Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows)

by Judith Arnold

  She ordered Erika to angle her skis so they were nearly touching in front of her. Becky called this "snow-plowing." Erika called it "skiing cross-eyed."

  "It will slow you down," Becky explained, and Erika wanted to argue that she didn't want to go slow. She was used to cantering on horses, galloping on them, flying over fences on them.

  But she was the novice here, the East Coast chick in Rocky Mountain country, and she obeyed Becky and Adrienne and the other kids from her dorm who had dragged her off to this mountain for her first attempt at skiing.

  Her years of riding had taught her a thing or two about balance, at least. And she was blessed with fearlessness. If she fell, she fell. Sooner or later, she'd make it down the hill without falling. And without angling her skis to slow her down.

  She and her friends spent all of Saturday at the slope, which made sense since their lift tickets were good for the entire day. By early afternoon, Erika was actually using the ski lift rather than gliding up to the top of the bunny hill on a tow line. She was a long way from qualified for the double black diamond trails, but she made it down the green trail, escorted by two of her friends, and she fell only twice. At the bottom, she immediately slid over to the lift line to ride up again. She would master skiing the way she'd mastered riding.

  She didn't fall at all during her last run of the day. She began to feel comfortable enough to straighten her skis out and add a little speed to her descent. The dry mountain wind stung her cheeks and fanned through her newly cropped hair-she'd decided to try a new style, and she loved the freedom of not having those long, heavy tresses hanging down her back.

  New hairstyle. New sport. New life.

  Just what she'd wanted when she'd left Mendham.

  And yet.

  Like an ember that refused to die but continued to glow and send a thread of smoke into the air when the rest of the fire had been reduced to cold, gray ash, there was a part of her that refused to let go of the old life. It had nothing to do with horses, nothing to do with her parents and their comfortable house and the bathroom she'd had all to herself once her sister had left for college. Nothing to do with Allyson and Laura and all her other friends, who'd scattered to other colleges but who managed to stay in touch with phone calls and email.

  It was Ted. She couldn't seem to let go of Ted. He was that ember, that spark, still glowing, still hot. Still capable of warming her, or burning her.

  Like the long, thick hair she'd once had, he was a weight on her, holding her back. She wanted to move on. She wanted to be Erika, the Colorado ski queen instead of Erika, the New Jersey horse show queen.

  She wanted not to be always thinking of him, wondering what he was doing, how he was feeling, whether he still believed they ought to be married. He wanted to marry the old Erika, and she wasn't that person anymore.

  Her friends insisted on toasting her success on skis that night when they ended up at a frat house party, drinking cheap beer from plastic cups. "Look at you," one of the guys said as he hoisted his cup in her direction. "A whole day on skis, and you're not in a full-body cast. I'd call that a success."

  "Not even a broken leg," one of the girls pointed out.

  "Or a totaled knee. I totaled my knee the third time I skied."

  "There's a real confidence booster," Erika joked. "Now I can't wait to get back on skis again."

  The truth was, she couldn't. The more beer she drank, the more eager she was to return to the slopes. Before the end of the school year, she was determined to qualify for black diamond.

  Ted would never understand this, she thought. He'd mastered wrestling, but that was completely different. Wrestling was combat, but it wasn't death-defying, or life-affirming. It was about winning, not about soaring.

  He wouldn't understand anything about her anymore. Not her excitement about her studies-intro psychology utterly captivated her, and the level of analysis in her literature class was so much more advanced than those superficial high school discussions about Julius Caesar and Silas Marner.

  He wouldn't understand. He wouldn't know her anymore.

  Thinking about that stubborn, glowing ember made her want to cry. She had to extinguish it.

  "Hi," she said the next morning. Her head was aching, maybe from the beer she'd drunk last night but more likely from tension. This was not going to be an easy conversation.

  "Hey, Fred," Ted greeted her. "How's it going?"

  Just do it. Put out that ember before it ignites and burns down your world. "Ted, we've got to stop calling each other."

  He said nothing.

  "Are you there?"

