Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

“Have I told you recently, Eli, that this one is a keeper?” Truck teased.

  Eli pulled me to him, kissing me. We both tasted like caramel and vanilla vodka. “I thought you couldn’t surprise me any more, and yet, you still do.”

  I let the happiness of the moment fill me, not wanting to lose it, not wanting to think of our futures and the things that were waiting around the corner for both of us. I wished that I could keep this feeling forever. The sense of contentment. The sense of belonging. This was what I wanted—peace.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Sunday, Truck left to go back to New York for his shift. I could tell that it killed Eli that he wasn’t going back yet—might never. It showed in the quietness that came over him the rest of the day, the humor and lightness that Truck had brought with him disappearing.

  Mandy and I pulled him into a Scrabble game, but we both could tell that his mind was elsewhere. I saw her watching him with a concern that he didn’t register.

  The next morning, Eli dropped Mandy and me off at the bookstore on his way to his physical therapy appointment. I’d brought my guitar and my notes, and I made my way outside to the little patio area behind the store.

  There’d been new songs bouncing in my head all weekend, and I finally had a few minutes to myself to explore them. So, I lost myself in the sunshine and sang about family and belonging. About loss and family. About emotions being a storm and how family could guide you through until you could find the rainbow waiting on the other side.

  “It’s lovely.” Mandy’s voice dragged me from myself and my music. I grimaced.

  At Juilliard, people were practicing their craft everywhere. You never thought twice about strumming out notes and a song wherever you were. I hadn’t really thought about what it might look like there, me crazily singing on the patio.

  “It’s a work in progress,” I told her.

  She took a seat at the table beside me.

  “Can I ask you something?” Mandy asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I hadn’t had this conversation with Eli, so it seemed strange to have it with his mom. My body and Eli’s body… He was right when he’d told me it felt like they’d been together for a long time, like we’d done this dance over the centuries and had just been drawn back together one more time. But our bodies weren’t our lives, and we both had so many unknowns scattering around us. Did it matter if we loved each other? Would it be enough?

  “You’re taking a long time to answer that,” she said gently.

  “It isn’t because I don’t love him.” It was the closest thing to the truth that I could think to say.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m afraid…”

  “That he’ll hurt you?”

  I shook my head. “That I’ll hurt him.”

  Her turn to be silent.

  “I didn’t really have a great example of love in my childhood. I’m a little broken in this regard,” I told her.

  “Ava.” She said my name so sweetly that—like when Eli said it—it felt like its own endearment. “We’ve all been broken into a million little pieces and had to put ourselves back together. Not just because we were hurt by the ones who were supposed to love us the most, or the ones who left, or the hopes and dreams that skittered away from us. We’ve been broken and chipped at, daily, by the small things. Frowns instead of smiles. Lifted eyebrows instead of nodding chins.”

  She took a breath, her own voice shaky. “But being broken doesn’t mean you can’t love and be loved. Sometimes, you just need someone who loves you enough to help you see the full brilliance left inside after all the breaks.”

  My heart squeezed tight at her words.

  “Thing is…” Mandy paused, her tone full of worry. “I think Eli is pretty attached to you, and I’m not sure he could handle another loss these days.”

  The thought of losing him curled unpleasantly in my gut. I wanted, with every vein in my heart, to be the one to show him his own brilliance if his world did fully fall apart. But I was also afraid that she was wrong about the breaks. I was scared that mine would shatter me, or Eli, or both of us.

  I did the only thing I could do at the moment, which was try to lessen her worry by squeezing her hand and saying the thing I wanted to be true. “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Her turn to nod.

  It was all I could offer this brave woman who’d experienced her own set of losses and yet continued to fight every day. I wanted to be that brave. I wanted to look back someday and say that I hadn’t walked away when I had the chance to stay.

  “I’m sorry you lost your husband. I’m sorry you have cancer,” I told her.

  “Had cancer. I’ve beat that piece of crap in the ass.”

  “Mom!” Eli’s startled voice came from the doorway.

  I wondered how much he’d heard of our conversation.

  Mandy laughed, and it reminded me of Eli’s, just like the warmth in her voice always did when there was really no pitch or tone that was the same. It was in the quality of it. The fullness of it.

  “Just because I tell you not to cuss doesn’t mean it isn’t appropriate at moments.”

  “You told me there were no appropriate moments,” he said as he came up to the table, looking down at both of us.

  “That’s because you and your friends seem to think that cuss words are the only adjectives in the English language.” He shook his head at her, but she just smiled at him and said, “I’m hungry. Who’s up for enchiladas?”

  “You’re hungry?” Eli asked.

  “Yep. You too tired after therapy to take us to Tito’s?”

  He did look tired, but I knew that Eli would never deny his mom anything, like he would never deny me anything. I hoped I could be strong enough to do the same thing—give him whatever he needed and maybe even the things he didn’t realize he did.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  That night, as we lay in bed with me pulled up tight against his body, I said what was in my heart. “Eli?”

  “Hm?”

  “Your life. It’s amazing.”

  “What?”

