Already, I’m getting choked up, and I nod hard, pursing my lips to keep back a sob. I drop my phone in my purse and then get into the driver’s seat of my car. He gets in the other side, and his hand finds its way to my thigh, that same possessive, delicious grip that he has used on me since the first time. It’s as if neither of us knows what to say, and so we drive along in painful, heart-wrenching silence. I pull into the short-term parking garage, out of the sun and into the deep shadows. I don’t waste time looking for a spot, but pick the first one. As I put the Bronco in park, he leans over and cradles my jaw in his hand. This kiss is more tender than urgent, and also so very, very sad. My tears slide down my cheeks and make his lips wet against mine.
Together we make our way toward the terminal. He carries his suitcase by the side handle, so there’s no clacking rolling noise, only the sound of our footsteps on the oil-stained concrete. The suitcase doesn’t seem heavy to him, because I realize it isn’t. It only contains a week’s worth of his clothes. That’s all it’s been. One week. One week that changed my entire life.
And now it’s over.
He checks in for his flight, never letting go of my hand. I catch a glimpse of him on his license, where he looks much less happy, more like when I first saw him and not at all like the man I’ve gotten to know. Before the ticket agent can take his bag, I pull my pink pom-pom from my purse and double-knot it onto the handle.
“There,” I whisper.
I look up at him and see that his lips, those sexy, confident lips, are trembling. He puts his fist to his mouth and his eyes fill up with tears, spilling over his dark lashes and sliding down his cheeks. As soon as his tears start coming, so do mine, in big, awful, painful sobs.
“I hate this,” I say into his shirt.
His breath is jagged as he tries to keep the sadness down. “Fuck. So do I.”
The attendant takes his bag and looks sadly from him, to me, and back again, then puts it on the conveyor and says, “Gate A6, Mr. Macklin. Boarding in half an hour.”
We wait until the bitterest, bitterest end of those thirty minutes. We sit together, making more plans for the next visit, and the one after and the one after, assuring each other it’ll go by in a flash, that it won’t feel like any time at all, that two weeks will pass before we know it. But every single minute of this week was the most precious eternity, and how I’ll survive twice that time without him, I just don’t know.
As the final boarding call comes over the loudspeakers, we head for security. I wait with him all the way through until they won’t let me stay anymore, until the TSA agent has stamped his ticket and handed him his ID.
He turns to me and takes me in his arms, walking me up against the black lane tape and out of the way. “This has been the best week of my whole life, Penny. I never knew what it was like to be happy until I met you.”
There are so many things I want to tell him, so much I can’t say. Please don’t go. Please stay. Please. Please. Please. But over the loudspeaker, they’re calling his name.
“I love you,” I say, as he hugs me so tight that my feet come right the ground, until there is no gravity but him, no force in the world stronger than what we feel together. “Tell me when you land in…” But I can’t get the words out.
“I love you, too. I’ll see you soon,” he says, finally setting me down. He steps back from me and turns away.
Ask me to come with you again. Insist on it. Tell me your heart is breaking too.
And he does turn to me but doesn’t say anything. Just smiles and wipes his eyes, thumb and forefinger pushing away the tears.
I have never known heartache like this, never. It’s the kind of grief that makes me want to fall right down onto my knees. I watch him take off his belt and see the sliver of skin under his shirt as it comes untucked. He puts his bag on the conveyor, and his laptop. His shoes, his keys. All the little things that I adore because they are his. Everything that is his is perfect. Everything that he is, perfect too. He stays, with his eyes on me, for one long moment. And then he’s gone.
Somehow, through my tears, I find my way back to my car. I press the earbud holder to my chest. I open my phone to the picture of the two of us in the sun and clap my hand to my mouth. And for a long time, I sit in the dark, quiet parking garage, sobbing with my head to the steering wheel, while all around me Adele sings about the difference between us, the million miles, and who we used to be.
