Addy noted the color in her mother’s cheeks, the thread of excitement in her voice. “Does he know about Peabody?”
“No, but that would be a good litmus test, wouldn’t it?”
Addy smiled. “It certainly would.”
Claire smiled back. “Don’t worry about the deer. I’ll feed her before I go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Addy kissed her cheek and said, “Thank you. Have fun.”
* * *
CULLEY OFFERED TO cook dinner for Addy under the stipulation that she not hold his less than superior culinary skills against him.
They arrived at his house just after five-thirty. Ida and Madeline came by and picked up Hershey who ran circles in the yard, before settling into the car with his head on Madeline’s lap.
Once they’d left, Culley offered Addy the use of his shower. She took him up on it, feeling as if she had a thin layer of dust coated to her skin. She stood under the warm spray, trying not to think about the fact that he stood in this same shower every day. Or what it would be like to have him in here with her. Time to get out. There was trouble in that line of thinking.
She got dressed and went back downstairs to find him in the kitchen pulling things out of the refrigerator.
He looked up, smiled at her. “I have a limited repertoire, but I make a notable chopped salad.”
“Sounds perfect. How can I help?”
“You handy with a knife?”
“Fairly.”
He passed her a cutting board that had cucumbers and an assortment of bell peppers on it.
“Would you like some wine or something? I could probably find a bottle somewhere.”
“No,” she said. “Better not. My track record’s questionable.”
He grinned. “Playing it safe, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, smiling back.
The kitchen had a lived-in, comfortable feel to it. And Culley obviously knew his way around. It surprised her somehow. Mark wouldn’t have been able to locate a broiling pan with a compass.
Culley had put on some music, John Mayer, and it drifted down from the ceiling speakers.
“Did I thank you for saving me today?”
“No thanks necessary.”
“Plenty necessary. Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
Their gazes held for a moment, something warm and beckoning in the wordless exchange.
Addy looked away first. “So do you think there’s a connection between Dudley and Powers?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but they’ve definitely been the two strongest voices for pushing the interstate through Harper’s Mill. And now it turns out Dudley’s been behind all these threats people have been getting. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out in the wash.”
They worked on the salad, chopping and dicing. Addy thought it amazing that the two of them could enjoy something as simple and mundane as making dinner, but it was the act of doing it together that made it enjoyable. “This is nice,” she said.
“What?”
“Just being here. Doing this.” She hesitated. “Mark and I never did this kind of thing.”
“Yeah?”
She lifted a shoulder. “For a long time, we were both consumed with the career thing. Getting ahead. I was as guilty as he was. But somewhere along the way, it started to feel like there should be more. That it wasn’t enough.”
“Did you want children?”
She nodded.
“And Mark didn’t?”
“He said he wasn’t ready. I guess in the end what he meant was he wasn’t ready with me.”
Culley put down his knife, turned her to him, looked into her eyes. “I don’t know what was going on with Mark. But I do know this. He was an incredibly lucky man. And I think he’s only just now figured that out.”
She looked down, shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He tipped her chin up with one finger. “It matters.”
“Thank you.”
He leaned in and kissed her then. And it felt so right and natural, as if this was where she belonged, like a place she’d been trying to find for a very long time, now recognized.
She put down her own knife, slipped her arms around his neck, and they kissed some more, a man and woman enjoying one another. “Back to You” was the current song, and the lyrics somehow fit the moment, conjured a longing in her for past and present, some mingling of the two.
After a few minutes, they went back to work, cutting, slicing, knocking elbows and bumping knuckles when they reached for the same vegetable.
“A masterpiece,” Culley declared when they were done.
“Too pretty to eat,” she agreed.
They sat outside on the stone terrace, talking about anything and everything.
Something about the night felt rare and special. They shared a few lingering looks that made words unnecessary. Addy found herself wishing she could stretch it out, make it last.
When they were done, they took their plates inside and cleaned up the kitchen. She turned on the dishwasher, wiped down the counter while he put everything away.
“Okay,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ve got something to show you.”
“What?” She smiled, following him into the living room, warmth emanating up from their entwined fingers.
He left her in the center of the floor. “Be right back.”
He disappeared for a few moments, and then was back with two big photo albums which he held up and said, “How brave are you?”
She made a face and said, “How far back do they go?”
“Far enough.”
She tipped her head. “All right. Let’s see how bad it is.”
They sat cross-legged in the middle of the rug, her right knee touching his left. He placed an album on the floor in front of them, opened the cover.
School pictures covered the first few pages, first grade up. Culley with bangs cut straight across his forehead. Addy with a gap-toothed smile. In one picture, Culley’s shirt was buttoned all the way to his throat. And there was one of Addy wearing a pointy-collared dress, one side of which was wet from where she’d had a habit of sucking on it.
