by Teisha Mott
Samantha looked at him. There were tears in his eyes. She had not known. How could she have known? This was not the Jeremy she was accustomed to. She knew a confident, assured man. Maybe too confident and too assured. She knew the man who was smart, handsome, bound for success and knew it. This guy, clutching the steering wheel of her Rav4, looked so lost and vulnerable, and really, really wanted his father’s approval.
“Jeremy, I’m so sorry…”
“Not as sorry as I am!” Jeremy bit. “I am so sorry that I went to that stupid club when Phillip called me and told me you were there. I am sorry that I offered you that damn tequila. And what I am most sorry for is that even after everything, no matter how hard I try to make things right with you; to step up and be responsible – to be there for you and offer some support, and try to be a good father, all you can seem to do is hate me. You, like my father, can see nothing good in me. All my father sees when he looks at me is boy who could never live up to the great expectations of the son of Judge Peter Malcolm, and all you see when you look at me is that stupid ass who made that bet against Andie all those years ago…”
“That’s not true!” Samantha whispered.
“Of course it’s true.” Jeremy disagreed. “You think I’m no better than crap you scrape from under your shoe. And why shouldn’t you? My own father thinks I’m nothing, why shouldn’t you?”
“Because you aren’t!” Samantha insisted. “I don’t hate you. And I don’t think you are nothing.”
“Well you sure coulda fooled me!”
Samantha closed her eyes and took a breath. She did not know what to say. So many thoughts were rushing through her mind. So many things that she wanted to say to him. But where should she start. She glanced at him from the corner of his eye, still wearing his vulnerable scowl. If they weren’t in a moving vehicle in the middle of the Bog Walk Gorge, she would have reached over and hugged him. She would have held him and told him that she didn’t think he was nothing, and right at that moment, he and Caitlin were her everything. But she couldn’t tell him that – could she? She wasn’t sure she was ready for the repercussions that would follow telling him how she really felt about him.
Silence dominated the car for the rest of the trip. Finally, they pulled up to Nathan’s apartment complex. The security guard opened the gate, and handed Jeremy the key. He was relieved. Bless Nathan for having the foresight to leave the keys. He pulled into Nathan’s vacated spot and pulled up the hand brake.
“Jeremy…” Samantha began again.
“You okay to drive yourself home?” He interrupted, unfastening his seatbelt. She looked like she wanted to get into some long discourse over all the things he had told her about his father, and he did not want to get into it. He was embarrassed having emptied himself on her like that in the first place.
Samantha nodded. She looked at him. He still looked upset.
“Thanks for coming today, though,” he grunted. “I mean, you didn’t have to; and I’m sorry I shouted at you.”
Samantha did not respond. She just looked at him.
Jeremy switched off the ignition, and the doors automatically opened. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Call me when you reach home.”
Samantha watched him get out of the car and walk towards the main door of the building. She wondered if she should follow him. She couldn’t let him go upstairs like that – looking so upset, still angry at her. She had to tell him how she really felt about him. But what would she say? She never got into discourses without carefully thinking out every word she wanted to say; every argument and counter argument. That was just how she was. Samantha Persaud lived by a script. She would think out her words tonight, and call him tomorrow…
“Jeremy, wait a minute…” Before she could stop herself, she jumped out of the car and ran to him.
“What?”
“Ahm…” What indeed. Where would she start? He was looking at her waiting to say something apart from ‘ahm’. Perhaps she should start by apologising. When she was little, her father always told her that the perfect way to start an apology was with a smile and gratitude. Maybe that would work with Jeremy.
“Thank you.”
He furrowed his brow. “Thank you for what?”
“Thank you for everything…” She took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to me… I don’t treat you bad because I don’t like you, Jeremy. I act up and get annoyed around you, because I do. I like you, and I am not supposed to like you. You are you. You are the rudest, most conceited, morally bankrupt person I’ve ever met in my life, and I’m not supposed to like you!”
“Gee, thanks!” Jeremy scoffed.
“Well, you are – well, were. Now you are different, and I am not sure who this guy is. I have watched you this summer turn into a real man that your father should have every reason to be proud of!”
“Don’t pander to me, Samantha. It’s insulting.”
“No, I’m not pandering to you. I mean it, Jeremy. Seriously, you have put up with so much. You have taken my crap and you are still here. You are a wonderful, caring man, and I am so lucky to have you and Caitlin is lucky to have you. You’re right, all this is my fault. I put us in this situation. You did your part and I dropped the ball. You could have gone. You had so many reasons to go, but you are still here. Instead of being grateful, I’ve just been treating you so badly, and you didn’t deserve it. I’m really sorry…”
He smiled. “Well, thank you for saying that.”
She took a breath. “I just want to ask you never to change back, okay? Because I like this Jeremy…”
“You do?”
“Yes. Well, not so much the broody, scowly one who has been cross at me for the past three hours, but the patient, sincere one who has really stepped up for me. And I would really like it if we could be friends.”
“You want to be friends?”
“Yeah, why not? I mean, we have to be – if for no other reason, but for Caitlin’s sake. She will need parents who get along.” She held out her hand. “So what do you say, Jay?” She used the name she had heard Jasmine call him all afternoon. “Truce?”
