The Guest Book

by Marybeth Whalen

  He was wearing an old, blue oxford shirt over a T-shirt, and a pair of black shorts so faded they were nearly gray. The unbuttoned oxford billowed around him in the strong winds coming off the ocean, exposing his lean torso, the body of a runner. He looked more like a marine biologist, Macy decided. She could see him scanning for dolphins from the helm of a boat.

  Noticing her assessment, Nate put his arm around Macy companionably. She could smell his cologne, a scent she would like to keep in a bottle so she could smell it again and again. She resisted the urge to ask him what kind it was.

  “I want to help people find God, to know Him like I do.”

  “I’m guessing I’m your newest pursuit in that arena?”

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Not exactly. I don’t usually give parishioners this much, um, individual attention.”

  “Oh, I thought this was part of the job. Sailors have a girl in every port. Single, handsome pastors in beach towns have a new girl every week.” She laughed and was relieved when he laughed too, relieved that he’d gotten her joke and hadn’t been offended. But he quickly turned serious.

  “That’s hardly me.” He stopped walking. “I hope you know that.”

  “Oh, sure.” She smiled, a bit flustered by his change in tone. “I was just kidding around.”

  “I mean, I do want to answer any questions you might have about God. But that’s not why I asked you to dinner.”

  “Well, if I have any questions about God, I’ll be sure to come to you first,” she said, laughing his serious tone away. She intended to keep things light even though part of her wanted to ask him about her prayer by the beach—and if he could be the answer. But they were far from ready for that conversation yet.

  He chuckled. “Deal.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. She thought about the boy she’d kissed on the beach when she was fifteen; the boy she’d wished was the artist. It seemed all her trips to the beach always came back to him. The name of the boy she’d kissed had gotten lost in the details of her life. She was trying to remember it when Nate spoke again.

  “So I want to hear all about you, remember? Tell me your life story,” he said.

  Evan. That was his name. But she certainly wasn’t going to share that memory with Nate.

  “My life story is pretty boring, actually,” she said instead. “Not sure you want to hear it.”

  He elbowed her lightly. “Sure I do.” He thought about it for a moment. “How about you tell me why you stayed away from Sunset for so long? You clearly love it here.”

  “Wow, way to get right to the heart of the matter, Pastor.”

  “Ugh. No calling me Pastor. That somehow feels … can we just stick with Nate?”

  She laughed.

  He stopped walking and sat down in the sand, patting the space next to him as an invitation. She sat down and gathered her sundress, tucking the fabric under her legs to keep it from blowing around. They looked out at the ocean together, their bodies close enough that his thigh was touching hers. She shivered a bit at the closeness and thought back to the night she’d woken up to find him staring at her through the car window. She realized now she wouldn’t mind waking up to his face at the start of the day, those eyes looking into hers.

  “So spill it,” he said, “before I kiss you and get this date headed in the absolute wrong direction.”

  She had to fight against asking why that would be the wrong direction, reasoning that it had to do with his profession. She respected that, but found herself a bit disappointed at the prospect.

  She could make out his profile in the moonlight, his complexion glowed a sultry blue.

  Macy swallowed and began talking, telling Nate about her family’s decision to never return to Sunset Beach the year after her father’s death. “That last year we came here without him was very hard. The memories of him were all around us; we could scarcely move without bumping into one. And I just got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. My brother Max and I went to play mini golf one afternoon, and I had what I guess you could call a panic attack while we were there. Of course, I didn’t know what to call it then.”

  He nodded, a mix of understanding and sympathy in his eyes that made her like him even more.

  “So that night I could hardly sleep, I was so afraid it was going to happen again, that I would literally die of grief — and guilt.”

  “Guilt?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I felt really guilty about how I’d treated him the year before. I’d been too hard on him, withdrawn from him, just been unnecessarily mean to him.” Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away. “I worried that I’d broken his heart and that that caused his heart attack.”

  Nate rested his hand on her bare shoulder, his hand warm and firm, comforting her with his touch. “You know you didn’t, right?”

  She smiled, nodding. “I do. But I still feel badly about that last year —and I wish I could take it back, could have that last year back.” She continued. “So after that sleepless night, I got up really early and told my mom that I wanted to leave, that I thought we should go home and never come back to that house, to this place that was so him.” She looked into Nate’s eyes. “I couldn’t separate the two.”

  “And now?”

  She thought about it for a minute — about the guest book, about telling Chase she wished he’d gotten to know the little girl she was when she was here, about the way she’d felt when she prayed on the beach. None of that had anything to do with her dad. “I think I’ve separated them.”

  He held his hand up, and she gave him an obligatory high five, feeling self-conscious as she did.

  “‘Atta girl,” he said.

  She thought back to the morning she’d told her mom she wanted to leave, and the part of the story she hadn’t told Nate. It just wasn’t time. Not yet. But she could tell him other parts, so she continued telling her story to Nate, enjoying having someone listening who really wanted to hear it.

  “It’s like I left all the things I used to feel deeply—my love for my dad and for this place, and my faith — here.”

  “So this trip has been about finding all that again?” he asked.

