First Love

by Amy Brent

  I picked up my bags and made my way to the front of the resort. I turned in my rental at the kiosk in the lobby and requested a car to the airport. They took my bags, and I walked out the front doors and waited for the car to pull around. I watched the happy tourists loading and unloading from the transport buses, some couples in love, some families on their vacation, and others there by themselves, looking for something missing in their lives. I wanted to see Caroline so badly, to hold her, to make her listen to me, but it was a lost cause. I didn’t even know how to find her, and by that point, she was probably resolute never to see me again. It was too late, and I had to learn to live with that fact. I had done the best I could to try to find her, and nothing had come of it. Obviously, the universe was giving me a really strong dose of karma, and I was going to have to swallow every dose of it.

  When the car pulled up, I hopped inside and sat back, looking out the window. We drove along the ocean for a while, and I watched the surfers riding the waves. I thought about Caroline and how she looked that first time I saw her on the water. I had just gotten there, grabbed some clothes from the resort shop, and headed out to her bungalow. When I walked up, I stood at the top of the hill, watching her moving through the waves on her board, the sun sparkling in the water around her. I sat there on the beach for a while, watching her floating through the water, gazing out at the dolphins off the shore. It had been the perfect scene, and I had really thought everything was falling into place perfectly after that. My heart was broken. I could feel it, and there was no one but myself to blame for it. I didn’t dot all my i’s and cross all of my t’s like I should have. I jumped in headfirst, and I drowned really fast.

  As we turned to go toward the airport, I watched the ocean leave my line of sight. It was back to New York City, to the grind of people, the never-ending onslaught of women who would never live up to Caroline. It was back to my desk with my tail between my legs and to a world where I was going to have to tell Brandt what happened and how bad I fucked up with his future wife’s best friend. I knew eventually, it would blow over, that people would forget about the time I up and left to chase a girl only to watch her walk away. I just didn’t know I was ever going to be able to fully move on from this. It was the first girl I had loved in a really long time, and I was still all alone.

  Chapter 9

  Two Weeks Later

  Caroline

  Camden was always the place I ended up. It was the place I had grown up in, the place I had left a hundred times, and the place I always came back to. Every time I was away, I couldn’t think about how I could possibly come back, but then when I drove in through the city limits and saw all the familiar faces, I couldn’t help feeling at ease and comforted. It should be a shock going from somewhere like Hawaii to a small town like Camden, but it never felt that way to me. It just felt like going from one home to another. That day, I had found myself at the café that I always frequented, lounging on the couch, attempting to read a book, and sipping a vanilla latte. My mind was wandering, though, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.

  I kept thinking about my time in Hawaii and how much fun it was. I always had a good time when I was there, but this time was different. Trevor was there, and it made everything so much more vibrant and alive. Our time together was amazing, and I had never fallen for someone like I had for him. I wasn’t the kind of girl who moped over guys or milked a broken heart, but I was struggling to get past everything that had happened. I knew I should have probably stayed and faced him, asked him why he would do something like that to me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hear the excuses or the lies. I couldn’t bear to have him tell me I was way more into him than he was into me. I didn’t even go back home that night. I had driven out across Oahu to the other side and sat watching the sun come up.

  I couldn’t help wondering what Trevor thought when he got out of the shower and found that note. I wondered if he was angry, if he was sad and hurt, or if it was just a shrug of the shoulder. I wondered if it even bothered him at all that I left like that. I wanted to believe that I didn’t make up the way were together in my head. I wanted to believe that he wasn’t the kind of man who would travel all that distance just to get laid, but those texts made everything really hard to believe. There was a girl out there with a broken heart because he did the same thing to her. Maybe he didn’t travel all that way to do it, maybe just a stroll down New York Avenue, but he did it nonetheless. I breathed deeply trying to control the emotions bubbling up in my chest. Visions of Trevor dancing next to the bonfire holding me tightly were haunting me at every turn. It had been two weeks, and I was still struggling to get through it.

  Emma had called me a couple days after I had gotten back and asked me about everything. I guess Trevor had told Brandt, and it trickled down from there. She had said he was apparently really beat up over it, but she said Brandt didn’t know all of the details. I decided to let it lie, making up an excuse about not being able to deal with a long-distance relationship. I didn’t want to make her angry at him. She had to live that life and see him on a regular basis. I don’t know if she believed me, but that was the story I stuck to. I closed my book and picked up my latte, pulling myself upright and taking a sip. Part of me wanted to see him again, if for no other reason but to tell him he was a horrible person. At that moment, something moved in my peripheral vision, and I looked up at the front window, freezing with my coffee to my lips. Trevor was standing outside, staring at me through the window, waiting to get my attention.

