“Thank you, Amy,” he whispered.
She cocked her head. “For what?”
“For coming back to me.”
He kissed her again, and she climbed into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss.
“Dude, I know you have years to make up for, but you’ve got a teenage audience.” Caden smiled to soften the friendly harassment.
“Dad, I’m almost eighteen,” Evan said.
Tony laughed. “Like he’s never kissed a girl before?”
“Shit. Too many to count.” Evan shook his head and sat down beside Bella. Evan had been working at the Geeky Guys, a computer-repair shop in town, part-time for the past few years. This year he’d added working out to his daily regimen, broadening his once-rangy body into pre-college stud status.
Caden held his hands up. “I don’t need to know.”
“I think he learned from you and Bella,” Jenna teased.
Caden pulled Bella closer and kissed her. “We’re very discreet.”
Everyone laughed at that.
“I’m almost eighteen. I think I learned on my own, thank you very much,” Evan added.
“Okay, change of subject time,” Leanna said. “Evan, what are you looking forward to most at college?”
Evan flashed a lopsided grin. “You really want to know?”
“No!” Bella and Caden said at once.
“What?” Evan laughed. “I was going to say surfing and better computer classes.” Tony had taught Evan to surf last summer.
“Right.” Caden gave him a playful shove.
“Well…and the babes, of course,” Evan said with a mischievous grin. “Harborside is sixty-five-percent women. Why do you think I chose that school?”
“Because your best buddy’s going there?” Caden said with a fatherly head shake.
“Yeah, Dad. Why do you think he’s going there?” Evan looked at his watch. “Speaking of which, it’s ten. I’m meeting Bobby at his house for a LAN party. Do you mind if I take off?”
“No. Go ahead. Drive carefully, and if you leave his house, let me know where you’re going,” Caden said.
Tony couldn’t help but feel the sting of jealousy at how easy Caden and Evan’s relationship was compared to the conflicting interactions he’d had with his own father the last summer they’d spent together at the Cape. He forced the jealousy aside, knowing he couldn’t change the past.
“Okay.” Evan looked at Amy. “You’re all set. Just bring the stuff back with you.”
“Thanks, Ev.” Amy stood and hugged him. She whispered something in his ear, and he pointed to a backpack he’d left beside Bella.
Amy joined Tony again on the blanket, and it was all Tony could do not to pry her for information. It turned out he didn’t need to. Within a few minutes everyone made excuses and left early. Caden and Bella were the last to leave. Being the ever-responsible police officer, Caden doused the fire with a few buckets of water before taking off, leaving Amy and Tony alone beneath the stars.
Amy rose to her feet and reached for Tony’s hand.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. Can you grab Evan’s bag, please?” Amy grabbed their blanket and folded it over her arm.
Tony picked up the backpack, and before he could reach for Amy’s hand, she reached for his and led him toward the dunes. It was dark and cool by the tall dunes. Tony’s heart hammered in his chest with each step as they walked along the empty beach, past the protected area, and toward the place where they’d shared their first kiss—where they could see the tips of houses above the dunes. Erosion had desecrated the beautiful dunes, taking away much of the buffer in front of the houses. Their decks were now visible from below. Amy stopped by a knee-high pile of towels.
Tony eyed the towels with curiosity, then set the backpack down to help Amy spread out the blanket. “What’s in the backpack?” he asked.
“You’ll see.” She crouched beside the pile of towels and carefully folded each one, then set them aside.
Tony crouched beside her to help fold the towels, quickly unveiling the projector Caden bought Evan last Christmas so he and his friends could stream movies from his computer onto the exterior wall of their house.
Amy met his gaze with a smile that reached her eyes.
“I can’t believe you got Evan to leave this out without anyone to watch it.”
Amy pointed up toward the dunes, where a flashlight was waving back and forth. She pulled a flashlight from the backpack Evan had left for her and waved it up at them. The light on the dune faded into the distance.
“That’s mine and Evan’s clever signal. He would never leave his goodies out here alone.” Amy smiled at Tony; then her eyes grew serious. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us and about our families.” She pulled Evan’s computer from the backpack and hooked it up to the projector. “I told the girls about that summer.”
“I assumed you did by the looks on everyone’s faces when I showed up at your place. How did they take it?”
Amy’s eyes warmed. “They were great. You know how they are. It was really hard to tell them, but once I started, it got easier.”
He pulled her to him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“It’s okay. I feel so much better having told them, but I went down to the woods this afternoon, and it made me realize something.”
Tony’s chest tightened. She hadn’t given him any reason to worry that she’d changed her mind about them, but he didn’t know what to make of her bringing up the past instead of avoiding it.
“Before what happened at the end of that summer, I had such good memories. But I think all the good memories have been clouded over by what happened. And I got to thinking. I can’t change what happened, and I can’t change how it affected either of us.” She took his hand in hers. “And I can’t change that I wasn’t there for you when your father died.”
“Amy.”
She stepped closer and pressed her hands to his chest. “I should have been there.”
“You were there.” Physically at least, which was more than he could have hoped for after what they’d been through.
