Let Me Love You

by Lily Foster

  “Yes, sweet Rene…even if it kills me.”

  We walked back up, hand in hand, and then he kissed me possessively once more before I made my way back to bed. I took a speedy shower to get the sand off me and then slid beneath the sheets. I let myself enjoy the thought of the day, hopefully soon, when Caleb made love to me again.

  Darcy got up early to say goodbye. As we stood around the kitchen island I could have sworn I saw her look between me and Caleb a few times but maybe I was imagining it. When we got to the airport Caleb took us inside dragging most of the bags and then said, “Rene, didn’t you have another bag with you?”

  I looked at my things and I was missing one small carry-on. “Come run back out for a second and we’ll check the car. If it’s not there I’ll have it shipped.”

  When we got back out he handed me the bag that he’d stashed in a far corner of the trunk. “I’m crafty, Rene.”

  He pulled me close and kissed me for a moment. Then he held my gaze and said, “Rene, I want to see you soon. We need to talk and just figure out how we want this to work for the next few months while you’re still in school.”

  “I know. I have to take care of some things this week.”

  “Me too.”

  We both understood that we were referring to ending relationships.

  “I’ll come to you, Rene, to make it easier for you with school and work.”

  “No, Caleb, I don’t want to stay in a hotel. If it’s ok with you I’d like to stay with you at your place.”

  “I’d love that. Call me later so I know you made it in ok.”

  “I love you, so much.”

  “I love you too, Rene.”

  Caleb

  I came back from the airport to find some of the best surfing conditions I’ve ever had on the island. Was this the universe telling me that, yes Caleb, all is now officially right in the world?

  I spent the next four hours out on the water. Between sets I had time to think and relive the past two days. I was so happy and relieved that tears actually welled in my eyes at one point.

  I couldn’t wait to get home. I knew I probably wouldn’t be seeing Rene for a little over a week and I had some things to take care of. I was not going to go speak to Elena before I left the island. She was a little tempestuous and I had the feeling that a beer bottle might be hurled in my general direction if I went in there telling her, again, that I couldn’t see her anymore. My plan was to just stay out of the café for the rest of my natural born life. Cherry though, was a different story. She already knew how I really felt but I owed her an explanation and would give her a full one. I had to tell her that she had always been a good friend to me. That’s why it was so easy to gravitate to her when I was hurting so bad over Rene. That was the truth. I knew Cherry would understand and all, but thinking of her had me wondering again if staying at the firm was a good idea. Not just because leaving would make it easier on her, but I’d been having this nagging thought that if I did intend to venture out and start something on my own, what was I waiting for?

  As I came in I heard my father saying to Sarah and Darcy, “You see what some good surfing does for that kid? He looks as happy as can be.”

  I heard Sarah then. “Wonder if it was just the surfing?”

  Darcy asked, “What do you mean?”

  Sarah answered, “Nothing, it’s just that there were also a lot of beautiful women here this week. That alone could make someone like Caleb very happy.”

  I hung back until the conversation was over and then casually strode in. Believe me, I wanted to burst in and yell at the top of my lungs that I loved Rene, someday I was going to marry her and she’s made me happier than I’ve ever been. Not just because I was pretty much bursting with emotion at that point but also because I really loved my family and I wanted to share the best things in my life with them. But that time would come. Maybe Rene and I would decide to tell certain people soon but maybe we wouldn’t. That was between us and I’d decided I wouldn’t tell anyone anything until she and I made that decision together.

  The only exception to that rule was Luke. Just as Rene had Caitlin to confide in, Luke had been the only one to know what was really going on with me. I called him later that day and he picked up on the first ring. “Caleb, I feel like a fucking fourteen year-old girl waiting by the phone to hear the latest news. What the hell happened?”

  “It’s all good.”

  He let out a breath and sounded relieved. “Really? Man, I’m happy for you, Caleb.”

  “I’m fucking ecstatic.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “No, just you and Kate. Luke, did you tell Kate everything? I mean, it’s ok if you did.”

  “No, not everything. Kate and I were trying to get pregnant then and anyway, it just didn’t seem like something I should tell her.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad. I just want Rene’s privacy protected.”

  “I know that.”

  “Thanks for everything, Luke. I don’t tell you often enough but I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He laughed. “I worry about that myself sometimes.”

  I laughed too. “You can’t even let me say something nice. Later, dick.”

  “Bye.”

  Chapter Ten

  Rene

  What to do? What to do?

  Since the dorms were closed over the break I was crashing with Cara, who lived just outside of Boston. I would stay with her for a week, then head down to see Caleb—hooray!—and then move back into the dorm.

  I couldn’t wait to be working and living in a place of my own. I never really took the time to stop and think about it before but my whole life really, I was like a nomad. Moving from place to place, crashing with this one, subletting that one’s place for a few months; it was sad and I was so tired of it.

  My dilemma now, being temporarily out of the dorms, was finding a time and place to meet up with Tanner. I could not go visit him at home. I couldn’t break up with him with his family around. It was ten days until we got back to school, should I just wait? Tanner called me just then. “Hey, were you even going to call and tell me you were back? I was thinking maybe you flew off on a third vacation!”

