Life, Liberty, and Pursuit

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  They cleared the dishes and cleaned up. Addison invented a reason to leave, obviously wanting to give Clayton and Tea some time together. He dragged Eliza out to the small porch at the back of the apartment to enjoy the view of the sun as it dipped down towards the water. The apartment wasn’t far from the beach, and a sliver of blue ocean peeked at them through the dunes. Leave it to Tea to score an apartment with an ocean view.

  “Let’s leave the lovebirds alone,” he said with his best low voice to convince her to come with him. It wasn’t difficult. When she saw the beach, she met his gaze with wide eyes. Hand in hand they snuck off, skittering across the narrow campus drive separating the apartment complex from the rolling dunes. They abandoned their shoes once they crossed the road, to better navigate the sand, steering clear of the desert strawberry and thistle plants that created a maze along their path.

  The euphoria he felt walking with her, holding her hand as they reached the water, was making it difficult to breathe. He was transported back to the beach where he had found her shell, and where he probably fell in love with her for the first time. It was a glorious and heartbreaking day. Somehow they had survived that day and many others, and she was still here with him. She stole glances at him as they walked in silence. When he couldn’t bear the suspense any longer, he stopped and pulled her to him, holding her hands curled up to his chest. He looked into those soft brown eyes and wondered where his courage went. He took a soft breath and asked the question that had plagued him all week …

  * * *

  Eliza was finally alone with him, the time she had been waiting for, and she couldn’t speak. She kept looking at him from the corner of her eye, wondering if this would be the last time she would see him. If it was, it would be fitting to have it end on a beach, so much like it had started.

  He pulled her around to him, holding her hands to his chest. Just being held by him and seeing love in his eyes gave her courage, as though the strength of his arms spread to her and made her safe.

  “Have you heard about the deferral yet?” he asked softly. His blue eyes sparkled in the setting sunlight, but they looked sad.

  “They’re supposed to call me on my cell.” She slipped one hand out of his grasp to fish her cell phone out of her pocket. There was a message on it, from the same prefix in New Jersey that she had been calling all week. She put the phone back in her pocket. She didn’t need to know what it said, because she knew it didn’t matter.

  She looked back up into those azure eyes and asked the one thing she really needed to know. “Did you mean it, when you said you would love me no matter where I was?” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremble in her voice, but she was sure he could feel the tremor that was going through her body.

  “Yes.” He sighed as he said it. After only the briefest pause, he added, “You’re not coming, are you?” There was such sadness in his voice that it almost broke her heart. Her throat tightened up.

  She cleared it and told him. “No.”

  He sighed in what seemed like relief, but couldn’t be. He wanted her to come, right? A rush of fear went through her. She had to tell him how she felt, quickly, or she might not have another chance.

  “I’m afraid …” she started, but suddenly he was kissing her as if this was his last chance to sear his love into her lips. He left her breathless, her thoughts scrambled as he pulled away.

  “I’m afraid, too,” he said. The words tumbled out of him. “I’m afraid that you will go to Princeton and forget about me. I’m afraid you will discover that you really love Nicolas after all, and I was just some …” he paused, as if tasting something bitter, “brief love that you had.” He stared into her eyes, holding her face. “I’m afraid you’ll find someone else to love, but you can’t come here just because I’m afraid of losing you.”

  She was speechless. He had sucked the words out of her mouth, and she had nothing left. He was afraid of losing her, just as she was afraid of losing him. But he didn’t want her to come to Monterey Bay. Why?

  “I don’t understand,” she said, fear making her heart beat hard. “Don’t you want me to come?”

  He looked anguished, releasing his hold on her face and closing his eyes briefly. When he opened them, they were so filled with pain that she instinctively reached up to touch his face and smooth away those grimace lines. He pulled her close so that they were nearly touching. “Eliza, I want you to come here more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But I want what’s best for you … more. I can’t decide your future for you, just because I want you to be with me.”

  She dropped her hands from his face, stepped slightly away, and gaped at him. She couldn’t believe the words that were coming from him. He understood. Without her telling him anything, without any explanation of her nightmare fears of losing him, he understood why she needed to go to Princeton. It was almost beyond reason that he could be saying these things to her.

  “Eliza, please say something. Please tell me that you won’t forget about me when you go.” Now it was her turn to kiss him ferociously, shutting him up and showing him with her lips that she would never forget him. How could she possibly?

  When she stopped, she told him, gasping with the intensity of it. “David, I love you so much that I was desperate to find a way to come here. I was willing to give up everything, because I was afraid I would lose my only chance to be with you. But I need to go to Princeton. I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. Please tell me you’re sure. Please tell me you’ll still love me if I go.”

  He finally smiled, almost laughing. “Eliza, don’t you see I can’t stop loving you? If I could, I would have stopped long ago.”

  “You would have?” she asked, not quite sure how to take that.

