Andrew looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
She avoided his gaze. “For what?”
“Everything.”
“That covers a lot of territory.” She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She’d waited too long for an apology, needing one even though it would change nothing. “Are you saying you’re sorry I dropped out of school for two years before I went back to get my degree, that I married someone I didn’t love because I wanted to prove to myself I’d gotten over you, or that I’ve wasted half my life wanting something I can’t have. Just what is it you’re sorry for, Andrew.”
“That I was such a coward.”
At last she looked at him. “Oh, is that what happened?”
“I’m not the man I was then.”
“Too bad, I really liked that man. Actually, I loved him. With one small exception, of course.”
The anger didn’t bother him. The pain did. How easily he’d convinced himself the wounds he’d inflicted would heal and that she would be whole again and happy without him. “Do you ever wonder–”
She turned on him. “Don’t you dare ask me that. What I wonder, what I think about, what I feel are none of your business anymore.”
“Then I’ll tell you how it is with me.” He ached to touch her. Just holding her hand would be enough. It seemed impossible that he had once taken the hundreds of small, day-to-day moments they’d shared for granted.
“There isn’t a day I don’t think about you. There are times I’ll see a woman walking alone on the beach and let myself believe it’s you. Some days someone will knock on the door, and for the seconds it takes to answer I tell myself you’re the one waiting for me.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“I can’t say. I’m not sure when it started.”
“I know exactly how long it’s been with me.” She stared at the liquid in her glass, brought it to her lips, and finished the wine in two long swallows. “What happened that finally made you realize you’d made a mistake?”
“One day I took a hard look at myself and all the other men I knew chasing the endless summer and realized we’d bought into something that doesn’t exist.”
Her eyes flashed an antagonistic challenge. “I was hoping for something better.”
“I had to grow up to understand what I had lost. By then it was too late.”
“Lost? You didn’t lose me, Andrew, you discarded me.”
He flinched. None of the arguments he’d used to justify abandoning her made sense anymore. In hindsight he understood the fear that had consumed him the day he was told he had cancer. He remembered the growing, desperate need to grab hold of whatever time was left to him. Most of all he remembered the shame that came with the prospect of losing his manhood. Facing testicular cancer hit him harder than anything else ever had, stealing his youth and with it the belief that he was invincible.
He’d reacted the way he had reacted to every crisis he’d faced before he met Cheryl, pulling into himself and closing out those who would have helped him. He battled the cancer and chemotherapy and radiation alone, dropping out of college, coming up with excuses at the last minute not to meet Cheryl for holidays and birthdays, lying toher about difficult classes and intractable professors. He came through the experience so completely focused on himself all he could think about was his determination to savor every moment left to him, to experience everything life had to offer, to refuse ever again to settle, or compromise, or bargain.
Cheryl turned back to the man and boy and watched them until they went inside a house at the end of the block. “If you realized you’d made a mistake all those years ago, why did you wait until now to look for me?”
“You were married. Happily, I thought.”
She nodded. “For a while we actually managed to convince ourselves that we were the perfect couple portrayed by the media.” She paused as if struggling with what she would say next. “But a marriage gets a little crowded when another person becomes involved,” she said finally.
“Jerry was unfaithful?”
She held up her empty glass as if to ward off the question. Andrew reached behind him for the bottle of wine. As he poured, he said, “I know you. There’s no way you would ever–”
“You knew me, Andrew,” she reminded him. “The breakup was my fault.”
The revelation stunned him. “There was another man? What happened? Why aren’t you with him now?”
She stood motionless, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “I am.”
“I don’t understand.” And then it hit him. “Me? I’m the other man?”
Instead of answering, she took another long, deep swallow of wine.
Andrew reached for her glass. “Talk to me.”
She pushed his hand away, looked at him, sighed, and then handed him the glass. “Liquid courage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s never worked before, I don’t know what made me think it would work now.”
A childhood spent in foster homes where he’d been on display like merchandise for childless couples had taught him that dreams were for others, for those who had the right looks, the right smile, the right words. Those who were left behind, the kids like him, learned to play the cards that were dealt them.
Still, he couldn’t stop the swell of hope that filled his chest. A lump in his throat, he took a chance. “I never stopped loving you,” he admitted. “You have been the standard I used to judge every other woman I met.”
Her smile was tinged in a bitter sadness. “I’ve dreamed of this moment. So many times I’ve lost count. It’s always the same. You tell me you love me and take me in your arms and all the hurt and confusion simply disappear.”
“It can be like that.”
“No, it can’t. It’s not why I came, Andrew. I don’t want to start over. I want to put you behind me. I want to forget I even knew you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t you see? We can’t go back. We can’t even start over. You can’t have a relationship without trust, Andrew. Or do you have a magic wand you can wave that will bring that back the way you think you can bring back everything else?”