  He perked up immediately and waved at me, smiling sweetly. He slowly lowered his hand and stuck it in his pocket, looking down at the ground and kicking at something. I sat there for a minute looking around me for some sort of support, but there was no one I knew. I took another drink of my coffee and set it down on the table next to my book. I didn’t really have any choice but to go out there and face him. I knew he would stand there waiting to talk to me all day until they kicked me out of the shop. Every emotion I had that night after leaving his resort room came flooding back to me, and I could feel myself turning my hurt into anger. Not only was I afraid to talk to him, but I was now afraid that when I went outside, I was going to completely blow up on him. I tried to take several deep breaths to calm myself, but with him standing there waiting for me, it was no use. I forced my resolve and stood up, walking over to the doors and stepping outside. I nodded for him to walk away from the door, and he followed me over. I turned to him and shook my head.

  “Seriously? You come here now? You didn’t call me, you didn’t say a word to me for the last two weeks, and you come here now? Why didn’t you just walk over to that Eliza girl’s place? She was a hell of a lot closer than Camden. You are a real piece of—”

  He shushed me, and I stood upright surprised by his response. No one ever told me to be quiet.

  “I need you to be quiet,” he said. “I know that’s hard for you, but just try for a minute. I want to start by saying I think you’re the most interesting and amazing woman I have ever met. You light up the room everywhere you go. You bring something to the table that no one in my life ever has, and I cannot just walk away from that. My time with you in Hawaii was the best thing that has ever happened to me. It was one of those moments I will carry with me when I take my last breath. It is the wild that you talk about, the wandering, except you were there by my side, and it never felt more real. As far as the texts, Eliza is a girl who as a single guy I slept with one night. I never promised anything or led her on in any way. She found my information and then started to stalk me. When I got back to New York, she showed up at my apartment, and I had her arrested. I now have a restraining order against her. I brought it if you would like to see it.”

  I stood there wide-eyed, listening to him talking, watching the way his face curled up in anger as he talked about Eliza. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a court-ordered restraining order against that girl, signed by a judge and stamped by the state of New York. I r
ealized in that moment that I’d made a mistake. I’d jumped to conclusions without giving him time to explain.

  “If you still don’t believe me, scroll through these messages,” he said, handing me his phone.

  I looked at him for a moment and then down at the phone. I scrolled through, shocked at what I was reading. There were hundreds of unanswered texts ranging from her sweetly asking him to come over, to her freaking out in the next five minutes when he didn’t respond. The texts were all hours of the day and night. I handed the phone back to him and sighed, knowing that even if he wasn’t a player, none of it was going to work, not with the way I lived my life.

  “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions,” I said. “But that doesn’t take away from the fact that you live in a different world than I do. I love to travel. I cannot sit still, and that is my life. It has always been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I get that, but I love my life. I can’t be Emma, living in some high-rise in New York City, waiting for you to get home, taking care of babies. Maybe one day, I’ll have a family, but for now, I want to live my life from country to country. I want to see the world, and I—”

  He put his fingers over my lips and stepped forward. “Just be quiet for once,” he whispered. “I love you, Caroline.”

  I froze again, feeling his fingertips sliding down my lips. I looked at him with wide eyes, unable to even comprehend what he just said. I was supposed to be angry at him, pushing him out of my life because it would never work. Then I thought about that dance under the stars, the love we made on the rocks, and the way he made me laugh until I cried. I thought about the butterflies in my stomach when he kissed me that first night, and even how excited I was when he was the one sitting on the beach in front of my bungalow. I thought about the dolphins, swimming together, connected as they traveled through life. I realized that I was angry and scared for one reason and one reason only. I was in love with him too.

  “Dammit, Trevor,” I whispered. “I love you too.”

  “Look,” he said, pulling me over to a bench and sitting down next to me, taking my hands. “I know you’re a wanderer through and through. I saw how much that life brought you to your peak. I saw the excitement and lust you had in your eyes at every turn. I saw the relationships you built with everyone around you, and I know that you can’t do without that,” he said. “I don’t want to change you, to make you a housewife in New York. The spark in you is what I love the most about you. That spark is what brings me to life, what makes me want to dance to Fleetwood Mac, jump on a plane and fly to Hawaii at the last second, and do a dance to the gods with the native Hawaiians at a luau. I know you cannot commit to an everyday life with me in New York, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for you in my home. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a relationship that can’t be stoked by that wanderlust.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, you fool.” Trevor laughed. “Yes, a million times over. I would rather travel with you, have you in New York sometimes, and video message with you a million times than not have you at all.”