58
Russ
Just before we take off, my phone dings. I want it to be the thousand things I need to hear. Don’t go. Stay. Stay forever. But instead it’s the picture of us together, in front of the palm trees. I look so happy that I barely recognize myself. But I recognize her. The love of my life, now getting farther and farther from me as we taxi toward takeoff.
I open up the video of her laughing from the day when she was driving back to me. Her giggle fills my ears, and that contagious smile makes me smile too. Again and again I watch it—her glance, her smile, her whole-body giggle. And my heart bottoms out every time it ends.
I don’t even try to hide the tears as I watch Port Flamingo disappear below the plane. I wish with all my fucking heart I’d gotten on one knee and told her, Fuck real life. Marry me. Be with me forever. All the shit I should have said last night, and today, and a hundred other times, but didn’t.
59
Penny
As soon as I get home I get back in bed, where I spend the new few hours crying into Guppy’s fur and drifting in and out of sleep as old episodes of Murder, She Wrote stream at me from my laptop. As I finish off an entire pint of Rocky Road, my phone dings with a message from the mayor.
* * *
Dickerson’s pulled his permit for the golf course!
Looks like he’s moving on, Darling!
* * *
It seems as good a time as any to break the bad news to the mayor, so I rub my snot with my knuckle, send a party hat emoji with only half my heart, and tell him:
* * *
I think the movie scout was actually here investigating him.
* * *
Which he answers with a .gif of Sonny Bono clapping. I drop my phone into the sheets and tuck my face into the cool pillow case where Russ slept. My phone buzzes again, and I see that it isn’t Russ, or even the mayor, but now a message from my mom. It’s a picture of Omar, which she’s outlined with a hand-drawn red heart, the lines a little jerky from her phone’s photo edit app. Underneath she’s added the message:
* * *
You two did it! The farm is safe!
Give that Russ a hug for me!
I want to be happy. I am happy, for her and the animals and Dennis, and for Port Flamingo too—but I am also well and truly stuck in a hopeless, heartbroken mope. With no more ice cream left, I move onto the Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, which make my sheets feel like I just sprinkled them with sand. I pull up his flight information on Google, and keep hitting refresh until he lands in Boston. Within seconds of the flight showing landed, he messages me with a simple:
* * *
I love you.
* * *
And the tears start all over again. He was here for so little time, and yet he changed everything. He changed me, he changed our town, he changed my life. He rattled everything I am, everything I know, and everything I’ve ever thought I wanted, too.
Maisie comes to check on me every few hours and finally comes and stays about five o’clock. She sits by my bedside, putting her hand to my forehead every ten minutes and taking my pulse for no reason whatsoever. She feeds Guppy, and she drags my UPS boxes in from the porch. But around six o’clock, she marches into my bedroom with her fists on her hips. “I’m all for mourning periods, but I can’t watch this.” And then she literally pulls me out of bed. She makes me put on a pair of soft black shorts and my favorite tank top. She dots my cheeks with blush and then, hauling me by both arms, loads me into her car.
“Where are we going?” I say sadly against the
window.
“To cheer you up. I know just the thing.”
Just the thing is, of course, not the thing at all, because it’s a drink together at Lucky’s. As she puts her little hatchback in park in the sandy parking lot, I drop my face into my hands, and the sobbing starts all over. I’m too exhausted to tell her that this is the worst place she could have picked, and yet I’m also too tired to resist. She loops her elbow in mine, and we walk through the sand, down the very same path I took with Russ. Where our feet were that first night. Where everything started to change forever.
On the beach, we sit in the same place where Russ and I sat, but the sand doesn’t budge underneath Maisie’s chair. I peer at the hot sauces through my fingers. “I don’t know how to do this, Maisie. I know I shouldn’t feel so…”
Her hand rubs the back of mine gently and slowly. “It’s okay. You feel how you feel, and that makes sense to me.”
The tears splat down on my bare legs. Maisie orders two mango margaritas for us and I look up at Lucky as I sniffle. Even through the fuzziness of my tears, I can see his big face is worried and pained. “You okay, Pen? That guy recover from the incident?”