He didn’t have an answer, at least not one good enough. “What would it take for you to trust me again?”
She considered the question. “I’m not sure that’s possible. Even if I were willing to take a chance.”
“Time?” he prompted.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s yours. As much as you want.”
“What if it took years?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Seems to me I’ve heard that before.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and brought her around to look at him. “I let you go once, there’s no way I’m going to do it again. At least not without a fight.”
She started to say something. He put his finger to her lips to stop her. “Do you still love me? Even a little?”
“It doesn’t make sense for me to love you, and I don’t do things that don’t make sense anymore.”
“I don’t care whether it makes sense or not–do you love me?”
For long seconds she looked into his eyes, trying to decide whether it was the man she loved or the memory. “I’ll give you this much–there’s something unfinished between us.”
He nodded. “That’s enough–for now.”
It wasn’t enough for her. “So where do you see us going from here?”
“If it were truly up to me, I would have you move in with me tomorrow.”
“Just like that?” she snapped. “What about my job? My friends? My life in Oakland?”
He gave her a slow grin. “Like I said, if it were truly up to me.”
She was at a place she’d imagined, but never truly believed she would be. Andrew loved her and wanted her. Wasn’t this the answer to her dreams? Or was it a reminder that she had to be careful what she wished for?
He could break her heart again as easily as he had broken it be
fore. She wasn’t the tower of strength, the battle-scarred worldly veteran she wanted to believe she was, that she wanted him to believe she was. “I don’t know….”
“Where we go from here is wherever we feel comfortable going.” He stepped back and hunkered down to look her directly in the eyes. “Right now, a walk on the beach would be nice.”
It was exactly what she needed–time. He knew her as well as he’d ever known her, and it scared her as much as it connected her to him.
“Of course, unless you have a suitcase in the car or are willing to wear something of mine, you probably don’t agree.”
She’d spent an entire week’s salary on the midnight blue designer dress she was wearing. The narrow strapped high heels had set her back another two hundred. Sand would ruin one, salt water the other. “My suitcase is at the motel.” He looked the same size he’d been in college, and his shirts had swallowed her then. “What did you have in mind to lend me?”
“Shorts and a T-shirt?” He looked at her waist. “And a pair of suspenders?”
ALONE IN ANDREW’S BEDROOM, THE PROMised clothes on his bed, Cheryl questioned what she was doing. Doubts assailed her. She could feel her defenses slipping. How long would it take to recover if he walked out on her again? Would she ever recover? If not for her mother and father and their persistent efforts to get her on her feet again the first time, she wasn’t sure where she would be now.
Andrew’s power over her had been complete. She’d looked to him for her happiness, her dreams of the future, even her career, which she’d chosen to accommodate the children they would have one day.
She’d been so young and trusting and filled with conviction. Other couples might fight andbreak up and go their separate ways, but not her and Andrew. They were the perfect match. Everyone said so.
What was she doing? Was she out of her mind? She’d come to the reunion to put Andrew behind her, not start over again.
What made her think it would be any different this time? If she had any sense, she would thank him for the stroll down memory lane and get out of there as fast as she could.
Instead, she slipped out of her dress and into his clothes, tucking the T-shirt with San Jose Firefighter’s Chili Cookoff emblazoned across the back into the khaki shorts and rolling up the sleeves. She shortened the bright red suspenders and snapped them onto the waistband of the shorts, then went out to meet Andrew on the deck.
Andrew looked up. He’d taken off his jacket and shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. “Ready?” He held out his hand. She hesitated just long enough to let him know she still wasn’t sure about what they were doing. Andrew let the moment go, taking her hand as he would a friend’s, leading her out the gate and down the stairs.
A full moon had followed the sun into the western sky, marking its position with a silver trail across the water. Along the shoreline, waves deposited shimmering arcs of bubbles that glistened with moonlight. A gentle breeze tugged at a strand of Cheryl’s hair. She tucked it behind her ear.
They crossed the beach to the water in silence, the only sound the soft roar of the tumbling waves. Andrew stopped at the edge of the shore. Cheryl continued moving forward. She closed her eyes, listened to the wave break and roll into itself, and waited for the rush of water. When it hit, she put her head back and looked up to the stars. I’m home, she told herself.
The receding wave pulled the sand from beneath her feet. She dug in her toes to maintain her balance and laughed when she teetered to one side. Opening her eyes, she discovered Andrew beside her.
“I’d forgotten how much I love your laugh.”
She put her hand in his again and started walking toward the south side of the mile-wide cove, where a rocky promontory isolated the area from the next beach. Only twenty-five private homes and the state of California shared this cove. With the state the primary landowner, the dense forest of pine and eucalyptus surrounding the houses had remained undeveloped. Only a small parking lot at the trail head that led to the beach intruded on the sense of isolation.