  I sat there staring at him, completely ecstatic to hear those words. I never thought in a million years that someone would ever feel that way about me. I never thought that someone would love me enough to let me be the woman I was, to not try to change me and mold me into something they really wanted. I leaned forward and kissed him hard because I had no words to say back to him to tell him how happy I was. He chuckled and pulled me close to him, making me feel more at home than I had ever before in any place I had ever gone. I couldn’t believe I was going to have my own happy ending.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Trevor

  I was more than excited to be back in Hawaii, and it was going to be one of those trips that neither of us ever forgot. Caroline had flown into New York a week before from a trip to Cambodia, and I surprised her with a trip to Hawaii for our one-year anniversary. It was a strange feeling being in a relationship like ours, but in the end, it really worked for us. We talked all the time, more than anyone I had ever dated before, and when we were together, it was like fireworks. We really cherished our time and didn’t take advantage of the fact that it was not as often as other couples.

  I sat there on my surfboard floating in the water, watching a pair of dolphins swimming through the reefs. I wondered if it was the same two from the year before, returning after raising their child and coming back for some fresh fish and relaxation. I really loved being out there on the water, watching Caroline kill it on her board. I turned and smiled, seeing her pull herself up and raise her arms high in the air in celebration. She wobbled back and forth and then fell off, sliding through the waves and up onto the beach. She turned over on her back and looked up at the sun, a smile moving across her lips. She shot one hand in the air and gave me a thumbs-up.

  We both burst into laughter, her lying on the sand holding her stomach and me balancing on the board as I tried to paddle back to shore with tears in my eyes. When my board hit the sand, I rolled off of it and landed next to Caroline, still laughing. I turned over and looked deeply into her eyes, pushing the hair out of her face. She smiled up at me and lifted her head, kissing me sweetly. At that moment, a wave crashed into us, spiraling us into another laughing fit. I had so much damn fun with this woman, it was unbelievable. She got up and dragged her board onto the sand, wiping her hair with her towel.

  I watched her as she closed her eyes and let the sun warm her body. I couldn’t believe how amazing she was and that she had actually fallen in love with my dumb ass. After all of that, our lives just went right into motion, and we hadn’t had a single fight since then. I stopped going to the bars and, instead, went home and worked on my financial plan to get to the point to where I could stop working and travel with her. I never thought anyone could settle me down like that, but she had done it, and I had no problem with it at all. She kept me on my toes at all times, and Brandt thought it was good for me. I had to agree with him, even if I did so reluctantly.

  I pulled myself up and pulled my board to shore, taking a towel from her to dry off. I smiled as she started to wax her board, most likely planning on getting one last surf before dinnertime. I sat down on the blanket and watched her go out there, catching one really good wave and riding it all the way in. I clapped my hands and bowed to her, making her laugh. I looked down at my watch and realized the sun was about to set, and I wanted to make that the beginning of our evening. I waved her in, and she jogged up, tossing her board on top of mine and plopping down next to me.

  “That was a good one,” I said.

  “Yes, yes it was.” She giggled. “And I smashed it.”

  “My little surfing queen,” I said, pulling her sweater over shoulders and pulling her in close.

  We sat on the blanket watching the sunset together, her head leaning on my shoulder. The smell of her shampoo wafted into my nose, and I thought about right before she took me to the luau a year before. It had been the best scent in the whole world, and a year later, I still felt the same exact way. She was the girl of my dreams. We had driven out to a different beach that day, so we packed up our things and made our way to the Jeep that I had bought for when I was in Hawaii. We stacked the boards in the back and hit the road, riding with the top off, feeling the warm, salty air blowing around us as we drove.

  I glanced over at her and smiled, watching her wave her hand out the side of the Jeep catching the wind. She turned and smiled at me, and my heart skipped a beat. I had never been with a woman who made my heart do that and especially not after a year of being together. It was going to make that night even more special than it already was going to be.

  “The waves were perfect today,” she said as we slowed down, approaching the bungalow. “I’m really glad you suggested we go out there. I wasn’t sure why since we have our own beach, but the way the waves broke out there was completely different than on our beach.”

  “I figured you would really like it.” I chuckle
d, pulling up and parking. “We’ll have to go back out there before we leave.”

  “Yeah, especially with that storm blowing in on Thursday,” she said excitedly as she pulled her bag out of the back. “The waves will be amazing, and I can finally see if you can survive a bigger crash.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll find a new boyfriend,” she teased, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Good plan.” I laughed.

  I stood to the side and let her walk up the stairs first, listening to her talking about the waves more. She was so cute when she got excited about something. There was no talking her down from it. I would be hearing about those waves until the next big wave came along. I walked slowly behind her, watching as she turned the corner and stopped. The entire deck was lit up with candles, and the table was spread with all kinds of foods and champagne. She looked back at me and then to the table. She put down her bag and walked over, smiling and shaking her head.

  “How did you do all of this?” she asked, glancing over at me. “I’m speechless.”