.
But I was tired of that Dagny.
Maybe it was the open ocean air, the freedom of not holding back around Hernandez, or just the inevitability of change, but I sensed something stirring within me. Something new, big, and wildly bold.
Or maybe it was Hernandez.
His voice cut through my haze of thoughts. “I meant to thank you for last night.”
“Th-thank me?”
“Bastian told me what happened with Victoria. What he heard of it, anyway. I’m sorry she pounced on you like that.”
Victoria came rushing back to me all too soon. In the light of day, I wanted to giggle over it. What a dramatic woman. “Ah.” I smiled to reassure him. “She d-didn’t f-frighten me.”
“I plan to talk to her today and tell her to back off.”
“D-do it for your s-sake. Not mine.”
He nodded. “Of course. But I still don’t want her bothering you. Or me, for that matter. And . . . thank you for believing me.” He frowned. “If you do, of course. Maybe Victoria has convinced you that I’m a terrible person.”
My lips pressed together in a poor effort to keep from smiling. He relaxed a little when he saw it. “She was n-not successful, I p-promise. You’re right, though. Sh-she’s good at what she d-does.”
“I wish her well, but I just want her to leave me alone,” he said simply, and it tugged at my heart. What a perfect thing to say.
A strand of hair fell into my eyes as a little breeze rustled in from outside, and blushed when I realized he was staring at me. I didn’t have a bra, makeup, or even a decent hair style in place. Jayson didn’t seem to have noticed, and if he didn’t care, I didn’t either. Finally, he seemed to come back into himself and gazed away with an adorable, embarrassed little smile, like a kid.
Part of me wanted to guide his arm back onto my shoulders, then force him to snuggle with me while the breeze lulled me into yet another warm sleep, but I held back. This wasn’t real behind closed doors, and that reminder might be the only thing that created a natural distance. That allowed me to walk away from this experience without my heart being a total wreck on the ground behind me.
No, I needed some space if I was going to mentally prepare for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner tonight, where he’d inevitably have some sort of role. Traditional anything wasn’t really my forte, or something I was used to. Mom didn’t abide by any sort of rule book that she didn’t write, so the whole wedding thing was a new world.
“I think I’ll try that yoga class out.” I tugged a grape off the stem and popped it in my mouth. “Where is it?”
“Out on the beach.” He tilted his head in the direction the dinner had been. “Mats provided.”
I gave him a little smile, then straightened up. To stop me from throwing myself into his arms, I returned to my room and shut the door firmly behind me. Then I let out a long breath, pressed my forehead into the smooth wood of the door, and tried to talk myself out of intense infatuation. The one I was supposed to be demystifying right now.
Even though there would be no returning from that torrential landslide.
The yoga class had almost started by the time I padded my way through the foliage and onto a stretch of beach where ten or eleven people were gathered. The empty beach was so wide that I could step into position at the back and never be noticed, all while creating distance between me and Jayson.
Win, win.
Vikram lingered in the milling crowd, but I acted as if I didn’t see him. I didn’t know him well. Of the Merry Idiots, my crush extended only to Jayson for my high school career. He left after my freshman year, but still haunted the general Pineville area until he settled into work as a deputy around twenty-one. Around then, I started to work at the Diner, and he'd come in often.
Vikram had been enigmatic and funny to a fault. Charming, in some ways. He seemed to do everything with high intensity, as if he had no medium scale. He’d sort of frightened me, and when he left the high school, it had been a bit of a relief.
Today, Vikram wore a form-fitting t-shirt across lean shoulders and a pair of board shorts. He wore his hair longer and pulled away from his face, still slightly tousled. Like Jayson, I didn’t expect Vik to remember me, and I saw no flicker of recognition in his eyes when he glanced my way as I arrived. His gaze skated away, and I let out a long breath.
All the better.
Helene stood at the head of the group and sent me a subtle little wave in between conversations with Victoria and a young girl. I returned it with a warm smile and a silent pang of regret that we would never be sisters. A tower of yoga mats waited off to the side in the sand, and I quietly plucked one off the top and unrolled it. It had been a year or two since I’d last attempted to even stretch, so this would be interesting.
The hiss of a mat opening to my right side drew my gaze up. Bastian tossed his flip flops into the sand next to him. Before I could say another word, the same thing happened on my left. Vikram moved over there. He sent a quick nod to Bastian over my back, then winked at me.
Well . . . maybe he did remember me. Then again, Vik winked at any available female, and he knew Hernandez and I weren’t really dating.
“Wh-what are you d-doing?” I asked Bastian, because he seemed the safer bet. He looked at Victoria, then back to me.
“Making sure she doesn’t get weird again.”
Vik whistled low. “Girl be crazy.”
“I-I’m fine. R-really.”
“Hernandez insisted.” Bastian shrugged. “We obey.”
