by S. J. Bishop
Ryan turned, his look unreadable behind his sunglasses. The motor cut, and I could hear the sound of the anchor dropping.
“Your daughter isn’t nine.”
Oh no…
“You lied to me. She’s ten.”
I closed my eyes and tried to calm the tidal wave of nausea that rolled through me. This was the moment I’d been trying to avoid. I’d been half hoping that, even if he did find out, he’d ignore it. Go back to Boston, live his life, and leave me alone. The old Ryan would have.
God. I’d been such an idiot. Addie, Brandon, Karen, my parents: they’d all told me, when Ryan had expressed interest in investing in The Mangroves, to tell him the truth about Lea. But I hadn’t. And now it was too late.
“Say something,” Ryan’s voice snapped across the calmness of the water: brutal and demanding.
I glared at him. I didn’t like being yelled at. “And say what? Yes. Okay. I lied. She’s ten, but that doesn’t make her your daughter.”
“Her birthday is in February, so unless you were sleeping with someone else in high school…”
“How dare you. I would never!” I said, outraged. “But that doesn’t mean she’s your daughter. She’s not. She’s mine. You’ve had nothing to do with her.”
Ryan’s hand balled into a fist and crashed into the side of the boat. “Of course I’ve had nothing to do with her! I didn’t know she existed! How dare you take that from me, Courtney! How dare you take away the opportunity for me to get to know my own daughter…”
“Oh please!” I snapped. “It’s fine for you to act all self-righteous now that you’re a bored, wealthy football star with little to do but throw your money here and there! But don’t tell me that eighteen-year-old jackass who broke my heart into pieces would have given two shits about impregnating his high school girlfriend. Because that’s all I was to you, Ryan! I wasn’t the love of your life; I was your high school girlfriend. Good for the odd, fond memory.” I was yelling now. “I was disposable, replaceable. All you had to do was tattoo over my name, and you forgot about me. Forgot about Serenity. You never even reached out again – not to see how I was doing, and not to get any of your things back. Not one word!”
I was crying. Hot, angry tears were streaking down my face as he stood there, his fists balled at his sides, looking ready to break something.
“You were done with me. I wasn’t going to pull you back into my life because we’d made a mistake. You wanted to go off and be a big football star. Fine. And you know what? I let you. I could have dragged you back here, could have dragged you into all of this, but I didn’t. I raised Lea myself. I moved to Texas so that nobody in Serenity would ever know. And I went to community college, Ryan. While you were banging Michigan cheerleaders, I was working nights and taking care of my daughter during the day! I was lucky that my grandparents babysat Lea while I finished my degree. I was lucky that someone like Doug, at twenty years old, would consider dating a mother! I was lucky when my parents offered to sell me the restaurant, but it was hard fucking work to get where I am now. And you don’t get to come here after ten years and act all affronted that I never told you about my daughter!”
Ryan’s head was shaking back and forth. “You should have told me…”
“No! I shouldn’t have! I didn’t want you in our lives. You left me, Ryan. After two years, after everything we went through together. You were such a mess in high school – angry at your mom, shitty in school – and I stood by you! And in return, on the night of graduation, you fucked me and then broke up with me. You didn’t deserve me, and you didn’t deserve Lea.”
My words seemed to reach him like dual slaps. He twitched and seemed shaken. The silence was thick with tension.
“That’s not fair, Courtney,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s not fair.”
“Screw fairness. It’s not fair to be a mother at nineteen, to have my youth stripped from me by the very man who said he’d love me forever.”
Ryan’s jaw jutted outward, and he turned away from me, gripping the side of the boat as if to pry it off. “I would have come back,” he said, finally, his voice gravel. “I wouldn’t have let you do it alone.”
I closed my eyes. “Would you have?” I shook my head. “And even if you had come back, you would have gotten a job to support us. You wouldn’t have gone pro. You would have hated me forever. I couldn’t do that to you, Ryan. Even after what you did to me, I couldn’t do that to you…”
His arms were around me then, and he was crushing me to his chest. I was sobbing – tears I’d never shed, not even after finding out I was pregnant. Tight in Ryan’s arms, my face pressed against his shirt, I sobbed uncontrollably.
The truth was that I never thought I’d be here again, I never thought I’d be in his arms again. I’d wanted, desperately, to tell him about Lea. In those early days, all I’d wanted was to have him back with me. Now, here he was, and he knew.
I don’t know if I turned my face up, or if he bent down, but we were kissing. Raw, desperate, hungry kisses. We devoured each other, as if to make up for those lost years, those years where I’d been too proud and he’d been too selfish. He held my head between his hands, trapping my head and savaging my mouth as if in punishment.
One hand came down and closed over my breast, burning through my shirt and my bra as if searing my skin with a brand: mine.
I arched into him, whimpering, wanting him to touch me everywhere. My hands twisted through his hair, holding his lips to mine while his hand rucked up my shirt, burning the skin at my hip. I was lust and panic and rawness and need and – oh god! This was wrong!
