“Okay, I won’t talk about me and Ginger.” He kept swimming. “Whatever that has to do with anything, but you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”
With a frustrated growl, she let herself go limp, and allowed him to drag her along to his heart’s content. He reached Frock and planted his feet solidly on the cement block below, turning her to face him.
“Hang on to me. You’re too short to touch,” he said.
She gave him a defiant look, and tried to put her feet down anyway. He let his eyes roll up to watch the reddening, evening sky for a few seconds, impatiently waiting for her to figure out he was right. On tippy-toes, her face broke the surface, but the gentle swells lapped against her nose, making her panic to catch each breath.
“Are you done?” he asked while arching a brow, and held out his hand for her to grab.
She didn’t waste time grabbing for it, and she used it to pull herself closer so she could hook an arm around his neck. He put his hands around her waist and closed his eyes with a contented sigh. She didn’t like that she’d given him that, but breathing was more important than her dignity at the moment.
“That feels good,” he said quietly, his eyes still closed. “I’ve missed you.”
“Huh,” was all she gave him, and he opened his eyes to look at her, probably to assess his strategy.
“Rhees, I don’t want a divorce.”
“Neither do I, but . . . I love you too much to keep making you so miserable.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” He shook his head.
“I told you this would happen,” she started. “You’ve never wanted to get married, but for some reason, we did anyway, and I’ve done nothing but make you miserable since.”
“That’s not true.”
“You can’t lie about this one. I was there, remember?”
“Where is this coming from? Wait—” The crease between his brows grew deeper. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s my fault. I should have told you about my past—”
“This has nothing to do with your past,” he cut her off. “This is about me being an idiot. I held you to an impossible standard, I know that, now. Not even you could have lived up to that. I pulled the Weaver family expectation card on you, but now that I know that, I won’t let it happen again, and I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said.”
“I know. You missed an important session with Keene.”
Rhees pursed her mouth into a tight line.
“Not Keene again,” she jeered. She rued the day she ever met the good Dr. Keene. “That’s it. I’m suing him for breaking up this marriage. He filled your head with a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with us, but you’d rather hang on to every word he said than believe anything I’m trying to tell you.”
“I did that too. I’m sorry.”
“You’re saying that a lot, again.”
“You want a list?” Paul smiled, attempting humor to diffuse her anger, as usual. She knew he was referring to his first try at an apology, on Duna Caye. “So you can decide which, of all my blunders, you’ll forgive me for?”
“You, trying to be cute, is not going to work this time. This is too serious.”
“I am cute, no trying required.” He tilted his head, flashing her one of his best smiles. She had to look away to avoid the temptation to smile back, and to plant her mouth on the gorgeous lips she’d missed.
“Here goes. I’m going to work my way backward. First, I’m sorry I pushed you into the water. I’m sorry for reacting with anger, to your . . .” His brows furrowed again, thinking about what she planned to do. He thanked God he made it back before she had a chance to follow through with it.
“To your ap-point-ment—” His lips popped on the P’s and T’s, venting the lingering anger he still felt about it. “With Bar-ton.” He popped the T again, giving her a stern glare.
“I thought this was an apology.”
“Just promise me you won’t do that again.”
“I’m not promising anything,” she snapped and they stared each other down. Paul gave in first, he rarely gave in first, but Rhees looked so fierce and unforgiving, he didn’t dare push it.
“Okay. Where was I?” He reeled in his negative emotions, setting himself back on track. “I’m sorry I read your journal. I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner, but I didn’t dare come back until I knew for sure, but then I ended up staying an extra day, and when I finally realized I had to get back, I couldn’t get a flight that wouldn’t miss the three o’clock plane—”
“You took the ferry?”
“No. I chartered a private plane. I wanted to get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” He snorted a laugh.
“Because Ginger refused to take you back, after all.”
Paul ran through his facial routine, trying to come up with possible reasons why Rhees suddenly seemed so obsessed with Ginger. He thought back to the day he’d run off. He’d been on a whirlwind of a ride since that day, and he’d almost forgotten why he left in the first place, but now, he remembered clearly.
The look on Rhees’ face came to mind, when he first realized she’d witnessed him in one of his, not-so-fine moments, smashing everything in sight—the way she stood there—shocked, bewildered, frightened.
Since the beginning, despite his immature efforts to intimidate her, she’d always refused to show fear, of him or his behavior. Tough as nails, he thought, until that moment.
“You saw the email?” he asked after clearing his throat, because shame had kicked him in the gut, but also because he just realized she’d been standing there in the office, behind him, longer than he realized.
She nodded, and he could tell she was about to choke up. He glanced down in disgrace.
“Rhees, I’m sorry—”
“Stop saying that!”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t run off to be with Ginger. She’s a friend, nothing more. I’m sorry for what I put you through, but I did nawt run off to resume our relationship—which never really was a relationship. We didn’t break up, because there was nothing to break. We just . . . parted ways.”
