This Is Not How It Ends

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  Liberty had left her car at the airport, so by midnight we were driving the deserted road home. My dad was sound asleep on the couch with Sunny by his feet. As soon as I entered my bedroom, I kicked off my shoes and fell into a bottomless sleep. And though I woke up the next day and the next, I was in a trancelike state. The fantasy of starting my new job with Ben in my heart all but splintered in the wind.

  My dad stayed a few extra days. We went for long walks and got to know each other again. He offered his advice, and I was quick to respond. “It was a ridiculous plan. What did I think would happen? He’d ditch Claudia? Move back to the island with me? Rip Jimmy from his grandparents again?” The problem with the plan was that it was never a plan. It was a wish I kept hidden, without direction. It was romantic and tugged on heartstrings because it was make-believe. “This had all the trappings of a Nicholas Sparks novel.”

  “What’s wrong with Nicholas Sparks?” my father asked. “I love his books.”

  “Of course you do,” I laughed. “Maybe there are people in the world who are meant to be alone. Maybe they touch lives for brief moments, intermittent connections with long-lasting effects. Maybe we’re meant to learn from goodbyes. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s all a bunch of nonsense that sounds good in theory but rips you apart, leaving everything broken.”

  “I don’t believe any of that, Charley Myers.”

  “Stafford,” I corrected him.

  “Charley Stafford, you were meant to be loved.”

  My father returned to Nashville, promising to visit with Julius and Polly. Our goodbye was different from before, and we embraced, vowing to stay in touch.

  Sunday was spent at a farmers market and on a quick visit to Island Home, a nursery just down the road. I’d decided I’d work on the backyard landscaping. Without Philip tending to its needs, the flowers and plants were overgrown and sickly. He employed staff to maintain the area, but I’d fired them, which was snippy and shortsighted of me. Island Home had beautiful plants and flowers, and I’d decided early that morning, in my feverish melancholy, that I’d spruce up the garden with new ceramic pots. I can do this.

  By five o’clock I had a mild case of heat exhaustion. I was dehydrated and could barely breathe. My fingers were filthy, blistered, and raw, plus I had painful burns on my shoulders. The backyard was a disaster. I slunk back into the house and found the number for John, the landscaper, in my phone. He made no effort to conceal his laugh. “Mrs. Stafford, I’ll send the guys over now to take a look. We’ll have it fixed in no time. My condolences, ma’am. Philip was a good man.”

  I headed for our enclosed cabana and changed out of my damp, dirty clothes. There was a blue-and-white bikini hanging on a hook, and I slipped it on my body, eager for a dip in the pool. When I came out, a giant iguana was slithering around the water, taking a big crap. Philip would have taken out his BB gun, his voice filtering through the air. “You bloody bastard.”

  The ocean behind the pool was a peaceful blue. With a towel slung over my shoulder and a yellow raft under my arm, I crossed the backyard. Along the way, I passed the iguana who’d left his mark in our pool, stifled my annoyance, and walked the wooden dock until I reached the tip. Teenagers on Jet Skis passed by, heading toward the sandbar. I dropped the float in the water, attaching it to the rope hanging from the dock. A pair of sailboats followed the teenagers, and I jumped on the float, fell back on the thin plastic, and studied the sky.

  As I tugged on the handle, there was a part of me that wanted to untether the cord and drift far, far away. Far away from Philip’s memory, far from Ben’s rejection. And then it occurred to me I’d ripped the letter. Thrown it in the garbage. Philip’s last words, his confession of love and forgiveness, were in a waste can in Manhattan. And I was sick.

  The screeching sounds of tires on gravel, plus a friendly honk to alert me they’d arrived, meant John and his team were here. I looked up and saw a few of them coming up along the side of the house, meandering around the deck with ladders and equipment. Sunny was barking wildly in the house, and I hollered to John, “Do you mind opening the door and letting Sunny out? I think the doggy door may be stuck.”

