Nate nodded, laughing. “I caught that, yeah. What a pompous ass!”
“Did he really think that telling me my ‘edges need softening’ was going to somehow seal the deal?”
“Exactly.” Nate wasn’t even going to mention the shameless way he added sexual innuendo to every possible comment. His free hand was pumping relentlessly as they walked. He needed to change the subject.
“Come on! I have to show you this bridge.” He pulled her off in a slightly different direction. “It has a bear pit on the other side of it.”
“A bear pit?”
“Yes. With real, live bears in it.”
“And you know this how?”
“My dad brought me here once. We bought bunches of carrots from a street vendor and threw them over the edge of the bridge to feed them.”
“Are you sure there wasn’t a “Don’t Feed The Bears” sign posted in German somewhere?
“Yes, I’m sure! The vendor sells the carrots so that people can feed the bears.”
“And they’re just sitting out there–for no reason? It’s not part of a zoo or anything?”
“Nope. They’ve been here since the sixteenth century. Well, not these exact bears of course. You probably can’t see them in the dark, but maybe we can come back when it’s light and I’ll prove it to you.”
“This is definitely not New York. Can you imagine bears in New York? Some Bellevue psycho would probably free them and let them roam the streets for fun. It’d be all over You Tube.”
“I know, right? It is a little quirky, but I’ve always loved this city!”
“How old were you when you visited?”
“I was ten when my dad first brought me. Then I spent a few weeks here the summer I turned sixteen.”
“Can you believe he did that?” Paige was staring off into the night sky as they walked.
“Brought me to Switzerland?”
Paige wasn’t even listening. “After he promised Kevin he wouldn’t try to steal me away! I mean, do I tell Kevin or keep it to myself?”
So much for romance and reminiscing. “I don’t know.” The thought of Kevin needing to step in and rescue her from Frank was not easy for him to stomach, even if it was part of the business world.
He squeezed her shoulders lightly. “It’s not easy to hold your ground against such a lucrative offer. At least he didn’t make you an offer you couldn’t refuse.” His Brando wasn’t quite as good as his Monty Python, but she laughed anyway.
“One of the first principles of business is to count the cost. All I could think of was what an incredibly high price I’d have to pay in order to have all that money, all those perks. It’s like being asked to sell my soul to the devil.” She shivered at the thought. “No thank you!”
Nate pulled her closer into him. “That’s why I love you. That, and the uh–everything else part.” He smiled and kissed her head.
They stopped on a bridge from which you could see the lights of the Münster and thousands of red-roofed silhouettes against the night sky. He turned her shoulders just right so that she had the best view.
“Wow. In my whole life I’ve never seen anything this beautiful.” She started to cry.
“Don’t cry yet. I haven’t even asked you.”
“You what?”
He got down on one knee and pulled out a gorgeous red velvet box, opened to reveal a beautiful white gold and diamond ring.
“I’ve counted the cost a million times Paige. Being without you is just too damned expensive. I can’t afford it.” He watched her eyes mist over. “I love you with everything that’s in me. I want to be with you every day for the rest of our natural lives and even then, into eternity. I want to walk beside you. I want to live with you and love with you. But most of all, I want to give you your wings. I want to watch you fly.”
She was looking at him through full pools of deep green, and he wanted to wrap his entire being around the ache.
“Will you marry me?”
Some people had stopped along the bridge, pointing at the two of them and staring, no doubt wondering about the outcome of the proposal.
Paige shook her head almost imperceptibly. “I can’t, Nate. I’m not ready.”
His head went down, his lower jaw quivering against the urge to cry. It took all his strength to maintain composure as the breath leaked slowly out of his lungs. He couldn’t let her see–not in the face of a rejection. He’d been foolish to jump the gun. He knew she wasn’t ready. He knew it and he tried anyway.
The onlookers began to move away. A picture was worth a thousand words in any language, and the interpretation was pretty obvious in this one.
She grabbed both of his cheeks in her hands and tried to get him to look up at her. “Nate, please! Look at me! You have to understand something.”
He shook off her arms and stood up, but kept his head turned to the side. “I do understand. I understand Paige.”
“No, Nate–I don’t think you do. Please…look at me!”
His emotions were like a swirled cone, so intermingled were the dark and the light in him. He wasn’t able to bury it. Finally, frustration and impatience got the best of him. He turned and gave it all to her, right between the eyes, his face filled with the fusion of love and hate. What he hated was what life had dealt her, and how that affected her ability to love him–to love anyone. She couldn’t possibly understand how much he hated those men that had stolen her heart right out from under him.
Paige turned and ran off the bridge.
For a long time Nate stood against the railing. He should’ve known better. He should’ve waited a little longer. Eventually he walked to the other side and started talking to the bears.
“Switzerland seemed like such an ideal place to propose. Could you blame a guy for trying?” He could hear the bears wandering around below him; could just barely make out some of their shapes. “What, you only speak German? I don’t know how to say ‘I really fucked that up’ in German.” The bears grunted their approval. “Well, thanks for agreeing with me, anyway.” He leaned his head into his arms.