“Don’t lie to me. I told you, I saw the email. She said she regretted leaving you—wished she never had.” Rhees sniffed. “And then you couldn’t get back to her fast enough—oh, yeah—you did take the time to smash up everything else I love, like giving me the finger before you left.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it, but he stopped when Rhees narrowed her eyes at him.
“You apparently didn’t read the entire message.” He tried to lean his forehead against hers, but she turned her head.
“She’s sick,” he spat out.
“No, I’m not! Being assaulted is not an illness . . . and I’m working on it—”
“Ginger!” he blurted. “Ginger is sick!”
He waited for it to sink in, and just like he knew it would, Rhees’ inherent empathy immediately drained every ounce of her anger.
“She’s contracted Tuberculosis,” he continued. “She hadn’t been well for some time, but she ignored it, self-medicated away the symptoms. By the time she finally made it to a doctor—if she’d just seen a doctor sooner—she might have had a chance. But now, the odds of surviving it are not good.”
Paul glanced at Rhees and felt himself start to lose his composure, haunted by thoughts he had yet to share.
“She’s HIV-positive, probably has been for a while.”
“I’m so sorry.” Rhees’ countenance fell. “I jumped to the wrong conclusions. You were upset. You ran off to support a dying friend—and I—I’m so—”
He pressed a finger to her lips, o
nce again in awe of her compassionate soul.
“That’s what you would have done—probably not the smashing things up part—but no, Rhees—I went to Texas.”
“What?” she cried out, her face the picture of incredulity. “Are you kidding me? You don’t have to have me committed to get rid of me. I know you’re unhappy. I’ll keep my appointment with Barton. We can go together. I won’t fight you on anything. I’ll leave—”
“To get tested!” he yelled over her outburst. “I flew to Houston to get tested, because I’ve never been tested . . . and I haven’t exactly been the pillar of careful.”
Rhees stopped talking a million miles a minute and just stared at him, confusion all over her expression.
“Listen.” He felt his eyes fill a little. “When I left home, Florida . . .” How did he get here? He didn’t want to relive all this again, but he had to. It was time, because Rhees had to know.
“The gun misfired, and I didn’t have the courage to try again, but I didn’t stop wanting to put an end to the tormenting memories, and the suffocating guilt. I couldn’t bring myself to take a quick way out again, but I—it didn’t keep me from trying more passive, creative ways of getting the job done.
“I took the first flight out of Miami and wound up in London. I met Mitch at an illegal warehouse party, and we hit it off as we bitched together about London’s cold, sucky weather. He talked about his cousin the dive instructor, diving, and living the life. He planned to join up with her, and said I should tag along.
“I’d been drunk for days, so it didn’t take much to convince me to do anything. The next thing I knew, I was in Thailand, getting trained by Aislinn.” Paul’s eyes met Rhees’ with a knowing look. “I started calling her Ginger, because, well, because she has red hair and freckles.”
“You never call anyone by their real name,” Rhees added.
Paul smirked, nodding his head.
“She was mean as piss, and the wildest thing I’d ever seen. I finally told her she looked like Ginger on Gilligan’s Island—she didn’t— it’s almost an insult to Tina Louise, but I had to get her to stop punching me in the arm. I had a bruise for months.”
“You could have just started calling her Aislinn.”
“What’s the fun in that?” He smirked again.
So far, Paul’s story wasn’t setting Rhees’ mind at ease about Ginger, if that was his intention. They’d already established he had a thing for feisty girls who resented the nicknames he called them.
“Thailand can be a pretty wild place, if you’re not careful,” he continued. “It wasn’t hard to get myself into trouble—dangerous situations. I hung out at the roughest bars, picked fights with guys bigger than me.” He paused and glanced down. She felt him shift on the block beneath them.
“I’d smoked a little weed in my day, but . . . I started using drugs, all kinds—”
“After Pete died from—” Rhees gasped.
“I know, right? But I wanted to forget. That’s where my relationship with Ginger came in, she’d been using for years. She’d been there longer and had connections.” Paul kept looking at Rhees, but each time he tried, his eyes skittered away, as if he was too ashamed to meet her gaze. “I kept pushing my limits, and I’d curse every morning I woke up—because I secretly hoped I wouldn’t wake up.”
Rhees threw her other arm around his neck, and held on tight, wishing she could have taken away his pain.
“Rhees?” He tried to pull himself from her more intimate grasp, but she didn’t let him. “I spent the next two years messed up and stoned out of my mind, and yeah, I slept with Ginger, but I didn’t feel anything for her except . . . convenience.”
“Okay,” Rhees breathed.
“But the thing is . . .” Paul hesitated. Rhees could tell he didn’t want to go on, but he pushed forward. “She wasn’t the only girl I slept with.”
“I already know you weren’t a virgin, and you already know I don’t care about your past.”
He nodded, but didn’t appear to be put at ease.