“Oh, my gosh,” Addy said, clamping a hand to her mouth.
There were shots of the two of them at nine and ten, when they’d spent most of their summers riding around bareback on ponies and swimming in the orchard pond.
“Our sense of fashion was amazing,” Addy said, laughing. “You actually wore parachute pants!”
“And how’d you get your hair that big?” he asked, pointing at one photo taken after Addy had begged her mom to take her to the beauty shop for a perm.
Into the second album, Mark began to appear in the pictures. There was one of the three of them at the Cliffs, a wall of rock at nearby Smith Mountain Lake where they used to go in the summertime and dive from the top into the deep, cool water below.
In the first few pictures, the three of them were side by side, most of the time with Addy in the middle, arms locked around one another. But then the poses changed, and Addy and Mark stood together with Culley off to the side.
Addy looked up and found Culley’s gaze on her.
“I thought he was the luckiest guy in the world,” he said, the look in his eyes suddenly serious.
The words touched something still tender inside her. She thumbed through the remainder of the album more quickly, closing the cover just as the clock in the foyer struck nine. She sat back with her palms on the floor behind her. “Painful, but fun. Thank you.”
He set the albums on the coffee table next to them, anchored an elbow on either thigh and brushed his hand across the rug. “For the record, if I could do it over again, I would have given Mark a run for his money.”
Addy looked at him, something inside her flipping over. “What does that mean?”
He drew in a deep breath, looked as if he were considering what he was about to say, and
then said, “That I had feelings for you that went beyond friendship, but I didn’t have the courage to act on them. You were crazy about him. And I was, you know, the guy you grew up with.”
She propped an elbow on one knee, rested her cheek on a balled up fist. “Why is it that we can be so sure we’re right about what we feel, and yet we get down the road to look back and wonder what we were thinking?”
“I don’t know, but maybe sometimes we get shaped into a better version of ourselves by those choices. At least, if we’re lucky.”
Addy considered the words. “That morning when I got my eyes opened about Mark, it was like I began to see everything else for what it was as well. That I was accepting a life without children, keeping my nose to the grindstone at work so I didn’t have to think about the holes in my personal life.”
“Maybe we’re willing to settle sometimes, just because it’s easier than making a change. And you know what I realize now?”
“What?”
“Those moments we let go by. The ones where we wish we’d said what we wanted to say, did what we wanted to do. Most of the time you never get them back. I knew how I felt about you all those years ago, and I didn’t take the chance and tell you.” He looked at her for a long moment. “So I’m telling you now. You were amazing to me then. And you still are.”
Emotion rose up from somewhere deep inside, preventing her from speaking. She looked into his eyes, let him see how the words had touched her.
The song on the CD changed. Something about missed chances and the second time around. And it was in that moment that Addy realized she had two choices. She could let what had happened with Mark leave a hole inside her into which every good thing that came into her life would eventually fall. Or, she could choose to see what had happened as an opportunity to, as Culley had said, be a better version of herself.
Life didn’t come with any guarantees. Reaching out for something you wanted always meant there was the possibility you might later lose it.
But to never reach out meant you would never know.
She leaned forward, touched her lips to his, kissed him softly. He kissed her back, tentative, testing kisses, like the first steps of a new dance. They moved carefully at first, finding the rhythm, each step imbuing them with increasing confidence, stripping away the barriers of caution.
Addy could have kissed him forever, just like this, as if they had all the time in the world, as if it were too good not to savor. Everything about this night felt different to Addy. She felt different. As if she were here in the arms of a man to whom she was drawn in a wealth of ways. The past and who they had been to one another now layered with the present, the people they were discovering more each day. She liked who he was, this man he had become.
Another song slipped by, and then another. The kissing changed tone, his hands slipped up the back of her shirt, splayed at her waist.
They changed angles, and he pulled her across his lap, sideways at first, and they kissed like that for a good while. And then he put his hands on her hips, turned her so that they were sitting belly to belly, her legs on either side of him. All along, still kissing, feelings jolting to life beneath the exploration of their hands. She ran her palms across his wide shoulders, and then down his back, fitting closer even as it seemed they couldn’t get close enough.
He pulled back, hands at the bottom of her shirt. “Is this okay?”
With her eyes, she gave him permission, and he lifted her shirt over her head, tossing it on the floor beside them. She undid his buttons, one at a time, then slid his shirt from his shoulders. Admired him for a few moments, then wrapped her arms around his neck, and they got close again. She felt an overwhelming rush of gladness to be here, to be with him. And for the fact that unlike that night in New York, this had something different at its center. Something that stood on its own, without the weight of the baggage she had been carrying around then.
