“Scout’s honor.” He crossed his fingers or heart or something like that.
I stood on my tiptoes, but he still had to bend his six-foot-four frame so I could kiss his cheek.“Thank you.”
“Make him smile, Savannah.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I ran out through the Savannah Beach Pavilion. How fitting.The rain still mocking me as I scanned the beach. My eyes finally fixed on the dark curls walking slowly up the beach in swim shorts, a sopping beach towel hanging from his left hand, making lines in the sand as he dragged it behind him.
The run down the stairs to the beach seemed to take forever. There must have been hundreds. The thud of my heart echoed on every step.We met at the bottom. He almost walked past me, until I called his name and reached for his arm.
“Please, Joshua! Wait!”
He stepped back down to the soft white sand and looked eye to eye with me as I remained on the bottom step.“Savannah, it’s pouring down rain. What in the world are you doing out here?”
“I needed to see you. It’s so important.”
“What? Has something happened?”
“Yes.To me. Something’s happened to me,” I said, thankful that the water was running so heavy down my face that he would never be able to tell how many tears were mingled in.“I’ve been so stupid! I’ve been so judgmental and condescending and so . . .”
“Arrogant.”
“Yes, arrogant!” I blubbered.
He smiled.
“And I’m so sorry. I know the kind of man that you are now. And I know that you didn’t even have to tell me; you didn’t even owe me an apology.”
He stopped me.“No, I do owe you an apology. It wasn’t the right decision to make. And I made it. And even though I never dreamed all of those years before that it would ever affect someone else so deeply, the way it hurt you made me realize that all decisions have consequences.” He dropped his towel to the sand and placed his hands on my hips. “And I’m so sorry. And I do need you to forgive me. Because what I did has consequences for our future.” I could see the puddle of tears that rested on the tip of his long black lashes. At least they might be tears.
“That decision is a part of you. That decision, no matter how wrong it was, is part of what has made you the man that you are. And you are the man who I am completely in love with. And I forgive you! I completely forgive you.” I peppered his face with kisses. I wrapped my arms around his neck and then leaned back to stare into those eyes that welcomed me. “But now you have to forgive me.You have to forgive me for my meanness and for not being willing to give you the very thing that I’ve needed myself more times than I can count. And forgive me for not telling my mother and not telling Amber and not telling the world how much I absolutely love you. And forgive me for continually having to learn lessons over and over. It’s like every month something new happens in my life and I go backwards instead of actually growing and changing and maturing and—”
He leaned in closer and wrapped his arms firmly around my waist.“You love me?”
“Yes, I love you! And I won’t let my head hit the pillow until everyone who needs to know knows! You hear that, world?” I yelled, throwing my head back to the deluge. “I love—”A raindrop hit the back of my throat and about choked me to death. By the time I got through coughing, my throat was raw. But we laughed. And then I threw my arms around that strong neck, and those strong arms wrapped themselves firmly around me, and the man who I had been waiting for, though I never even realized it, kissed me in a way that let me know he was in love with me too. And by the time we were through, entire books could have been written. They might even have been.We could have written one ourselves. But there would be time for that.
“Let’s get out of this mess.” He reached down and grabbed his sand-encrusted towel.
We walked slowly up the stairs. There seemed much fewer going up now than there had been coming down. When we reached the Savannah Street Beach Pavilion, I thought that the strong columns gave it almost a rather stately presence. Very much like the man next to me. Clean strong lines. Not a lot of fuss or pretense. But a beautiful statement. He sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs that rested underneath the tin roof, and I sat across his lap and laid my head on his shoulder. The rain fell straight down, so we were covered from any more of its onslaught.
“Oh, excuse me,” said a feminine Southern voice as it crested the top of the stairs and shook out its mane of blonde highlights underneath the pavilion. When she threw her head back, we all caught a glimpse of each other. My eyes reached hoot-owl proportions. Hers were even bigger.
“Savannah? Joshua?”Amber screamed.“What are you two . . . oh my . . . oh my . . . you two are . . . are . . .” Her bottom lip began to quiver.
I leaped off of Joshua’s lap and ran in her direction.“Amber, you need to let me explain.” I reached out to take her arm.
She jerked her arm away.“Explain? How can you explain the fact that you’re . . . you’re . . . you’re . . . a liar?” Her neck jutted out in my direction, causing me to stumble backward.
Joshua stood up and came to help the remotely helpless situation.
“And you!” she said, pointing to him.“Well, you’re just nothing but a tease! A tease, I tell ya!” She sounded reminiscent of Carol Burnett when she played Eunice on Mama’s Family. It was all rather frightening.
“I can’t believe this, Savannah. You were my best friend. My sister. The daughter of my mother and father.”The child was ill. “And you have turned your back on me in sheer mockery. Well, I disown you!” she screeched.“You are no longer part of our family.” She was officially removing me from my own family.
“If you’ll just let me explain.”
“No. I will hear no more of your Benedict Arnoldness. You and I are through, finito, arreviderci, benediction, amen and amen! And you, mister.” She pointed to Joshua. I could see the hurt for her in his eyes. And the entire thing was my fault.“You have just said farewell to—to . . . to, well to me. All for . . . for . . . this . . . this . . .” She waved her fingers at me.
