by Mindy Hayes
“Well…” Harper hesitates. “No, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you to.”
I heavily exhale. “Harper, think for one second. She called off the engagement this morning. And she didn’t even end it. She only postponed the wedding. It’s not that simple. She needs to figure out what she wants. And I have to work. I can’t just get up and leave everything every time you think Peyton is ready for me. I’m lucky I didn’t lose my job the last time you told me to go and win her back.”
“But this time there’s nothing standing in your way! She just needs a little push in the right direction.”
“Harper,” I say sternly, but try to keep my voice low enough so the rest of the office doesn’t hear me. “I’m going to say this once, and then you’re going to drop it for good. I tried. Weeks ago, I poured out my heart in Hatteras, and she crushed it. She mutilated it. It’s dead. Over.”
“Okay. I get it.”
“You don’t get it. Otherwise you’d stop this. Stop coming to the wrong person. Stop trying to give me hope. Leave it alone. Peyton knows where I stand. I’m done chasing her.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I have to go.” I hang up before she can continue to argue with me. If I go after Peyton again, I’m nothing more than a fool. I can’t expect a different outcome when I’ve tried the same thing over and over again. She’s doesn’t want me, and Harper needs to understand that.
“Fisher.” I look to see my boss leaning around my cubicle. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Great.” My smile is so fake it practically splits my lips.
He doesn’t believe me. “Do you have the financial reports for me from last week?”
“Yes.” I pull out my keyboard. “I’ll email them to you right now.”
“Good. Hey, listen,” he comes around to the open doorway, “I know you’ve had some family emergencies as of late, but if you keep doing what you’re doing—keeping up the good work—I see nothing but great things in the future for you. You just have to be present in order to show what you can do. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”
I nod respectfully. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay.” He nods once with a smile before he walks away.
I run my hands down my face. It’s just my luck to have him show up when Harper calls. I’m blocking her calls from now on.
APRIL TURNS TO May. May turns to June. June turns to July. Months evaporate like clouds in the sky. I hear nothing from Peyton, and I make no attempt to contact her. It’s the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking. Not even a text. My mom and dad filled me in on her chemo treatment in June. One round for precaution. That’s it. She didn’t lose her hair. And she’s now cancer-free. I’m relieved. I am, but it’s almost a win without victory because I’m not the one she’s sharing it with. And now I feel like an insensitive prick for feeling that way. It makes me no better than Tyler.
Harper finally stops pushing the idea of Peyton and me having a future. I thought I’d be grateful for the day, but it only makes it feel more final. If no one besides me believes in us, there is no hope. There is no us to believe in.
I often wonder: if what we had was real, how is she okay without me? And why can’t I be okay without her? I wonder if it was all a lie—something I created in my head because it was easier to believe a lie than to swallow the hard truth.
She never loved me.
There are days when I think of calling Brooke to check in on her, but it’s for purely selfish reasons. I want to know how she’s doing, but only to ease my heavy heart. I want to know that I didn’t break her heart the way Peyton broke mine. So I never call.
Peyton called off the wedding, but for what? Clearly, since I’m still in Boston, alone and married to my job, it wasn’t for me. And as far as I know, Tyler is still in the picture. I haven’t heard otherwise. So, that’s one other thing Boston is good for. I can keep myself detached from a world I no longer belong in.
I am grateful for two things: Peyton is cancer free, and she’s still not married to Tyler. Maybe someone else will come along. Maybe there’s a man better for Peyton than me. There’s definitely a better man than Tyler.
At least she was mine for a summer. That will have to be enough.
WHEN I GET off the elevator on my floor, I trudge toward my apartment. It’s been a long, tiring day. I had to stay and work overtime on a report my boss needed for a project in the morning. Of course, his request came in an hour before I was meant to head home.
I want to flip on the TV, put my feet up, and enjoy a beer. I stop in the hallway. There’s a person seated outside my door, leaning against the wall. Her head is bent over her cell phone, blonde hair draped across the side of her face. When she hears me coming, she looks up.
“Peyton?”
“Oh, good.” She grabs her purse and stands as I approach. “I didn’t know when you’d be home. I tried calling you, but your phone sent me straight to voicemail.”
“I forgot to charge it last night. It’s dead.”
“Well, that explains it.” She’s visibly relieved. What is she doing here? “I was hoping you weren’t sending me straight to voicemail.”
My lips purse as I shake my head. “Just bad timing.” If she did try to call when my phone wasn’t dead, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. I wouldn’t have sent it to voicemail, but I’m not sure I would’ve answered it either. There was a time when I thought I could go back, that we could be best friends and live our lives apart. Now, looking at her standing in front of me, I know that’s impossible.
“That’s comforting.” The corner of her mouth turns up, half-smiling.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Not too long.” She shrugs her purse up her shoulder. “A couple hours.”
There’s an awkward moment when we do nothing but stare at each other. Her hair is longer, less white, more natural. It lies below her shoulders in loose waves, like she just got done surfing. The closer I get, the easier it is to see the freckles gracing her face. She’s not covering them anymore.