  “Yes,” he said, still laughing. “It would be much easier to not love you. It would have been so much simpler if I had said good-bye after the cruise and not looked back. But when you dropped into my life, you turned it upside down, and I haven’t been the same since. And I don’t want to be. Whatever your future is, I want to be there. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

  “Are you sure?” She trembled with the force of his words.

  “Yes. And much less sure you won’t fall under Nicolas’s spell once you’re there.” Pain dragged down the corners of his eyes.

  “Nicolas? You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m very serious about that.” She could tell he was, and that needed to be stopped, immediately.

  “I’ve already broken Nicolas’s heart. He probably still hates me, and I’ll be lucky if he even speaks to me.”

  “I want you to talk to him.”

  “What?” she asked, incredibly confused now. He ran his fingers through her hair, slowly running his hand down her back.

  “I want you to be friends with Nicolas, because I need him to look out for you while I’m not around,” he said, causing her to gape at him again. She was having a hard time keeping up with him and the turns in this conversation.

  “You want me to be friends with Nicolas?”

  “Yes, and absolutely … positively … nothing more than friends.” He possessively kissed her in between words. “Otherwise, I’ll have to kill your friend, and I’m afraid that might make you sad.” He gave her a slight smile.

  She smiled grimly, her mind reeling with the thought of David jealous of Nicolas when the only reasonable thing was the reverse. “I’ll make sure Nicolas knows about your intentions.”

  He laughed lightly, his hands traveling down to hold her around her waist. “Now, when you go to Princeton, you need to keep writing me, and calling, too. I want to know everything you’re doing—all the classes you’re taking, all the friends you’re making, all the boyfriends you’re turning away.”

  She gave him a disgusted look. Of course she would write, call, text, email, whatever means she could to remind him daily th
at she still existed. “I will be stalking you from the East Coast. And you better write me back—I want to hear all about your classes, and all the pretty female students that you have to say no to.”

  He laughed, actually sounding light-hearted, making her smile at the sound of it. “I won’t have Clayton to keep them occupied any longer. Seems he’s too interested in Tea now. But you don’t have anything to worry about. I’ll be spending all my time in the library.”

  “And writing me.”

  “And writing you, and thinking about you, and counting the days until I get to see you again. You are coming back to visit, right?”

  She gave him a look that said Of course, silly boy. “As soon as I have a break, I’m coming back here.” Her mind was suddenly turning with all the possible ways that she could come visit—breaks, summer—maybe when he had a leave he could come see her? They were going to rack up some serious frequent flyer miles.

  “Good,” he said with a glint in his eye. “But I’m also going to try to come to you.”

  “Can you get some kind of leave, long enough that you could come for a visit?”

  “Better than that,” he said quietly. “There’s a special program I’m going to try to get into. If I’m one of the top students, I might get selected to go to the Attaché Office next year … in Washington, DC.”

  Her eyes went wide, trying to remember how close DC was to New Jersey. Whatever it was, it was a lot closer than California. “Really?” She could hardly believe it.

  “I’m going to have to work like crazy to get in. But it’s a great program—I might even be able to do intelligence work. If I can get accepted, we should be able to see each other on weekends. It’s only a three hour drive …”

  She threw her arms around him. An incredible happiness filled her. That was only a year away, and she would see him even before then. Suddenly it all looked possible. She could feel his smile and warm breath as he buried his face in her hair.

  “Would you do that for me?” she asked.

  “I would do it for me and for us,” he said. He held her for a minute, and it all became clear to her. They would survive the separation because she knew. He loved her. He was willing to let her find her own calling at Princeton, simply because it was the right thing for her. And if he loved her enough to do that, then she knew he was hers and always would be.

  He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “You’re stuck with me, Eliza. You’ve been warned.” He gave her that little smile that she loved so thoroughly, and she couldn’t help but kiss him. Then she curled up in his arms, resting her head on his chest and closing her eyes. His arms held her tight, and she couldn’t imagine anything better.

  Chapter 22

  Trust

  It was unbelievable how much sameness there was in Oklahoma. Plains filled with golden grass, and then farm fields with rows of yellow wheat, and then empty lots sprinkled with high brown weeds. It was Eliza’s turn to drive, and her new silver Prius hummed under her hands, taking the straight highway at an alarming speed without a tremor. She smiled at the memory of the sweet surprise when she flew home from California and found it waiting in the driveway, courtesy of her impulsive mom and Johnny’s bonus.

  They were only on the second day of the drive, but they had already exhausted all the CDs. They drove in silence now, but eventually they would have to start talking. She glanced at Nicolas, noticing how his brown hair was long enough to move with the air conditioned breeze from the vent, just like fine waves of darkened wheat. She was losing her mind, she decided, driven mad by the relentless, unchanging landscape. When they crossed into Missouri, maybe they would find something green.