  Soon I heard Sunny’s paws thumping against the wood panels, his nails clicking so that I knew they needed to be cut. John’s footsteps were beside him, and I sat up on the raft just in time for Sunny to swoop down for a slobbery kiss.

  Behind him wasn’t John. It was Ben.

  The raft moved beneath me, and I held on tight. “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s not much of a welcome,” he said.

  I was at once aware of my body, and I climbed off the raft and covered myself with a towel.

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

  “We need to talk.” As we headed toward the patio, I sensed his gaze on my back. John and his crew were busy assessing the damage I’d caused and informed me they’d return in two days with everything they’d need to do an overhaul.

  Which left Ben and me alone.

  It was almost ninety degrees in the Keys, though I shivered under the towel. Sunny was at my feet, tasting the sea on my toes, licking my blistered hands. Ben just stood there, grinning. Ben. His eyes a brighter green, his hair this new short length. His nose appeared sunburned, and I wondered if it was from the weekend away with “the Mrs.” Already his scent filled my nose with memories. Ben and the warm sun, like drops of ocean on my cheeks.

  He took a seat on the hammock, and I sat rigid on the lounge chair across from him.

  He didn’t say anything, only reached in his back pocket and dropped a ragged piece of paper on the small table between us. It had been taped together.

  “I think this belongs to you.”

  I stared at Philip’s letter.

  He exhaled. It was long and pronounced.

  “My bartender gave it to me. He said the woman who came in to see me—the pretty woman—was noticeably upset. He didn’t mean to pry, or be nosy, but he thought there might be some significance to the paper you crumpled and asked him to throw out.”

  I couldn’t face him when he said this, choosing to watch the crashing waves, the birds flying overhead.

  “Look at me, Charley.”

  I was too afraid. If I looked at him, I’d lose myself. I’d fall in and be lost forever.

  “Philip cornered me before he died. He asked me to take care of you. He was incoherent by then, making little to no sense, and you know what, Charley, I laughed at him, but I told him I would. I promised.

  “But you . . . you were so damn angry. All that regret . . . You couldn’t see what was right in front of you. I thought you’d come around because you felt the same things I did.” He paused. “I loved you. I wanted to give you all the things he couldn’t. But then you didn’t want the same things . . . and I knew it was a lot to ask, having just lost Philip, so I waited. And I tried. But you kept pushing me away. So I did what you finally asked. I broke my promise to Philip, and I left.”

  I was trying to hold back the emotions that were forming in my throat. I loved him so much I thought my heart would burst. I wanted him to reach over and kiss me, grab me in his arms, and never let me go.

  “Why’d you come to New York?”

  Sunny brayed, and I patted him on the head. My voice was gravelly. “You know why I came.”

  The hammock tilted, and he grabbed the ropes. “I want you to say it.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. It was a mistake.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Why, Ben? You’re with someone else. You married her. That guy at the bar told me. What did you expect me to do?”

  He dropped his head into his hands. What could he possibly say? I had lost my chance. It was over.

  But then he laughed.

  “I’m glad you think it’s funny.”

  “Tell me what you want, Charley. I won’t ask again.” The laughter faded, and he was serious.

  “You have no right to ask me that.”

  He
stood up, inching closer, his words stretching out. “Tell me what you want.”

  “You love someone else . . .”

  He pulled me up to meet him until I couldn’t look away. His eyes were deep pools, and I was falling in. “Forget everyone else.”

  “It’s wrong, Ben . . .”

  “Charley, tell me what you want.”

  I concentrated on Ben. Ben standing in front of me. Ben asking me for something I had no right to give. It slipped out. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “You.”

  “Say it again, Charley. I didn’t hear you.”

  My cheeks flamed, but I did what he asked, raising my voice a little louder, speaking a little clearer. “I want you.”

  He pulled me closer, his breath in my ear. “Good, I’m glad we’ve got that settled.”

  I shook my head, not understanding. He was so close, but we’d lost our chance. There’d be no more touching him, no last chance to love him. When he spoke, it was a whiff of air against my cheeks. “Charley, my guys have names for their significant others. ‘Ball and chain.’ ‘Girlfriend.’ When they think it gets serious, they tease . . . ‘the Mrs.’”

