She looked away quickly, staring at the television. Another sitcom had started but she didn’t bother to turn up the sound. “It’s been going on for a while. We never talk about the future except when he tells me I should go to college, that I’ll have the time of my life. We never say ‘I love you’ or even talk about when he’s coming back. Every time he leaves I never know if that’s the last time I’ll see him. It took him months just to give me his cell number. And now . . . I just don’t know.”
Amber’s voice trailed off and they both sat silently. Emily cast about for the right words, the perfect piece of wisdom to share. “Are you going to keep the baby?” she finally asked.
“I’m not sure if I can keep it or if it would be best to give it up for adoption. I want to talk to him about it, I guess.” She shrugged. “Not that he’s ready to be a father. I mean, he’s trying to get that business launched and it’s not like he’s got extra money.” She gave a little ironic laugh. “Or any money.” She brought her fingers to her mouth and licked the butter and salt from the tips, one by one. “I was all set to just, like, give it up for adoption or whatever but then when I saw the little heartbeat, I was just like, ‘That’s our kid.’ And it made me think, what if we could make a go of it? I know I’m young and everything but I just want it to work out so much.” Her beautiful green eyes widened. “I love him so much.”
“Then you should tell him. Be honest. The next time he comes in town, just go for it.”
Amber nodded. “I know. I need to. I will.” She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. “Thanks for letting me talk. I don’t really, um, have someone to, you know, talk to.”
Emily patted her and stood up. “That’s what I’m here for.” She walked toward the kitchen, giving them some emotional and physical distance after such raw honesty. “Want some sweet tea?” she called out over her shoulder, doing her level best to seem unruffled. She hoped she could act as well as Marta, could pretend that all was well when it completely was not.
Nineteen
Amber stood in the doorway watching Emily, who was turning from side to side in front of the bathroom mirror. She had decided on white jeans paired with a black sleeveless crocheted top and black wedges. She’d gone with simple silver jewelry and barely any makeup. With her tan face and sun-streaked hair, she looked, she hoped, shiny and healthy. She’d looked weighed down and blah for far too long. Tonight she liked what she saw in the mirror, feeling her best even if Amber wasn’t looking all that convinced. “You’re sure about that top?” she asked. Emily had worked with kids long enough to know a veiled insult when she heard one.
“What’s wrong with this top?” Emily tried not to sound defensive but maybe the girl knew something she didn’t.
Amber shrugged and turned from the doorway. “It just looks kinda old-ladyish to me.” She laughed. “But too late to change. He’s here.” Amber laughed harder at the look on Emily’s face. “I’ll get it,” she said and dashed for the door, leaving Emily to stare into the mirror one last time. For better or worse, Amber was right. It was too late to change a thing.
She walked into her room and took a few deep breaths, looking around at the place that had become familiar and comforting to her in recent weeks. It was, she had to admit, starting to feel like home. She looked at her bed, thinking how nice it would be at that moment to crawl into it and hide under the covers, pretend she’d never said yes to this insane idea. What business did she have going out with any guy, much less a guy whose poster she used to have taped to her wall? She laughed when she remembered the movie tagline scrawled across that poster: “Tonight they take their one big chance.” The irony was almost too much.
“Why do I feel like somehow you’re behind all this?” she whispered, her eyes scanning around the room, wishing somehow he would answer. She’d give anything to hear his voice again, see his smile, feel his arms around her. Even now, even with the prospect of going out with someone she once had a crush on. That someone didn’t—couldn’t—live up to the reality of who Ryan had been to her, who she still wished he could be in her life. She waited a moment longer, giving him a chance to come rushing back into her life like she wanted, before putting on her bravest smile and going out to rescue Amber and Kyle from small-talk purgatory.
Kyle walked Emily out to his car, his body stiff, his smile tight. She wondered if he was regretting taking her out or just feeling nervous like she was. Marta had called and given her a pep talk that afternoon, speaking to her like a coach might address his team during halftime at the Super Bowl, her speech punctuated with exclamation points and peppered with superlatives. If the night kept going like it was so far, Marta had oversold the event. She gave Kyle a little smile as they neared his car, then heard her name being called and turned her head to see Noah standing in the front yard of his house, holding the water hose and dripping wet. “Hey, Emily!” he called.
“Hi, Noah,” she replied, thankful that she was standing far out of the hose’s reach. She started walking toward the car, silently praying that the boy would become engrossed in whatever he was doing with that hose again.
“Where ya goin’?” Noah continued. The hose dribbled a little stream of water from the end as Noah arced it through the air. Emily guessed he was pretending to be a fireman. She thought of her comment on the state’s site, about the access to emergency vehicles that a new bridge would allow. Her stomach fell at the thought of Kyle finding out how she really felt about the bridge. Somehow she didn’t think he’d understand her position.
“Out to dinner,” Emily said, trying not to think about what could go wrong for once.
“Who’s he?” Noah asked.
“This is Kyle. He lives here. Your mommy knows him.” She couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw Kyle wince as she said it.