  She tried daydreaming about her weekend with David. It was a mixture of frozen moments where they just held and loved each other and fun times with Tea and Clayton silliness. They had several long walks and talks on the beach but still didn’t touch on all the things they wanted to share. The two days were gone in a flash, and then he put her on a plane back to New Mexico, a determined smile on his face. God, she missed him already.

  When she realized that Nicolas would be driving with her to Princeton, she wrote David about it. He would get the letter after they had arrived, and it would all be over, so hopefully he wouldn’t be jealous. If he was, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t tell her. They were both determined that their fears about their separation wouldn’t get the best of them. He would be released on liberty by the weekend, and she would call him then to tell him all about their trip.

  Nicolas wasn’t excited about driving with her, either. He was still hurt and a bit perplexed that she was going to Princeton. They hadn’t really talked about it. She told her mom she was fine to travel across the country by herself. Over her objections, her mom had begged Nicolas to go with her. She guessed he decided he could tolerate spending four days in a car with her. She could have put up more of a fuss, but she was hoping they might be friends again by the time they arrived in New Jersey. So far, they hadn’t made much progress.

  “Is the air conditioning okay? Too cold?” she asked. She was trying to keep herself awake—and hoping she might get more than a one word answer out of him.

  “It’s fine,” he said. He looked like she had roused him from some deep thought.

  “What are you thinking about?” She was unsure if he would answer or glare at her.

  He just sighed and looked out the window. “I think we’ve died, and purgatory is an endless sea of wheat grass.”

  She didn’t know if he meant for that to be funny, but she laughed a little, and then she couldn’t stop. It must have been the strain of the drive. Nicolas looked at her, smiling at first, and then finally began laughing quietly, shaking his head. When she regained her composure, she said, “I’m sorry to drag you into purgatory. You should have told my mom I would be fine. I would have been, you know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Eliza, I’m not going to let you drive across the country by yourself. That’s just crazy.” She sighed. He was still trying to protect her, take care of her. He lapsed into silence again, staring out the window. She thought it would be another couple of hours of quiet, and she wondered how she would endure it without passing out from boredom. More David fantasies, perhaps …

  Unexpectedly, he spoke up again. “Do you really love him?”

  That jarred her, but her voice was firm. “Yes.” He nodded as if he expected as much.

  “Then why are you coming to Princeton?” He looked at her, and she returned his stare for a moment before turning her eyes back to the road stretching ahead of her. There wasn’t anything she could hit for miles, but it seemed safer to look straight ahead.

  “Because I need to figure out what I want to do with my life.” Then she remembered something Nicolas said before. “And you were right,” she glanced at him. “Love doesn’t make you trade down. It brings you up, makes you a better person.”

  He seemed surprised at this, and then frowned. “So, he told you to go to Princeton,” Nicolas said, having apparently come up with an explanation that made sense to him.

  “No!” she said, more forcefully than she should have. “I decided to come.” Realizing he might take that the wrong way, she added, “But David totally supports me going. He wants what’s best for me, even though we both wish I was there.”

  Nicolas cringed a little, but was apparently back to thinking again. She wondered what he really thought of David. He didn’t know him at all, and she could imagine that Nicolas would simply hate him. The only time they had met had been that horribly tense encounter at the Thai restaurant.

  “David wants us to be friends, you know,” she said quietly. She had promised David she would try to make that happen.

  “Huh?” he said, a skeptical look on his face.

  “I think he’s worried about Carter.”

  Nicolas broke out into a wr
y smile. “Well, he doesn’t need to worry about that. Carter won’t be coming to Princeton after all.”

  “What? Since when?”

  “Since I told him you weren’t going.” His grin was ear to ear now, quite proud of himself. “I tracked him down at a party. He was all over some girl named Haley. I told him you’d found a new boyfriend and weren’t going to Princeton.” He stopped, laughing a little. “You should have seen the look on his face! It was worth the swing he took at me.”

  “What?” she asked, horrified by the entire story. “Did you get hurt?”

  “Heck, no! He was drunk—and he couldn’t land a punch on me if he was sober,” Nicolas boasted. “And it wasn’t a lie. I was pretty sure you weren’t coming at the time. And it felt good to share the pain a little.” He looked sideways at her.

  “So, what? He just decided not to come?”

  “I guess. Last I heard he was going to some college in Washington. I probably saved him the embarrassment of flunking out of Princeton. He should be thanking me.”

  She didn’t know about Carter, but she felt like she should be thanking Nicolas, once again.

  “You’re always so good to me, Nicolas. I don’t deserve it.”

  “That’s true,” he said easily, but she could tell he was joking. She loved how it felt easy in that moment, like they used to be. He was quiet again, and she didn’t want to lapse back into their awkward silence.

  “Do you really regret it?” she asked. He looked confused. “Getting into Princeton—do you regret it?”

  He seemed wary, and then shrugged. “No, not really. I didn’t exactly get what I wanted,” he gave her a pointed look, “but getting into an Ivy League college is a pretty good consolation prize.”