She turned just in time to see the object of their conversation. His jeans and navy sport coat hung on his frame like he’d lost weight. His golden brown hair had lost some of its sheen.
Her heart ached when she realized that his eyes looked like all the joy they’d ever held in them had been snuffed out. Like they’d been that way for a long time.
But it was his down-turned lips which captivated her attention. He’d overheard Emily’s gossip.
Marissa’s cheeks flamed. This was why she hadn’t wanted to come to the reunion.
“Ladies.”
That voice, which accompanied a thousand memories Marissa hadn’t thought about in over a decade, made her heart stop. It wasn’t a dream.
“Declan.”
His lips twitched in the beginning of an acknowledgement of her presence, but it was the scathing disapproval he shot at Emily which took center stage.
Emily blushed. “Oh, Declan. It’s good to see you. You look well all things considered. You remember Marissa?”
His eyes drifted over to hers with a hint of recognition, though he didn’t speak.
“Anyway, I’ll just leave the two of you to get reacquainted, shall I?” Emily leaned in and kissed the air to the side of both Marissa’s cheeks. “Let’s have lunch sometime. I’ll call and set something up.”
Marissa sighed as she watched Emily scurry into the crowd, her beady eyes searching for her next target.
Well, that was awkward.
Declan’s air of power waned, and he rubbed his eyes. “It could have been worse. Most of the time, they just stop talking when I walk into a room.”
Marissa turned away from Declan, closing her eyes in self-deprecation. Perfect. She turned back to him with an apologetic smile. “I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”
He looked almost pained as he bobbed his head once. “Yeah.”
She fell silent, unsure of what she could say to ease his burden. She couldn’t even imagine what a loss like his would feel like. Sure, she’d lost her parents, but he’d lost his wife. How did one comfort someone through that kind of loss?
Then again, nineteen-year-old Declan hadn’t let that stop him when he drove all night to comfort her during her parents’ funeral, and he’d been one of the most consoling people there.
She hesitated, then wrapped him in a hug. A hug that took a few moments before he lifted his arms and returned it, his face dropping to the crook of her neck the way it used to all those years ago.
When she pulled away, she took the chance to scrutinize him, how his face looked gaunt like he hadn’t had a proper meal in forever. How the lines of his face had grown etched over twenty years from repeated muscle movements and facial expressions. He wasn’t any less handsome than he’d been back then, just older. More mature. “How are you?”
He tried to fake it. She could tell by the smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The practiced single shoulder shrug. The way he distributed his weight unevenly like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Oh, you know—”
She stopped him, a finger hovering over his lips. “Yes, Declan. I do know. So, drop the act.”
His bravado deflated in an instant. “Honestly? I was fine—well, not fine, but getting better at least—until I got here.”
Join the club.
“But I promised someone I’d make an appearance, so here I am.”
“Man of your word.” He may have grown older, but he hadn’t really changed. Not in the ways that it mattered. That pleased her more than she could have expected.
“For all the good it does me.”
Maybe he had changed more than she could see. The old Declan would never have been so resigned or cynical. Marissa cast an eye over the wide sea of faces. “Who did you promise? Someone at the reunion?”
He shook his head. “Angie’s brother’s watching the kids for me. Since it’s a Friday night, and he’s single, there’s a little pressure for me to stay for at least—” He checked his watch and frowned. “—An hour.”
Sounds familiar. “Let me guess, you just realized you’re ten minutes into that hour, and you’re not sure how long you can keep this up.”
His hazel eyes sparked with surprise. “Five, actually. How did you guess?”
She took a sip of her punch. “I have a similar arrangement.”
He glanced over the crowd. “So, where’s Mr. Marissa Lambert? Is he around here somewhere?”
She almost spit out her drink at the absurdity.
Declan glanced down at his shirt as if to check to see if she’d caught him, then turned a questioning glance over at her.
“Sorry.” She wiped at her lips with a nearby cocktail napkin emblazoned with the year they’d graduated. “It’s just weird to think of myself married.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “Just never happened. Didn’t even bring a date. In fact, we’re kind of in the same boat. Except that it’s Cassie who will chew me up one side and down the other if I get home any earlier than nine tonight, and if he’s still awake, Aiden will be right there with her.”
Declan seemed to perk with interest at the unfamiliar name. “Aiden?”
She grinned. “My son. He’s eight.”
A gentle smile filled his features. “Just a little older than Tabitha then.”
“Tabitha?”
“My oldest. She’s seven going on seventeen.”
Marissa laughed at the image. “People said the same thing about me when I was her age. Pictures?”
“Uh, yeah. Somewhere in here.” He fumbled to navigate his smartphone as a balding, pot-bellied man in a Hawaiian shirt lifted him up in an awkward backward bear hug. “Hey, it’s my man, Dec!”
A cheer erupted from a half-dozen people following the man, and Marissa had to refrain from rolling her eyes. “Terrence.”
A ghost of the old Declan shone through as Declan offered her the same now, play nice smile he used to offer her back when they were dating. The one that only seemed to come out when they were within ten feet of Terrence Newsome, Declan’s grade school buddy.