  I was half listening, and he was inching closer, but what he was saying hadn’t fully registered. “Claudia’s not my wife, Charley. She’ll never be my wife. We broke up. It was a short visit. That’s when I got the letter.”

  The world stopped spinning. I searched his eyes. “Say that again.”

  “I’m saying you have no more excuses to push me away.”

  A tear slid down my face. He kissed it softly, and I told myself this wasn’t a dream. This was Ben kissing me. Ben was here. Ben loved me.

  “Do you know how much I’ve missed you?”

  Now that I was able to tell Ben how I felt, I couldn’t find the words. I hugged him instead. I pulled him toward me and circled my arms around his waist. His found their way around my shoulders until the longing disappeared.

  He was kissing the top of my head. “I love you so much, Charley.”

  That’s when I realized I hadn’t said it back.

  I took his hand and rested it on my heart.

  “You don’t have to do that, Charley. I plan on touching you again.”

  “No,” I said, feeling myself come alive. “Feel this. Feel my heart.”

  His fingers spanned over my breast, and our eyes met.

  “I love you,” I said through my tears. “I need to give you this. It’s yours.”

  That’s when his lips came down on mine, and his hands flung the towel away. His mouth was urgent and powerful, our bodies knowing just where to touch. I was out of breath, overwhelmed with wanting. This was love. This was Ben and Me. But this is not how it ends either.

  We barely made it to the front of the house and up the stairs of the Love Shack before he was on top of me. The want between my legs was almost as strong as the desire within my soul. Our bodies found each other again as though they’d never parted. When we were done, we lay there spent, my body snug against the curve of his chest.

  “We just did it in the love shack.”

  He tickled my skin with his fingertips, and we didn’t talk about the fact that neither of us had wanted to make love in Philip’s house.

  “I want you to live with Jimmy and me,” he said. “I want us to be a family.”

  I let the idea simmer, warming my skin.

  “I want to make you breakfast in bed. I want to watch you fall asleep at night, and the hours in between . . .”—he slid his hand toward my inner thigh—“we can find stuff to do.” He was inching closer, and I felt him move against me. “Say yes.”

  I didn’t answer him with words.

  THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS

  Ben had never sold the Islamorada home. It turned out he had contracted with TINHIE for a mere six months. He’d signed on for their opening, helped them get established, and then planned on focusing on his other restaurants. Claudia was an unforeseen circumstance he hadn’t factored into the equation. “I had to get away from the island, Charley. I had to get away from you.”

  “What about Jimmy’s grandparents?”

  “They hate New York. They begged me to stay. They wanted to move here—escape the cold winters.”

  I rolled over in our love shack. “You left because of me?”

  “That wasn’t our ending, Charley. I told you that months ago.”

  “And the restaurant?” I asked, squeezing his fingers. “Will they keep the name?”

  “They hated that name. It was the one thing that kept me tied to you, Charley. It was speaking to you when I couldn’t. If I held on to the idea, maybe it would be true.”

  “It’s a weird name.”

  He nuzzled me. “You’re weird, so it’s perfect.”

  The house in Islamorada sold after only four days, though I didn’t have to be out until Labor Day. I stood in the doorway, staring down the barrel of memories. Philip was everywhere. In the bookshelves. In the floors. In the view we’d stared at for not even a year. I donated the money from the sale to pancreatic cancer research and moved in with Ben. Only it wasn’t in New York.

  By the end of summer, Ben, Jimmy, and Sari’s parents, Caren and Nick, had returned to Islamorada for good. After a week of my sneaking home in the middle of the night, Jimmy cornered me. “I’m not a baby anymore, Charley. It’s okay to have a sleepover.” Jimmy had sprouted since I’d seen him last. He wasn’t the shy, closed-off boy I’d once met. When he walked away, I smiled, thinking about the life we were creating together. The next day, I stepped through their door with my suitcases. Jimmy helped me carry them to Ben’s and my room.