“I thought this would be the perfect place, you know? I figured if I told her how much I didn’t want to hold her back it would be enough. I thought…hell, I don’t know what I thought. All I know right now is that I love her. And this ring was a lousy idea.”
He flipped the case open again and fingered the diamond, poised so perfectly above the princess setting. Once again the timing was off, and it was entirely possibly that he’d just blown his only shot.
__________
Discovering more of you each day
The sound of your breath
The feel of your touch
The fragrance of your presence
Closer – closer –
Don’t stop until it’s all of you I see
Without these eyes to blind my heart
And to deceive…
Somewhere in the distance Brendan woke with the taste of apples on his lips. He’d fallen asleep reading Tess’s poems, yet dreamt all night about kissing Sarah– one long, soft kiss that seemed to last for hours. It unnerved him, and he was thinking about her still as he fired up his computer and started clicking through the photos he’d taken over the last week or two. He came to the two or three shots from the coffee shop and studied them with interest, especially the close-ups of Sarah’s face. He found himself peering past the veil, catching glimpses of her deeper parts, and somewhere on the inside, he felt himself stumble. He straightened and tried to catch himself. She was just a girl. She had no right.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Every man has his breaking point.”
-The Shawshank Redemption
Paige didn’t sleep that night, and Nate never did come back to the hotel room. All the next day she waited to see if he would contact her, but there was nothing. Images of Nate’s face kept looping in her mind as she went over and over the conversation from the night before. When she got back from work, his bag had disapp
eared.
As time went on the days got easier, but not much. The nights were miserable. By day three she was so exhausted she slept eleven hours straight. Not a text or an email had shown up since the night she ran off the bridge. It wasn’t like him to be incommunicado. After a while she just assumed he was gone. Her one shot and she’d blown it.
The grief came in waves, but her work turned out to be a nice tonic for combating loneliness. Grief spread to numbness and finally just shut off completely. Frank only asked once more about Nate, and she’d told him he’d only been able to stay a couple of days. He had to get back to take care of some business. It was probably true.
She never did see the bears by daylight.
Ten days later however, when they flew home and she walked in the door of the apartment, it all came flooding back. Pins and needles started to creep into her heart as numbness was replaced by sudden feeling. His clothes were still there. Maybe he hadn’t left after all? But if that was true, then his absolute silence became one big, deafening explosion in her head. She couldn’t even guess what he was thinking, and had worn herself out with regret for how she’d handled their interchange on the bridge. The idea of facing him again was overwhelming.
Her breath started coming in short, shallow bursts as the familiar panic began to constrict her throat and wreak havoc on her stomach. She used the bathroom several times while trying to get unpacked. Exhausted, she laid down fully clothed and buried her head in the pillows.
They smelled like him.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, she cried herself to sleep.
__________
When Nate got home and saw her, asleep in their bed, his heart broke all over again. He got undressed, turned out the lights, and crawled in behind her, drawing her into his chest. Half asleep, she adjusted her position so that as much of her was touching him as possible. A few minutes later she startled awake, looked at the clock, and realized where she was. She wiggled in his arms and turned toward him, holding his face in her hands. The light coming in through the windows was just enough to be able to see the look in his eyes. The hatred she remembered so vividly was gone.
“I’m so sorry” he choked out.
“Don’t. You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one that–”
“Shh!” He put his finger over her lips. “We’ve got all day tomorrow to talk. Just kiss me. I’ve missed you so much.”
The next morning Paige bolted upright in a panic. “What time is it?”
He pulled her gently back down on the bed. “Relax. It’s Saturday. You have the whole weekend to recover from your jet lag.”
She sagged back onto the pillows. The sudden inevitability of a conversation long overdue hung over their heads like a cartoon bubble.
He pushed up on one elbow, slowly tracing lines across her cheeks and jaw with one finger. “I thought I’d lost you. I know now that I pushed too hard and too fast, and I’m sorry. Somewhere in the back of my brain I knew it was too soon. It just seemed so perfect to propose in Switzerland like that. I guess I just wanted it to be special.”
She tilted her head to the side and looked at him. “Is that why you came? To propose?”
One side of his mouth curved up. “I wish I could be noble and say yes. That was part of it, but not all.”
“What was the other part?”
“Well, I missed you of course. That first night when we talked on the phone until you fell asleep I realized I wasn’t going to get much sleep myself without you here.”
She smiled sympathetically.
“I hadn’t been to Switzerland in years and when I started thinking about it, I remembered my dad telling me the story of how he proposed to my mother there–on that very bridge. I thought “how cool would it be to repeat family history?” so I went and picked up the ring I’ve had my eye on ever since I met you, and got on the first plane out of JFK.”
“So that was it?”
Nate sighed heavily. “I’ve had a lot of time to think over the last week, and if I’m really honest with myself, I’d have to say that what really drove me there was jealousy.”
“Jealousy?”
