Only You

by Addison Fox

  All of them had vied for her time and finally, fed up with her own swirling thoughts, she’d headed for the backyard and the roses. It was a job that always made her feel melancholy, the removal of one set of blooms to make room for the next. Of course, by doing it she’d have a gorgeous, late-season bloom before it got too cold, but it still always struck her as a slightly sad task.

  Shaking the sadness off along with the dirt on her work pants, she dropped her shears into her gardening pocket and stretched out a few kinks. The backyard had certainly seen its changes. Although the area was small, the boys had always found a way to maximize the space, whether it was a soccer game or tossing footballs or, as they got older, bringing girlfriends out here to talk.

  Or what she’d always thought of as talking and which, she’d ruefully accepted, probably consisted of some light making out, too. She’d lived with it because to ignore the fact they were growing up had always seemed pointless. They were her sons, yes. And her responsibility. And the loves of her life.

  But they were young men, and to ensure they grew into good, strong, adult men, she wasn’t above them learning about how to treat a woman or how to responsibly approach a relationship. No young woman ever visited their home who wasn’t walked home at the end of the evening. And if the girl was good enough to go out with, she was good enough to come to Sunday brunch.

  Her rules had been simple but, Louisa liked to think, they’d left their mark.

  Nick would marry Emma in the spring. Landon and Daphne were planning their wedding now, with next August increasingly looking like the winner.

  And then there was Fender.

  He’d been cagey—which she’d grown to expect from him—but she knew how much he thought of Harlow. The fact he’d brought her to the Glen that weekend was a huge sign of his interest in her.

  The way he looked at her was an even bigger clue.

  A light rap on the back-fence door carried on the afternoon heat, and before she could register the sound, Dave stepped into the backyard. “Emily said I’d find you back here.”

  “She did, did she?” Louisa avoided shooting a hairy eyeball back toward the roofline, where Emily would no doubt be watching, and gestured Dave into the yard instead. Her dear, wonderful boarder was going to be the death of all of them.

  Death by embarrassment.

  “Don’t blame her.” Dave kicked at a small clod of dirt on the yard. “I’m the one who asked when I talked to her through the windows.”

  Through the windows. Good lord, now Emily had resorted to passing messages across the buildings?

  “We missed you again this morning at brunch.”

  Although their conversation the prior week didn’t produce much in the way of advancing a romantic relationship, she did think they’d managed to come to new ground. And that kiss . . .

  Well, she’d hoped it had put them on new ground, even though she hadn’t taken things any further. Which had made it that much more upsetting this morning, when he hadn’t come over for his weekly fix of pancakes and bacon.

  Amending her statement, she added, “I missed you this morning.”

  He stood there in a blue polo and khaki shorts, his hair neatly pressed and his hands shoved in his pockets. He was still trim and fit for sixty and she marveled that she not only found him attractive, but found that the thought of touching him filled her with excitement and anticipation. And just how amazing it was that attraction and desire grew with you as you aged, instead of withering and dying like the roses.

  “I almost came over. Figured I’d held out long enough. And then I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not trying to push you, Louisa. But I also can’t understand why you seem to feel that it’s okay to wither away, not taking anything for yourself. You’re a vibrant woman, and if you don’t want me, I’ll leave you alone. But I don’t think that’s the reason for your hesitance.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Did she dare reach out? Dare close the distance and take what stood before her? Was it time to deadhead her own life and take the fresh growth that was still to come?

  She’d done that once before. She’d stood on the other side of a fence, at the edge of a children’s playground, and seen her future. She’d never been more scared in her life, but she’d also never known a moment of more perfect rightness than the day she made a family with Fender, Landon, and Nick.

  Did she have the courage to make that kind of leap again?

  “I’ve been thinking—” She stopped, pulled her gloves off and wiped her hands on her apron, before moving closer to him. “Well, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things, but particularly about what you said.”

  “What I said?”

  “About the past. About how long ago some choices were. About how I deserve to move on.”

  “Come to any conclusions?”

  Had she?

  Louisa thought about the bright, vibrant young woman who’d come to see her at the pancake breakfast the prior Monday. The young woman who stood proud and tall, more than willing to address her demons and go after what she wanted.

  There’d been a time Louisa had been the same.

  So when had she lost that?

  Oh, the core spirit was there, but she’d channeled it for so long into doing for others that she’d stopped acknowledging that maybe she deserved the same fierce commitment to herself.

  To her own happiness.

  She didn’t regret her decisions, and would never regret the love, attention, and devotion she’d given to her boys and the life they’d built together. But maybe it was time to expand the definition of love and devotion. Time to see where making herself happy might lead.

  “I think I have.”

  “And?” Dave stared down at her, those serious eyes even more solemn than normal.