The tidal wave of sadness hits me once again. It’s madness, and yet it’s the only logical thing. There is a wisdom of the head and a wisdom of the heart. I know I will see him again, but there is a great big gaping hole in my chest where he used to be. Where he should always be.
“She’s okay,” Maisie explains, handing me a paper napkin. “Two frozen, mango, sugar rim. A double for me and a triple for her.”
I try to blow my nose, but I’ve been crying so hard that my sinuses are blocked up completely. I make a dreadful honk into the rough brown paper napkin, and the tears keep on coming.
Lucky returns with our margaritas and a basket of complimentary calamari. As soon as he sets it down on the table, I press my napkin to my eyes so hard that I see flashes. Maisie makes soothing, “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” noises. The squirt of lemon is a gentle spray on my forearm, but I’m too stuffed up to smell it.
“You need to eat,” she says. “You’ll disappear on me if you don’t, and we can’t have that. Who’s going to beta test my new salt scrub? Who’s going to do happy hour yoga with me, if not you? Norm from UPS?”
She skewers a piece of calamari with her plastic fork, holding it out in the air to me. She nudges my closed lips with the battered circle. “Oh em gee, Penny. It’s not the hay smoothie. You love calamari. So down the hatch. Please,” she pleads, and I finally open my mouth.
“There we go.” She nods maternally as I do my best to chew it. I swallow hard, gulping down some of my margarita through a straw and blotting at my cheeks with a new napkin.
Maisie feeds me another piece of calamari and then another. As I chew, she makes small chewing motions of her own, nodding with her perfect eyebrows mushed together in a dramatic line. Every swallow reminds me of being a little kid and having two ear infections and a cold at the same time. “It’s okay, Penny.” Her voice is far away, and I feel like I’m underwater. “It’s going to be fine. Just two weeks, and he’ll be right back here.”
“Two weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred thirty-six hours.” Cue the wracking sobs again.
“Boy, Cupid is launching a full-scale assault on you. Have some margarita. Let me get you some of my calming tincture. It only tastes like vinegar for a second.”
I put the margarita straw in my mouth, but before I can take a gulp, something else comes over me—it’s a totally unfamiliar feeling. It’s a queasy, stomach-rolling dizziness. Once, my uncle took me out on some choppy seas, and I felt sick like this. I put my margarita down and hang on to the edge of the table. A tremor of nausea comes up from way down in the pit of my stomach, and my hands go cold and clammy. I slap my palm to my mouth and bolt for the trashcan, but it’s too late. This ship is sailing, and I lose my cookies right into the lapping ocean waves.
Maisie is right behind me, and soon enough comes Lucky with a damp wad of paper towels. I fall down to my knees in the wet sand, the stinging bile of the vomit hot in my nostrils and burning my throat.
“There’s something wrong with that calamari,” I tell Lucky as I clean off my mouth.
“There isn’t,” he says, patting me on the back. “I’ve been eating it all day. So has everybody else.”
“I feel fine,” Maisie adds. “Maybe it’s all the crying. Let’s get you home. I’ll put you in the bath, and then we can watch some Dickens.”
Oh, God. Up comes the sadness and the wave of nausea again. I heave into the sand and throw up the ice cream from lunch.
“Maybe you’ve got a bug.” Maisie moves my hair aside. I dig my fingers into the sand and brace for another round. The waves slide up the shore, and the smell of the ocean makes me sick all over again, reducing me to horrible dry heaves. “Maybe I should take you to Urgent Care.”
“Maisie,” I groan, through the rolls of sickness, “I love you, but you’re not helping.”
“’Kay, okay,” she says softly, pulling my hair back into a makeshift ponytail as I fall to my elbows, overcome with nausea again. “Quiet time. I gotcha.”
