by Kallysten
“I’ve been going down this thing by myself since I was four. I never needed a hand down.”
“So I see,” he replied, glancing at her feet. “And you seem to have the right idea there.”
Bending down, he pulled off his shoes, tucking his socks inside and setting them on the bottom step of the staircase.
“Shall we?” he asked, indicating the beach with a sweeping gesture.
Daisy pointed to his right, where they would find fewer boulders in their path, and they started to stroll down the beach side by side.
“Was it too many?” Daisy asked, thinking of the events of the night and how Woods seemed a little unsettled by all of it. “You said you could read ten, but I never wanted you to feel like you had an obligation to do this.”
Woods glanced at her before returning his gaze to the beach. “I only did nine in the end,” he reminded her. “And it wasn’t too much. I’ve done more before. The most I’ve done in an evening like this was sixteen, back when I was young and foolish.” He flashed her a grin, then continued, more somber now, “It’s just that these visions were pretty…” He hesitated and finally finished with a shrug. “Involved.”
Daisy couldn’t stop herself from chuckling. “Involved?” she repeated. “Is that your code word for X-rated?”
He laughed, and even under the cold light descending from the moon, she could see that he was blushing. It was rather extraordinary that someone who had peeked into so many lives and seen, she imagined, so many things, could still blush in embarrassment.
“That too,” he conceded, “but that’s not what I meant. Your friends all seem to have complicated lives.”
Daisy let out a quick burst of laughter. “Don’t we all?” she asked, tongue in cheek.
He threw a quick grin at her. “I guess you’re right.”
For a little while, they walked in silence. The ocean had pulled away, leaving a band of cool, wet sand in which their steps left two clear trails. Other cottages were peppered along the gentle curve of the coastline, and light or music drifted down from some of them. Once, they came across a trail of footprints, already eroding and fading away, but they never saw anyone else.
“Do you come here often?” Woods asked when they reached the end of the beach, where large boulders blocked the path and advanced into the ocean like a hand trying to clasp the waves.
Stepping onto a smooth rock, Daisy shook her head. “Not anymore. When we were kids, we came here every weekend and for every vacation. Now, we have family reunions every now and then, but my parents are talking about selling the property.”
She hopped from rock to rock toward the ocean as she talked, arms raised on either side of her for balance, years of practice guiding every step.
Woods rolled the hem of his pants a little higher and stepped closer to the water, keeping pace with her.
“That would be a pity. It’s a really nice place.” His feet made small splashing sounds when he reached the point where the waves lapped at the sand. “Quiet,” he continued, his voice so soft that Daisy almost didn’t hear him. “Peaceful.”
She turned to fully face him, dropping her arms as she observed his profile. After a few seconds, he glanced at her and frowned.
“What?” he asked a little defensively.
“Nothing,” she replied at once, but she knew that she sounded too guilty to be convincing. His words and expression, wistful, longing for the peace the beach offered, were hard to reconcile with the image she had of him: TV personality, self-help book author, constantly meeting new people and always greeting them with a smile—even when they were less than pleasant, as she could admit she had been both the first time they had met and earlier that night.
“I wouldn’t have guessed that you liked peace and quiet,” she said after they had both taken a few steps back toward the beach and he continued to look at her questioningly.
When he finally looked away, the shadow of a smile was playing on his lips. “There’s a lot you didn’t guess about me, isn’t there?”
“Touché,” she said, inclining her head.
He held his hand out to her to help her climb off the rocks, but she rested her fingers on his shoulder instead and stepped back down onto the sand. A wave of goose bumps erupted over her arms. She rubbed her hands briskly over them as the two of them started back toward the cottage. She could feel Woods’ eyes on her. After a few more steps, he slipped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She pushed her arms into the sleeves and thanked him with a smile.
“Will you please let me read you?” he asked suddenly.
Taken aback, Daisy stumbled in the sand, her resolve wavering along with her balance. Woods caught her arm to stop her from falling and didn’t let go, holding her gently. Even through the heavy fabric of his jacket, Daisy could feel the warmth of his hand, and the same heat burned in his eyes when she looked up at him.
“What if you’re the one?” he insisted, even more quietly.
Daisy’s throat tightened. She tried to tease him, but her voice sounded flat when she said, “Do you ask yourself that about every woman you see in the street? In a line at the supermarket? Every person sitting in a movie theater when you come in?”
“I wonder, yes,” he admitted easily enough.
“And do you ask them all to kiss you?”
Woods’ chuckle sounded forced. He squeezed her arm once and let go. “Of course not. But you’re not a stranger I just met. We talked at Helen’s—”
“No,” she interrupted. “We argued for five minutes at my sister’s wedding. And tonight was only the second time we met. You don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s not true. I know how much you care about your friends. I know they trust you with their secrets, and that says a lot about a person.” He observed her for a few moments before he added, “I know you changed your mind about me, too.”