I unlock my apartment and let Peyton follow me inside, flipping the lights on as I go. I drape my suit jacket over the arm of my futon, loosen my tie and unbutton the first couple buttons of my blue button-down. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Beer? Dr. Pepper?”
“You hate Dr. Pepper.”
I don’t even know why I have it in my fridge. It’s not like I was planning on her unexpectedly showing up. Or maybe I hoped.
I nod.
“Dr. Pepper would be great.”
When I come back from the kitchen, she’s still standing in the entryway, looking around like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. I don’t know what to do with her either. She must be able to tell I’m awaiting her explanation. I can hope, but for all I know, she came to apologize. Or maybe she just wanted to visit Boston. There’s a first time for everything. If she wants me to be her tour guide, I’ll have to pass.
After she takes her first sip, she says, “Your place is nice.”
I look around. It’s bare compared to what it used to be. My bookshelf has half the books it used to. There are no bookends or figurines, just books—disorganized and falling on their sides. And the pictures of Brooke and me on the walls are gone. The walls are empty. It’s sad to think of what they once looked like compared to now.
“Brooke wanted it to feel like home, but she took most of the decorations when she moved out.”
She nods. “It’s got a bachelor pad vibe now.” Peyton clicks her tongue, something she only does when she’s nervous. “The night you played that song for me in your car, you remember?”
The night she told me she was going to marry Tyler and destroy any hope of us? How could I forget? I remember it all too well. I nod again.
“I wasn’t listening,” she says, and looks down at the soda can gripped between both of her hands. “My mind was wandering, trying to figure out how to tell you about
the engagement. It didn’t occur to me until yesterday that it was the words of that last song you wanted me to listen to, not just the music of the band.” She lifts her gaze to me. “When I saw the album on Harper’s iPod, I remembered how upset you were before I even told you about Tyler, so I asked Harper if I could play it. She hopped in the shower, and I sat down on her bed.”
Peyton bites her lip. All I can think is, she wasn’t listening?
“As soon as I heard the chorus, I started to cry. When I first saw you I thought you’d moved on with Brooke. I pushed you away for so long I thought it finally stuck. It didn’t occur to me that you were still holding out hope after all these years, that the song was your way of telling me everything you missed. I knew you wouldn’t be happy about Tyler, but not because you were jealous or still in love with me. I know how much you hate him.” She hurries on. “Then you came to me in Hatteras, and I thought I was your rebound from Brooke, someone who you’d always come back to because it was comforting, familiar. It’s so easy for us to be around one another. And I saw how much you loved Brooke, and I completely understood because she is incredible, a real catch. It didn’t make sense for you to give up on her so easily. You caught me off guard.”
I try to interrupt her, but she stops me with a hand raised and sets down her drink on the side table next to the couch. Peyton takes a step toward me.
“When Harper got out of the shower and saw me sobbing on her bed, she sighed like she knew. And she did, didn’t she? She’s known all along what you felt.” Peyton can see the truth in my eyes. “Harper looked at me and said, ‘You dummy. How could you not know?’” Her laugh is breathless, like she can’t believe she didn’t put it together.
“Listening to that song…I was drawn back to that summer in Hatteras. Something clicked. Everything about Tyler became so clear. Everything you and Harper had been trying to tell me. And everything about you and me made more sense than ever.”
“The first time you listened to the song was last night?” My heart flatlines.
She nods. “I hopped on the first plane I could this morning. If I hadn’t, I’m sure Harper would have had a conniption.”
And like I’ve been jolted back to life, my heart starts racing. Every organ inside of me is bursting at the seams.
“Maybe if I’d stopped being so selfish for two seconds, I would have seen what I needed to from the start. I was so blinded by my bitterness toward Nick, so overpowered by my pride and what everyone would think. I so stubbornly wanted Tyler and me to work so I wouldn’t see how much I was missing by pushing you away. I was too scared to give us a real chance. And then the cancer threw me a curveball. I don’t even know how to play baseball.” She laughs again, self-deprecating. “After everything we’ve already been through, I didn’t want to put you through more. I couldn’t expect you to take care of me, and I knew that’s exactly what you’d have done. You’d have dropped Boston in an instant.”
She doesn’t give me time to respond before she’s talking again. “I lied about why Tyler never came to my appointments with me and why he left after my surgery.”
I don’t understand why she would do that.
“I asked him not to come to the appointment. I asked him to stay in North Carolina.” She takes a deep breath in a way that tells me she’s ashamed. Her eyes dart around the room as she says, “He was never very good at consoling me. The words were always there, but they felt rehearsed. He was uncomfortable with my pain. Rather than taking it on, empathizing with me, he blocked it out.”
I have to hold back my I-told-you-so expression. It would be poor form.
“You were right, and I knew it.” Peyton finally sets her eyes on me again. “And after my surgery, Tyler told me he wanted the doctor to tell me the outcome. Can you believe that? What a coward. Why would I rather hear that kind of news from Dr. Levanstine? So I asked him to go home to get the laptop for me. I didn’t want him to see me when I found out. It was my pain, not his. His presence would’ve only made my pain feel insignificant, as if I was being melodramatic, that it couldn’t be as bad as I thought it was.”
