by Dana Corbit
“Then how?”
“I agreed to the five-year plan.”
“You agreed to let him cheat for five years?”
By now, I was smiling. “No. Forget the cheating part, okay?”
“Okay. So what was the five-year plan?”
“When I married Alan, he was ambitious and charismatic, a real go-getter. He had this plan of leaving the logistics company he worked for and building a company of his own in—”
“Let me guess. Five years.”
I pointed to the tip of my nose to say he’d gotten the answer on the nose. “We were saving for that launch. Until we reached our goal of being financially secure, Alan thought we should delay starting a family.”
His head propped on his hand, Luke seemed to consider. “Sounds like a reasonable plan…if you’re into things like food and shelter and other frivolous nonessentials.”
“Do you want to hear this or what?”
Suddenly becoming serious, he nodded.
“When I said ‘financially secure,’ what I really meant was ‘well-off.’” I paused to let that settle before continuing. “After a few years, he starting hinting that he didn’t want children at all, that our life together was perfect the way it was.”
“Only it wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t. That made it an even bigger slap in my face when he left me for a woman who was pregnant with his child. It wasn’t that he didn’t want kids. He just didn’t want them…with me.” I hated it that my voice cracked then. I hated it even more that it still mattered.
“You don’t know that, Cassie.” Luke shook his head adamantly. “He could have just played around and got caught.”
I shrugged, but I wasn’t ready to believe him.
“I’d thought you might have had fertility problems.”
“We hadn’t exactly…er…tested the system let’s say when it came to the whole baby business.” My cheeks and neck heated, and I had this infantile temptation to giggle, though nothing should have embarrassed me now. If I’d survived us discussing my ex-husband’s infidelity, then I could live through this.
“Good. I felt lousy just thinking you might have had trouble, especially after I’d pointed out that you weren’t even a parent and you were giving parenting advice.”
“You were just fending off an attack.”
“Well there’s that,” he said with a chuckle. “That didn’t give me any excuse to be cruel.”
“You don’t have it in you to be cruel.”
Though his eyes widened, Luke didn’t try to argue with me. “So tell me, how does this make you partly responsible for your divorce? If you were a prosecutor, I’d say you haven’t made your case.”
I sat up on the cushion and planted my feet on the boat deck in front of me, frustrated because he couldn’t get it. “I said I agreed to the five-year plan. But that was just a symptom of having my priorities all out of whack. I wanted all of those things that money could buy.”
Luke sat up and faced me. “Cassie, everybody wants things.”
“But I’m such a classic overachiever. I was so ambitious, so driven that I married a man who was just like me—and all wrong for me. God had someone out there who was perfect for me, who would bring out the best in my character rather than the worst, but I wasn’t listening.”
“We’ve all been guilty of not listening. You just paid more than most.”
“But it was more than choosing badly. After I was married, I didn’t honor my husband or my marriage. I was so driven that I threw myself into my job one hundred percent. I even volunteered as a reading mentor after school. If my husband had actually come home from work once in a while, I still wouldn’t have been there to spend time with him.”
Luke shook his head, still refusing to buy my argument. How thickheaded could he be?
“Fine. You made a lousy choice, and then you made some mistakes. Those things happen. But you would have made changes to make your marriage work somehow. You didn’t break your vows or jump ship.”
I started to disagree again, but a sudden realization had me clamping my mouth shut again. Maybe I was the thickheaded one here. I finally understood why he’d defended me. He was right: I would have stayed. Just as he would have stayed with Nicole, if given the chance. In that way, Luke knew me better than I knew myself.
“Thanks for saying that.” I stared at my fingers, their tips still wrinkled from the water.
“And Cassie…” He waited until I lifted my gaze to his before he spoke again. “I told you before that your husband was a creep. But he was more than that. He was a fool not to recognize how amazing you are.”
I swallowed. There had to be something I could say, but I had no idea what it was. I waited, half expecting him to add a punch line about what an amazing specimen of a neurotic I was or something. But he didn’t. I didn’t do it, either, though I would have given almost anything for some comic relief at that moment.
“Are you hungry?” Luke stood so quickly that the boat rocked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
As usual, Luke was protecting me, even from the discomfort caused by his own words. I liked to think of myself as tough and independent, but I sensed that I could get used to always knowing someone—no one in particular, of course—was there to catch me.
“Swimming will do that to you.”
“Hungry, too?”
“I could eat.”
Our early dinner was another round of bologna sandwiches and cheese puffs from the cooler, but Luke made it well-rounded this time by adding baby carrots.
“Almost a whole meal in orange. Is that lucky or what?” I said once we’d settled back into our seats and were floating and eating casually.
“If we had some food coloring, we could have transformed the sandwiches, too.”
“Orange bologna, yum.”
He pulled his cap low over his eyes to shade them from the sun. Its MSU insignia caught my interest and renewed some of my lingering questions over Luke’s past.
“Tell me about Michigan State.”
My question must have surprised him because he stopped with his sandwich only a few inches from his mouth and then lowered it back on the plate without taking a bite. “I told you it was Nicole’s alma mater. I just passed through there.”