That moment, Victoria turned around to face our direction, but she didn’t look our way. Her hair glided over her shoulders in a ponytail that swept her bikini top. Just as Helene called for class to begin, Victoria stepped away. Unable to help myself, my gaze followed her as she strolled off the beach without looking back. Had she left because I was there? I doubted it, so I ignored her as she disappeared and tried not to think too hard about Jayson asking them to stand at my side.
Helene guided the class into a few gentle stretches that soon consumed my attention. The gentle tug and pull on my body felt refreshing after the plane ride and long, deep sleep. The breeze stirred my hair, and the sand felt hot beneath the mat. I luxuriated in the open air. How un-tropical would the coffee shop feel after this? I’d never want to go back to Mom’s claustrophobic towers and wild ideas.
Only a few men freckled the female-dominated crowd, among them a middle-aged woman that looked like a wiser version of Helene. Alison Dunkin, I would bet. Helene’s mother and Anthony’s wife of over twenty years. I tried not to stare at her—or Vikram, who was surprisingly agile and talented for a man that drove trains for a living—while the class progressed. Bastian moved like a stiff tower, and groaned, red-faced, with every other stretch.
For years, a deep curiosity about Anthony had haunted me. Alison lingered in a close second. Questions about them had always plagued me. What was their marriage like? Were they happy? Was he a good husband? Was she a good wife?
Who got to define good in those roles, anyway?
But why stay with a husband that would do such a thing? Power, I'd guess. Money, for another. Although both might be the same thing.
These thoughts accompanied me through the deep breathing exercises, flanked by Bastian and Vikram. Still, having them at my side was bolstering. Crowds didn’t seem so daunting when I had someone to talk to, and neither had asked about my stutter.
Before I knew it, Helene closed the class with a bow from her waist and a wish for good health. Bastian lay on the mat, hands stacked behind him, and tilted his face back to the sun. Vik untwisted himself from his pretzel-like position and dusted the sand off his shorts after he stood up.
I stared at Alison and wondered.
“So,” Bastian drawled, “Hernandez said something about going to the grill after this. You ready?”
“D-do you always m-make plans for girls you d-don’t really know?” I asked, my gaze still locked on Alison. With a sigh, I forced myself to look away. There would be no answers to my questions about her, and that left me with a melancholy feeling. Because Alison seemed like the right kind of woman with the wrong kind of man. In the meantime, I tucked the question of what will happen to Alison when I talk to Anthony? out of the back of my mind.
Bastian tilted his head in my direction and seemed to consider my question.
“Fair,” he said. “Dagny, want to hit the grill and meet up with the man you so deeply care for?”
His choice of words hit me like a bag of bricks in the chest and scattered my senses like sand on tile. The man you so deeply care for. Not a hint of sarcasm, but I could tell he searched for something.
Was I that transparent?
How did he know?
“Yes.” I cleared my throat when I realized my silence extended to an awkward length. Vik stared at me, eyebrows high. “I’m s-s-starving.”
“Me too,” he murmured, his attention focused over my shoulder. “Please excuse me.”
Vik had already rolled his mat up and slung it over his shoulder. He stood with one hip cocked, his wavy, black hair shining in the light as he called to a girl in a white tank top. I grabbed my mat and turned to follow Bastian when I collided into something else. An oomph followed a second before I stepped back and saw only flailing arms.
“S-s-sorry!” I cried. “I d-d-didn’t s-see you there. I—”
Words failed me when Alison Dunkin righted herself and glanced up, a bright smile on her face. She waved a hand through the air.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, laughing. “I’m such a klutz after yoga. It’s like I stretch all my brains into my muscles when I relax and breathe deeply, then I’m all over the place for the rest of the day. What’s that last pose? Shava-something? I almost always fall asleep.”
She’d set a hand on my arm to stabilize herself—and me, I would imagine—after our crash. The mat that she’d tucked under her arm had fallen, so I bent to retrieve it.
“H-here.”
“Oh, thank you.”
She beamed, then pushed her sunglasses off her face and into her hair. Her eyes were piercing and kind, a blue so dark they could have been violet. Helene had clearly inherited her graceful looks from her mother.
“And what was your name?” she asked. “You must be here with the groom.”
My tongue seemed to have gotten too big for my throat. I attempted to reply, but it choked off at first. She blinked, but her smile didn’t falter and she waited with an easy patience that almost made it worse.
“D-d-d-dagny,” I finally managed. The word came out hard, as if my frustration could shove it out by sheer willpower. “I-I’m here with J-j-jayson Hern-nandez.”
Her expression brightened. “Yes! I remember meeting him a while ago. So handsome, if you ask me.”
Somehow, my brain managed to make my face smile a little. While she patted my arm and prattled about the trees and the yoga class and how she’d love to live in a paradise like this forever, my brain could only compute one single thought:
I am the child of your husband’s indiscretion.