“Is that Marissa Freaking Lambert?”
She forced a smile to her lips. “The one and only.”
Terrence ran his gaze the length of her figure. “You look great.”
She tugged down her dress as if a couple extra inches at the hem would protect her from how Terrence leered at her. “Thanks. You look—festive.”
He waggled a finger at her. “Same old Marissa.”
She waggled one back at him. “Same old Terrence.”
Terrence wrapped an arm around Declan’s and Marissa’s shoulders. “Well, now it’s a party. Can’t have a reunion without the couple most likely to stay together forever, can we?”
Marissa felt sick. She’d forgotten that. Her eyes sought Declan’s, unsurprised to see the blood drain from his face.
“Terrence, what are you doing for work these days?”
She hoped he’d gotten better at taking a hint over the years.
“What? You two aren’t together anymore? What happened? You two were practically married last time I saw you.”
Marissa winced. Apparently her hopes had been in vain.
“Terrence, maybe we shouldn’t—”
He blinked at her. “What? Did I get that wrong?”
She let her eyes drift closed at the futility.
Declan shrugged off his friend’s embrace. “Excuse me.”
Terrence watched Declan push past the sea of alumni and toward the front door. “Was it something I said?”
MARISSA MANAGED POLITE smiles and quick greetings to her former schoolmates as she pressed her way outside. Though it took her longer than she’d hoped, she found Declan sitting atop the stone sign proclaiming this building Thomas Jefferson High School, Home of the Blue Jays.
Just like in high school.
“How many times do you think the security guard had to kick us off that thing?”
Though Declan’s lips lifted in a smile
at the memories, his eyes lined with pain. Some of which had been her fault. He absent-mindedly tore at the spores of a white-topped dandelion. “If you don’t mind, Marissa, I’d really rather be alone right now.”
She bit her lip as she stood beside him, resting her arms on the cool stone of the sign. She wasn’t getting up there in this dress, so standing beside him would have to do. “Do you want to talk about her?”
He looked at her like she’d grown three heads in the twenty years since they’d known each other. “You want to hear about Angie?”
If she was honest, that was probably the last thing she wanted to hear about, but she did owe him for how understanding he’d been during her own grief. She shivered in the cool breeze of the Rocky Mountain air. “I think you need a friend and even though you were young, you did a better job of comforting me than people twice or three times your age.”
He shrugged off his sport coat and draped it over her bare shoulders, a move she hadn’t been expecting but which felt as familiar and foreign as the walls of this high school. “Even when I told you that the pain would pass less than a day after you buried your parents? That at some point, life had to return to normal?”
She wondered how long he’d been beating himself up for that line. Probably as long as she’d been beating herself up for insinuating that he was immature for thinking marriage would fix her problems.
“That may not have been your brightest moment, but you were right. The only difference was that it was a new normal.”
He discarded the dilapidated stem, leaning his weight on his palms, which gripped the edge of the sign. “How did you do it? How did you keep from breaking?”
She was quiet. Had she kept from breaking? Looking back at pictures of herself from before her parents’ death had made her question whether all the sacrifices she’d made had been worth it. If maybe she hadn’t given up too much to grow up. She still didn’t know the answer to that.
She swallowed. “I don’t know that I did keep from breaking. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Same as you.”
He caught hold of her hand as doubt clouded in his hazel eyes. “I’m not so sure I’m doing all that great at that.”
She stared at his fingers, gripping hers so hard they almost turned white with the effort. She ached to take away his pain, to endure it herself even knowing the toll grief could take, rather than see the pain which turned him into an old man before her eyes.
This must be what karma feels like, the universe making you sit on the other side of your most painful experiences to bring you balance and wisdom.
She thought back to that year after her parents died. Like Declan, she’d practically sleepwalked through each day, making a host of mistakes and missteps she still occasionally second-guessed. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
Declan’s drooping head lifted at her words, questioning her. “Yeah, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with not breaking. I mean, I lasted five minutes before I needed some air.”
She brought her other hand to rest on top of his as tears pricked her eyes. “Yeah, but you saw you needed to do something different. In my experience, that’s probably a sign that you’re doing better than you think you are.”
Chapter Four
Declan
“I missed you.”
The words escaped Declan’s lips before he had a chance to think about them, but no matter how awkward they felt, they were true. He had missed her, more than he’d allowed himself to admit over the years.
Marissa ducked her head, her hair falling into her face and hiding what he suspected was a light blush. “I missed you, too.”
She looked lovely. Far lovelier than he remembered with her fully formed figure, her grace and confidence. The last time he’d seen her, she was wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, her hair in a hastily tied ponytail. Now, she wore a dress that flattered her curves as her loose curls bounced playfully on her shoulders.
Still, it bothered him that she hid her eyes when she admitted that she’d missed him. Was she just trying to hide that she was embarrassed by his vulnerability? Or was she trying to hide that she hadn’t given him a second thought?
