by Kayla Perrin
“I was happy to be there. And I meant what I said. I plan to come back and visit. I’d love to take the kids to that soccer game whenever works best.”
Melissa noticed that they were heading in the direction of the beach. “Are we heading to Brighton Beach? I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“All will reveal itself in time.”
Melissa sat back in the car, listening to the slow jams playing on the Bluetooth. Songs from twelve years ago, when she and Aaron were teens. She closed her eyes, getting caught up in the emotions that the words evoked.
And then he reached across the seat and took her hand.
They stayed that way as they drove, the music taking Melissa down memory lane. Several minutes later, Aaron pulled up next to a walkway that led to a stretch of beach. It was out of the way, not at all on the popular portion of the beach that people frequented. To the right was an older wooden house that looked like it needed a lot of fixing up.
Aaron put the car into Park and got out. Melissa looked around, wondering what on earth they were doing here as he made his way around to her side of the car and opened the door.
“What are we doing here, Aaron?” Melissa asked as he offered her a hand to help her out of the car.
“You’ll see.”
So she let him take her hand and lead her down the path to the beach. It was hard to walk in the sand with her heels, so she kicked them off and scooped them up. As they passed the tall thicket of grass, she noticed a dock come into view.
“I don’t understand,” Melissa said.
The house in front of the dock had been partially obscured by all the brush and the large wooden fence. Now she could see that the yard was filled with tall, unkempt grass. The house definitely looked abandoned. Certainly he wasn’t taking her here.
The dock reminded Melissa of the one on Sheridan Lake where she and Aaron used to sneak off and kiss at night.
Was that what this was?
He took the first tentative step onto the dock, and, determining that it was secure, extended a hand to her and helped her onto it as well. He walked all the way to the end and peered out over at the water. Melissa followed him. When she reached his side, he slipped an arm around her waist and held her close.
“I remember everything about that summer,” he said.
So that was why he brought her here.
“I remember how we always snuck out on the dock at night.” He looked at her, trailed a fingertip along her cheek. “How we used to steal kisses under the moonlight.”
Melissa’s heart began to pound. She thought for sure that he would have forgotten all about that. It was so long ago.
Aaron released her and bent to roll up the cuffs of his pants, then he sat down and dangled his feet over the edge. He looked up at Melissa, shading his eyes from the sun. “Join me.”
Melissa carefully held her skirt around her thighs and then lowered herself down onto her bottom. She slipped her bare feet over the edge as well, let them hang above the dark water.
“I don’t want this baby just because I want to be a dad. Although, I admit, that’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. But I want this baby because I want you.” He took her hand in his. “Because I love you.”
A shuddery breath escaped Melissa’s lips. The wall around her heart had already come down when Aaron showed up this morning to support Tyler, and hearing him say he loved her caused a thrill to rush through her body.
“I know we never really discussed the past, and what happened. Why I let you walk out of my life. I hoped you would realize that I was a different person now, but you kept running.” He paused. “I was young and dumb. I was afraid of what I felt for you at the time. I know that’s not a great excuse, but then there was my soccer scholarship, and me wondering if things could really work out between us...”
“I would have done anything to make it work between us,” Melissa said. “I loved you so much. But when you shut me out, I felt like you never cared about me at all.”
Aaron stroked her cheek. “I did. I fell for you, too, Melissa. How could I not?”
“And yet you could walk away?”
“I have something to show you. Actually, come back to the car with me.”
Melissa stared at him with curiosity. They’d just gotten here and started to talk, and now he wanted to go back to the car?
“Bad planning on my part, but you’ll understand in a moment.”
Aaron hopped to his feet, then helped her up. They walked the short distance back to the car, where Aaron opened the trunk. Melissa sidled up beside him.
“What do you want to show me?”
Inside the trunk was a large rectangular box. Aaron took out the box, closed the trunk, then opened the box on the trunk’s smooth surface.
Inside the box, Aaron pushed aside wads of tissue paper, and the edge of a painting came into view. “Take a look,” Aaron said.
Melissa did. It was beautiful. The painting depicted a night sky with a full moon. The moon’s rays were shimmering on the water below. There was a dock on the lake and two people sat at the edge, with their feet entwined as they hung over the edge.
Melissa’s lips parted as she fully checked out the picture. It was a young couple, African American, their bodies angled toward each other. Even without being able to make out their faces, Melissa’s beating heart told her what the picture was.
“Is that us?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Then her eyes widened as she saw the signature. “Wait a minute—is that a Felix Virgo painting?”
Aaron nodded, a smile on his face.
Melissa’s heart slammed against her rib cage. She stepped fully in front of the picture, holding it up in the box to better inspect it. The familiar brushstrokes, the unique way that Felix put color on a canvas. The feeling of calm his paintings evoked.
But this was them. This looked like the lake in Sheridan Falls. This couldn’t have been a random picture that Aaron picked up.
“Are you saying that...you had this painting commissioned?” she asked, her tone full of disbelief.
