40-Love

by Olivia Dade

  She could have changed her settings to make those messages bounce. She could have switched her personal e-mail address to something he didn’t know. At the very least, she could have left those letters unread. But even if she’d never, ever given him the satisfaction of a reply, she’d had to know.

  Why, after so many years?

  Why, after she’d offered him everything she had?

  Why, when she’d loved him?

  Why, when he’d said he loved her?

  Even years later, the worst messages—the ones written after his pleading turned to rage—remained pristine in her memory, each word crystalline, their edges razor-sharp.

  No man wants to fuck his mother, Tess, come on.

  You’re so good at arranging things, but people don’t want to be arranged.

  If you’d paid more attention to my feelings, and less to your schedule, I wouldn’t have—

  Some people aren’t made for love or marriage. I suppose you can’t help being that way.

  At least she was warm. You won’t even return an e-mail after ten years together, you cold bitch.

  Some of the most cutting passages stung less now. After encountering Lucas, she no longer doubted her desirability to the right man. And she didn’t know about marriage, but love had come to her easily enough. So easily it frightened her.

  The rest of Jeremy’s bile…well.

  Somewhere along the way, she’d internalized it as fact. As objective truths offered by a man who no longer needed to spare her feelings.

  But Lucas had dismissed Jeremy’s accusations without even knowing their source. Not just tonight, but repeatedly. He’d staunchly defended her ability to read and respond to emotions. He’d said her pragmatism stemmed from love—or fear. Either way, he’d insisted, there was more to her than the perfect administrator, the practical helpmate.

  She supposed she could see for herself.

  For the first time since that shattering afternoon in a shared bedroom, she read the e-mails from before that day. Messages she and Jeremy had written to one another as they’d dated, moved in together, gotten engaged, and lived as a committed couple. After a minute of thought, she accessed the old texts too.

  What she read didn’t exonerate her. Not really.

  It also didn’t convict her.

  A man in his thirties—then his forties—shouldn’t have begged her to buy socks or schedule haircuts for him. He shouldn’t have committed her to cooking for his students without asking first. He shouldn’t have gotten angry when she needed to stay late at work and couldn’t immediately proofread his article for him.

  But if he insisted on doing those things, he then should have understood that she was fucking tired. Too tired for frequent sex or even flirtation. He should have understood that she was treading water as fast as she could, showing her love as best she could, in the only way that still felt possible for her.

  Then, if all else failed, he should have either suggested couples counseling or broken their engagement before he fucked someone else in their bed.

  So, yes, at some point, she really had started addressing her fiancé with the exasperated, exhausted fondness of a mother, rather than a lover. She’d focused on the minutiae of their life together, rather than the greater picture of how their interests, their hopes and passions, had diverged. She’d stopped responding enthusiastically to sexual overtures and innuendo, ignoring them whenever possible and tolerating them when necessary.

  But she’d only become his makeshift mother because he’d behaved like a child.

  And before all that—before they’d moved in together, before the laundry and the toothpaste purchases and the doctor’s appointments, back when he’d been her lover instead of her charge—she’d asked him about his dreams. Taunted him with glimpses of the lingerie she planned to wear that night. Commiserated when none of his students finished the assigned reading, and the tenure committee was demanding yet more documentation, and his journal article didn’t generate the acclaim he’d hoped.

  She’d told him she believed in him, and more than that, would love him no matter what.

  You are so good to me, he’d written. When I’m with you, I feel like I can do anything, Tess. Like we can do anything as long as we’re together. Thank you for loving me.

  All the accusations, all the petty quarrels of their life together, no longer made her cry.

  His message of love did.

  Once—so long ago—she’d loved him and he’d loved her. Once, they’d made sense as a couple. Then they hadn’t.

  Neither of them had acknowledged that central, heartbreaking truth. Instead of dealing with her emotions in a better way, she’d buried herself in work and practicalities. Instead of dealing with his emotions in a better way, he’d cheated on her. And instead of dealing with that in a better way, he’d blamed her for everything. Made her responsible for their breakup in the same way he’d made her responsible for so much else in their relationship. Told a story of their time together that contained just enough truth to be credible to both of them.

  Just enough truth that she’d believed all of it. Every word.

  In doing so, he’d relieved his own guilt and shame.

  In doing so, he’d conjured ghosts and set them at her heels.

  But the evidence didn’t lie. She wasn’t faultless, but she wasn’t a cold, practical automaton incapable of love either. She wasn’t inherently, irreparably flawed and doomed to alienate any man who dared love her.

  With a swipe of her forefinger, she dismissed the texts on her cell phone. One tap later, her contacts list appeared. Another tap, and she was calling her best friend.

  “Hey, babe.” Belle’s voice was normal again, thank goodness. Breezy and confident, instead of shaken. “What’s up? Shouldn’t you be boning Sparky right about now?”

  Fuck, she wanted to talk to Belle about Lucas. But before she could contemplate her future, she needed to reconcile her past.

  “I want to ask you something. I’ve asked you before, but I need to know you’re being completely honest with me. No feelings spared.” Tess switched on the bedside light, suddenly impatient with the darkness. “Promise me.”