I pointed to his T-shirt he’d put back on and then to the hat. “You wear MSU stuff all the time.”
He stared down at his T-shirt before looking up again. “Why do you care? You’re not a U of M fan, are you?”
His look of horror made both of us laugh. The arch rivalry between the two universities was legendary.
Finally, he lifted his hands in surrender.
“Okay. Okay. Nearly every Christmas, birthday, Valetine’s Day and anniversary, Nicole bought me Michigan State stuff, so about half my wardrobe would work well at any fraternity house on campus. I guess she wanted to remind me of our shared past.”
My guess was that his wife had wanted to remind him of something else entirely: his lack of a college diploma. My unflattering thoughts of the dead must have shown in my expression because Luke hurried on with his story.
“I’m a guy. What can I say? If it’s clean and it doesn’t have any major holes, then I’m still wearing it.”
“You never told me what you studied. Or why you didn’t finish.”
Luke shrugged but straightened in his seat, setting his plate aside. “I tried on college for a few years, but it just never fit right. I studied business, but I hated talking about problems when I could be using my own two hands to fix them. That’s why things work so well between Clyde and me. He trusts me to take care of the problems and get my hands dirty. Clyde knows I can handle it.”
Luke’s last comment punctuated everything else he’d said. Clyde knows I can handle it. Luke might as well have said, “Clyde believes in me.” I could understand why his boss would. What I couldn’t understand was that there ever had been someone who didn’t believe in him.
“How did Nicole feel about you taking a different path instead of higher education?” I knew it was a loaded question, and yet I couldn’t keep myself from asking it.
“I told you I was always a disappointment.” He flicked a glance my way and then looked away when he saw my stark reaction. “Now don’t blame Nicole. It wasn’t what she’d signed on for. When I dropped out, she thought I was only taking a break. That I would go back and finish what I started. She thought I was a failure for not doing it.”
“How could she even think that? You are not, have never been and could never be—”
He held up his hand for me to stop before I could get out the words a failure. I might not have said them anyway. Luke and those words didn’t belong in the same sentence.
“Did I ever tell you how she died?”
“A car accident.”
“Did I tell you what happened right before?” His voice sounded strange.
I shook my head, dread pulling on my heart like icy fingers. I had the feeling I wouldn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say.
“We were arguing. I don’t even remember about what. We bickered about everything by that time. She decided to take a drive, just to cool off. She ended up dead instead.”
“Oh Luke…” So much made sense right then—the many little things Luke had said, so much of his pain. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I let her get in the car.”
Years of his guilt could be summed up in that sentence. It was simple and yet complicated, tied in an intricate web of half-truths that were more painful than lies.
“It was an accident, Luke. The police said she ran a stop sign, and a car hit her broadside.”
He looked up at me from the deck, his confusion apparent.
“My aunt told me.”
“Oh.” He appeared to think for a moment, and then his jaw tightened. “Did she also tell you the police said after I admitted that we’d been arguing that I shouldn’t have allowed her to drive so upset?”
“No, but it wouldn’t have changed my opinion.” I said it as if he should have cared what I thought when his opinion was the only one that mattered. And his was killing him.
There had to be some way for me to help him see the truth, to help him see what I saw when I looked at him. Someone good. Someone strong. And someone who would never intentionally hurt anyone. But I sensed I needed to start from a neutral place—a place we’d once walked together—if I wanted him to hear me at all.
“I can’t get over what a funny pair we are,” I said, waiting for him to look up at me again before I continued. “Just a regular cheesy poster advertising weddings and happily ever after. You in your tiny tux and me in scratchy periwinkle.”
“Is that what they called that ugly purpleish-blue?” he asked, his hard expression softening.
“That’s it.”
“Are you saying we missed our calling to write greeting card poetry?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t think we’d sell many cards.”
“Oh, I would. I’m an overachiever, remember?”
“I forgot.”
I paused, needing to find a smooth segue into the subject that really mattered, but there wasn’t one. Still, it had to be said. “Doesn’t it get exhausting?”
“What?”
“Carrying around all that guilt with you on top of that chip you already have on your shoulder.”
When he turned to plant his feet on the deck and crossed his arms, I realized I could have started off more gently. Just another reminder that diplomacy wasn’t my strong suit.
“Listen, you keep beating yourself up for something that wasn’t even your fault. When you’re not doing that, you’re killing yourself trying to prove you’re not a failure when the only person who ever thought so isn’t here to see it.”
I should have stopped there. I was in way over my head, and I knew it. Hadn’t I learned my lesson the first time when I’d nosed into Luke’s business and he’d all but told me to take my advice and shove it?
It would be easier to just back down, to find some way to smooth over this conversation and make nice before Luke pulled anchor and dropped me back at the beach. But I’d spent a lifetime trying not to make waves, and here I was rocking the boat…literally.
Come to think of it, I’d been different with Luke from the beginning, more invested, even when I’d had no right to be. I still didn’t have the right, but the words burned inside me. Maybe I needed to say them as much as he needed to hear them.