  She thought about that. “Yeah, I guess it has been. I mean, that’s not what I thought when we first decided to come. I thought it would be more about coming to terms with my tendency to run away when things get hard.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I think it’s more about dealing with things I left undone. My feelings about losing my dad. And why I stopped talking to God.”

  “Have you figured it out yet?”

  “I think I relegated God to my childhood and nothing more. He was part of my past. My dad told me Bible stories, but he also told me fairy tales. God was a good bedtime story, but He seemed no different than those fairy tales. I convinced myself that’s all He was. He couldn’t bring my dad back or help my family not be sad when he died. And I was mad at God for a very long time, so it helped to tell myself that He wasn’t real, wasn’t important.”

  “But you feel differently now?” Macy could hear the note of hope in Nate’s voice. He might want to be just a man when they were together, but he couldn’t stop being a pastor.

  “Yes. The other night I actually prayed for the first time since I was a kid.” She smiled at him in the darkness, surprising herself by her admission. “It felt like coming home to someone who’d been waiting up for me for a very long time.”

  Nate looked at her intently. “You can bet that God is going to answer that prayer too. Whatever it may have been.”

  Macy blushed, grateful he couldn’t tell in the dark. She changed the subject to avoid discussing her prayer in any detail. “Nate, Max said you used to come to Sunset as a kid.”

  “Yeah, my family would always come here. Every year. I promised myself I’d come back here to live someday. As a kid I thought it would be as a marine biologist, but of course, God had other plans.”

&n
bsp; “And you stayed at Time in a Bottle?”

  “Yep! Sure did. Almost every year. That house is where my dream of coming here to live started.” He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “I thought living here would feel like being on permanent vacation.”

  “And does it?”

  He turned up the other corner of his mouth. “Tonight it does. Tonight it feels like the life I dreamed about.”

  “Nate, I—”

  “Hey, Macy, can we start walking back now? I gotta be honest. The ocean waves and the moonlight and the way you look are killing me. I’ve got high standards I hold myself to, but if I sit here much longer I’m not going to be able to.”

  “You could kiss me, Nate, if you wanted. I wouldn’t mind,” she offered. I wouldn’t mind at all, she thought to herself, taking in the cleft in his chin, the curve of his lips, the smell of him. “I mean, one kiss wouldn’t hurt.” She’d never had a guy resist kissing her before, and it left her feeling confused and a little rejected.

  “I could kiss you,” he said, standing up and offering her his hand. “I could indeed. And it would be amazing. That I do not doubt.” He started to pull her toward him but then stepped quickly away, keeping his distance. “But if I start kissing you, I fear I wouldn’t stop.” He turned away from her. “So come on. Let’s get you home.”

  He took her hand and walked her back to the public access, steadying her with one hand as she slipped on her shoes. As they left the beach, it was if a spell had been lifted — gone was her plan to make cranberry spritzers to sip on the roof deck with him to keep the night going. Instead, she accepted that the night had to end, and she did her best to accept that Nate was a bona fide respectable gentleman who was honoring her with his restraint — not rejecting her. He teased her about her flip-flops, and she teased back, making quips about his lame sermon jokes as the two of them returned to the familiar territory of Time in a Bottle.

  After climbing the steps with her, Nate pulled her in for a hug. “Macy?” he asked as he held her so close she could feel his heart thumping beneath his shirt.

  “Yeah?” she answered, her voice muffled by the folds of his T-shirt. She hoped he had changed his mind and wanted to kiss her after all.

  “Believe the fairy tale.” He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “All of it. Don’t be afraid of it.”

  She nodded and wondered if he was the answer to the prayer he’d told her she could count on God answering. The truth was, this all felt like a fairy tale.

  Nate kissed her cheek and all but pushed her inside before she — or he — could move those few inches that would change everything.

  sixteen

  As she showered and dried her hair the next morning, she struggled to shake the image of Nate’s face so close to hers on the porch, the way he’d seemed genuinely bereft at the thought of ending their night. She couldn’t quite decide if his mix of charm and chivalry was part of his job or just part of him. Could he really be what he seemed or was there bad stuff she just hadn’t discovered yet? Her cynical side told her there had to be.

  She donned cut-off denim shorts and a tank top that could stand to get paint on it. At some point after Wyatt had asked Macy to help paint, Brenda had committed her to it, springing it on her at breakfast earlier this morning.

  At the last minute, Macy rubbed some pink-tinted lip gloss onto her lips. She took one last look in the mirror. She didn’t look like she was trying too hard, which was her goal. With his looks and smug demeanor, she could tell Wyatt was used to girls throwing themselves at him with some regularity. That would not be her, Macy decided, no matter what he looked like.

  She crossed the yard to Buzz’s house with a sense of purpose. She was doing a good thing for Buzz, who had been so sweet to her family. Painting Buzz’s house for him was the least she could do in return. Besides, her mom had basically insisted she go.

  Something inside her asked, Does the fact that Wyatt looks the way he does have anything to do with your burst of altruism? There was a voice inside her that would forever sound just like her mother, even when Brenda was nowhere around. Macy silenced the voice with a knock on Buzz’s front door. She saw Wyatt’s truck parked in the drive and ignored the little thrill that surged through her. Wyatt pulled open the door and leaned lazily against it as he sized her up.