  In that moment, she realized it was more than her own happiness hanging in the balance. His did, too.

  Extending her hand, she waited for his. “If you’d like, maybe you can come inside with me?”

  Something small and hopeful flickered behind the solemn eyes. “For pancakes?”

  She kept her gaze steady, unwilling to think too hard about what she was proposing. The time for thinking was over. It was time to feel. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  His smile spread as he closed the distance between them, wrapping her hand in his. “I guess it is.”

  * * *

  “The engines are totally different. The cars we watched yesterday are crafted in labs where money is no object and production requirements are irrelevant.”

  “So what you’re saying is that all those precious hours I spent in shop class would be useless on one of those engines.”

  “I don’t know.” Fender’s focus hadn’t left the road as they wove their way back toward the city, but she sensed the shift in his thoughts. The way he carefully calculated and considered details. “You understand the basics of how an engine works. And you also have a keen understanding of the actual mechanics of cars. You might surprise yourself.”

  “Did you have to learn special skills? To work on them?”

  “I may have squeaked by in history and English, but I aced physics and shop, baby. I’ve loved engines since before I could read. The first time I got my hands on a custom engine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

  “Sounds like the summer in college I worked on restoring a Rembrandt. I spent the first month in a mix of stark terror I’d mess something up, and beside myself that they actually left me alone with the painting.”

  “What about months two and three?”

  “I told the rest of them to get lost and leave me alone with my Rembrandt.”

  “I can relate. They don’t start you in the pits, but I had a chance to do some repair work on a professional engine. It was a mess after a race, and I asked if I could have a shot at it.”

  “And?”

  “Aced that, too.” Cocky triumph pai
nted his face. “Aced it enough that I was invited to join the crew. I might have considered it, but I was about three weeks out from buying the shop and realized that I didn’t want to spend my life on the road.”

  “No gals in every race town for you?”

  “Wasn’t my style.”

  Harlow had already figured that out, but it warmed her to hear him say it. Neither of them had come to the relationship without personal history, but there was something about his that smacked of discretion and respect instead of machismo and a race to carve as many notches in his bedposts as he could manage.

  And yet again, she saw that layer of respect that had warmed her from the first.

  “What happened to the painting when you were done with it?” He asked.

  “I started what would be my Masters thesis on the painting and on the artist. And, if memory serves me well, I aced that myself.”

  “Well done, gorgeous.”

  “How do you do that?”

  He did divert his eyes then, shifting his gaze from the road to her before doubling back. “Do what?”

  “How can you make something sound sexy and appreciative all at once?”

  “Um, well . . . what?”

  “What you just said. Usually gorgeous is tossed around like some pet name, putting me up on a pedestal while gently patting me on the head to confirm that I won’t ever be anything more than a pretty ornament. But you say it and compliment me all at once, and it feels good.”

  “Who, exactly, have you been hanging out with?”

  The question was so honest—and so sincere—that she suddenly felt self-conscious. “My family. My friends. Guys I’ve dated. You know. People.”

  “Jerks, if that’s what they made you feel. Or made you think.” He let out a long sigh. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I don’t know what you mean. I see it at the shop all the time. The couple that comes in and the man sort of handles her to get her to keep quiet, even though I can tell he knows jack-shit about an engine or cam shafts or how to check his fucking oil.”

  “Mansplaining?”

  “And then some. I see it at Nick’s bar, too. Every once in a while I’m close enough to listen in on a Friday-or Saturday-night flirt session. Most of the time I want to tell the woman to run for the hills.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “If I thought someone was in genuine danger I’d say something. But when she’s giggling back and eating it all up in return, it’s none of my business.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t.”

  Highway signs for the George Washington Bridge became visible up ahead and Harlow knew what they meant. The quiet weekend that had been just theirs was soon to be over, the bridge the pathway back into Manhattan.

  Back into reality.

  “People are going to wonder about the two of us,” Fender said as sun streamed in the windows, lighting his side of the car as he navigated them closer and closer to home.

  “People already do wonder about us.”

  “They’re going to wonder more. And they’re going to poke at it because they don’t understand it or want to understand it.”

  “Do you think that’s a reason not to move forward?”

  “No.” He let out a hard breath. “Maybe.”

  “Is that why you keep bringing it up?” Her breath caught in her throat, and she held it there for a few beats, waiting for what he was going to say.

  “When Nick started dating Emma, she was the local girl who came from Park Heights. She might have left Brooklyn after school, but her roots were there, as well as her family business.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Daphne is part of the fiber of the neighborhood. Her family is so entrenched in the town, they might as well name a few streets after the Rossis. Hell, someday they probably will.”

  “I’m trying to follow you but am clearly missing something.”

  “Even if we didn’t have history, you’re not a local girl.”

  “I live about four miles away.”

