Almost Missed You

by Jessica Strawser

  “You were always fancy on the inside,” he told her affectionately. He sank onto the middle step and motioned for her to join him. All the windows in Maribel’s apartment were closed tight to keep the air-conditioning inside, but the glow of the lights through the sheer curtains backlit the tiny front garden, and the sounds of music and beer-buzzed laughter seeped outside in muffled waves. “George on the road again?”

  “And miss your engagement party? No way.” She smiled. “He’s just parking in the garage. He let me off at the corner. The price of a pair of high heels is not necessarily proportionate to their comfort level, as it turns out.”

  “Good,” he said. “Please be sure to tell Maribel. If she tested that theory even once, it would drain the rest of my savings.”

  Caitlin laughed. “So the rumors are true?”

  “I guess that depends on what the rumors are.”

  She spread open her hand and started counting off her fingertips. “Let’s see, you got laid off, booked a bunch of really promising job interviews, canceled all of them when Maribel got offered a job in Asheville, and are planning to start your own freelance business down there. Oh, and I suppose the proposal came somewhere in between.”

  A low, full August moon was just making its way over the top of the jarringly modern office building that stood between the historic apartments and the river. Out of habit, Finn looked up to see the stars, but could spot none through the haze of the city’s own glow. In Asheville, the stars were uncommonly bright, almost close enough to touch. In a few short weeks, they’d be there, unpacking the first-floor studio space and the second-floor living space in the Victorian house they’d rented. “Hang out a shingle,” Maribel had said, pointing to the front porch, and then, lifting her arm up triumphantly to the terrace above it, “mix and mingle!”

  “The rumors are true,” he conceded.

  “I’m so happy for you.” She gave a little tug on his arm until their shoulders bumped in a brotherly way, then abruptly let go. “But I’m so sad you’re leaving! We’ve hardly seen you at all lately. We feel like we’ve already been missing you.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. We’ve been … antisocial.”

  His eyes found Maribel through the window. She was shored up on either side by her mom and dad, and all three of them were laughing at something that someone outside the frame had said. The way her parents had embraced their news, even though they didn’t know him that well, was touching—not a hint of concern that Maribel and Finn were moving too fast, or that they’d soon be moving even farther away. They seemed genuinely happy that Maribel was so happy, and Finn took it as an honor that they would trust him so completely with their daughter. A smile spread across his face as he watched the three of them turn to greet another small circle of guests.

  “I can see why,” Caitlin teased. “You’re smitten.”

  “Well, you’d better be if you’re going to tie the knot, right?”

  “Touché.” A hint of sadness passed across Caitlin’s face but was instantly replaced by one of her practiced smiles. “You know,” she said, “George and I never really got a chance to have that hibernate-and-be-lovey phase. He travels so much for work, and then when he is home, there’s always something with his family. You would have thought when his father retired from the Senate, the all-family appearance schedule would die down. But he’s still always getting some award, hosting some charity benefit, whatever, and wanting George there for ‘support.’”

  She glanced down the sidewalk, but there was no sign of George yet. “Really, I think his dad just likes to show him off, the prodigal son gone out to conquer the international business world. Sometimes I wonder if he wants him to run for office, too.” She gave a nervous little laugh. “I’m not cut out to be a senator’s wife. I’m still not sure how he ended up marrying me at all! A girl from the suburbs.”

  He laughed. “Come on. It was a nice suburb.”

  “It was no estate on a hill.”

  “You know George doesn’t care about that stuff. That’s what’s so great about him.”

  “Whether he cares about it or not doesn’t change the fact that our entire first floor would have fit inside their horses’ stables.”

  Finn knew what she meant. And while George didn’t care about that stuff, Caitlin’s family had pulled back from her a bit once she’d become a Bryce-Daniels. Her sister and brother lived in their parents’ neighborhood now, about forty minutes outside of Cincinnati, and her move to the city after college made her the odd one out even before she’d married George. His family’s largesse only widened the chasm. “I think my family is intimidated,” she’d told Finn. “And I can’t blame them, because so am I.”