“Careful,” I warned.
“For . . . this . . . this heresy!”
“I think she means heretic,” I said to Joshua.
“Oh.”
“What does it matter what I mean! You are what you are! A thief! A liar! A floozy!” Then she sobered up immediately and turned toward me with fire in her eyes.“Is this the man you had the date with the other night?”
I couldn’t lie. Well, I could have. Probably should have. But my recent church encounter destroyed that possibility. Plus the fact that she was absolutely right. I had lied to her. Lied to her over and over.Me, the one who demanded honesty, was nothing but a filthy liar. I needed to head back to that church again as soon as she got through with me here.“Yes,” I whimpered.
“You mean to tell me, you wore my clothes on a date with Joshua?”
“I didn’t—”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you. But know this, missy, I will never—and I do mean never—not ever, ever, ever, be your friend again.” Her tears fell, and her mascara firmly remained.“You either,” she said to Joshua as she made a beeline past us. “I hate you! I hate you both!” she screamed as she cried and ran down the footpath to 30-A.
Joshua and I looked at each other and then took off after her. Berserk chasing berserker. What a perfect way to complete a perfectly normal evening.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
How does she run like that in those heels?” Joshua tried to yell over the rain while in a full sprint.
How “She can do anything in those heels!” I panted.
We turned down a footpath off Savannah Street, where we had last seen her blur. But once we crossed over to East Ruskin, she was nowhere in sight. We bent double in the middle of the street. “I can’t believe this. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid!”
“Savannah, you can’t worry about that now. We just have to find h
er and make sure she’s okay.”
I stood up and tried to wipe the rain from my eyes.“Let’s go back to the house. Hopefully that’s where she is.”
“But what about your mother?”
“My mother knows everything.”
“Everything?” he said, standing up himself.
“Everything.”
“I knew it. I could tell at dinner she knew.”
“Yeah, yeah.You know everything. So since you know everything, tell me this is all going to be okay.”
He wrapped his arm around me and led me in the direction of home.
That was reassurance enough.
Mom, Dad, and Paige were sitting on the front porch watching the rain fall. Pink Toes cowered on a pink leopard-print pillow not too far from Duke. He had his butt stuck in her face, a posture that meant multiple things, I was certain.
They saw us coming, and Mother jumped to her feet. “Oh, darlings, what are you doing out in this mess? Let me get you some towels.”
She returned with two large dry towels by the time we reached the top of the stairs. “Is Amber here?” I asked.
“No, we haven’t seen her since she went to take a walk on the beach. I had a feeling she was really going to see if she could run into you, Joshua.” Mother gave him the once-over.
I wiped my face with the dry towel and relished the warmth that it brought.“Well, she ran into us all right.”
Mother threw her hand to her mouth. “Savannah, what in the world happened!”
“She happened. She happened upon me sitting on Joshua’s lap. Called me some rather crude names, I might add.”
“Like what?” Paige asked.
“Like not important right now.” I glanced at her, allowing my face to make an even clearer statement than my words.
Mother grabbed my arm.“Well, where did she go?”
“We’re not sure,” Joshua said, wrapping his towel around himself.“We were hoping she came back here.”
“We haven’t seen her since after dinner,” Dad said.
“Well, we’ve got to find her,” I said, laying my towel across the chair and heading back to the steps.
“You’re not going back out in that,” Joshua said. “I’ll find her.”
Dad got up from his chair. “I’ll go with you.”
Joshua turned to my mother.“I know you and I need to talk, Mrs. Phillips.”
She smiled at him warmly.“I think you’ve had to do enough talking lately, Joshua. Don’t worry about me right now. You just go try to find Amber.”
Dad grabbed a raincoat, his galoshes, a T-shirt and raincoat for Joshua, and a couple umbrellas, and they left in search of Savannah’s brightest jewel.
I changed clothes and pulled my hair up in a clip, then returned to the porch. Thomas had arrived while I was inside.
“So tell me what she called you, really,” Paige inquired again.
“I think floozy was amongst the carnage.”
“Ooh, floozy.” Paige snickered.
“She did not call you a floozy,” Mother said, shocked.
“Among other things,” I confirmed.
“What other things?” Paige leaned in closer.
I sat down in an Adirondack chair next to her.“I will answer no more of your questions.”
Thomas entered the conversation. “So, were you getting some smack when she caught you?”
“Thomas Phillips,” Mother scolded. “I don’t know what smack is, but if I ever hear it come out of your mouth again regarding anyone, but especially Savannah, I will move into your dorm at the Citadel and put some smack on you.”
He said not another word the rest of the evening. He knew she absolutely would perform every word she had just spoken.
“I’ve hurt her so bad.”
“She’s been out of control,” Paige responded.
“She has, darling. She just has never been loved, well, by her own family. And so she has never grasped a clear perspective of what love is or how it works. That’s why she lives for pageants. This really has nothing to do with Joshua or you,” Mother assured.
“It sure sounded like it did a minute ago.”