  “Manhattan is a different world. Hell, I don’t think I even went over the bridge into the city until I was eleven. Mama Lou decided to take us in Christmas shopping and to see the Rockettes.”

  “What’s your point? That because you were insulated as a child you’re still insulated as an adult? Or that because you had a difficult childhood it needs to define the rest of your life?” When he didn’t respond, she pressed on. “Because I’m really trying to understand this block that keeps coming up every time you get scared, and I can’t figure it out.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Several minutes passed, along with a continued barrage of overhead signs indicating the proximity of the bridge, before he finally spoke. “I’m not scared about us.”

  “Then what has you so upset?”

  “My father isn’t going to leave this alone. He’s not going to leave us alone.”

  She’d believed this subject closed, or at least diminished over the past few days, so the fact that it was driving so much of his behavior had her reconsidering all that had happened.

  The continued comparison of their lives. The references that hinted to her wealth, even though it was more than obvious that he didn’t care and that he did just fine for himself. Even the repeated references to what people would think of them together.

  In a stark moment of clarity, she realized Fender didn’t care what anyone else thought.

  All he cared about was what his father thought.

  “What did he do to you? Not the sanitized version of the story you’ve developed over the years, but the real one.”

  “Knocked me around. Treated me like shit. The usual.”

  It was hardly usual, but Harlow supposed it did fit a pattern. One that the justice system and social services did their level best to handle and manage, but were too often unsuccessful at changing.

  She wasn’t sure how to proceed—and knew well that she had no right to offer sympathy and compassion for something she hadn’t survived and could barely understand—but she was unable to stay silent.

  “I heard something once. That some of the best people in social services were the ones who went in with their eyes wide open. The ones who didn’t think they were changing the world or saving it, but who saw a base ability to put their time and talent and energy into making the differences where they could. I read that article and thought it was a pretty shitty way to look at the world.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I mean, if you’re going to make it your life’s work, wouldn’t you go in with a few more dreams? A few more hopes?”

  “And wait for it to get knocked away or beaten out of you, case by case?”

  “Exactly. I’d rather have my hopes dashed than never have them at all.” Harlow nearly cringed as she said the words, the prim, proper “keep your spirits high at all costs” attitude likely sounding stupid and childish to Fender.

  It was all too easy to keep spirits high when there hadn’t ever been anything to dash them in the first place.

  “Did something change your mind?” he finally asked. “‘You thought’ sounds like past tense.”

  Something had changed her mind. Life, and living, and the ongoing realization that life existed beyond the perimeter of her neighborhood, her privilege, and her wealth.

  “A few months after I took over at the gallery, I caught a woman out back. We’d had an exhibit and an opening-night party, and I’d stayed late to wrap up a bit, manage a few of the bills, and enjoy a glass of whiskey in celebration of a successful event. While I was in my office, I heard a noise out the back door and went out to investigate.”

  “You went out by yourself? In the middle of the night?”

  His anger warmed her, even as she couldn’t resist poking back at him. “Yes, Mom, and I lived to tell the tale. I was standing with my phone in my hand, 911 at the ready and a very solid door between me and whatever was out there. I figured I could take the ri
sk.”

  “What was out there?”

  “A pregnant woman, digging through the trash to get at the food we’d thrown away.”

  Memories of that night came rushing back to her. Her moment of triumph as she let the last person out of the gallery and then headed back to her office to pour herself a glass of expensive whiskey. The loud crash, and peeking through the door to see the dirty woman, obviously pregnant and starving.

  The image had lingered for months after, every time she thought about the vast chasm between herself and a woman who couldn’t have been that much younger than she was.

  “What did you do?” Fender asked.

  “I said hello and offered her a chance to come inside.”

  “You invited her in? Good Lord, Harlow, how long have you lived in a major city?”

  “Long enough to know how to take care of myself, and how to assess a situation where someone needs help. And this girl needed it.” She took a deep breath, the familiar tightness in her throat the same as every other time she’d thought of that young woman. “It didn’t matter, because she ran away when I tried to help. I found out a few days later she’d overdosed about two blocks away, out behind a restaurant dumpster.

  “As you so eloquently pointed out, we live in a major city. And we’re exposed to pain and suffering in a way that’s very present. I live with that, knowing that people sleep without shelter a few blocks away from me. That there are those who are so strung out that they have to dig through trash cans for their next meal.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’m not. And I’m equally glad I got a better understanding of how the world works. I’m not going to apologize for my life or my own hard work or the gifts I’ve been given, but I’m not defined by them, and I know damn well I have to share them.” She whirled in her seat, the slowed traffic for the bridge ensuring he’d turn to look at her. “You make it sound sometimes like we’re different species. Like our experiences are so far removed from each other as to make it impossible for us to ever understand one another.”