  “This. Your mom and Leena and Truck. It’s amazing.”

  His hand slowly ran up my arm, a finger landing on that tender spot behind my ear. Chills filled my skin. Chills that spoke of the things our bodies did when they were together.

  He nodded, as if the emotions I’d evoked in him by my words were too much.

  “I just think you should know,” I continued, “that regardless of what happens with your knee and your career, this…everything you have here…it isn’t going away.”

  I wanted to start to show him those rays of brilliance in him that his mom and I had talked about. I wanted him to see the beauty of the life he had.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “Me? For what?”

  “Reminding me of the best things in my life, and how they aren’t tied to the job I have.”

  My heart soared just a little, and I hoped that Mandy was right. That somehow, we would help each other see all the light instead of all the breaks.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Eli

  IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW

  “And I would be lying if I said

  That I could live this life without you

  Even though I don't tell you all the time

  You had my heart a long, long time ago.”

  -Performed by Brett Young

  -Written by Reeve / Schlienger / Tomlinson / Young

  Ava and I spent the week helping mom pack up the house, going through pictures, some that she boxed and some she said I could take with me. Going through the volume of books that she would either resell, giveaway, or keep.

  Mom and I had seemed to reach some kind of truce. I wasn’t angry with her anymore. She seemed to have relaxed into letting me help when she’d never easily accepted it before. It was like Truck a
nd I both showing up and confronting her about the choice she’d made to go it alone had made her realize that she didn’t need to. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that, going forward, we wouldn’t keep the darker stuff from each other.

  Ava seemed to enjoy helping us pack because she caught glimpses of my past. Mom was constantly telling her stories about me that were supposed to be embarrassing but weren’t. I loved Mom sharing my childhood with Ava, especially knowing that her life had been mom-less—really, parent-less.

  “Wait. Eli played football?” Ava asked, holding out a photo album that she was perusing. I was about twelve, and I had on a football uniform with a football tucked under my arm. I chuckled.

  “God, no. Why?” Mom came around the counter to look over Ava’s shoulder, and she started laughing and turned to me. “Was that your Halloween costume?”

  I grimaced. “Mom told me I couldn’t go as a Coastie for another year. She refused to buy me a new costume unless I chose something else. And I’d grown, what, two inches that year? Maybe more.”

  “That boy was drinking a gallon of milk a day and shoveling in food. I almost let him join the academy just so they’d feed him,” Mom said.

  “How many years did you go as a Coast Guard?” Ava asked.

  I flushed a little. I couldn’t help it. “All of them.”

  Ava laughed and then nudged my mom. “Good for you, forcing him to be something else for a change.”

  The pain hit me, as it often did, when I realized that everything I’d ever wanted and had accomplished was probably going to be ripped away from me. What would I be now that I was being forced to change? I couldn’t answer that yet—didn’t want to answer it yet. But I was leaving Stan’s offer stewing at the back of my brain until I absolutely had to use it.

  Mom asked Ava, “What was your favorite Halloween costume?”

  Ava’s smile dipped a little. “Dad didn’t believe in Halloween. Told me it was a ridiculous holiday started by misguided, uneducated people who created the idea of warding off ghosts and goblins as a way of explaining life. He refused to participate in it.”

  “Wait. You never trick-or-treated?” I asked, my career pain dissipating with thoughts of Ava’s dysfunctional childhood.

  “Nope. I really think he said that just because he knew I wanted to trick-or-treat more than anything. When I was in high school and they had a Halloween dance, Dad refused to let me attend. Jenna’s mom tried to intervene on my behalf, but he just got pissed that I’d told her. Grounded me with no phone or internet for a week.”

  My anger at her asshole father continued to flare. What man would deny his child anything as simple as Halloween? As dressing up and trick-or-treating like a normal American kid? I guessed it was the same kind of man that had denied her love.

  “This year, we are dressing up,” I told her with force.

  She grinned at me. “I think at twenty-six and twenty-three it might look a little odd to be trick-or-treating door-to-door.”

  “We don’t have to trick-or-treat. We can either pass out our own candy or throw a huge party,” I told her.

  Ava just rolled her eyes at me, but I was determined to make it happen. One more reason that I was sticking around in her future. Someone needed to give her all the things she’d deserved and had never been given.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  On Ava’s last night in New London, I took her out on a date. A real date. She complained when I told her my plan, because she’d only brought jeans and leggings to wear. I told her that I didn’t care what she wore and that even the fanciest restaurant in New London wouldn’t care either. But she seemed to care a lot.

  “I’ll take you downtown. There’s this little boutique that has some really lovely things,” Mom told her, coming into our half-hearted argument with her own commentary.

  “I highly doubt that Ava’s going to want to wear the crazy cat lady apparel,” I teased her, because most of my mom’s clothing had books or cats or both.

  She slapped me on the back of the head. “Don’t make fun of my clothing, and this isn’t where Leena or I shop. It’s one of the trendy, touristy places.”