  "I'm here." His voice was low, hard.

  "I'm sorry, Ted. Really. But I just can't make this work longdistance. It's crazy." I'm skiing now, she wanted to say, as if that explained everything. My hair is short. I'm someone new. "You're a great guy, and I don't want to hurt you. But I just can't do this any longer."

  Another long silence stretched between them. Closing her eyes, she could visualize the cables stretching across the continent, across the Great Plains, over the Appalachians, north along the coastline to Maine, where he'd moved with his parents. Brilliant inventors had created telephones, engineers had designed grids, laborers had sweated and toiled to string the wires and lay the cables that connected her to Ted right now. And all that effort, all that labor, led to this: silence.

  Finally he spoke. "Wow, Fred. That is a really ballsy move."

  Not what she'd expected. She'd thought he would plead with her, argue with her, insist that she was wrong, remind her of how much he loved her. Not call her "ballsy."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "`Because I'm a sure thing. And you're letting me go. I will never be with you again, I could never be this hurt again."

  Then silence once more, and she realized the line was dead. She stopped visualizing the cables and instead focused her gaze to the pile of drawings on her desk, the drawings Ted had sent her since she'd left for college. Beautiful drawings, hilarious drawings, somber drawings, and each of them a piece of his soul, captured on paper and presented to her. Gifts, all of them, from the boy who'd been a sure thing. The sure thing she'd just cut out of her life. The ember she'd doused.

  She lowered the phone, wiped her eyes before her tears could fall, and slid the drawings into a folder, which she placed carefully into a drawer of her desk for safekeeping.

  She might have broken up with Ted, the first boy she'd ever really cared about, the boy with the sexy green eyes and the sweet, hot kisses, the boy who had taught her about wrestling and sex and love. She might have broken up with him-but she wasn't ready to let go of his drawings.

  "Yo, Skala," his friend Dave said. "What do you think of Tempe?"

  Ted didn't think much of anything these days. He couldn't let himself think of Erika; it hurt too much. And what else was there to think of? His future? Yeah, right. Life in Jonesboro, Maine, population fifty, a few miles down Route One from his parents' home in East Machias? Oh, there was a lot to think about there. Love, sex, work, the meaning of life? Thinking about those things hurt too much.

  Right now, all he could really wrap his mind around was the six-pack of Budweiser he and Dave were working their way through. Dave was a few years older than Ted. Now that Ted had quit college and was no longer a student, he and Dave were practically equals-other than the fact that Dave could walk into a store and buy a six-pack of Bud and Ted couldn't.

  "What's Tempe?" he asked. "Some kind of sushi?"

  "It's a city in Arizona. I'm heading out there. Time for a change of scenery. What do you think?"

  "Arizona? That's like the other end of the world."

  "It's sunny there, all the time. And there's work there. Why don't you join me?"

  Ted tipped the can of beer against his lips and let the sour fizz wash over his tongue. What the hell would he do in Tempe, Arizona? Besides enjoy the sunshine?

  Work sounded good.

  And what was keeping him back east? His parents we
re okay, happily settled in Maine, and if they needed anything, his brothers and sister were around. There was nothing to hold him here, nothing that called to him. Nothing that meant anything to him.

  "They got beer in this town called Tempe?" he asked Dave with a grin.

  "They got everything."

  "How long a drive is it?"

  "Drive, nothing. I can score us some airplane tickets. We can fly out there, have a look around, try our luck with employment. There's a university there, too-Arizona State."

  "I'm done with college," Ted protested.

  "Yeah, but there are many thousands of undergraduate girls who aren't done with college there."

  Girls. Like he wanted to hook up with anyone.

  He did want to hook up with someone. Anyone. Anyone who wasn't Erika Fredell, anyone who could make him forget her, anyone who could heal the festering wound she'd left in his heart.

  "Airplane tickets, huh."

  "Gratis," Dave promised him.

  "So how long a flight is it?"

  "I don't know. You can't fly there direct. These tickets I can score for us, we'd have to change planes in Denver."

