How to Walk Away

by Katherine Center

  Then Ian was vaulting over the wooden turnstile, and then he was on the dock, running—no: sprinting, charging, pumping—along it, after us.

  The boat had already edged away. It was three feet from the dock by now, but Ian didn’t even falter.

  He just leapt right off the corner of the dock and landed in a crouch on the one open spot of deck—about three inches from my knees.

  It was a cool, badass, James Bond move like I’d never seen in real life.

  Ian stood up then and faced the crowd. “This is the boat to the reception, I hope,” he said to them all.

  The voice. That accent—again, after all this time. I felt my insides melting like warm butter.

  The driver shouted something angry at Ian in Flemish—I assume something like Not cool, man! You’re going to get yourself killed!—just as the guests all broke into cheers. Ian brushed off his suit, apologized to the driver, and waved an aw-shucks thank-you at the cheering guests before looking around to notice there were no seats left.

  That’s when the boat driver pointed straight at him, like, Sit down, pal! Then pointed straight at the seat next to me.

  Ian turned toward the seat, and that’s when he saw me.

  Our eyes locked.

  If there was a moment for me to die of intensity, this was it. But I couldn’t even do that. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. And from the looks of things, Ian wasn’t doing any of those things, either.

  “Please take your seat, sir,” the boat driver said, in English, at last.

  But Ian did not take his seat. Instead, he dropped to his knees on the deck. In front of me. Kneeling at my feet.

  “You’re here,” he said, a bit breathless.

  All I could think of was nonsense. “I’m not here. You’re here.”

  Every single person on the boat was watching us now, but as the driver revved the engine to pick up speed, the white noise of it gave us a little sound barrier.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.

  Can you be late to a party you weren’t invited to? “You’re not late,” I said.

  Next, his eyes dipped down and caught sight of my necklace. “You’re wearing my present,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I thought you might have thrown it away.”

  “I did,” I said. “My mom fished it out of the trash.”

  “Good woman,” he said. “Do you like it?”

  Slowly, I nodded.

  If it was good to hear the voice after all this time, seeing the face was just short of ecstasy. It made me woozy to be so close. I didn’t have even one photo of him, and so I truly hadn’t seen that face in almost a year. I drank in the sight—those dark blue eyes that always looked a little sad, the Adam’s apple just above his tux tie, the jaw squarer than I’d remembered.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked then.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here,” I said, gesturing at the rest of the guests on the boat, “for a wedding.”

  “Your prick ex-fiancé’s wedding.”

  “It hasn’t been that bad,” I said. Then I gave him a little grin. “It hasn’t been that good, either.”

  He leaned forward and took my hands. “What could you possibly have been thinking?”

  I shrugged. “My parents broke up, and Kit and I were trying to Parent Trap them back together.”

  Ian frowned. “At your ex-fiancé’s wedding?”

  “It was kind of a make-it-work moment.” I met his eyes. “Plus, I’d never been to Europe.”

  “You should have come to Scotland.”

  I couldn’t read his face. Did he know? “I was thinking about it,” I said.

  He seemed surprised. “Were you?”

  “I thought I might pop over there when I was done here.”

  He studied my face. “Is that true?”

  “Yes. Did you know that already? Did Kit tell you?”

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “’Cause I know you’ve kept in touch.”

  He looked down. “I had to keep an eye on you.”

  “I’m pretty sure the last time I saw you, you told me you never cared about me at all, so I’m not sure you had to.”

  “I was lying.”

  “What?”

  “I was lying to you when I said that.”

  I squinted at him to get a better look. “You didn’t not care about me?”

  He settled his eyes square on mine. “I didn’t not care about you.” He leaned closer. “I cared about you.” Then he added, “Too much.”

  “Can you care about a person too much?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

  I studied his face. What was he saying? “Maybe you’re lying now.”

  But he shook his head and picked up one of my hands and pressed it to his heart. It pounded in his chest. “I’m not lying now,” he said.

  That was a heck of a confession. “Why did you lie before?”

  “Because I thought it was better for you.”

  “Why? Why would it be better for you to break my heart?”

  He frowned and leaned closer. “Did I?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think that would happen.”

  “Because you thought I didn’t really like you?”

  Ian nodded. “I thought it was just the aftereffects of the trauma.”

  “Well, guess what? It wasn’t.”

  “I thought I was doing you a favor, really. I thought I was the only one who would suffer.”

  I had to ask. “Why would you suffer?”

  He held my gaze. “Because I didn’t want to be without you.”

  I kept not breathing.

  This didn’t seem like it could possibly be happening—me in Kit’s red dress, talking to Ian, in a tux, on his knees, holding my hand against his beating heart. And yet there was no denying the boat, the water, breeze, the churn of the current.

  We motored under a stone bridge, lit underneath by hanging lanterns, but I barely noticed. Until I heard my name, just as the bridge passed overhead.

  “Margaret!” The voice sounded very close.

  I looked up.

  “Margaret!”

  Hands waving on top of the bridge. Two sets of hands.