  “Uh…okay,” Belle said, sounding befuddled. “Yeah, I promise. What do you want to know?”

  Before Tess could falter, she rushed into speech. “All those things Jeremy said about me, about how I wasn’t good with feelings, and I was more practical than loving, and I acted like everyone’s mother, are you sure that stuff wasn’t true?”

  There was a long pause, and she cringed.

  Dammit, she shouldn’t have asked again. And if she was going to ask, she shouldn’t have demanded total honesty, because Belle would give it to her.

  “Well…” Another pause. “Sometimes you do get kind of maternal and managerial, but only in the most loving of ways. And if I tell you to knock it off, you do. Immediately. The other stuff is complete fucking bullshit, though, as I’ve told you before. You should know better.”

  Lucas and Belle were nearly echoing one another. It was uncanny, really.

  Tess exhaled. “Thank you. I—”

  “Which of my friends held me every time I cried about my brother and didn’t let go of my hand during the entire memorial service?”

  It was less a question than an outraged demand for justice, so full of love and loyalty and remembered grief that Tess wanted to cry. Again.

  “Me, although any friend—”

  But Belle wasn’t nearly done. “Which of my friends helped me apartment-hunt in Boston? Which of my friends cheered me up every time I got depressed by my job search there? Which of my friends immediately offered to cut short her hot affair with a twenty-something athlete so she could keep me company as I pouted about some random asshole fuckboy?”

  “You weren’t pouting. You were h—”

  Still not done. “I’ve told you again and again. Jeremy Boller—”

  Belle spat out the name like a mouthful of poison, and she sounded so
much like Lucas in that moment—again!—that Tess suddenly wanted to laugh and cry.

  “—is a gaslighting, cheating, man-child asshole who didn’t deserve a single one of the tears you shed over him, and the fact you even have to ask me whether he was right about you again makes me want to track him down and staple his nuts to his stupid chin, assuming I could even find it under that horrible muskrat he had growing on his fucking face.”

  There was no holding back the laughter, not after that.

  Belle’s indignant screech echoed over the phone. “Don’t laugh. That motherfucker’s going to be wearing his testicles as goddamn earrings when I’m done with him.”

  When Belle got overwrought, she started swearing and emphasizing words. Lots of them. It was one of Tess’s favorite things about her best friend, truth be told.

  “I love you,” Tess said.

  There was a distinct harrumph before Belle responded, sounding grumpy as fuck. “I love you too. I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to leave his balls intact.”

  “You’ve already heard my lecture about assault charges and jail time, so I won’t repeat myself.” She couldn’t help another snicker. “A muskrat?”

  “That was one scraggly-ass beard, babe. You could do better.” Belle’s voice brightened. “Come to think of it, you did do better. How’s it going with Sparky?”

  Tess told her. And by the time they ended the call, the ghosts of her failed engagement had stopped clanking. At least for now, and maybe forever.

  Right. That was done.

  Now she knew what to do. Now she knew what to believe.

  Her most important romantic relationship to this point had cracked under the stress of daily life together, true. But she knew how to give love, and how to receive it. She knew how to be there for those she cared about—her friends, her students, her coworkers, and all the other people in her life. She might be overly practical and managerial on occasion, but she knew how to apologize when she fucked up, and she knew she definitely would fuck up on occasion.

  Lucas would too. Because they were human, both of them, as he’d said.

  Because of Jeremy, she knew not to let those fuckups snowball into something too big to recover from. So maybe those ghosts had served a purpose, after all.

  Above all else: She knew she loved Lucas, even after a startlingly short amount of time together. He deserved that love more than any other man she’d ever met. If he still wanted her, if he still wanted to take a chance on her, on them, that was his choice, and she’d take that chance along with him.

  If.

  That was the word haunting her now. Her new ghost, come to call with a decided clank.

  If.

  Twenty-Seven

  For the first time since Lucas’s arrival on the island, he called in sick to work. He was suffering from terrible stomach cramps, either from food poisoning or too much time in the heat.

  Either way, he definitely couldn’t give lessons that day, and not the next morning either. Not until Tess had boarded her departure ferry for the mainland, anyway.

  The lie caught in his throat and itched beneath his skin, as did the thought of disappointed, inconvenienced clients. But a man had to have priorities, and a certain intransigent, terrified principal-to-be was his.

  He’d fucked up last night. No question about it.

  Their evening on the nude beach, she’d essentially explained everything he needed to know about how she approached risk, and he hadn’t listened. Not well enough.

  This isn’t an impulse or moment of folly, she’d told him. I considered the potential problems, and I took steps to control as many variables as I could.

  After that—and only after that—she’d allowed herself to have what she wanted. What they both wanted.

  Then, literally the next day, he’d approached her with a high-stakes gamble and given her absolutely no reason to believe he’d thought it through sufficiently. He hadn’t considered potential difficulties and concerns and counterarguments she might offer. He hadn’t theorized how best to address her worries.

  In short, he hadn’t eliminated as much risk as he could. For her. For them.