My hands roll into fists at my side. I hate how much he misunderstands her, underappreciates her. He has the best thing that could ever happen to him right under his nose, and he treats her like just another girl, not Peyton Parker.
She sighs and shakes her head. A humorless, short laugh escapes. “His life has been so cushioned; he doesn’t understand loss. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to lose so much, so young. Within a year I lost my dad, my relationship with my mom, my second family. I lost my best friend.” Her voice begins to shake, and all I want to do is hold her, but I can tell she needs to say this. “He never understood how much it hurt, how much it changed me. I tried time after time to make him understand, but it fell on deaf ears. There was nothing I could say that could teach him how to love me.”
She shouldn’t have to teach someone how to love her. How could loving Peyton not come easily, naturally? Loving Peyton is like breathing; I don’t have to think about it. It’s a part of me.
“I ended it.”
I was waiting for her to say the words. They still knock the wind out of me. I want to say something, but I can’t find the right words.
“Do you remember when we danced at Harper and Skylar’s wedding?”
It’s as if she thinks I remember nothing. I remember every moment with her. I answer with a nod.
“I lied to you.”
“About what?”
“When you asked me if I ever think about that summer…” She gives me time that I don’t need to recall that night. “Ask me again.”
I blink. “Do you ever think about that summer?”
“Every day.” Her voice trembles, clogged with tears. “And I don’t think about the bad. I think about our first kiss. Not the dare, but the one on the beach, when you told me you were still here and not to leave you while you were still here. I think about the way you kissed me, the way your lips already knew mine. I think about how we danced in the rain and didn’t care that we were soaking wet, how you sang to me and made me fall in love with you with one slightly off-key song. I think about the song you wrote for me on your guitar. I still hear it in my head all the time. When you’re gone, and I need to feel you most, I sing it to myself because I don’t know what I did to deserve you. You’re my everything good. You know how to love me.”
I close the distance between us and grab her face. I love her with my lips, with every brush, every nip. I love her with my hands and let them wander to places they’ve missed and craved to caress. I kiss her the way she deserves to be kissed. And when I can’t breathe because my mouth refuses to leave hers, I kiss her harder and lift her off her feet. She smiles against my mouth, but I don’t let go. Someone will have to pry my cold, dead lips off her because I could do this until the day I die. She gasps with me like it’s the first time we’ve taken a breath since our last summer in Hatteras.
When we reluctantly pull away, her eyes shine with unshed tears. They smile at me.
“Little did I know the day I played you that song, it was going to be the day that saved us.”
She lets out a breath of laughter. Then her face falls. “I can’t give you babies, Brodee.” She can hardly get the words out.
“Yes, you will.” I keep her secure in my arms, pressing one hand against her cheek and rest my forehead against hers. “They might have DNA donors, but they will be ours. Our blood in their veins or not, we will love them more because of what we endured to get them. I will love them because you will help me raise them. You’re alive to help me raise them.”
With a smile, more tears come. “I was worried my speech wouldn’t be epic enough. I’ve treated you so poorly for years.”
Suddenly none of the time we’ve lost even matters. I feel like we’ve moved on from cheesy pick-up lines, so I try something new. “Like Tom had Renee at hello, you have me. All of me.”
Peyton cracks a smile and wipes t
he tears from her eyes, never missing a beat. “Only if you’re a bird. Because I’m a bird.”
“So, that wasn’t too corny?” I ask with a laugh.
“I’m looking for corny in my life.”
I set her back on the ground and brush the back of my hand across her cheeks, catching some strays she missed. “Don’t cry, Shopgirl.”
“Is this our thing now? Romantic comedy references?” She laughs lightly.
“It seems to be the natural progression.”
“You think you know enough to make a challenge out of it?” She dares me with her eyebrow raised.
“Will I seem like less of a man if I do?”
“Only if you can’t beat me.”
“You’re on,” I say.
“Shut up and kiss me,” she says.
And so I do.
WE DON’T SPEND the summers in Hatteras as a family anymore, but we take turns. Peyton and I get the beach house for a few weeks, and today is the first of our stay.
She stands at the railing overlooking the boardwalk and ocean. I brush her hair away from her neck and plant a kiss on her skin. Her hair is back to the way it used to be. Long and no longer white, but sun-kissed, as it was made to be. I loop my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her bare shoulder. She exhales and settles into my arms. Her freckles are featured under the sunlight. I want to kiss each and every one. And I can, because we have the rest of our lives together. So, I make that my new pact. To build Peyton up and help her love every flaw and imperfection that makes her who she is, that makes the woman I love.
“You know, my dad used to tell me something whenever life wouldn’t go the way I planned.”
“Oh yeah?” I tighten my arms around her and listen intently.
“He’d say, ‘Peyton Jane, there’s beauty in a new beginning. It brings the opportunity to create something more, something better.’ And you know what?” I feel a contented smile brighten her face. “He was right.”
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I need to thank Michele G. Miller. She is the reason this book is in your hands right now. When my brain no longer wanted to give me words, she helped to drag me from the darkness.