  “So now you’re going to have her wearing an ‘I heart New London’ T-shirt?” I asked. I was dragging my feet because it was Ava’s and my last day together for what would probably be a month, and I didn’t want her to be away from me for any length of time. Selfish but true. It was why I was taking her on a date—so it would just be the two of us.

  “Doodles, you can live without her for an hour or two. Let her do this her way,” Mom scolded, and Ava smirked. She’d been smirking every time Mom called me Doodles. It didn’t happen often, but it had happened enough over the course of the week for Ava to have appreciated it.

  They left me…to go shopping. I just groaned and spent the afternoon working in the garden until they came back. When they did, Ava rushed past me to get ready in Mom’s room, and I went to shower. When I came out, Mom was on the couch with a book—her and Snicker’s favorite spot.

  “You look handsome,” Mom said, glancing up at me.

  I was just in jeans and a button-down, with a pair of Timberlands on my feet. It wasn’t a suit and tie. It wasn’t my Coast Guard evening wear, but it was date worthy.

  “I need to get my haircut,” I told her, brushing my hand through the strands that I was still unaccustomed to having.

  “I like it,” my mom said. “It’s a new you.”

  We both let that settle between us, the weight of it pressing on me as we both understood that a new me wasn’t my choice. That it was being forced on me because of my dumbass mistake.

  Mom’s eyes strayed to movement behind me. Ava. I turned, and my heart stopped. She looked…alive. Full of color, and vibrancy, and almost that same energy that she’d had in Rockport. I’d slowly seen it coming back to life in her this week. With us. I’d even caught her sitting on top of the picnic table in the backyard one morning, coffee in her hand, notebook on her lap, hair in a messy bun. If I’d half-closed my eyes, I could have seen the Aransas Bay behind her.

  Now, with a dress the color of the ocean foam, and sparkly heels that added to her height, she looked like the sea nymph I’d once thought her to be. Like she’d emerged from the tides just in time to call me in. The dress she’d bought was floaty and yet clung to her curves, and I fought the urge to pull the straps away and kiss her skin.

  She had makeup on when she’d not worn any all week, and it didn’t make her look any more beautiful, but it made her beautiful in a different way. She was always sexy, but this was a new sexy.

  “You’re stunning,” I told her.

  She smoothed her hand over the dress. “It was a lovely find. Your mom has a good eye.”

  I stepped over, lifted her hand to my lips, and kissed it. “It’s not the dress, Ava. You. You’re stunning.”

  She smiled up at me, happy. I liked that I made her happy.

  “Well, have fun, you two. I’m going back to this novel about a gothic heroine who is never going to find true love,” Mom said behind us.

  I didn’t look at her. I just took Ava’s hand, placed it on my arm, guided her out to the truck, and drove to the restaurant. It wasn’t as nice of a restaurant as we could have gone to if we were in New York, but it was a nice place for New London. It had white linens, flickering candles, and bright flowers on the tables with a view of the ocean and the sun setting over it. It was enough to be a real date.

  We ordered cocktails and appetizers and then sat, taking in each other and the view for a moment.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” Ava said.

  “I wish we’d done a real date sooner,” I told her, regret in my voice.

  “Life had different ideas,” she responded. It was true, and life was still messing with the ideas that I had for us.

  “I love that I’m going to be able to help my mom, but I hate that I’m going to be away from you,”
I told her honestly.

  “When I get back, I’m going to be swamped. There’s still so much to be done on the album and in my classes. It’s probably good that you won’t be in the city.”

  “Are you saying that I’d distract you?” I grinned.

  “You know you would.” She returned my smile and then turned to watch the ocean.

  “Have you given more thought to singing with Brady?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she answered, but I knew that, just like the medical review board was hanging over me, this was hanging over her.

  “What will you do if you turn it down?” It seemed crazy that I didn’t already know her answer to that question. I’d been thinking of our future, us together, but hadn’t really stopped to consider what that looked like. What would she be doing if I was out to sea? What would she be doing if I was having to chase after something new?

  “I’d planned on going back to Rockport and writing songs until someone bought them. I’d probably continue to work with Andy and Lacey at the bar until they kicked me out.”

  I was quiet, and she noticed. “Spit it out, oh Captain, my Captain.”

  “It’s just…there’s no one there for you,” I said.

  “Andy and Lacey are there.”

  “But no family.”

  “Eli, I don’t really have family anywhere. Not like you have here.”

  That about broke me. “You have Jenna,” I said gruffly.

  “I do have Jenna. But she’s getting married, and she’s focused on running her business with Colby. She has a life that isn’t mine. A life in Galveston that I don’t want.”

  We were interrupted with our food, and we ate in silence for a few moments. Not an uncomfortable silence, but one heavy with things we were both still trying to figure out. I finally pushed my plate away and said the one thing that I really wanted.

  “You could stay with me.”

  I knew, even as I said it, that it wouldn’t work, thinking of Ava having to squeeze into the tiny apartment that Truck and I shared that looked temporary because we hadn’t done anything but shove furniture in it. Because it had been temporary to us. We’d known we’d be moving on to new assignments eventually.