He reached over, pulled a couple of pillows off the couch, and they stretched out on the thick Oriental rug. She lay on her back, and he lay half across her, one leg in between hers.
They kissed some more, taking their time.
He raised up on one elbow, sent a long look down the length of her.
She gave him an uncertain smile. “What?”
“I could just sit and look at you.”
Her face went warm. “You’re too good at this.”
“That was no line, Addy. I don’t have any reason to say anything I don’t mean.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He leaned down, kissed her again.
“Are we making out?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I forgot it could be this much fun.”
“Me, too.”
They kissed some more. Switched places, and now she was on top, his hands on the back of her thighs, urging her closer.
He pulled back, stopped kissing her. “Addy.”
“Umm?”
“If this is all we do, it’s okay by me.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear, dropped to the floor beside him, rested her cheek on his chest. “Was it something I said?”
He smoothed a hand over her hair, kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want to do anything you’re not ready to do. What’s going on between us is too important to rush. If you’re not ready—”
She raised up, touched a finger to his lips. “Thank you. Not just for saying it. For meaning it.”
He got to his feet and pulled her up beside him, arms around her waist. He ducked his head and kissed her, then took her hand and led her to the stairs. They walked up side by side, stopping at the door of his room where they stood for a few moments, looking at one another.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
He lifted her up in his arms, shouldered the door open and stepped into the room. He dipped down, gave her a long thorough kiss, then kicked the door closed behind them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ADDY STRETCHED, arching her back. “How is that possible?”
Culley raised up on one elbow and traced a finger down the length of her arm. “What?”
“That it could be better each time.”
“The response a man lives for.”
“Like you haven’t heard it before.”
He dropped back onto a pillow, stared up at the ceiling. “You have this lady-killer image of me that’s not entirely accurate. Pretty far from it, actually.”
“And you mind?”
“I’m just afraid I might have to live up to it one day.”
She put a hand on his chest. “I guess it always intimidated me.”
“What?”
“How crazy girls were about you.”
He looked at her for a few seconds. “It’s no big deal when it’s not the right girl.”
She leaned over, kissed him. His arms slipped around her waist to pull her across him.
“It’s after midnight,” she said.
“Very late,” he agreed.
“I should get home.”
“Stay a little longer?” This with a kiss on her neck, a hand at the small of her back.
She smiled. “I find it really hard to say no to you.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face, rubbed a thumb across her cheekbone. “That’s because you’re the right girl.”
She stayed a little longer.
* * *
IT WAS NEARLY 2:00 a.m. when they drove up the orchard road and stopped in front of the house.
They’d been quiet most of the drive over, but it was a comfortable, satisfied kind of quiet. There were a lot of questions between them, but Addy felt no sense of urgency for answers. And maybe that was what felt so right about what was happening. The fact that it was revealing itself at a pace of its own.
“Claire’s not going to ground you, is she?”
Addy smiled. “She might if she sees what time it i
s.”
He smiled back, and then with a more serious expression said, “I had a great time tonight.”
“So did I.”
“Can I just make sure we’re clear on something?”
She nodded.
“That wasn’t a casual thing for me.”
“For me, either.”
“I don’t want to rush you, put pressure on you—”
“You’re not,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “It was a perfect night. Really.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you.”
She opened her door, got out. “Good night.”
“’Night.”
She closed the door, walked halfway to the front porch, then turned and watched until the taillights of the Explorer disappeared into the dark.
* * *
CLAIRE HAD BREAKFAST ready the next morning when Addy came downstairs.
“That smells great,” she said.
“I made a batch of blueberry muffins. They’ll be out of the oven in a few minutes. Coffee’s ready.”
“Thanks.” Addy poured herself a cup, then looked up to find Claire studying her.
“You look happy,” she said.
Addy took a sip of her coffee, aimed her expression at neutral. “I am. It’s kind of terrifying.”
Claire opened the oven door to check a muffin with a toothpick. “Not quite done,” she said. “That’s the hard part about finding something good. Much easier to go along telling ourselves we don’t need it.”
“Are we talking about me or you?”
Claire smiled and lifted a shoulder. “Clayton is an interesting man.”
“So you had a good time last night?”
“We did. Nice having a man on the other side of the dinner table. Nice, but not necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that for a long time, I felt like there must be something wrong with me. That your father’s leaving the way he did proved that.”
Addy dropped her gaze under a wave of guilt. “And I didn’t help any.”
Claire reached over and covered Addy’s hand with hers. “You were trying to make sense of it the best you could.”
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