“You love the artist. So I found him. Asked him to re-create this picture for me. For us.”
Melissa was so shocked that she couldn’t even find her voice. Aaron must have done this before he learned she was pregnant. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Like I said, I remember everything about that summer. The way you used to smile at me under the moonlight. The taste of your lips. The feel of your skin against mine. The way we used to tangle our feet together.”
Melissa’s blood was rushing through her veins at warp speed. This was...incredible.
“Look at the moon,” Aaron told her.
Melissa had to wipe the tears from her eyes in order to focus fully on the picture again. She saw now that there was a small object in the moon. She looked closer, and realized it was a little angel. As she stared at the angel more fully, she saw that it had a little girl’s face.
She looked up at Aaron, not understanding.
“Why did I let you go? You were right when you said that guilt affected my relationships. I didn’t believe that I deserved happiness. I didn’t come to realize that until years later, when I did some serious soul searching. But it was more than that. I was also afraid, Melissa. Afraid of losing anything I loved. That angel is my baby sister,” he explained. “I asked Felix to include her in there, because...well, Chantelle is a big part of the reason I fell in love with you.”
Chantelle, his sister who had drowned.
“That summer, I shared with you my deepest pain. My sister drowned. On my watch. I’d been in the house, and somehow she got outside. She got into the pool. When I finally found her...” He grimaced. “Well, it destroyed me. And for a long time, I blamed myself. I was able to lose myself in the world of soccer. It helped me to escape my
guilt. But when it came to love...” His voice trailed off, and he shrugged. “Why would a guy who let his sister die deserve love?”
Melissa put the painting down in the box and turned to Aaron. She stroked his cheek. “Oh, Aaron. Of course you deserve love. What happened to Chantelle wasn’t your fault.”
“At the time, I didn’t think I did. I blamed myself for Chantelle’s death, and you were the only one I opened up to about what I was going through. You understood my pain, you understood my heart. The night when I told you, you hugged me and cried with me and told me everything would be okay...that’s the night I fell in love with you.”
A sense of awe and love and bittersweet emotions spiraled through Melissa. She remembered that night vividly. Aaron’s body folded against hers, his heavy breaths, his broken heart. She remembered it so much because it was the night she had fallen in love with him, too.
“Did you really fall in love with me that night?” she asked.
“How could I not?”
“I fell in love with you that night, too.”
It was that night that they had left the lake and made love on the shore. With all the campers sleeping, they’d found a secluded spot and consummated their relationship. For Melissa, it had been the most profound and wonderful experience of her life.
“Then you shut me out,” she said. “You let me go.”
“Because what I felt for you scared me to death. It was something I’d never experienced before. Something so powerful it scared me. And I doubted it. I questioned whether or not I even deserved it. Did I deserve someone as special as you? So yeah, a stupid young guy unable to deal with his guilt pushed away a girl he loved. But it was never because I fell out of love with you.”
Aaron was staring into her eyes now; she could see into his soul. Good Lord, he was telling her the truth. All this time, she felt that their relationship hadn’t meant as much to him, but it had. And she’d been so devastated by her broken heart that she had kept her walls up this time, not truly allowing him in.
Until now.
“Oh, Aaron.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you. But... I didn’t know how to deal with everything I was feeling. You were the one good thing that came into my life after Chantelle, and I ran. Seeing you again at the wedding, everything came flooding back. All of it. But I realized you had shut down emotionally where I was concerned. And when you asked me about Chantelle, it opened up old wounds and feelings I’d tried to keep buried. You accused me of still not opening up to you, and you were right. I’ve kind of been at war with myself over the past several weeks because of what you said to me. I wanted you, but I knew that meant I would have to finally deal with my guilt. Which meant admitting something I never told anyone about the day Chantelle died.”
Melissa’s eyes narrowed and her heart pounded. “What didn’t you tell me?”
Aaron paused. Swallowed. “The day Chantelle died, the reason I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as I should have been was because I was distracted by some girl. I was on the phone with a girl I liked, sweet-talking her, making plans for the weekend, while my sister got out of the house and into the pool.”
“Aaron...” Melissa’s heart broke for him.
“Now do you understand? Love and relationships for me were connected to how Chantelle died. I couldn’t get past that.”
“You can’t live like this, blaming yourself for a mistake. It’s not a crime to have been on the phone. It was an accident.”
“I know that now. But in order to really forgive myself, I had to finally tell my parents the truth about that day. I told them a few days ago.”
“And what did they say?” Melissa asked, regarding him tentatively.
Aaron’s eyes misted. “That it was high time I forgave myself. That Chantelle is in a better place where she’s happy. That they know she loves me with all of her heart and would never want me to be sad. And that one day, when I see her again, she’ll tell me that herself.”
“Aaron.” Melissa’s voice cracked. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Your parents really are wonderful people.”
Aaron nodded. “They are. They never blamed me when it happened, and that’s why the guilt was worse. Because I hadn’t been totally honest with them. I couldn’t bear to tell them the full truth at the time, but I knew I needed to tell them in order to finally forgive myself. That weight has now been lifted off my shoulders.”