“Don’t you see it, Luke? You’re not lacking something. You never were. You’re wonderful just the way you are.”
His arms still crossed, Luke started shaking his head, as if he was unwilling to hear what I had to say. Why couldn’t he see what I saw, what probably everyone saw except for the one woman who’d promised to love and honor him for life?
“It was Nicole who couldn’t see it,” I said before I could stop myself. “You’re an amazing father and a strong, caring man. You’re even a man of faith who has the courage to admit you still question.”
He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees and his hands gripped together, but he was still shaking his head. “You’re wrong about me, Cassie. I’m none of those things.”
“You’re all of those things. I see it. And she was a fool not to.”
Once the words were out of my mouth, my breath hitched. The cat was so out of the bag, and there wasn’t any easy way to shove it in again. It was so close to what he’d said to me, and I still figured his comment was three-quarters pity and one-quarter his just being a nice guy.
Worse yet, in the fervor of my speech, I’d planted my feet on the deck and faced him, leaning closer so that now no more than a foot separated us.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke. We didn’t move, either, if you didn’t count the way I was wringing my hands together as if one just might squeeze the life out of the other.
I could only imagine what he saw when he looked at me. I had to be humiliation personified. No one else needed to let him know about my growing feelings for him when I’d just gone and outed myself. Luke only looked bewildered, as if he’d like to believe what I’d said but couldn’t take the leap.
I started to pull away, going for any exit when a graceful one hadn’t been possible since I’d said, “I see it.” Probably long before. But Luke reached for my hands, taking them sweetly in his. Luke’s hands were warm and strong and roughened by honest work.
That same tingly sensation I remembered from when we’d brushed hands the night of my aunt’s wedding party spread in my fingertips, but I felt more than that. There was a warm constancy to his touch, and I felt the rightness in our gentle connection.
Maybe Luke felt the same pull that I did, the need for closeness that I’d sensed from the moment we’d met for the first time as adults.
Would his arms make me feel as safe as his hands already had? Would I finally be able to sink into a man’s arms and feel certain that he would catch me if I fell? I waited, hoping he would draw me near.
Luke didn’t move. “Thank you” was all he said.
I blinked and shook my head to get my bearings straight. Had I misread this whole situation? Had he just reached out to me in gratitude for my kindness and I’d manufactured a romantic scenario out of that simple gesture?
Now I was really humiliated. I needed to rock the boat, all right. Hard. So I could fall overboard and let the water swallow me with one freshwater gulp.
“What is it?” Luke was looking at me strangely. “Don’t you want me to kiss you, Cassie?”
What? I cleared my throat. “No…I mean yes…I mean no, I do.” Frustrated, I shook my head. “How am I supposed to answer a question like that?” How was I supposed to say anything at all with my heart staging its own Indianapolis 500 and my hands creating a second Lake Michigan? I started to pull my damp hands free, but he pressed his thumbs into my palms and kept holding on to me.
Luke’s eyes were
smiling before the expression moved to his mouth. “How about I pose it like I would have when we first met? Do you want to kiss me? Yes or no. Circle one.”
“Sorry, don’t have a pencil right now, but yes.”
“I guess that will have to do.” Tugging gently on both of my hands, he pulled me forward until our heads were but a breath away. He paused for a heartbeat, or a thousand of them, and then covered my lips with his own.
Luke’s kiss wasn’t a dance of lips, vying for angle and tension. His lips merely sank into the cushioning of mine, and he remained there, warm and deeply present, as seconds ticked by. He tasted like cheese puffs and sunshine.
I had the oddest sensation of coming home, which didn’t make sense because my apartment was more than two hundred miles away.
This was the same boy I’d kissed under the table at my aunt and uncle’s wedding before I knew how precious and personal such a touch could be, the depth of emotion it could convey. This was the same man who’d told me he wasn’t interested in dating anyone, let alone me. And this was the one man to whom I was in grave danger of losing my heart.
When he withdrew his head, he pressed his cheek against mine.
“What took you so long?” I breathed before my good sense returned. Just a first kiss, and already I was sounding like a demanding girlfriend.
His chuckle rumbled against my cheekbone. “Sorry. I was working up my courage.”
I pulled back and looked into his eyes to see if he was serious. “With me of all people.”
“You especially. You were the first girl I ever kissed.”
“Well, I would sure hope so unless you were scouring your preschool for dates.”
“Well…” The twinkle of confidence had returned to Luke’s gaze, the spark that I hoped he would never lose again no matter what happened in the future.
I shook my head, trying to look disappointed. “And I thought I was special. I carried a basket of flowers and everything. I should have known.”
All the playfulness fled from his gaze, and his eyes darkened. “You do know, right? You’re incredibly special.” Even as he said it, he lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across my lower lip. “So special.”
I couldn’t help leaning in to the sweetness of his touch. So this was what it felt like to be cherished. I could get used to it if he kept touching me that way. Luke leaned so close that I could feel his warm breath feather across my mouth.