  Ted might not have known where Tempe was, but he sure as hell knew where Denver was. In Colorado. In the state where Colorado Springs was located, and Colorado College, and Erika.

  Don't be an ass, he scolded himself. That's over. She's over. You're over her.

  Even if he was over her, though, they could still see each other. As former classmates, right? For old time's sake.

  And maybe she'd see him and realize she'd been wrong. Maybe she'd see him and think, What an idiot I've been. Ted is the only man I've ever loved, or ever will love.

  Stranger things had been known to happen.

  "Really?" he said to Dave. "You can score free tickets?"

  "Why did you agree to do this?" Becky asked as they merged onto 1-85 north, heading toward the Denver Airport.

  Seated next to her in the passenger seat, Erika sighed. Good question, she thought. Becky and the girls in the backseat deserved a good answer.

  That it was a sunny winter day and they didn't have anything better to do than spend more than an hour cruising tip to the Denver Airport was not a good answer. That after spending so many months in Colorado, Erika was hungry to hear a New Jersey accent was not a good answer.

  That she'd spent hours last night thumbing through the folder of Ted's drawings, trying to convince herself that she was truly over him, and that she thought seeing him would nail that conviction down was not a good answer.

  But she was over him. And he was over her. He'd said he would never be with her again. When he'd phoned a couple of nights ago and informed her that he had a two-hour layover at the airport in Denver, she remembered his telling her he would never be with her again. She figured he wanted to see her, just to be sure.

  She wanted to be sure, too.

  "We're friends," she said.

  "I'm your friend," Adrienne commented from the backseat. "Would you drive an hour to see me?"

  "In a heartbeat," Erika said, meaning it.

  "Okay, so you want to see this friend," Anna said placidly. "Sounds good to me."

  "Oh, come on. He was more than a friend, wasn't he?" Becky asked. "You showed us that picture he sent you, with the couple going at it."

  Erika wanted to scold Becky for her mocking tone. That picture was awesome; all the girls who'd seen it had agreed that it was. She and Ted had never been "a couple going at it." They'd been in love. That love was over, but out of respect for what had once been, she had to travel up to Denver to see Ted.

  So it was an outing with her friends. They'd go to the airport, and then, once Ted was on his plane and flying off to wherevershe recalled him mentioning somewhere in Arizona-she and the girls would cruise into Denver and check out a club or two. Or they'd drive back to campus and stop in at one of the frat houses. Or whatever.

  It was important for her to see Ted. Important for her to assure herself that he was all right after she'd broken up with him. Important for her to assure herself that she was all right, even if the breakup had been at her instigation.

  Denver International Airport was a maze of roads, connectors, and parking lots all weaving around a building that looked like a circus tent designed by Dr. Seuss. "Those points are supposed to represent the mountains," Anna explained, pointing to the swoops and peaks of the main building. It didn't remind Erika of mountains, but she was in no state of mind to assess the architectural daring of the building.

  In a matter of minutes, she would be seeing Ted. For the first time since she'd broken up with him-for the first time since she'd said good-bye to him before heading off to Colorado-she would be seeing the boy who'd been her first love. Her palms felt clammy and her heart pounded more fiercely than it ever had when she'd been about to ride in a horse show, ski down a slope, or take an exam.

  Like her exams in school, this was a test. But unlike her exams, she had no idea what she was being tested on, no concept of how to study for it, and no confidence that she'd pass.

  Becky cruised into the short-term garage, took a ticket, and drove up and down the aisles until she found a parking space. You'll pass, Erika told herself, mustering the same poise and steadiness that had seen her through so many riding competitions in her youth. You'll ace it.

  "Do they sell margaritas in the airport?" Adrienne wondered aloud as they sauntered to the crosswalk and into the terminal building.

  "Not to nineteen-year-olds," Becky told her.

  Erika didn't want a drink. She just wanted to get this reunion over with, so she could be sure she'd done the right thing in breaking up with Ted. So she could get on with her life.

  "Which airline is he on?" Becky asked her.