24
Ryan
I ravaged Courtney’s mouth, my tongue thrusting forward to fill her anyway I could. Too much emotion was swirling: rage, regret, sorrow, and longing. I couldn’t control any of it, and I didn’t try. I ground my hips into her. I wanted to possess every fucking inch of her, to remind myself of what I’d let go, to remind her why she shouldn’t have let me…
Her withdrawal was a bucket of cold water. One minute she was fire, living flame in my arms. The next she was gone, her hands shoving against my chest, jerking us apart. She stumbled toward the lip of the boat, grabbing the side to keep herself upright. Her lips and cheeks were flushed, her eyes liquid and burning into mine with unsatisfied desire. Fuck if I was going to stop. I moved forward to reclaim her, but she held up her hands. “No!”
I stopped.
“Ryan. All this,” she waved her hand around. The boat, the water, the sun, and the promise of fierce sex. “We’ve been here before, you and I,” she said. She sounded desperate. “And it was beautiful then. It was also a total lie. I don’t know that you can be committed, Ryan! And I can’t do this again with you. I can’t have Lea get her hopes up and her heart broken. I won’t do that to her.”
“I would never hurt her…” I objected
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to,” Courtney allowed. “I don’t think you meant to hurt me! You’re not malicious, Ryan, but you are selfish. I’ve seen the way you use women. I’ve followed your Instagram account, your twitter…”
Well, fuck.
“Courtney, I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to be Lea’s father. I want to be good to you. I want another chance. I’m not the same guy I was when I was eighteen. You need to give me a chance to prove myself.”
“I’m sorry,” said Courtney, and she looked sorry. But she also looked resolved. “But the answer is no. No.” She shook her head.
“Courtney…”
“Please, take me back to shore, Ryan. I want to go back.” Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart broke with it. I felt terrible, desperate, and angry. I deserved a chance to prove myself to her. I might have been a terrible asshole eleven years ago, but she could not keep me from my daughter.
I drew the anchor in and started the boat, heading back toward the waterway and The Mangroves. The quiet gnawed at my nerves.
“Courtney,”
I tried again when we got off the waterway and the engine stopped roaring. “I can’t forget that I know about Lea. I want to be able to see her.”
“No.”
“Courtney. You can’t just say no,” I said. “I understand that you’re upset, but understand that I am too, and the fact of the matter is that I have a daughter, and I want to see her.”
“No.”
“You can’t deny me that. I don’t want to bring lawyers into this, Courtney, but I will.” I stopped the engine. The Mangroves was in sight, but I wasn’t going to allow her to just leap off of the boat. We were going to finish this.
25
Courtney
We were on the boat for two damn hours before I realized that Ryan was serious: he was going to wring a promise from me to see Lea, or I’d have to leap overboard and swim to shore. In the end, I relented with bad grace - but only because I was pretty certain that Lea already suspected Ryan was her father.
Once we’d settled that he’d pick Lea up the following day, he started the boat and took us back to The Mangroves’ dock. He tried to reach for me, but I leaped off the boat and stormed back to my car, speeding away before he could call after me. He didn’t bother calling my cell phone. He knew I wouldn’t pick up.
When I got home, I called Addie, who came back to the house, Lea in tow. While Lea was playing in the backyard, Addie and I baked cookies, and I told Addie the whole thing. Addie was silent a moment before she said, “You know what I’m going to say.”
I shot her a glance. Actually, I didn’t.
“I think you should give Ryan a chance. Or at least ask Lea what she wants. Also…” Addie scooped a lump of cookie dough onto the baking sheet and paused.
I shot her a look, but she ignored it. “I think you should give him a chance and date him again.”
“Are you fucking serious!”
“Watch your mouth,” cautioned Addie, lowering her voice. “The Chatterbox could be listening. And yes, I’m serious. You’ve followed Ryan’s entire career. You clearly never got over him,” she said. “And now he’s back and interested again, and you’re waving him off like you’re trying to protect your heart.”
She shook her head. “Honey, I love you. I’ll tell you the truth, always. Nobody who knows you thinks you got over Ryan Mcloughlin. And it’s plain as day that you’re not that interested in starting things again with Doug. So why not just go for it with Ryan? Your heart isn’t going to get any more broken than it already is.” She opened the oven, deposited a tray of cookies, and set the timer.
I gaped at Addie, and she shrugged. “I’m telling you what you already know,” she said. “If you won’t listen to yourself, then listen to me. And don’t be a coward. Tell that little girl who her dad is, and let her get to know him.”
That night, when I went looking for Lea, I found her in the living room, tucked into one of the corner chairs, with my yearbook open in her lap.
“To my girl, Courtney,” Lea read, her small finger sliding beneath each word as she read it. “Baby, I don’t want a day to go by without holding you in my arms. You are heat lightening and summer storms. More passionate than a rip tide. Your smile electrifies my life. Your touch erodes me like the waves that beat against the coast…” It was a poetic note, one that had been written in mock seriousness. Ryan had plagiarized a metaphor assignment from our shared junior year English class.
“You warm me like the Florida sunshine. I cannot be who I am with you. Always yours, the love of your life, Ryan.”
Lea looked up from her reading. “I love that note.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a joke. “I know, sweetie,” I said instead. “Do you want to come chat?”