She and Andrew had come there when they wanted to be alone, their friends preferring Santa Cruz beach and the boardwalk, where the action was. This was where Andrew had told her he loved her the first time, where their teenage petting had moved to something more serious, and where he had asked her to marry him.
“Why did you buy a house here?” she asked.
“I would have thought you’d figured that out by now.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He stepped out of the path of a wave, pulling her with him. “In the beginning I told myself it was to be as near the water as I could. I wanted to be able to grab my board and be the first one to catch the big waves. It seemed the ultimate endless summer when I cared about such things. Turned out the big waves invariably hit when I was tied up at the nursery. And even when I wasn’t, the thrill I thought would be there, wasn’t.”
“You could have been close to the water a hundred different places. Why here?”
“I didn’t understand that myself until I became friends with the guy who was renting the house next door. Ken Huntington was a lot like you. He came here from the Midwest, took one look at the ocean, and never looked back.”
“Ken Huntington … wasn’t he the computer guy who died in a car wreck?”
“It wasn’t a wreck, but it was on the freeway. Ken had a heart attack on his way to work. He made me realize it wasn’t just the ocean that held me, it was this cove. I had my choice of beachfront property, some of it a lot nicer than what I wound up with and at the same price, but it had to be here.”
“And how did he make you realize the reason you had to be here?”
He stopped to brush windswept hair back from his forehead. “He fell in love. Seeing him was like looking in a mirror at the man I once was.”
She stared at him until the silence grew awkward. “Was there someone else, Andrew? You can tell me now. I’m stronger than I was then.”
He’d started to say something when she added, “Don’t tell me what you think I should hear. I deserve the truth.”
“There was no one else, Cheryl.”
“I could understand if there were. You were half a state away. You were bound to get lonely.”
Even after all this time, the pain was still there. He could see it in her eyes. She wanted there to be another woman because it was something she could understand. “Would it be easier for you to forgive me if I told you that I left you for someone else?”
She folded her arms across her chest in a protective gesture. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why? Make me understand. At least give me that much.”
His reasons for not telling her now were as valid as they had been then. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him or make decisions based on what he’d gone through. “Something happened to me that I couldn’t share with anyone, not even you. It changed me, Cheryl. Suddenly I was looking at the world through a narrow tunnel of time. I thought and acted in ways that seemed logical tome then but now seem like irrational acts committed by someone scared out of his mind.”
“Why were you scared?”
She was right. She deserved the truth. “I had cancer.”
“Cancer?” She frowned, her expression going from confused to disbelieving. “How could that happen without me knowing? I saw you every–” She peered into his eyes, questioning, remembering. “That’s why you didn’t come home for Christmas. And why you wouldn’t let me go down there for spring break.” Still struggling to understand, she added, “How could you have had cancer? You were never sick. You never even had a cold the whole time we were together.”
“That’s how I reacted, too. At least in the beginning.”
Her confusion turned to anger. “You had no right not to tell me.”
He started to reach for her; she slapped his hand away. “You bastard. How could you do that to me? How could you let me believe there was someone else? You had to have known
that’s what I would think no matter what you said. All these years I’ve doubted myself, believing I wasn’t good enough.”
She was wrong. He hadn’t known. “I’m so sorry.” The words sounded hollow. “If I had it to do over …” What did it matter what he would do differently now? “I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” she echoed. “A mistake is whenyou show up for an appointment on the wrong day or when you put the wrong check in an envelope–not when you destroy the reason another person gets up in the morning.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor. At the time it was something I believed with all my heart.”
“How could you have had cancer? You were so young.”
Finally, he understood. He’d had eighteen years to come to terms with what had happened to him, she’d had less than a minute. “Testicular cancer happens to young men.”
She started to cry, angry, frightened, accusing tears. “Make me understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“But we told each other everything.”
He led her to a log that had washed up on the beach during the last storm, brushed the sand from its smooth, gray surface, sat down, and brought her down next to him. She tried to pull her hand free, but he hung on. “The cancer was happening to me, Cheryl, not to us,” he said as he gently wiped tears from her cheeks. “No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t have understood what I was going through, and I didn’t want you to have to try. It was my problem.” He looked down at their clasped hands, and then up to meet her eyes. “And to be honest, it was easier for me not to talk about it. Not even to you.”
“I might not have understood exactly what youwere feeling, but I could have helped. How could you have excluded me? You didn’t even give me a chance. You didn’t give us a chance.” She turned her face to the sea.
“As I started to say before, if I had it to do over again, I would do it differently.”
“But you don’t,” she said with finality. “What might have been is gone.”
Fear traveled his spine like a sharp-clawed cat. He’d barely found her. He couldn’t lose her a second time. “The years we would have had together are gone, but there are a lot of years left.”
Another Summer Page 3
