“That’s the thing, I’m not…at least not for me. I’m sorry for Everly. I’m sorry for Meghan’s parents, who are still devastated and can barely look at Everly now. I’m sorry that she had to go so soon because she didn’t deserve to die. But…”
“But?”
“I’m not sorry for me. And that is the most horrible fucking thing I can ever say.”
It feels wrong to offer words of comfort to him, but it also feels wrong to chastise him. Instead of doing either, I reach my hand across the table and hold his hand. I offer him no judgment, just friendship.
“You know, I was dreading moving back here. I fought against it so hard because I knew. I knew you’d be here and because…”
“…because?”
Our eyes meet and I don’t need him to finish the statement, I already know. As much as I’d like to be angry, I get it. I would’ve spent the rest of my life avoiding him too if I had the option. There’s a lot of things we’ve had to deal with and we’re not done yet.
“Because it’d be easier than seeing you and having you hate me.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t hate you, Derek. I didn’t understand. I was hurt, and angry, but I never hated you. I loved you too much to hate you.”
The waiter clears his throat and we both lean back with a polite smile. My heart is beating against my chest and I grab the wine, thankful for the distraction. That was a pretty intense first ten minutes of a date.
We both order the pasta with a grin shared between us. After the waiter leaves, Derek and I sit in comfortable silence. There’s so much to unbox from our previous conversation, I think we both need a second to process.
“Did Chastity know you were coming out?”
“She did. I don’t keep much from her and I thought if she was going to hear about our date, it was better coming from me.”
“Again, another display of how inept I am at dealing with my own kid.”
God, I can only imagine what that means. “I take it Everly knows?”
“She does.”
“And she took it well, I see.”
He laughs. “It’s hard. She knew that you and Meghan didn’t get along.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true.” I didn’t have a problem with his wife. And really, his wife had nothing on me. I didn’t write that damn journal entry. I never once made any kind of advance toward Derek. They were married, and no matter how broken I was over it, I didn’t do anything to warrant her hatred. “I thought I got along with Meghan, she didn’t like me for something you did.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not really first-date discussion.”
“I don’t think you and I could have an authentic first date,” I say with a smile. I don’t want my first, and probably only, date with Derek to be a bad thing. “We might as well call it what it is when it comes to us—weird.”
I want to be able to remember tonight with affection. This has been something I’ve dreamed of and now it’s here. The last thing I want is us spending it bickering or talking about heavy shit.
“How can you still do that?”
“Do what?”
“Change topics so fast. It was always something I wished I could do.”
“It’s a gift,” I say and then take a sip of my wine.
I’ve never really tried to dwell on things that don’t matter. I like to handle it and move on, except where Derek is concerned. He’s always been my weakness.
“Okay, well, how did Chastity take it?”
“The truth?” I ask.
“Always.”
Chastity is a great kid. She never has given me pushback and usually is very supportive when it comes to things regarding me living a life, but this time not so much. “I want to preface this by saying it’s not you.”
“It’s my daughter.”
I nod. “She loves you. She thinks you’re really funny, clearly she doesn’t know your humor is lacking, and she’s learning a lot by working with you. I think she’s just afraid that you and I could mess that up.”
She also said she’ll cut all my hair off in my sleep if I ever think she’s going to live under the same roof as Everly. Sad thing is, I don’t doubt her.
“I would never stop allowing her to work with me. Chastity is great with the animals and a huge help,” he says earnestly.
“Other than she came back telling me her male cat is actually a pregnant female.”
“Yeah, there’s that, but she’s been reading a lot about what to expect—”
“Oh, I heard all about it. I didn’t realize they even have photos to help guide her through.”
Derek laughs and shrugs. “I thought she should be prepared.”
“How noble of you.”
“I’d be happy to keep Mrs. Stinkers when she’s closer to her due date.”
I roll my eyes. I didn’t want a cat to begin with, now to find out we may end up with a litter of kittens and the cat. Freaking kid. She’s lucky I love her so much.
“You can keep her longer. Think of it as a gift from me…like a mascot for the office.”
Derek shakes his head with a smile. “You’re too kind, but I think your daughter really needs a cat. It’s imperative for kids to have pets.”
We grew up so differently. He had so many animals, mostly because his father was fixing them, whereas I had none. I feel pretty okay with the fact that I didn’t have anything else to take care of. My weekends were for cheerleading and stupid boys.
Maybe I should get her two cats…
“You might have a point.”
He leans back with that shit-eating grin that looks sexy on him. “I usually do.”
The rest of the evening is very sweet. We have a great dinner—well, an edible one—and we talk about the past. A lot of old memories where we did stupid things and thankfully didn’t get caught. It took my mother almost two years to figure out I snuck out to meet Derek on the beach most nights.
It was our thing, though.
The time when the rest of the world faded away and we were just two friends on a beach.
“Tell me more about your painting,” he says as we finish another glass of wine.