Lea followed me into the breezeway which overlooked the woods behind our house. The cicadas were loud tonight, and my daughter and I sat there in companionable silence, dipping our cookies in our glasses of milk.
“You know when you used to ask me who your father was?”
Lea nodded, chewing. Then she swallowed. “It’s okay, Mom. I know it’s Ryan.”
“How do you know that, baby?” I asked. My heart was breaking for her.
“Because I’ve always known about him. Ever since I can remember. You used to look at those yearbooks all the time when I was little. And you watch his games all the time…”
I closed my eyes.
“It’s okay,” said Lea. “I really like him. He’s nice.”
God, my daughter was so grown up. So smart and intuitive. Ryan might be furious with me, but Lea was too pure-hearted to blame me for not telling her. She’d known all along.
“That’s good, baby,” I said, trying to keep the tears out of my voice. “Because he likes you too. He wants to take you out tomorrow. For ice cream.”
“He does?” said Lea, her eyes widening. “I haven’t even asked him to!”
“I guess he just knew,” I said. My voice was definitely trembling. I wanted to warn her. I wanted to tell her not to get her hopes up. But that would have been cruel. Lea was smart. I would let her form her own opinion about Ryan and pray he didn’t disappoint her.
“Why has it taken him so long?” Lea asked suddenly.
I took a deep breath. “He didn’t know about you, baby. I never told him.”
Lea considered that for a moment and then shrugged. “That’s okay,” she said after a moment, her forgiveness a simple thing. “He knows now.”
She cracked a yawn.
“You want to go to sleep, baby?”
Lea nodded. “Are you going to tuck me in?”
I wasn’t sure I could get out of the chair. “Do you want me to?”
Lea considered that for a minute, her smile impish. “No. Because if you tuck me in, then I have to go to sleep. If I tuck myself in, I can read a bit.”
I laughed softly. “Okay, baby. Go tuck yourself in. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
My daughter left to go to bed, but I stayed awake a few hours longer, staring into the black Florida night and listening to cicadas.
26
Ryan
I’d never hung out with a ten-year-old, and I was more nervous to spend the day with Lea than I’d been to play my first game in the NFL. But there was nothing to get worked up over. The kid was a fucking miracle.
I took her out to play mini-golf on Courtney’s recommendation. True to Courtney’s promise, Lea had a dead-eye. She’d take these wild putts but would somehow manage to sink her ball in. And Christ, could that kid talk.
I had all these questions I’d planned on asking Lea, but it turned out that Lea had her own plans. Before I could even ask her, she told me her entire life’s story in one long run-on sentence that lasted from the moment I picked her up until the fifth hole. Then she asked me questions: Where did I go to school? Who were my best friends? What was my favorite color? What was my dad like? Did I have brothers and sisters? Did I like to draw? What was playing professional football like? I couldn’t answer the questions fast enough for her.
She was incredible. She bounced more than a Mexican jumping bean, skipped from hole to hole, and chattered tirelessly.
At the ice cream parlor, Lea ordered an enormous cup of cookie dough. We sat down at one of the tables outside, and I was gearing up to ask her a question when she said, “Did you love my mom?”
Wow. Apparently, kids know how to hit hard.
“I loved your mother a lot,” I said because it was true. I hadn’t known what to do with that love in high school. I’d been a mess of angry emotions back then, loving Courtney as passionately as I’d hated my mother. I hadn’t wanted to feel that strongly about either one of them.
“Why’d you leave?” she asked.
I rubbed at my forehead. “Because I was an idiot,” I said. “I don’t actually have a better answer.” Eighteen-year-old me had been convinced he couldn’t enjoy life to the fullest while still dating his high school sweetheart. Had I had a blast in the NFL? Making bank, having no-strings-
attached sex, and travelling around the country? Life didn’t get better than that.
But apparently, it did.
I was currently eating ice-cream with all that I’d given up to be a man-whoring party-boy.
“It’s okay,” said Lea, as if sensing I was upset. She reached out and patted my wrist. “You’re here now.”
I looked down at her tiny hand, sticky with melted ice cream. “Lea,” I said. “You wouldn’t mind if we did this more often, would you? I’d really like to spend more time with you.”
Lea beamed at me and nodded vigorously. My heart hurt.
This little girl was incredible, and that had nothing to do with me. Courtney had raised her all by herself. She could have given her up for adoption; she could have chosen not to have her. But that wasn’t Courtney. Courtney was devoted; she was dedicated. She’d been both to me, and I’d thrown her away.
“Are you all right?” Lea asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. “Come on,” I said to her, holding out my hand. “We should get you back before your mother thinks I’ve run away with you.”
On the drive back to Courtney’s house, I thought of all the things I wanted to say to her. I couldn’t be angry because I couldn’t have done a better job with Lea. Who knows what she might have turned into with me? Who knows if I would even have been mature enough not to resent her? I wanted to apologize to Courtney for the scene on the boat. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was, how awed I was at her ability to create such a wonderful life for our daughter…
As we walked up to the door, it wasn’t Courtney who opened it. I recognized the dark-haired woman as someone who worked at The Mangroves. “Hey, Aunt Addie!” said Lea.