Daisy snorted. Was he still trying to convince her? “Did I?” she drawled.
A half smile curled Woods’ lips. “Oh, yes. Before tonight, you didn’t even believe I could do what I claim to do, did you?”
Thinking back on her preparations for the soiree and how part of her had been convinced that Woods would turn out to be a fraud, she had to concede this much was true.
“You’re right. I didn’t think you could do it.”
“But now you do,” Woods pressed on.
She could already guess where this was going; he would use her admission that she had been wrong to try to convince her to have a vision. Still, she couldn’t deny that she did believe him now.
“Yes. I do.”
“So let me,” he asked, and his voice had the low echoes of forbidden temptations.
Daisy tried to cling to her resolve, telling him—and reminding herself—why she’d made her decision. “Sam… I don’t want to know. I want surprises in my life.”
Without even thinking all that hard, she could come up with ten, twenty examples of things she would rather not have known before they had happened to her. Maybe if she told him, if she explained…
No. She had long ago decided that she wouldn’t tell a soul. She didn’t want anyone to treat her differently because of something she couldn’t control.
But Woods wasn’t giving up. “I’ll make you talk about it,” he offered. “You’ll forget right away, like Brett and Jack did.”
Daisy forced a laugh to her lips, but it rang false. “You want me to have a vision and forget it right away? Why would I want to do that?”
“So that I’ll know,” he said, and there was a thread of fear in his voice that hadn’t been there before, a fear that Daisy did not understand until he continued. “So that I can leave tonight and not wonder for the rest of my life if I let the woman I could have made happy get away without trying to hold on to her. Please.”
He reached out for her h
and. Wavering even though she knew better than to let him kiss her, she didn’t stop him. She only had time to look down to see both his hands wrap around hers. Already closing her eyes, she braced herself for what she knew was coming.
* * * *
Standing on the front steps of her dorm building, Helen beamed at Sam, an expectant look in her eyes. He took both her hands in his and smiled back, swallowing the lump of nervousness in his throat.
The evening had been lovely, like their previous dates. They had gone out to a poetry bar and listened to the open mike performances for a while before Helen had surprised him. Standing up, she had taken a deep breath, flashed him a smile, and taken her turn on stage. He had had no idea before that night that she wrote poetry, and as far as he could tell, she was pretty good at it. At least, she received enough applause that she was blushing when she made it back to their table, tittering.
Every time they went out together, Sam had a lot of fun. Helen was beautiful and smart and funny. They had enough in common to have many things to talk about, but still enough differences that they kept discovering new things about each other.
“I had a great time,” she said after a few seconds.
“Me, too,” Sam replied, feeling like an idiot. “You were great on that stage. You should do it again.”
Her smile widened in delight. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I never dared get up there before tonight. Thanks for being there.”
“My pleasure.”
A few seconds ticked by with nothing to break the silence other than the rumbling of a car passing down the street. Helen was waiting, Sam realized. This was it, wasn’t it? She was waiting for him to kiss her—waiting, expecting their first kiss. Knowing her, if he didn’t kiss her soon, she would kiss him herself.
The same mix of hope and fear always filled him when he met a new woman he was attracted to. Hope that she might be the one, fear that she wouldn’t be. In a way, it wasn’t fair. Other people could let their relationships develop and discover each other and whether they were meant to be together step by step. Even when things didn’t work out, even if they ended up heartbroken, they at least had a few weeks or months of joy. Of hope.
For Sam, hope only lasted up to the first kiss.
Maybe this time…
Helen was still smiling when he leaned in closer. He paused, and she crossed the last inch, pressing her mouth to his. Closing his eyes, Sam slipped his arms around her and caressed her lips with his own for a few seconds, drawing things out a little longer. As soon as they kissed properly he would know—and so would she.
Her tongue stroked the seam of his lips before pressing inside. With a swallowed sigh, Sam let her in and welcomed her with a caress of his tongue.
The vision started at once. Helen froze in his arms. Sam ended the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. It was only seconds before he realized he wasn’t the right person for her, but there was nothing he could do to stop the vision before it had run its course. All he could do was watch someone else make Helen happy the way he had started hoping he might.
At twenty-two, he knew he still had plenty of time to find the person he was supposed to be with, but that didn’t stop him from being tired of not finding her and tired of a dating life that never made it beyond a few dates. Even if his date didn’t believe what she saw or forgot it quickly, Sam himself could never forget the vision and what it meant; he could never forget the image of this woman he had liked looking at someone else the way she’d never look at him.
After a few more minutes, Helen drew in a deep breath and pulled away. Sam let her go, his arms falling to either side of him, his hands closing instinctively into fists. He watched her eyes flutter open and waited for the questions he knew would soon come.
“What… what just happened?” she asked, raising a hand to touch her lips.