  Macy decided right then and there that he looked like Matthew McConaughey, minus the blue eyes. The bad thing was, she’d always had a thing for Matthew McConaughey and saw all his movies, even the stupid ones that flopped at the box office. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and shrugged, holding up her hands with a smile.

  “I’m here to paint!” she said in a sing-song voice.

  Wyatt smirked at her. “So I see.” He held the door open so she could walk through, and she wondered why they’d never met as kids. She thought of him being inside Time in a Bottle when she wasn’t there, of Buzz dragging him out when he snuck in. She wondered how many times that had happened and if there was more to the story.

  She decided that eventually she would ask him if house painting was the only kind of painting he did. But then she immediately chided herself for even going down that path. It wasn’t likely that Wyatt was her mystery artist. And yet … he had admitted to being in the house and often looked at her like he knew more than he was letting on. She smiled at him.

  “Where do we start?” she asked, dispelling the thoughts that were running away with her imagination.

  He looked at her with the amused expression he always seemed to wear and pointed to the kitchen. “I’ve already taped it off,” he said, holding his arm out to let her go ahead of him. She rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw he had painted their names on the wall, blue paint against the former eggshell color. She stopped short and stared at their names there together.

  “I was just fooling around,” he said. “Testing the paint. I wrote my name, then figured it wouldn’t be fair not to include yours.”

  There was something so permanent about their names being painted on the wall. Even though Macy knew they would soon be covered by a coat of paint, underneath, their names would always be there. She turned to look at Wyatt, but he looked away, grabbing a roller and dipping it in the blue paint. He held the roller above the pan, studying it instead of her.

  “You want this one?” he asked. “I’ll do the trim?”

  “I guess with two of us working, this will go fast,” she said, reaching for the roller.

  He handed it to her. “If it goes too fast, I might just have to think of another project to get you over here again.”

  She smiled at him as she caught his eye. For just a moment, he seemed disarmed and uncertain. She liked that she could do that to him and, as she rolled the first streak of blue paint across the eggshell-colored wall, she found herself wanting to continue this strange dance that had sprung up between her and Wyatt.

  They worked in companionable silence with the radio supplying a sound track for her thoughts. As they grew more comfortable around each other, they both began to sing along to the songs they knew. Wyatt sang off-key most of the time but didn’t seem to care. Macy didn’t have the world’s greatest voice, but she could carry a tune. Still she sang softly, sometimes only mouthing the familiar words.

  Even though she was supposed to be painting, Macy found herself watching Wyatt out of the corner of her eye whenever she could. She was paying more attention to him than the wall, and her snail’s pace was evidence of it.

  Wyatt smirked at her when their eyes met. He gestured to the largely blank wall. “This is what I get for hiring an amateur.”

  She gave him a half-smile, glad he thought it was her inexperience causing her to go so slowly.

  “So tell me about Emma’s father,” he said, ending a long stretch of silence between them. He was facing the wall he was painting, so Macy studied his back for a moment, the way his shoulders flexed under the thin cotton of his T-shirt. The last thing she wanted to talk about
right now was Chase. Interesting that it had taken so little time for both Nate and Wyatt to go there.

  “Gee … way to keep it light, Wyatt,” she quipped.

  “No, I mean, I’m just curious, and we’re obviously going to be here longer than I thought we’d be, so why not ask about the doofus who bailed on you and that adorable little girl?”

  “Well, you pretty much nailed it. He’s a doofus.”

  “Oh. Well, good to know I’m still a good judge of character.”

  Macy hoped that was the end of that exchange. She didn’t want to think about Chase, shooed the image of him from her mind. She’d promised him she’d think about their relationship, but she’d hardly thought of him at all, and she didn’t want to. She focused instead on smoothing the paint over the walls, letting the rhythmic motion of the roller lull her. There was nothing wrong with working in companionable silence.

  “So that’s all you’re going to give me?” Wyatt asked after a few minutes. “You’re a locked box, huh?”

  She stopped rolling and shook her head. “Uh, no. I’m not a locked box. I’m pretty open about things.” She thought about her suspicions that he could be the artist she’d once traded pictures with. She hadn’t been open about that to either Nate or Wyatt. But that wasn’t the kind of thing one rushed into asking. “Where’d you grow up? What do you do for a living? And, by the way, did you used to draw pictures in a guest book in the beach house I’m staying in?” It just didn’t fit in to the normal flow of getting-to-know-each-other conversation.

  “But you aren’t open about him,” Wyatt observed.

  “It’s just that things with Chase are … sort of strange.”

  “How so?” Wyatt asked. Macy could tell he was trying to sound casual, but there was an edge to his voice.

  “Well, if you’d asked me about him a few months ago, I would’ve told you he wasn’t in the picture at all and hadn’t been since Emma was a tiny baby.” She dipped the roller into the paint and let the excess drip off slowly, grateful they weren’t having this conversation face to face. Painting was a good distraction.