by Megan Hart
“Why are Nick and Robbie down at the beach together?” He put the full bag by the door.
Bess handed him an empty one. “Nick’s talking to him.”
Connor laughed low as he tucked the new bag into the can. “Yeah, Robbie’s always been a little slow.”
“I don’t find that funny, Connor.” She crossed her arms.
He straightened and looked her in the eyes. “I didn’t think you would.”
She stared at him. He stared back. Neither of them broke eye contact, neither looked away.
“I’m with him,” Bess said without a tremble or trace of hesitation in her voice. “And I hope you boys can understand that. I’m not sure if I can expect you to. But I hope you do.”
Connor leaned against the counter, his arms crossed in imitation of hers. “What about Dad?”
“Your father and I tried to make our marriage work. But it didn’t.” Bess shook her head. “It doesn’t mean we don’t love you and Robbie.”
“Mom,” said Connor with a trace of disdain. “I don’t need the sunshine fairy glitter story, okay? People break up all the time. I’ll be fine. Robbie’ll be fine, too.”
It didn’t relieve her to hear him say it, even if he was convinced it was true. “I don’t want you to think my relationship with Nick had anything to do with me and your dad.”
Connor snorted, unfolding his arms and no longer resting against the counter. “Yeah, whatever. It’s not any of my business.”
He turned to go, but Bess’s words stopped him. “You’re right. It’s not any of your business. But I should have told you and your brother the truth right away instead of lying about it. I’m sorry.”
Connor paused, his shoulders hunching for a moment or two before he straightened again. He didn’t turn to look at her. “Forget about it.”
“I’m sorry, Connor,” Bess said sincerely, knowing it would do no good. Whatever chasm had opened between her and her oldest son was inexorably widening. “I love him.”
“You love him?” He turned around to face her. “After what, three weeks? You love him?”
She couldn’t very well admit it had been longer than that. “Like I said, I’m not sure I can expect you to understand.”
“And you want me to believe it had nothing to do with you and Dad breaking up, but you love him?” Connor’s voice got thick. “That’s a fucking joke, Mom! A joke!”
Bess flinched, not at the language but the vehemence behind it. “Connor—”
He held up his hands. “He’s, like, two years older than me! What’s he doing with you, anyway? What’s he after?”
Bess had never imagined her son might assume Nick was trying to scam her. “He’s not after anything!”
“Yeah? So why doesn’t he work? Where’s he get his money? Is he your…what—your hired stud?” Connor’s mouth twisted as if he’d bitten a lemon. “Don’t tell me you love him, please. I’m a big boy. I can handle the fact you’ve got yourself a cute little fuck buddy—”
Bess hadn’t spanked her boys when they were young, and though her hand itched to slap the nasty words right out of his mouth now, she slapped the counter instead. Hard. Her hand stung, but Connor stopped.
“You don’t know anything about it,” she said in a voice colder than she’d ever imagined having to use with her own child. “Don’t think you’re so smart, Connor Alan, because you’re not.”
Connor blinked rapidly, to Bess’s dismay, and his eyes shone bright as though he fought back tears. “You should’ve just told us the truth right away, Mom.”
“What would you have done, Connor? Would you have believed me then, or would you have jumped to the same conclusions? I can’t explain it to you, it just is. I know it’s not easy for you, or your brother.” She swallowed, hard. “It’s not going to be easy for me and Nick, either. But you can’t choose who you love, honey, it just happens.”
“You can choose who you don’t love,” Connor said, with an insight Bess wouldn’t have imagined him to possess.
“I don’t want to choose not to love Nick,” she answered honestly.
At least it was on the table, so to speak. In the open. Bess drew in a deep breath, her stomach settled now that the worst seemed past.
Connor scowled and stalked away, calling over his shoulder, “I’m out of here.”
The worst hadn’t passed, after all. Bess had assumed Connor meant out of the kitchen, but when he came back a few minutes later with his backpack and a duffel bag, her stomach leaped and jumped again.
“Where are you going?” she cried as he passed the kitchen and headed for the stairs.
“I’m going to crash at Derrick’s place. He’s looking for a roommate. Maybe I’ll stay there for the rest of the summer.”
“Maybe—Connor, wait.” Bess followed, but he didn’t stop. He thudded down the stairs two at a time. His duffel battered the wall and knocked off a large, framed photo collage that had hung there since Bess’s childhood. The picture hit the stairs behind him and the glass cracked. Connor didn’t stop.
Bess didn’t, either. She followed him out to the carport, where they both stared at the Volvo. “You’re not taking my car.”
He hadn’t seemed to think that far ahead, but adapted quickly. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Derrick. Can you pick me up, man? Yeah. Thanks.”
Boys communicated differently than girls, and that was it. Connor disconnected the call and put his phone back in his pocket. He slung the duffel over his shoulder and made for the street.
“Connor! What about work?” Bess hurried after him.
“Me and Derrick can work the same shifts. I’ll ride with him.”
“And you can count on him for that?”