Jeremy could not tell her ‘no’. Why would he? This was what he had been waiting all summer, scratch that, the past three years for – for them to be friends. Well, he wanted more than that, but he would settle for friendship right now. The rest would come later. He took her soft, well-manicured hand into his and shook it firmly. “Truce!” He agreed, giving her one of his dimpled smiles.
Samantha, smiled back, willing herself not to touch his dimple. Instead, she threw her arms around him and pulled him into a huge hug. He just stood there for a moment, perhaps in shock at her impulsive gesture, but finally, he lifted his arms and hugged her back – tentatively, at first, Samantha thought, because he probably thought she would freak out, change her mind and push him, away. Not this time, she decided. She had been pushing him away for far too long. It was time to squash all this nonsense and accept the fact that this was not the same boy she had known at UWI, but a kind, caring man, who was trying so hard to prove that he was a good person; not just for her or for Caitlin, but for himself, too. And as she stood there and as he held her for what was probably seconds, or a lifetime, she wondered why she had resisted for so long, and denied herself the pleasure of being held like this. Jeremy felt so good, and so strong. He smelled so manly, and she could stay like that forever – locked in his embrace, feeling his rock hard abs pressed against her. This was it, she thought. This was her just perfect moment. She closed her eyes and sighed, wishing he would never let her go…
Suddenly, her eyes popped open, and she gasped. “Oh my God!”
“What’s the matter?” Jeremy quickly released her. He, too, had gotten caught up in the moment. He had held her close and buried his nose in her hair. Her shampoo smelled like coconut, and her hair was so soft against his face. But… Had he done something wrong? Had he held her too long, or too clo
sely? Had he touched her inappropriately?
“She moved!”
“What? Who?”
Samantha’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Caitlin! She moved!”
“She moved?”
“Yes, she did, Jeremy! She did, and… There she goes again! Feel!” Samantha placed his hand on her bump, right at the spot where she had felt the tiny stirring of their child. “Did you feel it?”
Jeremy did not respond, but the expression of his face told her he had felt it too – the odd, unmistakable feeling of tiny feet, or perhaps arms, moving around in her. He looked at Samantha, her face aglow with excitement. He needed to do something, or say something … but what? He needed to at least remove his hand from her belly. His baby had moved! It was stupid, he knew, because he had seen her on the ultrasound, and heard her heartbeat, and Sam no longer had abs, but feeling her move suddenly made it all more real! That was a little person inside there. A real, tiny human being, who would come out in only four short months. He was going to be a father! Scratch that. For all intents and purposes, he was already a father! This beautiful woman standing in front of him was going to make him a father, and Jeremy felt something swell inside of him – a mixture of admiration, beneficence, pride and yes, love. There was no question in his mind. He loved her.
“Jeremy, are you okay?” Samantha looked at him. The last time she had seen that face was when he had been traumatised by the childbirth video. The baby had stopped moving, but he still stood there with his hand on her belly, looking at her as though he had never seen her before; as though he would never see her again.
“Sam, she moved!”
“Yes, she did!” Samantha smiled. “See, I told you I would tell you the second that she did!”
He smiled, and there were those beautiful dimples. Yup, it was official. If Caitlin didn’t get those dimples, she was sending her back to Heaven.
Finally, his hand left her bump and moved to her hair. He brushed back a strand and tucked it behind her hair.
“Caitlin Jada Malcolm,” he whispered.
Samantha forgot how to think. There were prickles running up and down her spine. He was going to kiss her. She knew he was. He looked like the kind of guy who would tuck a girl’s hair behind her ear right before he leaned in to kiss her. It was the perfect moment – right after they felt their daughter move for the first time. Even more perfect than the night she realised that she liked him. She closed her eyes as he leaned in. He better not freak out again like last Friday night, she thought. Because if he did, she was going to so…
Before she could think of what she would if he chickened out, he lifted her chin and kissed her. Right there. At the door of Nathan’s building. Out in the open.
It didn’t matter that Nathan’s neighbours were coming in and out and looking at them. It didn’t matter that the security guard was clearly enjoying the show, with a big, goofy grin on his face. All that mattered, Samantha decided, was that those beautiful bow shaped lips were once more on hers. It was their first kiss without the tequila, and it was even better now that she was sober. And there was nothing she could do, or wanted to do, but sigh and allow him to kiss her, while she enjoyed every single moment of it, because that right there, if there ever was one, was a just perfect moment.
247
Just Perfect!
chapter twelve
August 19
“Are you going to play anytime this summer?” Andie asked, frowning at her sister.
Samantha looked at her. “It’s my play?”
“For like the past ten minutes!”