  When Caitlin first met George, at a black-tie function she was covering for the PR firm that had hired her out of school, she took him for a “silver spoon snob” who’d bought his way into the Ivy League and his high-ranking job. “He probably bought his good looks, too,” she’d told Finn, and even then he had to hide a smile, so obvious was it that this mysterious Bruce Wayne character had lit a fire in his friend. George was soon revealed to be brilliant in his own right, bitingly funny, and generous almost to a fault, and if all that didn’t win Caitlin over, the way he doted on her as if she were a rare artifact did. George saw to it that Caitlin’s life blended seamlessly, at least on the surface, into his. Beneath it, Caitlin sometimes seemed to be scrambling to keep up—though oddly, Finn got that sense more when George wasn’t around.

  Finn hadn’t grasped the extent of the Bryce-Daniels wealth until the bachelor party in Sunny Isles last year. He grew uncomfortable, squirmy, though nobody treated him as if he didn’t belong. On the contrary, it was their willingness to talk openly in front of him about their untouchable lifestyles that took him aback and made him feel like an imposter. Only then did he become fully aware that Caitlin wasn’t marrying only George but also his father’s legacy. He imagined joining those ranks wasn’t as easy or as enviable as people thought. A mere couple days of it had left him making excuses to get away.

  Meeting that woman on the beach had been like coming up for air. Sometimes, he still imagined what might happen if he were to run into her one day—loading bags into her trunk outside the grocery store, or pedaling down the bicycle trail in his direction, her Camp Pickiwicki T-shirt taut against her body in the wind. There was no denying there’d been some spark between them, so he wondered what he’d say to her if their paths ever did cross again, how he’d put a stop to it before she could even start toward him. It was almost as if he felt he owed her an explanation. “Well, see, it’s so great to run into you this way, but I have a fiancée now. She is the one who answered the ad I placed when I was looking for you, actually … Yes, I did, I know it sounds crazy … But I really love her and I apologize that it worked out wonderfully for everyone but you.”

  Of course, he had no way of knowing it hadn’t worked out well for her too. He hoped that it had. After all, he owed her his own happiness. If it hadn’t been for her, he would never have met Maribel.

  “You know…” Caitlin’s voice faltered, and when he raised his eyes to hers, she offered him a sideways smile and held his gaze. “I never really told you—”

  “There he is!” George came striding up the sidewalk with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a small silver gift bag in the other, and Caitlin and Finn both got to their feet. He held the bag out to Caitlin as he leaned in to kiss her, as if it had been hours, not minutes, since he’d last seen her. That was one of the perks of spending so much time apart, Finn supposed. When George and Cait were together, they’d draw envious looks from every woman in the room—and some of the men, too—for all the affection George showered on her, how attentive he was, a rare combination of first-date politeness, old-world gallantry, and marital intimacy.

  “Forgot this under your seat,” he said good-naturedly, and she turned and handed the bag over to Finn as she looped her arm easily around George’s waist.

 
“The champagne is for everyone,” she told Finn. “The bag is for when everyone leaves.”

  “The champagne is for the everyones you really, really like,” George corrected. “This stuff is top-notch.”

  Finn was peeking through the tissue paper into the bag when he heard the storm door creek open behind him. “There you are!” Maribel called to Finn. “Oh—George! Caitlin! So glad you could make it.”

  “Hey, love, could you come out here for a minute? With four glasses.”

  “Actually, the toasts are about to—”

  “Just for a minute?”

  Maribel held up a finger and disappeared from view. A moment later she returned carrying four clear plastic wineglasses, which Caitlin took and lined up on the railing as George expertly uncorked the bottle with a soft pop, careful not to spill a drop.

  As George started to pour, Finn handed the bag to Maribel. She reached in and removed a CD with a stunning photo of Music Hall on the front, illuminated in all its LumenoCity glory. “The sound track to last year’s show!” she gasped. “I didn’t know this existed!”