Connor stopped. Turned. He set his duffel on the sidewalk. Bess recognized his sulk from his toddlerhood.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I can trust him.”
And he couldn’t trust her. Bess winced. “You’ve known him only a few weeks.”
Connor raised an eyebrow, looking so much like his father she wanted to scream. “Yeah? Apparently a few weeks is plenty long enough.”
He turned away from her. Bess spun on her heel and started walking back to the house. She’d been prepared to let him go at the end of the summer, but she let him go now.
Back in the house, she found Nick in the kitchen, putting detergent in the dishwasher. He closed the door and switched it on, turning as she came into the kitchen. He took one look at her and enfolded her in his arms.
“Connor,” was all she said.
“That bad?” His hand stroked her hair. “Shh. Bess. It’s okay.”
“Where’s Robbie?”
“Down at the beach, I guess.”
Bess tilted her head up to look at him. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him the truth.”
She knew him well enough now to smile instead of grimace. “Which was?”
Nick smoothed her hair off her face and kissed her. “I told him I’m crazy in love with his mother and I plan on keeping her the happiest woman alive for as long as I can, and if he had a problem with it he might as well punch me in my face now, because I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.”
Bess studied him. “Did he?”
Nick grinned. “No. I thought he might, and damn, your boy’s big. I was sure I was gonna get my ass kicked. But…no. Robbie’s a good kid.”
There was an irony there, in Nick calling Robbie a kid.
“He is,” Bess said. “Connor walked out on me. He says he’s going to live with somebody he works with.”
“So let him. He’s old enough.”
Bess chewed the inside of her cheek and pushed gently away from Nick. She left him in the kitchen and went to the bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the bed and fought tears. When he appeared in the doorway a few minutes later and sat beside her, and when he took her hand, she stopped fighting.
; She cried for a while, more because it felt good to weep and have Nick’s shoulder beneath her face when she did it. When he pushed her gently onto the bed and cuddled her, holding her tight, that felt good, too. And when he stroked her hair. Being with him, just being, felt good.
It was different, this time around. All of it. In so many ways she couldn’t begin to name them all.
Bess turned in his arms to face him. “I’m not sorry.”
“Okay.” He smiled and kissed her, but didn’t ask what she wasn’t sorry for.
“For anything,” Bess said. “Not back then. But more…I’m not sorry about now.”
Nick’s brow furrowed. “Not sure I get you.”
“I mean…” She shook her head, willing the words to come easily and knowing they probably wouldn’t. “I’m not sorry about the way things happened back then. Because if things had been different then, I don’t think we’d have this, now.”
Nick frowned. Bess felt the tension in his body, but he didn’t pull away. “We might have.”
“No.” She shook her head again. “We wouldn’t have, Nick. You know it.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, and Bess didn’t try to fill the silence. When he spoke at last, his voice was low and deep. It held the currents of the ocean in its cadence, and the cries of the seabirds. It was a sad and lonely sound, but a beautiful one, too.
“I waited for you. But you didn’t wait for me, not long enough, did you? Yet all those years passed with me waiting, and here you are. Here we are.”
“Here we are,” she whispered.
“Maybe you’re right,” Nick told her, still in a voice that reminded her of the sea. “Maybe things wouldn’t have worked with us.”
“We’ll never know,” Bess said.
“We don’t have to know,” Nick replied. “Because no matter what might have been, this is what is. This is what we have. It’s what I have, Bess.”
She kissed him, and held him tight, and together they listened for a while to the sound of the ocean outside.
“You might not be sorry, but I am.” Nick said the words into her hair when Bess had nearly fallen asleep. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t speak. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth back then, when I had the chance. And I’m sorry I didn’t come for you like I said I would.”
“You had no choice. I don’t blame you.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” His mouth moved in her hair, his breath hot on her scalp.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I did blame you. For a while. But then I stopped.”
“And then you came back.” He sounded as if he was smiling. “And here you are.”
“Here we are.”
He sighed. There was more silence, but it wasn’t awkward. “I just wish I knew…for how long.”
She pushed herself up on her elbow to look at him. “Why can’t it be forever?”
“There’s no such thing.”
She touched his cheek. “Then I’ll take as long as I can get.”
But as she settled back down into the comfort of his embrace, Bess, too, wondered how long that would be.
CHAPTER 36
Then
“What are you doing here?” Bess moved around Nick, who stepped aside to let her pass.
“What are you doing here?” Andy asked, glowering.
“I was just on my way to work.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t quite the truth.
“Missy told me you’d be here.” Andy glared over Bess’s shoulder at Nick, who lounged in the doorway, smiling faintly. “Who’s that?”
“If Missy told you to come here, she told you who I am,” Nick said.
Andy’s mouth worked, but he ignored Nick and looked at Bess. “What the hell’s going on?”
The world had begun to spin, and Bess put a hand on the porch railing to keep herself from spinning with it. “Nick, would you get my backpack?”
Both of them looked at her as she gazed at the ground. She felt them looking, but couldn’t face either of them. After a heartbeat, then another, Nick said, “Sure,” in a voice that told her he was no longer smiling.