He sat up. “Maybe jealousy isn’t exactly the right word. Maybe fear. All I know is, I don’t trust Frank Evans, not even for a second. I don’t like the way he looks at you and I don’t like the way he manipulates and controls every situation he’s in.”
“But-”
“Just let me finish, please. I didn’t like the fact that he arranged this trip so fast for the two of you, and I got scared. Scared for you and scared for me too. All I could think about was that I needed to protect you.”
“Just like you would have wanted to two years ago?”
“Yes, damn it!” He swung his legs around to the side of the bed and sat with his bare back facing her. “Is there anything wrong with that? I live with the torture of that night every day of my life. I should have been there!” He stopped suddenly, his arms resting on his knees. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I should have protected you.”
She laid her hand gently on his bare shoulder. “That wasn’t your job, Nate. Neither one of us can change what happened that night. I was attacked–viciously and brutally.” Her voice broke. The words were still so hard to hear. “But it wasn’t your fault. And nothing you can do or say now can take it back.”
He shook his head, defeated. “You think I don’t know that?”
“I was the stupid one, ok? I made a stupid mistake, and I should have known better. I don’t know what I was thinking, waiting in the dark so close to the alley in that neighborhood. I know better than that.” Paige kept her voice low, trying to calm him, but his anger flared up out of nowhere.
“Oh, so it’s your fault then? Don’t be ridiculous!”
She matched his intensity. “Ok, so what’s more ridiculous, me saying it’s my fault or you saying it’s your fault? How about we put the blame where it belongs, huh? How about the slimy bastards that got away with–” Her voice broke again and he reached out for her but she waved him away.
“When they dragged me back there and gagged me and held me at knifepoint I thought they would just kill me, and to be honest with you, sometimes I wish they had. But they didn’t, and I have to live with that. So do you.”
Just the re-telling of the story gave him the shivers. “Stop it Paige. We don’t have to talk about it now.”
“Yes! We do! It’s all wrapped up in this and we need to get it out in the open. Listen, you were late that night, but that was unavoidable. You couldn’t make that taxi go any faster through traffic unless you were God.” She sat up and slid back against the wall. “You can’t be with me every minute of every day, and you can’t keep evil people from being evil. The job of Savior is already taken, and from what I hear, he’s pretty popular.”
Nate sat shaking his head. “I don’t believe this.”
“I’m not a little girl anymore, Nate. I grew up in this city and I know the risks. I made a bad choice and I lost big, but I’m still here, and whether you agree with this or not, I’d still rather live here than anywhere else in the free world!”
He got up, went into the bathroom and closed the door. Ten minutes later he reappeared. He’d showered and shaved and was started toward the kitchen. “Do you want some coffee?”
“We’re not done, Nate! We’re far from done!”
He took a deep breath and tried to force himself to stay in the moment. “Well if this conversation is going to continue, I’m going to need some coffee, how about you?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He pulled the glass pot out of the maker much too hard and it banged into the strainer. Her startled expression jerked him back to reality. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked away when you were in the middle of a thought.”
She waited for him to scoop the grounds and flip the switch. When he was finished he sat back on the edge of the bed.
Paige made her voice low again, trying to keep him calm. “I
have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. I shiver when I pass by dark alleys. Sometimes I have panic attacks. Sometimes I get really overwhelmed with a bunch of emotions I have no idea how to deal with, and according to my therapist, this might never go away. This rape is a part of my life now, and if you want to be with me, it’s going to be a part of yours too. But I have to be honest with you–”
She stopped suddenly and bit on her upper lip. “Sometimes I feel like the only reason you’re still with me is because you feel so guilty–like you need to somehow pay a lifetime of penance for being late one time. It wasn’t your fault Nate.” She started crying again. “And I need to know that you love me for me–just because.”
He sat there stunned. For a long time he just blinked his eyes. There was some truth in what she’d said and the realization stung, but– “Is that what you think? That I’m with you because of some twisted sense of pity or guilt?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
When he looked into her eyes, the truth of it was unmistakable. He couldn’t understand how she could possibly believe that–not after all he’d done to make sure she knew otherwise.
“Can’t you see? I loved you before that ever happened. It’s because I already loved you that it tortures me. Don’t you understand?” He stared out the window, trying to formulate the words. “I wanted to propose to you that night–the very same night of your attack. I knew you’d think I was crazy–we’d only been together for a couple of months. But I knew you were the one, even then, and I was going to do it anyway.”
He swallowed hard. Her eyes were unchanged. Something wouldn’t let her believe him, but he had to explain the truth.
“I wasn’t–late that night because of a cab or traffic. I stopped by my father’s store to pick up a ring–the very same ring I presented to you in Switzerland. Traffic was bad, yes. But I was late because of the ring, Paige. The ring!”
She closed her eyes, shaking her head.
“When I finally got to you the unthinkable had happened. Afterwards I had my father put the ring back in his safe and I’ve been waiting all this time, trying to give you space–trying to give the two of us time…to heal and to… I don’t know, recover I guess.”
Letters From The Ledge Page 13