“Not the way I should have been. We were so young, and in some ways so selfish and naive. I mean, those woods are not exactly buffered by much, right? We could have been caught. I began to wonder what else we missed. Remember how my parents were always taking pictures?”
“Sure. We spent a lot of time ducking them.” He smiled at the memory of Amy’s mother asking them to smile pretty and the girls all making faces.
“Well, a few years back, my mom made a collage of the pictures and sent them out to everyone.”
“Yeah, I got mine.”
“Did you look at it?” She narrowed her eyes as if she already knew the answer.
“No. It was too painful. It was one thing to see you afterward. I mean after the first few years of avoiding you. That was hard, allowing myself to be close to you again, even as friends, but seeing my father? I couldn’t do that. It was too much.”
“I’m sorry.” She pressed a kiss to the center of his chest. “I’m glad you didn’t shut me out forever, and I know you and your father had a rough relationship that summer. I don’t know how you eventually separated seeing me from everything that happened that summer. Not just between us, but between you and your father.”
Tony looked away, clenching his jaw. It was a natural reaction when he thought of his father. “I couldn’t fight the urge to see you any longer. When you graduated from college, it felt like you’d achieved what your father had pushed for, so I guess I thought it was an okay time to risk seeing you again. You were an adult, not relying on his support to make it through school.” He shrugged. “I wanted our friendship, Amy. I needed it and couldn’t deny it any longer. I missed you. But my father…”
“I’m sure he’s on this disk, and I thought that since I wasn’t there to help you say goodbye to him and deal with all those emotions then, that this
might be a good time for us to do that together.”
“I’m not sure I want to see him right now.”
“I know. I thought you might say that. I realized today that we’d been so caught up in our relationship that summer that maybe we overlooked the good parts of your dad.”
Tony doubted that there were many good parts to overlook from those few weeks. His father had been a whole different person from the man he’d ever been before, and his mother had become solemn, more of a peacemaker, trying to gloss over what was going on. She never spoke of it, but Tony knew she’d noticed. She had to. How could she not? But he’d never blamed her for not getting involved. Tony was a man by then. At twenty he didn’t need his mother taking care of things for him.
“All I ask is that you try to watch with an open mind. We both have a lot at stake right now. I have a job I have to either give up really soon so I don’t piss off Duke, or…”
“Or?” He gazed down at her, hardly able to believe what she was saying.
“I don’t know. I want us to work, but you were right. We can’t have a relationship where we pretend the past never happened. For us to move forward, I think we need closure on all of it. What happened between us, which we’re already dealing with. Your father. My father.”
“Your father?” Tony nodded, beginning to understand where she was heading with this. He touched his forehead to hers. “You’re going for the clean slate.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I hope so.”
WHOEVER SAID “A picture’s worth a thousand words” was wrong. Their worth was unquantifiable. Amy sat snuggled against Tony as photo after photo projected onto the side of the dune. Pictures of Amy and the girls from the time they were toddlers until they were bikini-wearing teenagers, laughing, making faces, and running away from the camera. Amy wasn’t surprised to see herself smiling, but the look in her eyes was so much less guarded than the eyes that looked back at her in more recent years.
“You were always the most beautiful girl on the beach.” Tony kissed her temple.
“If you liked flat-chested women with almost no shape.”
“I loved a perfectly chested woman with the sexiest shape.” He pulled her closer. “Still do.”
The next picture was of Amy and her father when she was a little girl. They were flying a kite at Wellfleet Harbor.
“I remember that kite. My father bought it for me in Provincetown.”
A picture of Amy and her parents sitting on the fishing pier in Chatham flashed on the dune; behind them were their other friends from Seaside. Tony was sitting off to the side with Jamie, looking out at the boats, and Amy, though only eleven or twelve years old, was staring at Tony.
“See?” she said. “I even loved you then.”
“I think I knew it, but I wrote it off because I had just become a teenager and I wasn’t supposed to like you in that way.”
“Like you were ever a rule follower.” She bumped her shoulder against him with the tease.
The next picture was of Tony and his father. Tony’s father’s hand was on Tony’s shoulder, and they were both laughing, mouths open wide, eyes alit with humor.
“That was before he changed.” Tony’s stomach lurched. He tried to push away the longing and resentment that were vying for his attention.
“No. That was the last summer. I remember that bathing suit you have on. See?” She pointed to the photo on the dune. “That’s what I mean. There were moments that he wasn’t as gruff that summer, and we’ve forgotten them. He was a good man, Tony. It was just a bad summer. Everyone has bad times. Gosh, if anyone knows that, it should be us, right?”
He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. The picture changed to one of Tony standing at the edge of the water with his surfboard, wearing a pair of black board shorts, one hand on his hip, his eyes narrow and serious. Jamie was standing behind him, two boys who had turned into men over the winter and fall. Their shoulders newly broadened, the hair on their legs thicker, their cheeks unshaven and scruffy.
“I wonder what you were thinking in that picture.”