He was back with it in a minute and thrust it into her hand. She glanced up then, but Nick wasn’t looking at her. He was glaring at Andy. A quick glance at Andy showed he was glaring at Nick. She closed her fingers around the backpack’s straps and slung it over her shoulder.
“I have to get to work,” she said to Andy. “You can walk with me, if you want.”
She turned to Nick. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
Stung, Bess recoiled, but then lifted her chin. “I’ll see you.”
“Whatever.” Nick flashed her a smile that sent icicles straight down her spine. Then he shut the door in her face.
Bess unlocked her bike from the railing and started walking it without bothering to see if Andy followed. He did, after a minute, with the bike as a barrier between them.
“What the hell’s going on?” he repeated, and when she didn’t answer he grabbed her arm.
Bess jerked away from him, but stopped walking. “Why are you here, Andy?”
“Because I wanted to see you.” He reached for her again, but when she twitched out of reach he stopped. “I wanted to find out what’s going on. I figured I’d surprise you. I guess I fucking did.”
“Yeah.” Bess started walking again. Her backpack slapped against her side as she walked, and she paused to put it in her bike basket before continuing.
“I called your house but your cousin said you were with Missy. So I called her.”
“I’m sure she was thrilled to be woken up so early.”
“She wasn’t.”
Bess gave him a glance. Andy didn’t look shamefaced at all, but he didn’t look so mad anymore, either. “You stopped calling me,” she stated.
“I thought you were mad at me.” He gave her a sad little grin that did nothing to win her sympathies.
“So you just stopped calling? What were you trying to prove?”
Nick lived closer to the shop than Bess. The trip wasn’t going to take long, and she wanted to finish this conversation before she got to work. Even this early, there were joggers and dog walkers out and about. She didn’t want to make a scene.
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. God, Bess, would you stop and look at me?”
“I have to get to work, Andy, I don’t have time to fight with you now.”
“You don’t have time, or you just don’t want to?”
She stopped then. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to fight with you about this.”
“So it’s all my fault? I drive four hours down here to see my girlfriend and find her in some other guy’s apartment, but it’s my fault?”
“I didn’t say that!”
Andy scowled. “You didn’t have to.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Andy.” Bess pushed her bike across the highway and toward Bethany’s main square. To her left was the tall totem pole that had stood there for years. It appeared to be giving her a disapproving look. She didn’t blame it.
“I’m not putting words in your mouth. Stop and talk to me!”
“I don’t want to talk to you!” There it was. The truth. She hadn’t meant to shout it but felt immediately better for it. “I don’t want to talk to you about this, Andy. Not now.”
Not ever, maybe.
“I drove four hours—”
“What do you want? A medal? You drove four hours to get to me when you wanted to, but oh, when I asked you to earlier in the summer there was no way you could make it!”
She stopped and faced him, her fingers clenched so hard on her bike handles her knuckles had gone white. Andy wore a hangdog look she wanted to believe but didn’t. Bess bit her tongue against the accusations she didn’t want to hurl.
“I came for you,” Andy said, as if that should make it all better.
Bess couldn’t decide if she wished it did, or was glad it did not.
“Maybe you should have come sooner.”
At last Andy flinched. “Are you fucking that guy?”
“What made you decide to come find out? I asked you a dozen times to come down here. You always had an excuse for why you couldn’t.”
“I’m sorry!”
She did believe him, this time. “Jesus, Andy, I broke up with you and you didn’t even notice!”
He blinked and swallowed hard. Bess was amazed to see she might have actually hurt his feelings. Shame and a secret, guilty pleasure both took up residence in her guts.
“You broke up with me?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Yeah, but I thought Matty was fucking with me. I didn’t know it meant you broke up with me.” Andy blinked rapidly.
“And yet you still didn’t call,” Bess said. “Wow. You must’ve really cared a whole lot.”
“Are you with him now? That other guy?”
“His name’s Nick. And…I don’t know if I’m with him.”
Andy’s face turned bleak. “You’re sleeping with him.”
“Andy, does it matter?” she asked. “You’ve been screwing around on me all summer and maybe before that! Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”
“I haven’t been!” Yet his guilty eyes told her the truth.
Bess sneered. “Oh, please. I’m not stupid. At least admit it, Andy. You’ve been screwing around.”
“It didn’t mean anything to me,” he muttered, caught, not quite ready to admit to wrongdoing.
“Well, it meant something to me.” Bess looked at the ground, surprised to see the splash of a tear hitting the dust on her sneakers. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
“So you decided to get back at me? Or…what?” Andy sounded genuinely confused.
Bess looked at him. The edges of his face had blurred, but it was still the face she’d loved for so many years. “I didn’t do it to get back at you, Andy. It just happened. And, yes. I’ve been sleeping with him. I’ll tell you the truth, even if you couldn’t tell me.”
Andy flinched again and looked away. He scuffed at the sidewalk and didn’t follow her when she started walking again. He caught up to her in the alley, though, behind the shop, where she locked her bike and prepared to unlock the door.