“Oh…” Samantha looked at the scrabble tiles in her rack. Nothing there looked like it could possibly make a word—unless it was a word with three Ds, an I, a T an H and an R. Andie was beating her. Perhaps because, as she pressed towards the end of trimester two, her brain had gone on hiatus, robbing her of her short term memory and apparently her ability to make form words from jumbled letters in a scrabble rack. But mainly she was losing because she was really not thinking about Scrabble. Why would she think on scrabble when there were far more exciting things in the world to think about? Things like her precious little daughter, and her equally precious father…
Life was so much nicer, Samantha thought, since she and Jeremy had made peace. She had driven home in a daze last Thursday, rather stunned that she had gotten home in one piece. She hadn’t slept that night. She lay awake with her hand on her bump, waiting for the baby to move again. As she waited, she replayed in her mind the entire day – lunch with Jeremy’s family, seeing him get upset, feeling Caitlin move, Jeremy kissing her…
Jeremy. She sighed in the darkness as her mind stopped on the kiss. The romantic part of her – the part that she had always kept hidden under a thin veneer of pragmatism and a few bad choices -- just wanted to lay there, just her and Caitlin and relive the perfect moment, frame by frame. But the other part – the practical, sensible part knew that she had to analyse it – why did he do it, what did it mean, where would they go from there… She imagined that Jeremy in his sofa bed at Nate’s would be doing the same thing. She wondered in horror whether it would turn out to be just a spur of the moment occurrence, brought on by the emotionally charged afternoon, and tomorrow he would act like it never happened. But it couldn’t be. He loved her. From UWI. He told her that in Infierno, and again in Starbucks. Over the past few months she had not been very loveable, but she was sure that if what he felt was sincere, he could not turn it off just like that, just because she had been in a bad mood. Could he?
The following morning, she sat in the kitchen eating hominy porridge and scrambled eggs, listening to her father and Andie discuss whether it was the failure of the most basic of internal controls, and not necessarily Nick Leeson himself that had had brought Barings Bank to its knees. Nick Leeson was breakfast time discussion, because six years after his first wife divorced him while he was in prison, he had managed to find someone else to marry him. Samantha was thinking about all the ways in which she could get Jeremy to marry her, short of asking him herself, when Jeremy had just come in, and after saying good morning, perfunctorily kissed her cheek, patted her bump and gotten a bowl of porridge from Theresa, as if that was the most natural thing in the world. That was evidence enough. Of course he still loved her! He wasn’t Micah. He would never forget that he did. She felt, at that moment, like they were already married.
“You slept well last night?” Jeremy asked, settling down next to her with his bowl and spoon.
“Like a baby!” Samantha confirmed.
“Cool!” He tasted his porridge, and smiled. Yup. Hominy, just like he liked it.
“I think now I have seen everything!” Dr Persaud had commented.
And just like that, they were the happy couple that TATTLER had described them as in the beginning – doing things together, making plans, agreeing that once they started buying baby things they would not stick to the common and clichéd pink for girls, but use lavender instead. Samantha was happy. Not even Christopher screaming into her belly every moment he could, not even the constant missed calls from Micah that appeared on her phone, and not even the horrible thought that she only had two weeks and three days with Jeremy before he went back to New York could bring her down. And since she was happy, Caitlin was happy, and kept moving around, apparently doing ballet moves inside her, especially after she ate chocolate or pickles. Samantha could not help but wonder whether it was her constant miserableness in the beginning that had caused her not to move earlier. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she had moved for the first time when she decided to make peace with Jeremy…
“For God’s sake, play or pass!” Andie snapped, once more yanking Samantha from her reverie. “I want to wrap this up sometime before my 21st birthday!”
“Just chill, nuh!” Samantha told her. She looked at her tiles once more, and finally decided to play ID on an open R. She wished she had an S or an E to get the double word score.
Andie looked at her in di
sgust. “That’s it? You sat over the tiles for the last fifteen minutes and all you could come up with is RID?”
“Just write down my four points and don’t bother with the narration!” Samantha returned. She dipped her hand into the bag and retrieved two replacement tiles. Oh, great. Now she got a Q and a V.
“If you were concentrating on the game, you would be able to come up with better plays!” Andie pointed out.
“I am concentrating!” Samantha shuffled her pathetic tiles around the rack, thinking that perhaps she should forego her turn and choose a different hand.
“With that face? Puh –lease!” Andie scoffed. “You could not be further away from this game right now.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” The wide brimmed hat and sunglasses did very little to conceal her blushes. Samantha pulled her chair closer to the scrabble table so Andie would not see her.
Andie was not buying her nonsense for one second. “Look at you – all blushes and smiles and distracted. That’s how you have looked since you and Jeremy fell in love, and it’s about damn time!”
Samantha struppsed her teeth. Investment Banker, her tail? Andie should have become an Investigator. She was a master at reading faces. “I have this face because my hand sucks!” She informed her sister.
“I’ll give you a free pass to dump your hand, and pick new letters if you tell me what I interrupted last night,” Andie bargained.
Samantha’s blush deepened. Her mind went back to the previous night. Her parents had taken Christopher to the movies, and Andie was hanging out at Nathan’s apartment. Not wanting to be the third wheel, and realising that Andie had only five more days with Nathan before she had to leave for Columbia, Jeremy had left the apartment to give them some space. Samantha was pleased he had that foresight. It would give them a chance to spend some time together alone. It was a remarkably hot August night, so they abandoned the house for the pool deck, trying to get some breeze.