“Oh. You’re going to eat dinner with him?”
“Yep!” She gave a little wave and tried to hurry the rest of the way to the car so she could duck inside it and close the door on this little exchange. Noah was cute but Lord knew what he would say next.
“Noah!” she heard Claire call before she could see her. “Do you have that hose?” Claire rushed into the front yard, looking frazzled as usual. “I told you you were not allowed to play with the hose,” she continued, snatching the hose from the boy’s hand as he started to holler.
“He didn’t have it on very much,” Kyle said, defending Noah and shocking Emily when he spoke. Up to that moment he hadn’t said a word since they left the house.
Claire startled and glanced over to find Emily and Kyle standing there. She did a double take. “Oh! I didn’t know you two were out here.”
Emily pointed at Noah dumbly. “We were talking to Noah.”
Claire, holding the dribbling hose, nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll let the two of you get to wherever you’re going.” She looked from Emily to Kyle to the car and back again, clearly confused. Emily had almost gone over and told her about the date, but with Amber there she hadn’t had a moment to slip away and relay the whole story. And truth be told she hadn’t been dying to confess that she was going out with Kyle or that she had taken in Amber. It would take more than a few minutes to catch Claire up on everything that had happened in the past few days. She made a mental note to pay Claire a visit first thing tomorrow.
“Have a nice night, Claire,” Kyle said. “And go easy on the kid,” he added. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
Claire narrowed her eyes at him, her tone turning from civil to surly in seconds. “Mind your own business, Kyle,” she said. Then she turned her back on the two of them and busied herself with getting Noah inside the house.
Emily watched her go until Kyle made a move toward the car. “Shall we?” he asked, pulling the passenger side door open for her and gesturing toward the seat with a flourish and a silly grin. He really was handsome, she thought, and her heart did that fluttering thing that she thought had died with Ryan.
She nodded and slid into the car, watching as he walked ar
ound and joined her. He closed the door and looked at her. “You ready?” he asked.
She smiled back at him. “Yes,” she said, not wanting to bring up why Claire didn’t like him. Tonight she didn’t want to think about Claire or Noah or Amber or—truth be told—even Ryan. She studied Kyle’s profile as he concentrated on backing out of the drive. It was a very nice profile indeed.
He drove her to Southport, a quaint little town on the water about an hour away, for dinner. They ate outdoors, the setting sun warming her bare shoulders as they indulged in hushpuppies and corn on the cob, steamed shrimp and crabcakes. He told her stories about working on the bridge, entertaining her with funny things that had happened—the teenagers who tried to jump the bridge as it was closing in their truck à la Dukes of Hazzard or the boat that tried to race through the closing bridge and got snagged on one of the cables, ripping part of its motor away in the process. Around them boats bobbed on the water and happy children dashed up and down the docks where the restaurant was located while seagulls hovered around in hopes of scraps, their shrieks punctuating the meal every so often.
After dinner they walked along the road until they found a bench and flopped there, stuffed and content to just sit for a while. Around them vacationers swarmed, enjoying the atmosphere of the town just like they were. “I’ve never been here,” Emily admitted.
“To Southport? Really?”
She shook her head. “It’s nice. I’m glad you brought me.”
“Yeah, sometimes it’s good to get out of Sunset for a while,” he said. He crossed his legs at the ankle and folded his hands across his stomach, tilted his head up to the sky, and closed his eyes.
“Need a nap?” she joked.
He shook his head without opening his eyes. “Nah, just relaxing. Enjoying this night.”
“It’s really beautiful out,” she agreed. “We couldn’t have ordered better weather.”
A seagull swooped by them, calling out as it passed. In the distance a boat cruised along the horizon. “So tell me your story,” he said.
His eyes were still closed so he couldn’t see the shocked look she gave him. She closed her mouth. “My . . . my story?”
He nodded and cracked his eyes open to peer at her. “Your story. I’ve heard rumors as to what it is but I’d like to hear it from you, directly.”
She laughed. “And what about your story?” she countered.
He nodded. “That’s fair, but you already know more about mine than I know about yours. I mean, I told you all about working at the bridge. As for the rest . . .” He shrugged. “I tried acting. It didn’t suit me. I came back here.” He held his arms out to take in the ocean, the seagulls, the boats. “Home.” He sat up a little straighter and balanced his elbows on his knees, leaning toward her. “I don’t normally take out girls I know nothing about. I think it’s only fair I know more about you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “See if I pass the test? Is that it?” She was pretending to be more confident than she felt. Marta would be impressed.
He smiled without showing any teeth and nodded. “Something like that.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked, her voice lower and shakier than she wanted it to be.
“How about I tell you what I heard and you tell me if it’s true or not?” He propped his arm up on the back of the bench, almost as if it was around her, but not quite close enough.
She shrugged. She could smell the scent she was coming to recognize as him—a unique blend of sea air and skin and the cologne he wore, mixed with a metal smell that must’ve come from working on the bridge. She found herself leaning slightly forward as the breeze picked up and carried his scent that much closer. “Sure,” she managed to say. “We can do that.”