Would it destroy her world if she knew? Maybe. Alison had a bright, shining kindness about her that probably stemmed from an inherent trust. What a gift, such an idealistic view on the world.
Could I crush that?
No. That wasn’t even on the table. But wouldn’t it be the result? Not necessarily. If Anthony had kept me hidden this long, why not a few more years? Technically, I wasn’t even supposed to know about the NDA. There could be legal ramifications on Mom for me even seeing it. If I were to break the news, the recriminations could be horrendous. And pointless. To what end would I want to destroy Alison’s life?
Was the truth worth it?
“I ap-p-pologize ag-g-gain,” I said with a little smile.
“The pleasure and probably the fault was mine.” Her hands were warm and a little gritty with sand when she squeezed my arm. “Thank you for coming to the wedding, and you let me know when that Jayson is all dressed up.” She winked at me. “Can’t wait to see him in a tuxedo. Forgive me, but I best be going. Better get my sleepy husband up. He’d sleep through a hurricane with open windows.”
As quickly as she came, Alison left. Someone called to her from across the crowd. She gave a little wave, and headed that direction. While going, several other women flanked her and they moved in a group as they walked away, laughing over something Alison said. Her departure felt like clouds skidding over the sunshine. Everything fell into a small darkness.
Vik had nearly disappeared down the beach, captivated by the girl, while Bastian stood several feet away, half-turned, as if he’d started to go to the grill and then realized I wasn’t back there.
“You good?” he called.
“F-fine.”
“I’m going to find Hernandez.”
The beach had emptied while I’d stuttered my way through the talk with Alison, and I still felt as if my heart hadn’t recovered from the shock. I pointed the other direction. “I’m going to sit on the beach for a minute.”
After one last, studious look, he nodded and moved away.
12
Jayson
Although I hadn’t seen Victoria in almost three months, I had a feeling she’d find me. Like she was a stalking cheetah. I, like a lowly gazelle, could sense that she lurked in the shadows. I didn’t know where she hid, but I knew she’d be there, because there was no fighting inevitability.
And find me, she did.
Fifteen minutes after Dagny wandered to the yoga class and Bastian ditched his computer to not-so-subtly accompany her just in case, a knock came on the open bungalow door. Victoria’s shadow preceded her into the room, but she stopped short of letting herself inside. I’d recognize that long, hourglass figure anywhere.
“You want to talk?” I called without looking back while I filled up an empty water bottle at the sink.
“I think I deserve it,” she said. Her voice was as silky as ever. It felt uncomfortably like crinkle paper under my skin. I hid a scoff. She deserved it? Well, that grabbed my curiosity. With a nod, I motioned outside.
“Then we can go out on the patio.”
She scoffed, her bare feet almost silent on the wooden floor. “You don’t want to be alone with me?”
I laughed. “No.”
Before she got within arms distance, I stepped outside and sat on a chair in view of the yoga class, water bottle in hand. Now that Victoria was here, I wanted a beer. But lowering my defenses with her around wasn’t in the game plan. Maybe this paranoia was overkill for a woman that told me I'd never be good enough for her.
But, maybe not.
On the beach below, Dagny followed Helene through a stretching routine that would have made my mouth water had I been a le
sser man. On purpose, I gazed away. There’d be no focusing on Victoria while Dagny moved her body like that.
My eyes sneaked back, though.
Three times.
Victoria settled lightly on the chair between me and the yoga party. She rolled her lips together and brushed her hair out of her face, but kept her gaze on the ocean. One leg, hidden beneath a gauzy skirt, crossed the other one. Her legs were golden perfection and happened to move a little closer to me with every moment that passed. That was fine. I wasn’t a leg man.
“So.” She let out a breath. “How have you been?”
“Good, and you?”
“Fine.”
Our blasé tone carried into the silence. Victoria played with an errant string on her lap. “I was happy that you came,” she finally said, and her voice had lowered.
“I’m glad I could make it.”
“Were you?”
Her head tilted to the side a little, and I finally met her gaze. Several seconds passed before I could answer the question, and not because it startled me, but because I’d just realized that Vik stood next to Dagny down on the beach. He and I hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, and if I saw him put any advances on Dagny . . .
With effort, I closed those thoughts and blinked out of them.
“I was glad to make it,” I finally said once I remembered her question. “Grady and Helene are a great couple. It’s an island resort that’s all-inclusive and I only had to pay for my plane ticket and Dagny’s. The math is pretty simple.”
Victoria made a noise in her throat. “I thought my presence would deter you.”
“Not even a little.”
She flicked a lock of hair over her shoulder. “I suppose we should just get rid of the elephant in the room.” She leaned back, her eyes dropping. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of me to turn the weight of my most intense stare on her, but I didn’t trust Victoria to represent herself honestly. Victoria wasn’t afraid of much, certainly not a man. So when I looked directly at her with my flattest expression, she only faltered a little.