“What about it?”
“Why aren’t you selling them?”
I sigh. “I don’t want to share them. They’re just for me.”
It’s not that I don’t think they’re good, because I do, but then I think every painter thinks that. If I didn’t love them, I wouldn’t create them. Those paintings are my art, my soul, my truths all laid out for someone to see. Giving that to another to judge is…terrifying. I’m not that brave. I’m still trying to figure out what the story I’m painting really is. Is it my sadness? Or is it the hope of what I think the world could look like on the shore?
“I think they’re beautiful.”
My heart swells with pride from his compliment. Nina and Chastity always tell me they love them but there’s something different about it coming from him. “Thank you.”
“I’m not just saying it,” he insists.
“I didn’t think you were.”
“It’s the perspective of the painting. It really shows so much and the colors are vivid but not so in-your-face that you don’t know where to look. I felt like you were showing me something that I’ve seen so many times, but never really understood. You have an amazing talent, Teagan, and you should share it with the world.”
“I don’t think you understand. I’ve failed at pretty much everything in my life. I don’t need one more thing to not be good enough at. For now, it’s an outlet that I love.”
He shakes his head. “You aren’t failing at anything. You’ve done an amazing job with your life, and your paintings are another thing that you should be proud of.”
I place my hand on his and he stops talking. The two of us look down at where we’re joined. His other hand covers mine and my breathing slows. It’s like everything in the room around us fades. We’re the only thing in this moment that e
xists.
I’ve seen it in movies and listened to Nina describe it in books and thought it was lame, but here it is, happening to me.
Derek has always made things come into perspective for me. He was the grounding force in my life when I had him. That’s why it hurt so damn much to lose him.
But he’s here now. He’s touching me, holding me steady, and keeping me from floating away. When he speaks of my art, somehow understanding what it is even when I don’t, it’s indescribable.
It’s like drifting but being tethered, bringing me back in when I go too far. He pushes me outside of the bubble I’ve put myself in, and it’s scary and yet I’m not scared. How can this still be us? How can all this time have passed, but he is still the man who understands me at my core? After the years we’ve been apart our connection should’ve been broken, but it hasn’t.
Both of us continue to look at each other, questions, answers, and more questions passing between us.
“Do you want to take a walk?” he asks, pulling his hand back and breaking the spell we were under.
I nod without saying a word.
Derek stands, his hand extended to help me up. My fingers touch his palm, and that calm rushes over me again and I realize I was such a fool to think I could do one date and not come out unscathed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Teagan
Present
I should’ve known this is where he’d want to go.
We pull up to the far end of the beach where we would meet all the time. In every way, this is our spot. The place where two kids found someone who would forever be a part of the other.
“You wanted to walk here instead of the town we were just in?” I ask as I exit my car.
“Was there any other option?”
I shake my head. “No. This is probably exactly the best place.”
Derek walks over with a blanket and takes my hand in his. “Come on.”
We make our way to the shore, set up a cozy spot, and sit. Twenty years ago, I would’ve sat in front of him, his arms around my middle, my head resting on his chest as I stared out at the sea, but now, we’re beside each other.
“Do you remember the night you told me you were pregnant?”
I release a half laugh because it wasn’t funny. I was more afraid of him than of my parents. Disappointing him was the last thing I wanted to do. Not to mention, I was horrified it happened.
“I don’t know that I could forget. I threw up four times before I saw you.”
“Well, you were pregnant.”
“It was nerves.”
He shifts so our shoulders are touching. “I felt so many things that day, it was really the first time I started to wonder if what I felt for you was more than friendship.”
“That was the day?”
“I was so pissed because I kept thinking it shouldn’t be Keith. He didn’t deserve to have that piece of you. I was beyond angry and couldn’t wrap my head around why. Which pissed me off further.”
I laugh. “Sounds like you.”
He wasn’t the only one pissed. I had the same emotions because I didn’t want to have a baby with Keith. I didn’t even want to be with him, but I was young and stupid. My feelings for Derek were growing by that point, and I knew he was who I loved, I just didn’t know how to express that.
Then I found out I was pregnant and it felt like I’d missed that chance.
“Yeah, but then…”
“Then you had Meghan.”
As angry or hurt as I was, I never told him how I felt. It wasn’t like he knew I was in love with him, but God, I couldn’t handle it.
I don’t know that it makes any of this any easier, but it’s the truth.
“I really didn’t know what I was feeling.”
“You don’t have to explain, Derek. We were kids, you were confused, I was pregnant, and it all fell apart. I will tell you, there is nothing close to the level of heartbreak I felt when I watched you marry her.”
I’ve never felt that level of emotional pain. Knowing he was going to pick her with me standing there. Watching them profess their love when all I wanted was for him to love me the way I loved him. It was excruciating. I wanted to be happy for him, God I tried, but I couldn’t.