  They studied the monitor and figured out which gate he was at. Passing through security was easy, and they hiked down the endless corridor to his terminal. Erika ran her fingers through her hair, casually, so her friends wouldn't notice that she was preening. If she'd been alone, she would have ducked into a restroom to check her reflection in a mirror. But she wasn't alone. And that was a good thing. She needed her friends with her for support.

  Fifteen minutes of newsstands, souvenir shops, and food courts later, they reached the gate where Ted would be arriving. "I can't wait to see this guy," Becky confided to Anna and Adrienne in a whisper loud enough for Erika to hear.

  "Yeah, I bet you'd love Erika's castoffs," Anna teased.

  "I just want to see if he's hot."

  "Cut it out, you guys," Erika lashed out. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. You're going to clear the fence, she assured herself. You're going to soar.

  Then she opened her eyes and saw him, filing through the door with the other deplaning passengers.

  He looked ... good. He was dressed in a blue mock turtleneck that clung to his torso, hinting at a chest that had added a bit of muscle and heft. Nicely battered jeans-some newly gained muscle in his legs, too. His hair was relatively neat, his smile restrained. He was no longer the gangly high school boy she'd had a crush on. He looked ...

  Really good.

  In his hand was an adorable stuffed teddy bear.

  Oh, God. A teddy bear. Friends didn't give friends teddy bears, did they?

  Becky, Adrienne, and Anna must have noticed the teddy bear when Erika did. Anna nudged her in the ribs with her elbow, and Becky whispered, "Uh-oh. I think he thinks it's Valentine's Day."

  "Isn't that special," Adrienne added.

  Erika allowed herself a tight grin, acknowledging her friends' snide assessments even though she felt ... ambivalent. Torn. A touch disloyal. The teddy bear was special-it looked like an expensive one. And it was sweet. And kind of desperate.

  She shouldn't have come to the airport. She'd broken up with Ted, and she should have left things as they were: done. Finished. No mas.

  But now here she was, flanked by her friends as if they were her seconds in a duel. Looking at Ted was like losing a
duel. The memories stabbed her, pierced her, cut straight to her heart. If his stare had been any more pointed, she would have been literally bleeding.

  He veered away from the stream of passengers and approached her where she stood among the rows of chairs in the gate waiting area. "Hey, Fred," he said.

  "Hey." Her stomach contracted with nerves. With sorrow. Telling him to stop calling her had been easy enough when he'd been two thousand miles away. Now he was just inches away. Close enough to give her a brief hug, which he did. Close enough to kiss her, which he didn't. "These are my friends, Anna, Adrienne, and Becky," she introduced them. "And this-" she addressed her friends "-is Ted."

  He barely acknowledged them. His eyes remained on her, his brows dipping slightly. "You cut your hair."

  Behind her, her girlfriends laughed.

  She gave her head a toss. She loved how light it felt without all that long hair spilling down her back, and the way the clipped ends fluttered like a silky fringe around her face. "Do you like it?"

  Stupid question. His expression told her he didn't.

  And she didn't care. She wasn't dressing or styling herself to impress him. His opinion of her new coiffure was irrelevant.

  She'd never had to struggle to talk to Ted before. But now the words didn't come. Her life was as altered as her hairdo, and he wasn't a part of it. "So," she said brightly. "You're moving towhere was it? Tucson?"

  "Tempe. My friend Dave has a place lined up for us..." He dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a scrap of paper. "Here's the phone number where I'll be living."

  Erika took the paper from him. Such a small piece of paper, yet she nearly staggered from the sadness she felt when she gazed at the digits. Why would she need his phone number? They could barely speak to each other face to face.

  She tucked the paper into her purse and forced a smile. "So what are you going to be doing there?"

  "I don't know. There are lots of job opportunities. I'll land something."

  "That'll be nice." God, this was agony. She'd meant what she said. She wanted Ted to find a good job, something more stimulating-and financially rewarding-than working as a lowly gas jockey at a service station. She wanted him to succeed, to be happy, to figure out what he was meant to do and then to do it.