Tony looked down at her. “The summer we got together? I was probably thinking that I’d better get in the water before I saw you in your bikini and sported a woody.”
Amy laughed. A picture of Jenna and Amy appeared next. Their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and their faces scrunched up in goofy expressions. Even as a teenager Jenna had a figure that could stop a clock and a mischievous light in her eyes that could light up a room.
“When I look at that picture, all I see is the way your eyes glimmered with happiness, your sweet body that I will never get enough of…” He pulled her into his lap and brushed her hair away from her face, leaving his hand on her cheek. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Amy blushed with a sweet smile.
“Just you, kitten. It’s who you are inside and out that I love, and it was no different back then.” He kissed her as the photos flashed on the dune behind her, and when they parted, she cuddled beneath his arm again.
The next picture was of all of them—Tony, Jamie, Amy, Bella, Jenna, and Leanna—huddled together on blankets around the bonfire. Bella and Jenna were gazing into the distance. Leanna and Jamie were talking, and Tony and Amy were staring at each other with an undeniable look of lust in their eyes.
“Wow,” Amy whispered.
“There’s no way they didn’t notice that.” Tony tightened his grip on Amy.
“They weren’t looking for it. We are.”
Another picture of Tony and his father appeared on the screen. His father held a bottle of beer in one hand and he was looking directly at the camera. Tony’s eyes were drawn to his father’s. He was powerless to look away, and the eye-to-eye contact nearly pulled Tony under. Anger, resentment, and confusion warred for his attention again, and at the tail end of those emotions, love held his voice at bay. The picture changed before Tony could manage to say a word, and the next picture was of him and his father, his father’s arm around his shoulder.
“Can you pause it?” His voice was so quiet he barely recognized it.
Amy scrambled to pause the disk.
It was all Tony could do to stare at the image on the screen as memories flooded him. His father had never been a big drinker, but that had changed around that summer, too. How had he forgotten that? And how had he missed how much his father’s appearance had also changed. Alcohol had taken away most of the man Tony had looked up to by then, leaving his once-toned muscles soft, a shadow of the strong man his father had once been evident in his six-two, broad-shouldered stance. He and his father shared the same deep-set blue eyes, though in the picture his father’s had dark moons beneath them. Moons Tony had no recollection of seeing. They had the same strong jawline, though even against the peaks and valleys of the dune’s rough facade, Tony could see the hollowness in his father’s cheeks.
“Tony.”
Tony turned at the feel of Amy trying to unfurl his fist.
“Maybe I should turn it off,” she offered.
He shook his head and inched closer to the dune. “No. I need to see him.”
“He was handsome. You look a lot like him.”
“Beyond that, what do you see?” Tony squinted at the bigger-than-life image, which suited how he had once thought of his father. He hadn’t been afraid of his father, but memories of his father’s demeaning comments that summer fisted his hands a little tighter. He felt Amy touch his arm.
“He’s not here, Tony.”
“He’s not gone, either.” Tony shook his head, a million thoughts whirling through his mind at once. “Look at his smile. It looks real, right? Not forced?”
“Yeah, he smiled a lot.”
“Yeah, he did. That’s why it cut so deep that summer when he was such a shit to me. I don’t know what happened to my memories, but that man right there...” He pointed at the dune. “Amy, that’s not the man I have in my head. I don’t remember him looking so happy. In my
mind I see the angry man he was toward me. I can’t even begin to draw the memory of him looking like that. But he was that man. He was jovial, lighthearted.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Wha—? How?”
Amy shrugged. “I guess for the same reason that the man I see in the pictures of my dad doesn’t look like the image of him in my mind. That’s why I wanted to see these. I think our perspectives were skewed. When I went down to the woods today, I started thinking about our parents and I wondered if they’d seen anything between us that summer. And that made me wonder what we’d seen of them. My dad was always pushing me to do well in school, make something of myself. To be my best. He had expectations—there’s no doubt about that—but would he have really cared if we’d dated? I just don’t know the answer to that. And your father?”
She looked up at the image of Tony’s father on the dune.
“He was hard on you, and he was a real shit with some of the things he said that summer. And for all these years I’ve sort of blamed him for my shutting you out of my life. I was always worried that he’d throw our relationship in your face in some way, and after…well, after what happened, I felt like he’d never let it go.”
“He would have used it against me, Amy. He’d have told me that I was irresponsible and that I’d fucked up your life and mine. You know that.” Tony clenched his jaw.
“Maybe.” She shook her head. “But what if he was just pushing you like my father pushed me, but he just handled it in a horrible way?”
“Does that make it any better?”
Amy shook her head. “Of course not, but…”
“But we can’t change the past no matter how much we wish we could. Would I love to know my father was sorry for all the shit he said to me? Damn right I would. But the truth is, I’ll never know.” Tony shook his head.
“Why? Why can’t you ask your mother?”
“She doesn’t need to relive that summer any more than I do.”
“Or maybe she does. And maybe you do, too. I think it’s worth talking about. She’s probably carrying around a lot of guilt, too. She was there, too, remember?”
Seaside Secrets Page 15