  “So you can relive that night whenever you want,” Caitlin said, almost shyly. Finn realized then how little he’d let any of his friends really get to know Maribel. He’d been keeping her all to himself. There would be plenty of time to change that, even though they were moving away. If anyone had the resources to travel on a whim, it was George and Caitlin. Besides, Finn and Maribel would be back often to handle the wedding arrangements. As much as they loved the mountains and wanted to make their life there, Maribel had insisted on having the ceremony here. “We can’t not invite Cincinnati to the party,” she’d told Finn. “She’s family.”

  “Where did the guests of honor go?” Finn heard someone call from inside, but Maribel didn’t flinch. She was hugging Caitlin tight, her eyes glistening at Finn over his friend’s shoulder.

  George distributed the glasses, and Finn raised his before anyone else had the chance. “To the everyones I really, really like.”

  * * *

  The sounds of the orchestra filled Maribel’s living room. The end tables were covered with picked-over trays of hors d’oeuvres, crumb-filled bowls, stained cocktail napkins, and empty glasses. “I’m going to hire someone to clean all this up for you,” Finn murmured seductively into her ear, “just as soon as I pick through the couch cushions to see how much spare change was left behind.” Maribel laughed and tilted her head back to look up at him as they swayed. He wasn’t sure how they’d ended up slow dancing in the middle of the chaos. They’d put on the CD from Caitlin and George while they started cleaning up, and the next thing he knew, they were wrapping their arms around each other, and the mess around them seemed to fall away. It was how every day with Maribel was, really.

  “I’m more worried about whether or not I’m remembering this correctly,” she said, her eyes bright from too much champagne. She seemed to be making a great effort to enunciate clearly, as if to conceal her level of intoxication from him, something she often did when she’d had too many drinks. He’d never let on that he noticed it, because he was afraid if he did, she would stop. It was absolutely adorable. “Was our first kiss right around this point in the concert—” She cocked her head as the strings reached their crescendo, then leaned in and kissed him softly on the mouth. “Or maybe here?” she said into his lips a moment later as the percussion chimed in.

  He buried his face in her shiny dark hair and breathed in the citrus scent of her shampoo. He could not remember the last time he had felt so at peace.

  Life was good.

  “You know, we need to give some thought to the honeymoon,” he said into her hair. “I want to take you on a trip you’ll always remember.”

  “That’ll be easy,” Maribel said, “as long as the ocean’s involved. I’ve never seen it.”

  He took a step back to see if she was kidding and almost stumbled into the couch. He was a little drunk himself. “Are you serious? Never?”

  “Never, never, never,” she said, twirling in a circle with each word and giggling as she fell back into his arms.

  Finn blinked at her. How was it that this had never come up? Their engagement didn’t seem particularly whirlwind to him, even though there had been a fair amount of teasing from their guests tonight to the contrary. Finn knew all he needed to know about Maribel. The fact that he still had so much to learn was just … well, it was exciting. He couldn’t imagine life with her ever becoming boring when she could manage at one moment to be the unfiltered, unapologetic woman he loved and then the next to reveal to him a facet he’d never seen before. What you saw was what you got with Maribel—but she didn’t show you everything. He wanted to uncover the rest slowly, a little every day, for as long as he could. Forever.

  Finn dipped her down in a cartoonish simulation of a ballroom-dancing move, and she smiled up at him. “When was the last time you saw it?” she asked.

  “George’s bachelor party,” he said. “Right before I met you.” And then he was picturing himself there, gazing down flirtatiously at the woman on the beach in her unassuming T-shirt and windblown ponytail, the sun reflecting off the water and illuminating the golden tones in her hair, even under the umbrella. He could still hear her low, appreciative chuckle when she laughed at something he said, still feel the way he’d instantly sensed that she was like him in some essential way—a kindred spirit. Someone worth looking for.