Sam sighed quietly. How many times had he given this explanation already? A dozen? Two? No, not even that many but it felt like a lot more than that.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you about me,” he said, raking a furious hand through his hair. “I’m a seer. I can give people visions of their future.”
Helen’s delicate eyebrows knitted together in confusion at first, then rose high when she began to understand. Some people needed him to spell everything out before they got it, but he wasn’t surprised that she was one of those who caught on right away. “So what I saw… I mean… the man I saw… Eric…”
Her face broke up into the most beautiful smile. Nodding, Sam looked away and tried not to feel too disappointed. He’d meet his match, sooner or later. It was only a question of time before a vision included him, too. He just hoped it would be sooner rather than later so that it would happen before his heart broke one time too many.
“Did you…did you see it, too?” she asked, a little breathless.
Sam nodded again, now looking back at her warily. Some people didn’t like that he shared moments of their lives that could be very intimate. The outrage he had feared wasn’t there, however, and he was startled when she rested a hand on his arm and stroked it lightly.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It has to be hard for you.”
A slow blink hid Sam’s confusion—and his redoubled disappointment. No one had ever wondered about the toll the visions took on him. The fact that Helen’s first reaction was to worry about him only made him regret even more that she wasn’t the one for him. Sometimes, life simply wasn’t fair.
* * * *
Helen’s invitation for coffee didn’t come as a surprise. She and Sam had remained close since their college years, and he had watched with bittersweet interest as she had met Eric, then fallen in love with him. The two of them still met every few weeks for coffee or a quick lunch together, and it usually was Helen who called first. Sam would have been all right with letting this friendship fade away, too, like he had all the friendships that would never be more than that.
Her invitation for him to attend her wedding, on the other hand, was more unexpected.
“Are you sure?” he asked warily. “What does Eric think of that?”
“He’s fine with it,” she replied without a hesitation. “He knows what you do. What you did for me.”
Sam hid a grimace in his cup. A lot of people knew what he did; after all, going on television to talk about it or writing a book based on his experiences was a far cry from keeping a low profile, as he had, years earlier, when he had given Helen her vision. Still, he doubted he’d ever get used to hearing that someone else knew about his ability. If he could only have kept it all a secret… Sometimes, he wondered what would have happened if, rather than sharing visions with the people they concerned, he had been able to keep them to himself.
She was still looking at him expectantly. He still hadn’t answered, he realized. He set the cup on the table again and tried to smile.
“I’d be glad to be there.” He felt his smile widen a little more, now genuine. “Or be there again, I should say.”
Helen all but beamed at him, like she had that night when he had explained to her that she had just seen a glimpse of her future. A glimpse of her wedding day, in fact, when nervous jitters would paralyze her until she talked to her sister and calmed down.
“How much do you still remember?” he asked, observing her closely as he did.
She shook her head at once, wide eyes betraying her nervousness. “Oh, no, we’re not talking about it. I’ve forgotten too much already. Let’s talk about something else.”
Sam could all but see her mind churn away and try to find another topic. She didn’t veer very far from the vision, however—did she even remember that much?—because the next words out of her mouth were, “Have you ever met my sister Daisy?”
I have, Sam thought to himself. I’ve seen her in your vision. I heard her convince you that it was normal to be nervous a
nd that it didn’t mean you were making a mistake.
“I haven’t had the pleasure,” he said aloud. “She’s the youngest, right?”
“Yes, she’s the baby of the family.” Her lips took a teasing turn. “She’s very pretty. And smart. And very, very single.”
“Playing matchmaker?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her before he took a sip of coffee.
When Helen laughed, Sam felt a pang of regret. Her laugh had been one of the things he liked—loved—so much about her: light, carefree and contagious. He forced himself to smile and pushed away his regrets; they were friends, and he was glad to have that much.
“I just want to see what she’ll think of you,” Helen said when she had calmed down. “She’s been telling me all of this was silly ever since I told her what you showed me.”
Sam’s smile faded. “Great,” he said with an eye roll. “Having to defend myself and what I do is always such fun.”
She patted his hand on the table. “Maybe you’ll just have to give her a demonstration.”
She really was trying to play matchmaker, Sam realized. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It wasn’t unusual for people whom he read to suggest that he read their friends, but Helen had always been different.
“You never asked me to read anyone before,” he said, caught between puzzlement and surprise. “And now you want me to read your sister?”
She’d always been very pretty when she blushed; she still was. Sam chastised himself mentally. She was his friend, she was engaged, and she was getting married to the love of her life. He really had to get over her.
“I just think you and Daisy might hit it off,” she said, half hiding behind her bangs. “I can tell, sometimes, you know. When people belong together.” She laughed again. “Maybe I have a gift, too.”
Again, Sam forced himself to smile. He really wished he could believe, even for a second, that she might be right. He’d hoped so often in the past, however, that he knew better than to let himself hope now. That way, he wouldn’t be too hurt when it turned out that, like Helen, like so many other women, Daisy was destined to be with someone else.