“Ginger was fine with casual. She used me as much as I used her—she’d even bring friends over. We’d all get high, fu—uuh—romp.” He hesitated again. “She always had a party pack on her, or we’d just blunt, or blaze.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He finally did meet her eyes for a second. They were sad. “I hope you never know a thing about what I just said.” He dropped his head and seemed to be thinking back in time.
“Rhees,” he panted, closing his eyes.
She wasn’t sure if his bottom lip started twitching or trembling, the difference meant he was nervous, or scared, but she couldn’t tell which.
“I wasn’t careful!” He coughed out a sob. “I didn’t care where the needles came from, if that was the flavor of the day, and I wasn’t especially selective about who I was with . . . and I didn’t always . . .” He sobbed again as he squeezed her to him in a desperate hold. “I didn’t always use a condom.”
“Oh.” It was all Rhees could think to say.
“I wasn’t careful, because I didn’t care. I didn’t care, because I didn’t know you were going to come into my life.”
They shared a long pause, holding each other, sniffling into each other’s necks.
“When I got that email,” he forced out, and then gulped in a breath, “I read the words—Ginger is dying because she’d been careless . . . as careless as I’d been. I should have been upset or sad about that, but my only thought—” He painfully coughed out and sucked in gusts of air while desperately pulling on her, grabbing at her, trying to get closer, kissing and nuzzling her hair, her neck and face.
“Aw, Baby.” He sobbed again. “I didn’t have a condom in Costa Rica. I woke up and found myself all over you . . . and the dressing room. Ginger is dying because she was careless and stupid, and I deserve the same—” He’d become too choked up to finish. Rhees could only hold him and wait for him to recover.
“Aw, Rhees. I—I thought I’d killed you! I was sure I’d infected the most beautiful, innocent, pure person I’ve ever known in this ugly, screwed up world.”
“Are you?” she asked, not really sure she wanted to know the answer. “Infected?”
“No,” he rushed out in a relieved gust. “Nothing. Not even an STD.”
She felt so good in his arms, a little too naked for the moment, in her sexy-as-hell bikini. He continued talking to keep his mind, and He, under control.
“So, you’re not pregnant?” he said in an attempt to get his emotional outburst under control.
She shook her head against his.
“Oh.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “My mom used to talk about nesting instincts in her patients. I just thought—when I walked into the apartment and saw the way you’d redecorated, I’d been so worried about convincing you to forgive me. I selfishly hoped you could be, thinking it might work to my favor.”
She giggled and he had to look at her. He couldn’t believe she could laugh; let it go so fast, all the things he’d just confessed. He wanted to take it as a good sign.
“I just wanted to make it more like Oceanside. You were so angry with me for moving out. It felt like buying a ticket after the train had already left the station, but it gave me something to do, to get my mind off of you leaving me.”
“It’s not that I mind that you moved out. You just caught me off-guard, that’s all. I was still trying to do what I thought I had to do, and the move chipped away at my resolve that much more. You swing a wicked axe, Baby.” He grinned. “You do deserve the best, and my apartment sucks. At least, it did. It looks great now, still small, but it feels like—” He brightened with a new idea. “Maybe we could look into building a beach house on the north side.”
“Paul?” she said quietly. Her eyes d
ropped down and she pulled away a bit from his thankful and relieved embrace. His first instinct was to pull her back, but he didn’t force it when her body stiffened.
“I think I should keep my appointment with Barton.”
“No,” he said. He refused to negotiate the matter. “You shouldn’t. I won’t let you.”
“I’m not asking your permission.”
She grew sullen again, and his heart thumped against his chest. He thought he’d succeeded in worming his way back in.
“I’m just telling you as a courtesy.”
“Shit,” he mumbled. He licked his lips when he felt them start their usual, nervous motions. He pressed them together, tight, so they couldn’t move.
“This isn’t working. I think—I think we’re just too far apart, like polar ends of a magnet. I’m miserable, seeing you miserable. I can’t do that to you anymore.”
“Stop saying that.” He felt the panic building as his life crumbled away again, bit by bit. “Polar ends maybe, but on the same magnet. You said yourself, opposites attract.”
“And you said, having nothing in common only makes people miserable.”
“I didn’t say that! I said—” He realized that what he had said wasn’t going to help his case. He mumbled the rest, “Falling in love with your opposite makes it even worse.”
“Yeah, that.” The sarcasm dripped from her tone. “Sorry, I don’t have your super-duper memory, so I can’t quote everything you’ve said, word for word.”
He drooped, feeling deflated.
“Love sucks,” he commented mindlessly, thinking back on what he’d meant, living what he’d meant, the fact that his heart was cracking and threatening to break into a million pieces. She gave him a pained look, let go of him, and started to swim away.
“But I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back, blurting, “not loving you would suck even more. It would suck so much, I couldn’t bear it.”
Wet Part 3 Page 42