  No wonder she’d considered his decision to move a fleeting impulse. Pure, stupid folly. Yes, she’d responded from fear. But he hadn’t given her any reason not to be afraid, had he?

  Tonight, he had one more shot at convincing her. Today, he’d prepare.

  He’d already compiled his list of topics to research, people to contact, and tasks to complete. By the time he saw her that evening, he’d have his shit together and his arguments in place. He’d have positioned himself for a winning shot as best he could.

  Rally tolerance. He was learning. Better late than never.

  Around lunchtime, he texted her to meet him at the clubhouse at seven.

  In the end, the timing was tight, but he marked the last item off his list ten minutes before she was due to arrive. And after a quick shower, one last review of his plans, and a near-panicked jog down the stairs and through the clubhouse, there she was, standing outside the door and looking precisely as tense as he felt.

  When he unlocked the door to her, though, she immediately stepped into his arms, which lowered his heartrate all the way from barely survivable to rabbit-like.

  He held her and kissed her cheek.

  “Hey, älskling,” he said into the fine, soft hair at her temple.

  Her response was just as quiet. Just as tentative. “Hi, Lucas.”

  After claiming her hand in his, he led them both upstairs to his apartment. Neither of them said a word along the way. He waved her to his couch and offered her a drink, which she refused with a shake of her head.

  She perched on the edge of the couch cushion, tired hazel eyes pleading as she looked up at him, hands twisting between her knees, and he didn’t want to wait any longer. Neither of them could withstand much more tension without breaking.

  So he remained standing and took his shot. Again.

  This time, prepared.

  “Last night, I—” she began, and he didn’t let her finish.

  “May I speak first?” Interrupting her was rude, but he didn’t want her to condemn them both to loneliness before he’d had the chance to change her mind. “Please?”

  Her entire body stiff, she nodded. “Of course.”

  He couldn’t tell whether she was braced for pain or poised for flight. Either way, her posture made his arms ache to hold her again.

  “Today, I contacted the players’ association with a proposal. We haven’t worked out all the details, obviously, but I suggested a new partnership between the association and disadvantaged American schools. One created and coordinated by me.”

  Her mouth had dropped open in shock, and he took a certain amount of pride in that. “It would involve players who live or train in the U.S. adopting certain schools and periodically visiting to give talks and mentor students. Interested kids in need would receive free tennis lessons and be given access to training facilities and necessary equipment. Funds would also be used to eliminate school lunch debts for everyone, not just students interested in tennis, because as you’ve told me, hungry kids can’t perform at their best. On court or off.”

  He reached for the laptop on his coffee table and turned the screen to face her.

  “Here’s the written proposal I sent them. It’s brief, but it’s a start.” A tap of the touchpad, and he flipped to another page of typed notes. “The money aspect might entail my having to set up a foundation and do some fundraising, but that’s workable. I’ve already contacted my lawyer and an accountant to look into everything I’d need to do.”

  Her eyes were wide, stricken with so many emotions he couldn’t identify them all. But he definitely saw love there. Admiration. Maybe best of all: pride.

  In him. He was making her proud. He was making himself proud again, at last.

  “That’s…” Her twisting hands stilled. “That’s incredible.”

  “Even if th
e association rejects the proposal, I’ll still adopt a school myself.” Another tap. The appropriate home page appeared, its banner image dominated by a three-cornered black hat. “Your school, Tess. Marysburg High School, home of the Fighting Tricornes. Which is a pitiful mascot, to be honest, but I suppose you can’t help that.”

  “Lucas, I…” She shook her head, shock still parting her lush lips.

  When she trailed off, he took advantage of her silence and continued. “I’m excited by the proposal, and I can’t wait to make it reality. So thank you for helping me stretch myself. Thank you for believing I had more to offer the world than just my skill with a racket.”

  “Don’t thank me.” This time, her voice was steady. Resolute. “You’re the one who envisioned all this. I had nothing to do with it.”

  His tone matched hers. “But without you, without what you’ve told me about your school and your students, the proposal never would have occurred to me. Without seeing you brainstorm and work out the logistics for your own ideas, I would have struggled more to put the proposal together. Without your love and encouragement, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to make all the phone calls and write all the letters and explain why I’m the right person to coordinate this kind of partnership.”

  At the word love, she collapsed back into the couch, as if in need of its support.

  “I understand the importance of your work, to you and your community. I see myself fitting into your life, your school, in various ways, including this one.” Sitting beside her, he pressed his hip to hers, allowing the contact to anchor him. “I clarified a few other things today too.”

  She blinked at him. “Holy crackers.”

  “Turns out, I actually know the coordinator of Marysburg University’s indoor tennis complex. It’s Sasha Kasterov, who played on the ATP Tour with me a few years back. Not a big name, but a good guy.” He took her hand in his, unable to tell whose was trembling more. “He doesn’t have a job opening right now, but he thinks he might in the spring. If he can get more sponsors and funding for the tournament, he’d like to hire someone to coordinate the event while he deals with the daily functioning of the facilities.”