  I laughed nervously and told Tanner that I’d gotten in really late the night before because the flight was delayed—big giant lie—and I was beat when I got in.

  Meanwhile, I’d already spoken to Caleb three times.

  “By the way, where are you? The dorms aren’t open yet, right?”

  “Cara’s. It’s pretty close to the restaurant.”

  “I was going to drive in tonight but the weather is crap.”

  I felt relieved. I wasn’t looking forward to doing this. “No, don’t. It’s icy and I don’t like the idea of you driving in this at night.”

  “You’re sweet.” No, I thought, I’m awful. He went on, “But I won’t see you then, Rene. I’m leaving for Vermont tomorrow, remember?”

  “I forgot you were going skiing.”

  “Are you sure you can’t come? My family would love to have you.”

  “Besides the fact that I cannot ski to save my life, I’m committed to two days at the station this week and I’m waitressing.”

  “Okay, I’ll miss you then. I’ll be back that next Sunday morning. Don’t work that day, I want to see you, ok?”

  “Ok.”

  I called Caleb before I went into work. I told him that I wanted to come see him sooner than I’d first planned, if that was ok. “You all right, Rene?”

  “Never better, Caleb. I mean that. I just want to see you.”

  “I’ll be at the airport. You just tell me when.”

  “Sunday sound good?”

  “Yes, your twenty-first birthday sounds very good. Did you think I’d forget?”

  “I wasn’t sure. But really, I don’t want to do anything crazy. I just want to talk and to be with you. Low key, ok?”

  “I promise.”

  Caleb

  I go
t into work early and found her in the break room. I asked Cherry if she could go out to lunch with me. “Caleb, please. I know what this is. This is the letting me down easy conversation, right?”

  “Cherry, I was wrong to ever start us up again. You were pretty clear last year that this wasn’t good for you. It’s just…when I was hurting, you were so good to me and I took advantage of that. I think you’re a beautiful woman and you’ve always been a great friend to me. I just can’t do this to you anymore.”

  “Is she back in your life?”

  “Yeah, I hope so.”

  She had tears threatening in the corner of her eyes but she composed herself and took a deep breath. “I’m not totally innocent in this. I knew you didn’t love me but I thought maybe I could change that. I’ll be all right, Caleb.”

  Later on, I noticed that Cherry wasn’t at her desk. When I asked one of the secretaries about it they said she left early, said she wasn’t feeling well.

  I felt like a total bastard.

  I was glad I had a few days before Rene got here so I could get myself out of this funk. And when I saw Rene come walking towards me in the airport, everything lifted. The sun was shining again.

  We dropped her bags with my doorman and then I took Rene to a great little place around the corner from my apartment. We had a long, long lunch and talked for hours. She told me she wasn’t going to speak to Tanner until they were back at school. I was disappointed at first, I wanted her to do it as soon as possible, but she explained that she didn’t want to talk to him over the phone and she definitely couldn’t talk to him with his family there. “I’m dreading it, Caleb. He’s going to be blindsided. He shouldn’t be, but he will. I just don’t want him to feel hurt.”

  “Yeah, it’s not pleasant.”

  “That situation makes me unhappy but then at the same time, the thought of being with you makes me feel like I’m bursting with, like, joy.” She laughed then, her sweet laugh.

  Rene asked how Kate was doing and asked me if it was difficult, spending the past few months hearing about the pregnancy and the whole family getting ready for the baby’s arrival. I told her there were times it gave me a passing feeling of sadness but as time had gone on and since Kate had started to show so prominently, I had started to feel the same as everyone else, excited for the baby’s arrival. But as I said that, I felt badly. “Rene, I do think about it often. I think that…I have a hard time putting it into words. I just feel sadness and regret, I guess.”

  She looked right at me, pain etched in her face. “I think about the idea that I would have had the baby in October.” She let out a deep breath. “But like you said, as the months have gone by, it still hurts but I’m able to let the feeling come and then eventually, it passes.” We held hands and were both lost in thought. “You know, I went to stay at Tanner’s over Thanksgiving.”

  “Yeah I heard about that. I went on a bender that weekend.”

  She cocked her head to the side and frowned but her eyes were twinkling. “Oh, Caleb, I want to feel sad but there’s a part of me that’s so happy you cared.” She laughed again and rolled her eyes. “You know I only went because I had nowhere to go. I was so mad everyone was making me feel pathetic about staying at the dorm by myself so I finally gave in and went. Anyway, he has a young cousin, just seventeen, who had a baby. She asked me to hold the baby when she must have caught me staring at her. That was painful. Holding the baby felt so good but made my heart ache. Then I had to listen to his mom’s opinions about abortions and girls who get them. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a nice woman, but that was awful. I wanted to just leave the house at that moment and walk the hundred miles back to school.”