I watch Lucky’s huge bare feet sink into the wet sand, until he’s in up to his ankles. Another round of heaves rips into me, and another, until I’m on all fours on the beach. When I lower myself back down to sitting, in between bouts, Lucky lets out a whistle that sounds like one of the mayor’s radio sound effects. “Last time I saw someone sick quite like this,” Lucky says, patting me on the back again, “was when my missus was pregnant.”
Maisie’s hand halts its soothing rubs. A barge horn stops, leaving the air eerily silent. I freeze, watching the waves fizzle out in front of me. And then I turn to look at Maisie, whose mouth drops open as she stares at me, unblinking.
Pregnant.
Oh.
My.
God.
60
Russ
At six that night, I get out of a cab in front of a steakhouse on Boylston. The streets are full of people heading home, watching the ground as they walk, and it’s starting to snow. I walk through the first door, into the small heated anteroom, and the hostess opens the second door for me. “I’m meeting a couple of guys here. Reservation’s probably under Miller.”
She glances down at the computer, a flat panel in the podium. “Yes, sir. Can I take your coat?”
I exchange my jacket for a claim check ticket, and she leads me through the packed restaurant. Steaks sizzle, and forks clatter on plates. At the far table, in a private corner, sits Rex with two of his investors—Army guys, too, but I don’t know them. All three of them are in suits, like I am. In front of the empty chair sits a Scotch on the rocks, waiting for me. On top of my menu is a manila folder with the Darkwater logo.
Two weeks ago, I was so fucking stoked about this. No more PI hustle—just steady, solid work for someone who’s been to hell and back with me. But now, everything is different. She undid me completely.
Rex stands up and shakes my hand. He introduces the other two as Ortega and Brooks. It’s the old familiar move—a shoulder-grip hug. “Nice tan,” Rex says, when we take our seats again. “Where the hell have you been?”
Only getting my goddamned heart flipped upside down. “Fuck, if you only knew.”
He studies me like there’s some secret that he’ll be able to find on my face, or like I'm hiding a shrapnel wound to keep up morale. “You good?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” Such fucking bullshit. I’m the opposite of good. I check my phone, like I've been checking all day, my thumb automatically opening up Skype and the chat window with her. She replied to my earlier message with I love you too. But there’s been nothing since.
I look up from my phone and inhale hard, looking around the table. It’s a surreal déjà vu, back to sitting across from Rex at endless poker games in Basra. Back to the tours we felt like might never end. But that was then. And this—this feeling in my gut—is now.
“Pap
erwork first, celebrate after,” Rex says, and uncaps a pen.
Rex’s wedding ring catches my eye, and so does his phone on the table, the picture of his wife underneath the passcode, with their two kids kissing her cheeks. Then the screen fades to black.
Ortega and Brooks order another round of drinks, and Rex asks the waitress for four shots of Jack. I open up the manila folder and the words come at me like graphics on a PowerPoint. 5-year contract. Benefits. 2.5% share. I flip to the first flag, waiting for my signature. I put my pen to the paper.
And think of her. And what we could have, right now. And forever after.
This contract is a seriously sweet deal.
But not as sweet as her.
That’s when I know it: She is my future, there’s no fucking doubt about that.
I take my pen off the signature line, and then shake my head at Rex. “Sorry, man. I can’t.”
Rex puts his elbows on the table, making all the glasses shake. He doesn’t look pissed as much as totally fucking puzzled. Ortega and Brooks give each other a glance, and in unison loosen their ties. Rex says, “You what?”
I close up the folder and blow out a long breath. “I just…” I look down at the logo, all industrial, mysterious. Ominous. Secret jobs, high-value intel. A world apart from the one I want, from the woman I need. “…I can’t.”
The waitress returns with the shots first. In front of each of us, the whiskey shivers in thick crystal glasses.
Rex lifts his hands to say What the fuck? But now, I don’t hesitate. There’s only one reason to pass up the job of a lifetime, and it’s Penny Eleanor Darling. So I just fucking say it. Pure and simple: “I met a woman in Florida, and I don’t want to say goodbye to her ever again.”
Just Like That Page 30