“You’re a teacher from Rockingham. You came here to buy a house because you inherited some money. You bought Ada’s house after finding it for sale by owner while on a bike ride one evening. Now you live next door to Claire—my sympathies, by the way—and you have a friend who comes to visit from time to time, but mostly you seem to live alone. Of course, now you have the girl from the motel staying with you. So that’s not exactly true anymore, I guess.” He paused to take a breath and glanced over at her. “How’m I doin’ so far?”
She elbowed him hard and he leaned over and pretended to fall off the bench. “You sound like some stalker!” she said, unable to keep from laughing as he slumped across the bench, still pretending to be wounded. She watched for a moment until he composed himself. “I’d say those acting lessons paid off,” she added.
“I never had an acting lesson,” he retorted, a cocky smile on his face.
“Well, I didn’t want to say anything but . . . ,” she came back, matching his cocky smile with one of her own.
He studied her for a moment, all the teasing suddenly gone out of the moment as he fixed her with those gorgeous eyes of his. But it wasn’t just that they were gorgeous; it was what was behind that gaze—something deeper, something that told her he knew her, and not just the random observations he’d thrown out. And yet she wasn’t ready to broach any of that. So she looked away and did her best to keep up the banter. “So did you actually follow me or just happen into that information?”
Thankfully he went along with her and didn’t try to keep things serious. “I hear things. People talk. There’re not many new residents around here these days. The people who do buy houses mostly use them for rentals. It’s not often you have someone stay around. Especially a young single woman.” He paused to watch as a man with spiky hair walked a little black-and-white dog past the bench.
When the man was gone, he spoke again. “The one thing no one seems to know is how long you’re staying in town.” When he looked at her, his eyes said more than the question he was asking. If she didn’t know better, she’d say his eyes were hoping for a certain answer. She blinked and watched the man with the dog start to fade from view. Maybe she was reading more into this than he intended. Maybe he was just making conversation.
Then his hand covered hers, causing her breath to catch in her throat as he spoke again. “Or why you’re single but you wear that ring.” He twisted her wedding band around on her finger and then his hand was gone before she had time to register how his skin felt against hers. “You don’t have to answer that if you’re not ready to talk about it. I just want to know I’m not out with a married woman.” He looked away and for a moment they both sat, silent and still.
She searched for the right words to say. She wasn’t ready to talk about Ryan with him, and yet she did owe him some sort of explanation. She’d been a dummy to forget about her ring. It had been such a part of her—and for so long—she didn’t think of it much anymore. There had been the initial question after Ryan died about whether or not she should keep it on. (Everyone had had an opinion they were only too glad to offer.) Once she decided she felt best keeping it on, she’d stopped thinking about it. Other than those really lonely nights when she got out their wedding album, lit candles, and had a good cry, did she really let herself think about what having it on still meant?
But how to tell him all that? The last thing she wanted to do on their first date was weigh down the conversation with her sad story. When she tried to speak, the words caught in her throat and she coughed and swallowed as he watched, a look of mild amusement on his face. “Didn’t mean to choke you up,” he quipped.
She gave him a strained smile, thinking as she did of Ryan and wondering if being with Kyle meant she was getting over him. Did it have to be either or? She twisted the ring on her finger and looked down at it, trying to push from her mind the day he’d given it to her out on the quad at school. Bystanders had stopped to stare as Ryan dropped to his knee and began to propose. When he pulled the ring from his pocket, people had actually clapped. And when she said yes and they kissed, well, they had cheered. She would always treasure that moment, that feeling of being the most blessed and special girl in the world. And now, sitting with someone she once
thought was the most good-looking guy on earth and having him look at her the way he was, well, it was a close second.
“I’m not married.” She smiled. “I’d never have agreed to go out with you if I was. But would it be okay if we talked about it later? I’d like to have a nice time tonight and leave the past where it is, for now at least, if that’s okay.”
He leaned over and cupped her face with his hand, rubbing his thumb across her cheek. “I think that’s an excellent idea.” He drew her to him and kissed her on the cheek. “But can I just say that I’m really glad to hear you say you’re not married?” He pulled away, stood up, and reached his hand out to her. She placed her hand in his and let him pull her up too. As they started to walk to his car, she realized she had no idea where they were going next and she didn’t care. All that mattered now was that as they walked he hadn’t let go of her hand.
After Southport they stopped in Shallotte to check out the movies playing there, standing in front of the marquee scanning the listings as people rushed past. She couldn’t keep her mind off the fact that she was standing in front of a cinema with none other than Brady Rutledge. The irony made her grin and, while she was getting more and more used to the idea of him being Kyle and not Brady, she still had these little fan-girl moments, her inner teen thrilled with the development.
“Something look good?” he asked, mistaking her grin.
“Not really, to be honest,” she said. “I’m just having a good time. It’s such a beautiful night. I wouldn’t mind just sitting out on my dock and talking if that sounds good to you.”
The Bridge Tender Page 16