  “Margaret!”

  It was my parents. Together, side by side, standing on the bridge at the top of the arch.

  “Why aren’t you at the reception!” I called up to them.

  “We decided to ditch!”

  “Did anyone think to tell me that?”

  “Couldn’t find you!”

  That’s when my dad put an arm around my mom. In that one gesture, I knew something. She was okay.

  More than that: They were okay.

  All that worry about her? I could let that go. They’d found each other, and they knew what to do. They’d either work it out or they wouldn’t. But my job there was done.

  * * *

  THE BOAT DIDN’T slow. We kept moving ahead. My parents receded into the Bruges night, waving a little longer, then dropping their hands and turning to continue their stroll.

  Ian watched them, too, for a minute, before turning back to me.

  “Why are you here again?” I asked.

  “I came to find you.”

  “You came all the way from Scotland to find me?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because I miss you.” The word sounded like “mess.”

  “You do?”

  Ian nodded. “Every day.”

  I didn’t want to break this easily. I wanted to hold out and be tough and stay mad. Maybe it was the thump of his heart against my hand, or those earnest eyes, or that tuxedo he was not just wearing but rocking—but I couldn’t hold out. “I miss you, too.”

  “Even after so long?”

  “I think it might be getting worse, actually,” I confessed.

  “I told myself I had to wait a year to find
you again—give you time to settle and find your way. I consulted with my brothers, even, and everyone agreed—a full year at the minimum. Now, it’s a year. I had just bought a plane ticket to the States when I saw Kit’s post about you coming to Belgium.”

  “You bought a ticket to the States?”

  Ian nodded.

  “But then you came to Bruges?”

  Ian nodded again.

  “Did Kit know you were coming?”

  “In a way, I suppose. She texted me your flight schedule, and the hotel, and a photo of the wedding invite. And then she swore that you’d be all alone all evening long while she and your mother went to this crazy wedding. And then she told me she’d rented a room for me down the hall.”

  I shook my head. Kit. So sneaky. “So you went to the hotel?”

  He nodded. “When I found her there instead of you, she sent me running toward the church.”

  “And they sent you running to the canal boats. And here we are.”

  “But,” lan said, “she didn’t tell me about Scotland.”

  I met his eyes. “No?”

  “Why were you going there?”

  “Oh, you know. Just general tourism. Visit Loch Ness. See a few kilts.”

  Ian smiled a little. There it was.

  It was so strange, looking back, to feel on that crowded boat like there was nobody else around. The sound of the motor disappeared, and so did everyone around us, and so did the past and the future.

  “Back when we met,” Ian said, “I was supposed to be helping you—but it was really you who helped me. The way you teased me—the way you called out my bitterness—the way you surprised me over and over and showed me the world from different angles. It made me better to be around you. You made me laugh—probably more in those weeks we spent together than in my whole life beforehand. You taught me about goofiness. You showed me a different way to be in the world. You brought out some warmer, more hopeful part of my soul. Then, after I left, I had to go cold again.”

  He went on. “I moved home to the gray skies, and I took a job I didn’t like. I didn’t even try to look for something better, because all I could do was count the weeks until I could get back to you. I made a pact with myself to give you a year—but I almost broke it a hundred different times. My only exception was if you started seeing somebody else. Then I was allowed to go to Texas and fight for you.”

  I gave him a look like he was crazy. “Seeing somebody? Like who?”

  “I think that carpenter working on the camp lodge has a thing for you.”

  “He does not.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if the architect did, too. He’s a bit too enthusiastic.”

  “That is bananas.”

  “And of course I keep expecting Chip to crawl back begging any minute.”

  “Unlikely. Since he’s married now.”

  “Short of that, I had to wait a year.”

  “For my sake.”

  Ian nodded. “So you could get back on your feet.”

  I let out a long breath. “Not literally, though. Because it’s not looking like that’s going to happen.”

  Ian nodded. “Maybe not, but you’ve done great. I’ve been cheering you from afar.”

  Something about not just what Ian was saying but the way he was saying it—so intense, so unflinching—had me practically hypnotized.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” he asked then.

  Did I? I could barely think. “Are you saying you’re glad I’m better?”

  He shook his head, like, Not quite it.

  “Are you saying it’s been a tough year for you, too?”

  Not it, either.

  I shrugged. “You’re going to have to tell me.”

  He’d been resting back on his heels a bit, but now he rose up on his knees and edged forward, leaning in close.

  “I think about you all the time, Maggie Jacobsen. I can hardly sleep for missing you. I ache to see you and be near you. I love you with a longing that I can barely contain, and I fear it’s going to drown me.”

  Those eyes again.

  Maybe I should have leaned in to kiss him then, but I found I couldn’t move. It seemed impossible that I could want something so badly—and also get it. I’d been holding back for so long, I didn’t know how to let go.

  Until he brought his hand up to the back of my neck and pulled my mouth to his.

  Because at the kiss, I came to life again.