  “I think there will always be times when it hurts, Caleb. I met a doctor at the clinic when I went in for a follow-up visit. Once I got into the examining room that day I was a sobbing wreck again. It was kind of embarrassing.” She met my eyes with a faint smile that did nothing to mask her sadness. “Anyway, this doctor shared with me that she had gotten pregnant while she was in med school. She just understood me…understood everything and listening to her really helped me, more than she’ll ever know. I let myself feel it but most of the time I was on autopilot, you know? I just put my head down, worked harder than I ever had and tried to move on towards reaching my goals.”

  “I wish I was there to help you through that.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe you couldn’t have, Caleb. Maybe I would have wound up resenting you if you were around me at that time. I don’t know.”

  “Whatever happens from now on, Rene, I want us to make decisions together. Nothing is on just one of us, ok?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I hope that’s the one thing that’s changed for me after going through all this. Making decisions alone, not accepting help from people who love you and keeping secrets is a lonely way to live. I don’t want to do that anymore.”

  “You’ll never have to.”

  After I said that I realized it might sound too possessive, too final for Rene. As if I intended to have her close to me forever. But that is exactly what I intended. “I know you’re only twenty-one, birthday girl. I don’t want you to feel like I’ve mapped out your entire future for you, Rene. I just…I really love you.”

  She took my hands. “I can’t see a future with anyone but you, Caleb.”

  Rene

  Being here with him, talking for hours, I felt like I had my friend back and I was so thankful. Caitlin had listened to me for countless hours over the past year but talking with Caleb was entirely different. He was a part of everything and he was a part of me.

  When we got back to his place he asked me if I was ready for my present. He seemed a little nervous, which was not like him. When I nodded he pulled a small box out from behind his back. Don’t get me wrong, I did not think for a minute he was proposing to me. In fact, I would have thought he’d bumped his head badly or something if he had. It was a small Cartier box with a satin ribbon tied around it. “I hope you like it, Rene.”

  I unwrapped the box, which had another small velvet box inside. It was a ring with a wide band made from of a triple strand of white gold with two ends that met in the center where they intertwined. It was a cool, contemporary design and to me, the strands spoke of two people, laced together, entwined with one another. “I love it, Caleb. I absolutely love it.”

  It slid onto my ring finger, fitting perfectly.

  “What I meant to say before is that I hope you like it because it’s engraved so I can’t take it back.”

  I took it off again. Inside it had the word Someday engraved. I looked up at him with a question in my eyes.

  “A lot of times over the past year I found myself saying, ‘someday.’ Maybe someday Rene will let me back in. Someday I won’t miss her so badly,” he laughed as he said, “but I always did.” He took my hand but his head was down. “And then after you came back to me, I let myself think that someday soon you would be in New York again with me…all the time. That someday, I’ll make you my wife. Someday it will be you getting ready to be a mother and you’ll be carrying my baby.” He looked up at me, uncertain. “I’m sorry if that’s too much, Rene.”

  I sat myself in his lap and he wrapped his arms around me. I couldn’t help the tears that came. “I love you more than anything, Caleb.”

  He held me tight and we just stayed like that for a while. He whispered in my ear, “Can I take you to my room, Rene?”

  I smiled. “Yes, I don’t want to go slow anymore.”

  What followed was two hours of the most mind blowing, intimate love that both my mind and body would probably ever experience. There was so much emotion on both of our parts that when we were both spent we just laid there in one another’s arms silent for a long time. He spoke first. “Do you know how many times I dreamed of that? Then convinced myself I’d never feel that again?” He shifted me so that I was lying on top of him. He ran his hands down my back and then rested them on my bum. “Your body feels so good, Rene. I�
��ll always want just you.”

  His body felt so strong and hard underneath me. I wanted him again. I rested my forearms on his chest and looked up at him. “Caleb, I could stay like this forever.” Then I sat up straddling him. “Or like this. I could stay like this.”

  He smiled wickedly. “Yes, stay like this. I like the view.”

  He put his hands on my stomach and slowly, gently ran his touch up my body, lingering softly on my breasts and then took my face in his hands. He sat himself up so we were face to face.

  Without breaking the position he slid on a condom and shifted me over him. We moved together like that, our faces an inch apart, looking into each other’s eyes the entire time. I would never stop wanting this and couldn’t imagine being this close to anyone else.

  In that moment I was so happy that I hadn’t gone ahead and been impulsive with Tanner. I only wanted this with Caleb. I didn’t feel anything for Tanner like I did for Caleb. I felt like Caleb was my heart, my life.

  After we pulled ourselves apart I felt like a contented cat. He rubbed his hands over my hips. “What can I do for you now, madam? Would you like me to feed you in bed, rub your feet—anything, tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Hmm. You can run me a bubble bath and then sit behind me in the tub so I can feel you against me as you wash my hair.”

  “Absolutely. Although if I’m sitting behind you and this body is against me, I can’t promise that I won’t want you again.”

  My eyes went wide. “Caleb, I might not be able to walk tomorrow!”

  He gave me his most sinful smile. “There’s something hot about that. While I’m at work tomorrow I can think about you and how you’ll still be able to feel me.”

  “I actually love the thought of that myself.”