It didn’t matter anyway. He was too upside down and backward after Angie for it to matter. In a stunning new way, he understood why Marissa had shaken off his awkward, matter-of-fact marriage proposal. Even at thirty-eight, grief seemed to cloud his judgment enough to render his decision-making awkward and volatile.
He was just glad she didn’t hold his youth against him.
The laughter from inside the high school grated on his nerves. He had to get out of here, but at the same time, he didn’t really want to leave.
As if she could read his thoughts, Marissa looked over her shoulder at the diner across the street. “Buy you a coffee for old times’ sake?”
He checked his watch before he hopped off the school sign. “Why not? I’ve still got forty minutes before Liam’s going to let me in the door. Besides, you never told me about your son.”
She nudged his shoulder like she used to back in high school, a playful smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “And you never showed me pictures of your kids.”
“Right.”
They jogged across the street, Marissa holding onto the lapels of his jacket so it wouldn’t fall off her shoulders. Declan raised a hand to stop traffic as they crossed. He caught the door of the diner, and she stepped inside.
Just like old times.
“Sit anyplace you like. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Declan turned to Marissa, and she shrugged like it didn’t matter where they sat. He chose the booth in the corner they’d sat in more often than not in high school.
Marissa returned his jacket as she studied the colorful collection of vintage movie paraphernalia littering the walls. “Has this place changed at all in the last twenty years?”
“Not by the looks of it.” Declan picked up the plastic menu and flipped it to the back. He grinned as he slid the menu toward her and tapped on it with two fingers. “It’s like we took a time machine.”
Marissa set her purse on the seat and scooted in. “Let me guess. You’ll order a slice of apple pie à la mode. I’m going to order the chocolate silk. We’ll share an order of onion rings.”
Declan hesitated, only halfway to his seat when she spoke. “Were we that predictable back then?”
She smiled. “We’d always split the onion rings so neither of us could accuse the other of onion breath.”
His cheeks flamed when he remembered why that was so important back then. He could almost hear Angie laughing in the back of his mind.
Declan settled into the booth, propping the menu up so he could look at it. He didn’t want to touch that memory with a ten-foot pole. “Well, as long as we establish now that I’m not going to eat any of that chocolate silk no matter how much you beg me.”
He scanned the menu, although it was perfunctory. Just walking into this diner made his mouth water for their old order.
Marissa bit back a smile. “Didn’t you hear? I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m secure enough in my body image to finish my own pie.”
Declan waved down a waitress who nodded her acknowledgment before she kept moving on her original trajectory. “Ah, wisdom. One of the benefits of getting older.”
He glanced up as Marissa set her menu on the table beside her, apparently content with the old order. “Now, if I didn’t sound like my grandmother when I got out of bed in the morning with creaking joints and cracking bones...”
Declan chuckled. “My four-year-old is a ninja. I don’t know how many times I’ve woken up with his knee jabbing me in the stomach because he flung himself through the air to pounce on me.”
“Ouch.”
He shifted in his seat as he remembered how Luke had miscalculated his approach earlier this morning. “It’s worse when he misses.”
The waitress walked up to the table, cutting off any response Marissa might have
made. “Welcome to Nancy’s Diner. I’m Belinda. What can I get for you today?”
Declan didn’t even wait for Marissa to speak before he recited their old order. “Chocolate silk pie for the lady. Apple pie á la mode for me. An order of onion rings to share.”
The waitress scribbled the words on the pad in her hand. “Anything to drink?”
He and Marissa answered in tandem. “Hot chocolate.”
The waitress chuckled and shook her head as she tore the slip off her notepad. “I’ll be right back.”
Declan looked back at Marissa, but she turned her eyes away from his as if she didn’t want to be caught looking at him. That still bothered him. They’d been close once. Close enough that it had seemed logical for him to propose marriage when she suddenly found herself guardian to her three siblings.
He turned and looked out the window, the moisture from the rainstorm which ended before he arrived at the reunion reflecting the lights.
Marissa sat back in the booth, her arms across her chest as she studied him. “So, you said you have a four-year-old ninja and a daughter named Tabitha. I’d love to hear more about them.”
Declan glanced back at her with a moment’s hesitation before he yielded with a contented sigh. “Tabitha’s my little protector and a consummate mother hen. Luke is the ninja. Angie always said...”
His voice trailed off for a moment, his wife’s memory so alive right now that it felt like he was cheating on her by being here.
You’re not. You’re moving on. That’s a wonderful thing.
The mental picture of Angie reassuring him slipped as Marissa caught his hand with that look of empathy that had shocked him back at the high school. She knew what it was like. Somehow, he could tell that she understood.
It shook him.
He cleared his throat and continued. “Angie always said she could tell when he was sick because it was the only time he would slow down. Laney’s the baby. Almost a toddler at eighteen months, if I’m honest. Anyway, she’s feisty. Definitely has an idea of how things should be run and makes it known when you don’t measure up.”
Marissa smiled. “I’d love to see pictures.”
Sweethearts Old Page 6