“She’s hurt. That’s all. She’ll be okay, darling.” Mother rested her french manicure across my shoulder. Where was the red? Maybe she was mellowing.“Your father and Joshua will find her, and we’ll straighten this whole mess out. It’s just been a long week for her.”
“It’s been a longer one for me.” Paige sighed as she leaned back in her chair.
Terror struck me. “My story! Oh my stars! My story!” I ran into the house and up the stairs. The computer sat on the bed.Mr. Hicks wanted a story on storms. I’d give him a story on storms.
For an hour, I wrote about how all the storms of honesty and forgiveness and need had converged on this little part of the panhandle. I hit send before I had time to think. He responded an hour later with nothing but a smiley face.
Thomas joined the search party while I was typing furiously. So had Paige. That was rather disturbing in its own right. Mother and I never heard the four of them return. But when morning broke over Seaside, all six of us were sound asleep in our own Adirondacks.
The smell of coffee woke us all up. Dad was sporting five cups of it and a Coke. He had awakened first. Shocker. He passed out the liquid sanity, and we all sat there, peering at the house across the street.
“No sign of Amber at all?” Mother asked as she blew her breath into her hand. I’m not sure what she expected. But the sweet fragrance of roses she would not find. Her own face contorted.
“No, nothing at all. She’ll be back. She’s just trying to deal with all her emotions, I’m sure,” Dad said.
“I need to freshen up.” Mother rose slowly from the chair. Her body cracked as she did.
We all turned our attention back to the house across the street. This morning gave all of us a glimpse of the young man’s blue-jean-clad behind as it exited the second-story bedroom in these wee hours of the morning. When his eyes caught sight of us, he took off like a firework on the Fourth of July.
“He better hope her daddy doesn’t have a gun,” Dad said as the steam rose from his cup.
“Savannah used to sneak out her window,”Thomas offered.
“Did we ask for your thoughts on sneaking out of windows?” I asked.
“I knew she did,” Dad said.
“No, you didn’t.” I laughed.
“Yes, I did. I knew every time you left and every place you went.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I should have known. I caught a whiff of my own breath. “Y’all excuse me. I need to brush my teeth.”
Mother was picking up shoes from the family room as I came in.The television had been left on through the night.
“News from the world of the Georgia pageant scene” were the words from the perky morning-news anchor that caught my ear.
“It seems that the reigning Miss Georgia United States of America has been caught in a scandal . . .”
My feet stopped abruptly behind the sofa. “Everyone, you might want to hear this!” I hollered. Feet came scrambling in from every corner.
The anchor continued while a picture of the queen with her sash draped around her filled up the screen. “Sources have confirmed the beauty queen was divorced. A pageant no-no. And because of that undisclosed divorce, she will be forced to surrender her crown.”
The coanchor who sat next to her, wearing a pink tie, inter- jected,“I bet the first runner-up has never been so happy to hear about a divorce in her life.”
The thought registered with each one of us in the room. The first runner-up was Amber Topaz Childers herself. She was, finally, the reigning Miss Georgia United States of America.
“She will freak out.” Paige always had something profound to say.
“I can’t believe this!” Mother said, disgusted. “Someone has defamed the name of our pageant. Will it ever end?” She threw up her hands and marched upst
airs.
“Someone’s gone through a divorce,” I reminded her.
She looked at me for a moment. Then nodded her agreement.
“This means she’s won!” Paige screamed. “This means our girl will actually get to live out her dream. And it’s only a couple of weeks into her reign. And oh my word, this means she’ll get to compete for Miss United States of America. We have got to find her! This is huge! This is so huge!”
“I’m going upstairs to shower,” Dad said.“You ladies take the morning shift. And I’ll meet you as soon as I get cleaned up.”
Joshua turned to me.“I’m going back to the house to do the same. Come by in an hour or so and we’ll see what we can find. But if we don’t find her this morning, we really need to tell the Seaside security and get some help looking for her.”
“I agree,” Dad said. “We can’t let this go on much longer without getting some help.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. But I have no idea where she would have spent the night. I’ll come find you later,” I said, still feeling the need to shake Joshua’s hand. Everyone was watching. He saw my face. And rubbed my arm with both acknowledgment and approval.“Come on, Paige,” I said grabbing my friend and thanking Joshua with my eyes.
“She’ll freak! She will absolutely freak!” Paige could be so articulate.
“Yes, she will. She will freak!”
We searched nooks, crannies, and footpaths. We searched the beach just in case she had actually taken that walk to China via the ocean.We decided to go ahead and head to the Seaside security office, which would open at 7:00 a.m.
We were on our way there when we heard the familiar snore. There she lay, stomach down, on a bench in the screened-in porch in front of the Seaside Sales Center. Her head and left arm were hanging over the side. In her left hand was a cup with a few remnants of overripe fruit inside. Drool was coming from the side of her mouth and had formed a rather nasty ravine on the hardwood planks underneath her.
Her sky-blue halter top and white linen pants looked like they’d been through a cat fight. So did the poor thing’s hair. It was not what you’d find beneath a tiara, I assure you. It was more what you’d find underneath a bridge. Actually, on a vagrant underneath a bridge. Not a picture that would fare well in the Savannah Chronicle.
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