Melissa stroked his face. “I’m so glad.”
A small smiled lifted Aaron’s lips. “And now...” He put his hand on her belly. “You’re carrying my baby. I want you, and this baby. Because I love you. I always have.”
Tears streamed down her face now. No one had ever given her a gift as meaningful as the painting. Every doubt she had about him vanished. She believed, finally, that she meant more to him than she’d ever known.
She looped her arms around his neck. “Oh, Aaron. I love you, too. I didn’t want to. But I think a part of me never stopped. I kept running from you because you’d hurt me so much...but now I’m through running.”
Aaron swallowed, and Melissa saw his eyes mist. “I’ll ask you again, sweetheart. Will you marry me? Make me the happiest man alive and be my wife?”
A smile burst onto Melissa’s face, and happy tears spilled onto her cheeks. “Yes! Oh, Aaron, yes!”
And then he kissed her, one hand smoothing over her belly while the other one stroked her cheek. It was a slow and meaningful kiss that bridged the gap from the past, and paved the way to the future.
A future that would be filled with lots of happiness and love.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from French Quarter Kisses by Zuri Day.
French Quarter Kisses
by Zuri Day
Chapter 1
Few knew this, but on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept Pierre LeBlanc away from New Orleans on a wave of destruction and despair. Today, more than a decade later, the entire city and, via television sometime later, the entire country, would witness his hometown return amid a flood of bayou-styled fanfare, good wishes and well-deserved praise. It was the Fourth of July weekend, but the festivities felt more like February’s Mardi Gras. Drinks steadily flowed. Good times rolled. After experiencing unprecedented success at a Houston-based restaurant called New Orleans, Pierre had finally followed his mentor’s advice and opened up his own space. With its innovative take on traditional cuisine, his restaurant, Easy Creole Cuisine, was poised to become the new jewel in the crown of New Orleans’s famed French Quarter district. Along with being a new restaurant owner, the onetime shy, almost invisible outcast was now an internationally recognized Chow Channel star and a popular energy drink spokesperson who at the moment was seated on the back of a Rolls-Royce convertible offering slow, easy waves to the throngs of zealous fans welcoming him home.
“Pierre! Over here!”
“Hey, Easy!”
The nickname was one of only a few items that had followed him to Houston. The hometown crowd instantly matched Pierre’s laid-back demeanor with the word that appeared on his restaurant’s marquee.
“Glad you’re back, Easy!”
“Welcome home, Pierre!”
Pierre nodded, waved and offered up his megawatt smile to the fans and photographers shouting his name. Designer shades covered deep hazel eyes, hiding the merest hint of a longtime hurt that never quite went away. Eyes continually surveying, searching, slightly saddened... His sister, Lisette, would meet him at the restaurant. She’d be the only family member on hand to celebrate the big occasion. The other woman who was once in his life, the one that for years he’d searched for online and in the faces of every crowd, had been achingly absent during more than a decade of his life experiences and achieved milestones. His mother, Alana. The woman who’d put her fifteen-year-old son and e
leven-year-old daughter on a bus bound for Houston, Texas, promised to meet them there in a week, and disappeared.
The two-car caravan, followed by a small but energetic brass band, reached the restaurant. It was a totally renovated and hugely transformed building originally erected in 1879. The word Easy was scrawled across the side and continued upward into the sky in big cursive letters that would light up at night, with the rest of the name, Creole Cuisine, in block letters beneath. That sign and the group of people standing beneath it brought out Pierre’s first genuine smile all morning. Hard to believe that the dream he’d held since becoming a line cook and peeling more shrimp than he thought the ocean could hold had finally come true. And that the people who mattered most, well, almost all of them, were here to cheer him on.
Pierre swung a pair of long, lean legs over the side of the car, slid down and waded through a sea of people to hug Lisette, his mentor, Marc Fisher, his second mom, Miss Pat, his network publicist and his newly-hired manager, who’d flown down from New York. Then he walked over to greet the mayor and other city officials standing near the front entrance, just beyond the red ribbon and large bow stretched and waiting to be cut, a symbolic gesture signaling the official opening of Pierre’s dream.
“This is a happy day for our city,” the mayor said, each word from his booming voice absorbed by the attentive, enamored crowd. “Pierre could have chosen any major city in the country to open his restaurant. We are happy and proud that he has chosen the Big Easy to open Easy Creole Cuisine.”
With elaborate fanfare, the mayor was handed a framed proclamation that he read aloud. For the last line, he turned and spoke to Pierre directly. “By the powers vested in me as mayor of New Orleans, I declare this day to be Pierre ‘Easy’ LeBlanc Day in the city of New Orleans!”
The crowd cheered and began to chant. “Easy! Easy!” And then, “Speech! Speech! Speech!”
Pierre strolled to the microphone and held up his hand to silence the crowd. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks to all of the city officials and other public servants who have come out today to lend me your support. I really appreciate it.”