  He jerked Maribel upright as bit more abruptly than he meant to. “Wait a minute,” he said. “How have you never seen the ocean? You answered the ad about having met a stranger on the beach.”

  The symphony came to its end, and a conspicuously timed silence filled the room.

  “On vacation,” Maribel said, looking a little hurt. “I answered the ad about having met a stranger on vacation. All this time we haven’t ever talked about the people we were looking for that day, and you want to start now? On this night?”

  The light opening notes of the next symphony started, and Finn pulled her to him again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I guess vacation and the ocean are the same thing to me. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  A loud burst of percussion emphatically punctuated the end of his sentence, and they both burst out laughing. The moment of tension between them evaporated.

  “I’d just gotten back from Gatlinburg,” Maribel said as they started to sway again. “Hey, they’ve got Dollywood! That totally counts as a vacation.”

  By Cincinnati standards, it definitely did. It was less than a five-hour drive away, and in addition to the campy country-icon-themed tourist traps and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, Gatlinburg was filled with secluded mountain chalets, eclectic music, food and drink festivals, and gorgeous hiking. It was also en route to Asheville. Finn had been there himself, and he resisted the urge to ask how Maribel had met her mystery man—in the hot tub of a resort, at a bar in town, on a mountain trail. Then he thought again of the woman on the beach and felt uneasy. She’d seldom entered his thoughts this past year, and yet somehow he kept finding her there on tonight of all nights. Suddenly it bothered him very much that he could still see himself watching the tide come in with her but had never shared that experience with Maribel. He felt an overwhelming desire not just to see it through Maribel’s eyes for the first time, but to be there with her, beside her, and to not picture himself anywhere without her, ever again.

  “We should go, then,” he heard himself saying. “To the ocean. The honeymoon is still a year away! That’s too long to wait.”

  “We’ll live closer once we’re in Asheville,” Maribel said sleepily, nestling her face into his neck. “Maybe we can go for a long weekend then.”

  “You don’t get much time off at the new job—you’ll need it all for wedding planning.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But the wedding is only a year away. It will fly by.”

  “Tomorrow.” The idea seized Finn with surprising conviction. “We should go tomorrow!
We can be outside of Charleston, South Carolina, in nine hours or so.”

  She laughed. “You’re crazy. I have to work on Monday! I’m already tiptoeing around the office now that I’ve given notice.”

  “Oh, come on. You gave well over two weeks’. You’re, like, the best quitter ever.”

  “Still. Any unannounced vacation days, and my boss will not be happy.”

  “So we’ll have you back by Monday. Tomorrow’s only Saturday. Plenty of time.”

  “Drive eighteen hours round-trip for one night?” Maribel twirled herself across the room and bounced down onto the couch.

  Finn dove on top of her in a gentle tackle, and she let out a squeal of fake protest. “Or two. You could catch the Finn red-eye back to Cincinnati Sunday night. There are occasional benefits to unemployment, you know. I can sleep it off while you’re at work Monday.”

  She made a serious face, but he could see in her eyes that she was as taken with the idea as he was. “We really ought to start packing for the move,” she said dutifully. “We’ve only got a month. And we have to load up both our apartments and combine them into one.”

  Finn had already sold off a bunch of his things. Maribel’s were so much nicer. He leaned his face down to hers until their noses were touching. “You are spoiling. My grand. Romantic. Gesture.”

  She looked up at him, wide-eyed. Her dark hair was splayed out on the throw pillow beneath her as if a Vogue photographer had arranged her that way, and a part of Finn’s brain resisted the urge to run upstairs for his sketchpad to try to capture the exquisiteness of her. The symphony played on, the highest and lowest notes reverberating in a spot that had once been hollow in his chest, and he felt that the sound track seemed to do her beauty more justice than he knew his drawings ever could. “You seriously want to go?” she asked. “You’d really let me sleep in the car? Job or no job, that doesn’t seem fair.”