There was the man I wanted to marry, marrying someone else.
I couldn’t do or say anything.
I was trapped, watching it, pretending my tears weren’t because my heart was being torn from my body.
When we stopped talking, it was different because he’d already hurt me once. I guess that makes me a fool, but…
He shakes his head. “I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t. But even if you did, would it have changed anything?”
Derek’s mouth forms into a thin line. “I want to say yes, but I really don’t know. I loved Meghan and I was so hell-bent on proving I loved her, then we got married.”
“And she was pregnant.”
He nods with a laugh. “Yeah, there was that. Were you angry?”
I shake my head. “I couldn’t be. You were doing the right thing by marrying her, where Keith was doing the opposite. Besides”—I smile and nudge him—“Derek Hartz is a good man who would always be the kind of man who married the girl he loved and knocked up.”
“Great. That’s what you think of me.”
“It was never a bad thing. I just was afraid that things were going to change even more than my life was already spiraling out of my control. I had hoped and prayed that I could have you at least as a friend. I would find a way, I knew I would, but I needed you.”
And he left me anyway.
“Do you think, in some way, it was what we needed?”
“Is there really a right answer to that?”
He shakes his head. “No. Probably not.”
“On one hand, we were so young and I was…not ready for a real relationship, being pregnant when I felt like my life had imploded, so who knows if we would’ve made it? On the other hand, I would’ve liked to have tried.”
Derek leans his arms behind him, looking up at the sky. “I think I had to lose you.”
I wait for him to elaborate and when he doesn’t, I decide to push. “You what?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but you were…you. You were Teagan, my Teagan. Even when you were with Keith, I knew we weren’t really like that. I had this ridiculous delusion as to what our lives would be and I was so fucked in the head that when that vision was shattered because you wouldn’t leave him, I rebelled. I knew that you would never love me, at least that’s what I convinced myself of. By the time I got my head out of my ass, it was too late. I was married with a baby on the way. I had done permanent damage and continued to destroy everything.” He sits back up and his voice is a little broken. “I didn’t deserve you then. I’m not sure that I do now either, but I know that I would like to try.”
Now it’s my turn to stay silent. All of this feels like too much. Tonight was meant to be a date and now we’re deep into talking about the past and what we could have in the future. I never expected that there even could be a future.
I’ve spent so much of the last decade telling myself this would never happen. None of it. I would never see Derek again, talk to him, and then I stopped allowing him to enter my mind. I focused on being the best mom I could for Chastity. Everything I’ve done has been for her.
Now, I’m at this bizarre crossroads and there are so many more potholes and construction signs up. There’s Chastity, my family, his family, Everly, the fact that our past is murky, and I don’t need murky.
I need clear.
I need to feel secure because for so long, I haven’t been.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Us. What any of this means and if we’re still stupid kids trying to fulfill some destiny we defined.”
There’s no point in lying, and it’s better if we get this stuff out now so I can move on with my life and stop driving myself crazy.
/> “Me too.”
I tilt my head toward him. “Well, that’s not all that comforting.”
Derek sighs and sits forward. “What can I say? We’re both a little gun-shy and for good reason. I broke your heart when I stopped talking to you, and you were always between Meghan and me even after I did that. It wasn’t your fault, but in some ways, I’ve been in a relationship with you for years.”
“Why did you stay? Why didn’t you find a way to talk to me?”
His head drops and I know this is probably the last thing he wants to talk about. “I loved her, in my own way. She gave me Everly, and for that, I wanted to try. After a while, it was just what I thought I needed to do. She worked a lot, so did I, and we became…roommates. Also, God, this is going to sound bad,” Derek warns. “I knew if I saw you again, I’d struggle with the idea of staying with Meghan and forgoing all I was doing for Everly. If you were single, that would’ve been all I needed to know and I would’ve left my wife.”
My heart stops and everything around me turns hazy. All of my life I’ve wanted to hear that from him, and it’s bittersweet in every way.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
The breath escapes his nose and he leans back in the sand again. “I would go with both because it’s pretty pathetic and also a little romantic.”
I don’t know what he finds to be romantic about spending years married to someone who he wasn’t really a husband to because he was too chicken, but I’ll let him have this one.
“Did you buy the house?” I ask, switching topics to something safer.
He laughs. “I told you I was going to put an offer in.”
“Are you trying to torment me?”
“Not in the least.”
That’s what he’s doing by loving that damn house. “Why do you want it then?”
Derek turns toward me, his expression is serious, and I feel like this is one of those moments I should pay attention to. “Because you like it.”
“That doesn’t make sense! Clearly, you want to torture me by making me know that you now own my house.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Tea. It makes perfect sense. If you felt that way, standing there, then there’s a reason. I don’t have to know what it is or why. Whenever it comes to you, it’s been right. Look at tonight, you can’t tell me you don’t feel it.”
All I Ask Page 17