  The world stood still, but the boat kept going. We drifted past stone houses with stairstepped gables and gardens with foliage so lush, it tumbled down to the water. We floated past boathouses with wooden shutters. We passed cafés with hanging lanterns and candlelit tables by the water. But we didn’t notice any of it.

  Even as the boat taxi pulled up to the reception site and docked, and even as the bride and groom, and his parents, and the wedding party, and all the guests averted their eyes as they climbed up out of the boat and off toward the reception, we didn’t let go. We barely noticed them.

  We just stayed lost in that one kiss we’d waited so long to find.

  Epilogue

  THAT WAS TEN years ago.

  We never made it to the reception, by the way. Just rode the taxi back to the stand and made our way to the hotel from there. Ian kindly—and impressively—carried me piggyback to the hotel, my folded-up chair under one strong arm like it was nothing.

  We decided we ought to take it slow, but then we didn’t.

  We went back to Ian’s hotel room—just down the hall from mine—and stayed up all night. I spent much of the evening trying to explain to Ian why he couldn’t possibly be attracted to me, and he spent just as much of it proving me wrong. Convincingly.

  In the morning, at breakfast, we all ran into each other at the hotel buffet—Kitty, my parents, Ian, and me—and found a table together. None of us looked too perky, but Kitty looked the worst of all.

  “I think we’re going to need to take you to the doctor,” my mother said, touching her hand to Kit’s forehead. “You look like a wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s.”

  Kitty wiped her hand away. “I’m fine.”

  “Wrong,” my mother declared. “You are pale and sweaty.” Then, giving her a look, “I’m pretty sure they have doctors in Belgium.”

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  My mom looked at me for help. “Reason with her.”

  “You do look”—how to say it nicely?—“not yourself. Why don’t you just—”

  But Kitty started talking over me. “I’m fine! I’m fine! I don’t need a doctor—”

  As I kept going with “—see somebody? Just in case?”

  While my dad added, “It’s going to be such a long flight home, and the last thing you need is—“

  As my mom chimed in with “It could be Ebola, it could be a burst appendix, it could be some kind of E. coli situation—”

  We all yammered over one another like the most ridiculous bunch of foreigners, right there in our lovely Belgian hotel’s breakfast café, until, maybe just needing to put an end to the madness, Kitty shouted, “I’m not sick! I’m just pregnant!”

  We all fell quiet.

  “I took a test this morning. Actually, I took three.”

  “Whose is it?” I stage-whispered, after a good long pause. “Fat Benjamin? Or the Moustache?”

  “I vote for Fat Benjamin,” my mother said, in her normal voice.

  “Me, too,” my dad said, raising his hand.

  Ian and I raised ours for Fat Benjamin, too. “Unanimous,” I declared.

  Kitty gave us a look like we were the worst.

  Then she said, “Benjamin, okay? I have to throw up now.”

  * * *

  THAT’S OUR STORY. In the decade since the crash, things have moved on for everyone, like they do.

  My parents did get back together. My dad just wasn’t a grudge holder, or the kind of guy who could stay mad. As he explained it to me once, when I asked, “Your mot
her has never been perfect. And I’ve always loved her anyway.” I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d been in his shoes. But I think choosing to go back and work it out suited him. Leaving wasn’t his style. He was a for-better-or-for-worse kind of guy.

  My dad retired two years later, and about a month after he did, he got the news that he had lung cancer. Of all things. And he didn’t even smoke.

  “Too much sawdust,” he shrugged, when he told us.

  He fought it like a champ, and my mom sat right there with him at every appointment and through every treatment. She crocheted fuzzy socks for him and read him articles from Reader’s Digest, and made steak, spaghetti, and meatloaf for him in a rotation. All his favorites, over and over.

  To fill the time, in between treatments, when he felt good, he started volunteering reading books-on-tape for the blind. It wasn’t long before he realized he had a knack for reading stories. For a while, he invented a job for himself as the bedtime story guy at camp, reading by the fire every Friday night to rapt groups of kids—doing all the voices and the sound effects. He loved it so much that even after he’d gotten far too sick to read, or even to walk out to the campfire, he still came out to listen to his replacements and offer them pointers. My mom drove him in a golf cart and brought folding chairs.

  One night, near the end, when I was visiting him at hospice, he told me that those last years with my mom had been the best of all.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He smiled, a little sly. “She appreciated me more.”

  I flared my nostrils at him.

  “I appreciated her more, too,” he added. “And guess what else?”

  “What?”

  He gave me a half-smile. “I wouldn’t change a thing.” Then he squeezed my hand. “Be sure to tell that to your sister.”

  My dad didn’t want to be buried, he wanted to be planted. So we dug a hole for his ashes on the bonfire hill and planted an oak tree there. My mother wants us to plant another tree over her ashes right next to it when it’s her turn—so the two can grow together with their branches interlocked.

  She brings it up a lot.

  It’s been three years now since he died, and my mom still seems lost. She keeps busy, though. That year without my dad changed her, and humbled her, and freed her in a lot of ways. She’s easier on everyone these days—including, I suspect, herself.