  Sari’s parents moved down the street. We met over coffee at Morada Bay, where they were welcoming Ben back—for good. Caren was quiet at first. I could tell how much it pained her to meet the woman who she felt was taking her daughter’s place. When the men got up to talk shop, I reached across the table for her hand. “I’ll never take Sari’s place. Ever. She’s very much a part of our lives.”

  She softened, appraising me. She must have been a pretty woman, like her daughter, but the loss had creased her face. Her hair was in a short dark bob, with strands of gray threaded through. Her brown eyes captured a never-ending sadness.

  Voice trembling, she spoke. “I know what you did for Philip. Ben loved him very much.”

  “We both did.”

  We were sitting on the Pierre’s side of the property, so our chairs were thicker and plusher. The beach was deserted, the sand flattened. I narrowed in on the water because of its soothing effect, the waves lessening any tension. “I think back to that time when it was the three of us. We loved each other so much.” She eyed me intently. “We would’ve done anything for each other.” I paused before finishing. “Even if we had to hurt each other along the way.”

  She nodded her head, and I saw a tear spring from her eye. “We all make sacrifices for those we love, Charlotte.”

  “Please,” I said, “call me Charley.”

  “Thank you for loving Ben, Charley. And for being so kind to our grandson.”

  My throat knotted up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of us. Opening your heart again makes you vulnerable. I won’t hurt them, Caren. Not Ben. Not Jimmy.”

  She reached across the table with her free hand. “I know that. Thank you for including us in your life.”

  I smiled a wide grin. “I should be thanking you.”

  The men returned, and Nick handed Caren a handkerchief from his pocket and winked at me. “Leave these two alone for a minute and see what happens.”

  In the beginning, I walked Old Highway with Sunny, wearing a shiny ring on my finger and holding an unfinished tale in my pocket. I remembered the day being much like today. Sweltering hot, the humidity so thick you could catch it in your palm. There was no way of telling how the story would turn out, no way of knowing that the ring would slip off my finger into the hands of another while a young boy clung to life.

  The long table at Morada Bay was
perched beside the famous bended palm. Ben and I, Jimmy, Caren and Nick, Liberty, a man Liberty had just begun to date, my father, Julius, Polly, and Sunny. There was an empty seat at the table that was left there on purpose. A seat that symbolized the people we had loved and lost, the people who would forever remain.

  The restaurant was crowded with guests celebrating Ben’s return. Brett was playing all our favorites. Eagles. James Taylor. Don Henley. Sunny loved Don Henley. Our table was happily buzzed, swaying to the music, singing along with the words. Ben’s arm came around my shoulder, and he whispered in my ear. “Jimmy wants to show you something.”

  The boy appeared between us. He was holding a small painting, and when he saw he had our attention, he turned it around for us to see.

  “Jimmy!” I shrieked, as all eyes at the table turned in our direction.

  “What do you think?” Ben said.

  The painting was Ben. He was on his knees in front of the house. Ben was asking me to marry him.

  “Say yes, Charley!” Jimmy shouted. It was the most natural thing in the world. It was hardly a question.

  I squinted, moving closer toward the masterpiece Jimmy had created. The house had a name, the sign hung from the banister. Sea Forever.

  My gaze traveled from Ben to Sari’s parents. They were smiling, nodding their approval.

  “Yes! Yes, to all of you!” And the three of us hugged each other hard, and our guests joined in, and when it was just the two of us again, I found Ben’s ear and whispered, “Anything not to have to cook.”

  That was when I saw the butterfly. It flapped its beautiful orange wings across our table, fluttering and twirling around us to let its presence be known. And I knew in my heart the butterfly was here to tell me it was okay. It was approval and love and protection. It was Sari and Philip and my beautiful mother saying it was time to love again. It’s okay, Charley. Go on. This is about life. This is about living.

  We married on an October day, surrounded by the same group of friends and family. A week later, I found out I was pregnant. With twins. By May, we gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and a lovely baby girl.