Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows)

by Judith Arnold

  Then he would be alive again, breathing once more. Wheezing air into his lungs would revive him, and his vision would clear. He would feel the hot sun sizzling on his wet shoulders and scalp, and he'd grab his board and climb back onto it, wondering whether he could trust it not to slip out from under him again.

  At that moment, seated so close to Erika, he wanted to climb back onto the board. But he was still under water, being tossed and agitated like a T-shirt in a washing machine. He couldn't, shouldn't, mustn't want to kiss her. Not when he was in another relationship. Not when he was supposedly in love with someone else.

  "This has been great, Fred, but I'm afraid I've got to hit the road," he said, surprising himself by resorting to the old nickname he used to call her.

  She seemed surprised too, whether by his use of her nickname or his abrupt announcement that he had to run, he didn't know. But if they'd stayed there any longer, he would have given in to the thundering urge to kiss her, and that would have been wrong. Reckless. Like trying to surf through a riptide.

  While he settled up with the bartender, he and Erika exchanged a bunch of platitudes about how lovely it was to have gotten together. He dared to touch his hand to the small of her back as they wove through the crowd to the exit. Feeling its graceful curve made him want to gather her into his arms. But then, he'd want to gather her into his arms even if he hadn't touched her.

  He had to get away from her. He had to go home and straighten things out. He needed to plant his feet on dry land until he regained his equilibrium.

  Outside, rain fell in a gentle shower from the purple-black sky. She thanked him yet again for the drink. He considered ribbing her about her having conveniently left her wallet at home, but he wasn't in a joking mood.

  His yearning trounced his good sense and he pulled her into his arms. God, she felt good. More than before, he knew he had to get away. "Take care, Erika," he said.

  "You, too."

  Was that a good-bye? A have-a-good-life kind of farewell? He didn't want to analyze it. Instead, he released her, took a cautious step back, and smiled at her. Her responding smile was breathtaking. Raindrops shimmered on her cheeks like clear, tiny pearls.

  Then she turned and strode down the street, looking so elegant, so poised, so together. It took all his willpower not to chase after her and say, "Damn it, Erika, let's try again and see if we can get it right this time."

  As she turned the corner and disappeared from view, he thought he heard another door click shut. But maybe, just maybe that noise was the sound of a key twisting in a lock, turning the bolt so that the door might open again.

  ERIKA LAY ON HER BED in her studio apartment, staring at the ceiling. What was wrong with her? Why had she stood in the rain weeping as if she were at a funeral? She'd had a beer with Ted. It wasn't the first time, and now that they were both living in the New York City area, it probably wouldn't be the last time.

  Hell, the next time they got together, maybe he would bring his significant other.

  A choked sound emerged from her, and she tried to convince herself it wasn't a sob. Surely she couldn't be crying over Ted. Not now. Not when their relationship had died sixteen years ago.

  It hadn't just died. She'd killed it.

  And maybe that was why she'd bawled like a mourner at a funeral. The funeral had been for her first love.

  Her only love. All the men she'd dated since college, all those eligible bachelors her friends had set her up with, all the colleagues at her various jobs over the years who'd leaned across her desk and murmured, "Why don't we continue this discussion over drinks after work . . ." None of them had ever touched her heart. None of them had ever made her cry.

  Ted did.

  All right. She'd killed their relationship-but if she hadn't, it would have died, anyway. They'd been too young. She hadn't been ready to make the kind of commitment Ted had demanded of her, and if he were honest he'd admit he hadn't been ready, either. He'd been caught up in the romance of it, the feverish excitement. But if she'd accepted his proposal that long-ago summer when they'd been teenagers, he would ultimately have grown to hate her. She would have tied him down, prevented him from finding out what he was meant to do. The job at East River-his "calling"-would never have called. How could he have taken the journey that brought him to that wonderful position, to the wonderful life he was living now, if he'd had Erika hanging like an albatross around his neck?

  She'd done him a favor by breaking up with him. One of them had had to take that awful step, and she'd been the one to take it. But it had benefited him as much as her.

  Maybe more than her. He seemed so happy now. So poised.

  So sexy.

  Another of those weird choking hiccup sounds caught in her throat. She swallowed, tasting the salt of unshed tears, and pushed herself to sit. Her hair was still damp from her trip home in the rain, and it was drying in tangled waves. She shoved a heavy lock of it back from her cheek, decided the moisture on her skin was from her hair and not from crying, and reached for her phone. Allyson's number was on speed dial, and she pressed the buttons and waited.

  "Hey, Erika," her old friend greeted her. "What's up?"

  "I had a drink with Ted this evening," Erika said, skipping past the niceties and diving straight into the heart of things. She and Allyson didn't require small talk.

  "Ted? As in Skala?"

  "How many Teds are there in my life?"

  "Right," Allyson said. "There's always been just one. So, you had a drink with him, huh."

  "A beer at Fanelli's."

  "Nice." Allyson sounded a little snarky, but also amused.

  "He's in a relationship. He's been with her for a long time."

  "Well," Allyson said, sounding less snide than cautious now. "Good for him. I think. Did you meet her?"

  "No, he left her home." Yet another sob rose into Erika's throat, and she couldn't keep this one from escaping. "He's the one, Allyson. He's always been the one."

  Now Allyson sounded truly sympathetic. "Don't confuse what you were feeling sixteen years ago with who he is now."

  "That's the thing. Sixteen years ago, he was a kid. We both were. Now he's a man. He's solid, he's grown up, he's got a career ... he's everything I wasn't ready for sixteen years ago, everything he wasn't ready for."

  "Honey, there are lots of other solid, grown-up men with careers out there. I've introduced you to a few of them myself."

  "But they aren't Ted. They aren't the guy I fell in love with. The guy I learned all about love with. Ted was my soul mate."

  "And you think he still is?"

  "It doesn't matter what I think. He's with another woman. And..." She drifted off, remembering.

  "And?"

  The words echoed in her skull, harsh and bruising. "He said, `I will never be with you again."'

  "When did he say that? Tonight?"

  "When I broke up with him in college."

  "That was a long time ago."

  "He said I hurt him too badly. He couldn't bear ever to be hurt that badly again, so he would never love me again."

  "Maybe he's changed his mind."

  Erika laughed through her tears. "That's not the kind of thing you change your mind about. Like he'd say, `Oh, I thought about it recently, and I decided you didn't hurt me that badly after all.' I stabbed him in the heart, Allyson. He'll never forgive me for what I did." And I'll never forgive myself, she added silently.

  "But he had a drink with you. Who initiated that?"

  "He did," Erika conceded.

  "So? Why would he have asked you to meet him for a drink if he didn't want at least something to do with you?"

  "A drink with an old friend is meaningless."

  "Not to you, it isn't. And maybe not to him, either. Like you said, he's your soul mate."

  "Was," Erika corrected her.

  Allyson fell silent for a moment. "Remember the old days when you used to ride?"

  "Yeah, I think I have a few memories of that." It wa
s Erika's turn to be snarky.

  "So, a horse threw you. What did you do?"

  "Don't give me platitudes, Allyson. I know how to ride. I know how to pick myself up and dust myself off. But if a horse said to me, `You will never ride me again, because you hurt me too much,' I wouldn't get back on that horse again."

  "I'm not talking about Mr. Ed," Allyson retorted. "I'm talking about you. Figure out what you want, Erika. Set a goal and go after it. You know how to do that. If he's really tight with his current girlfriend, you'll wish him well and move on. But don't be so defeatist. You never know about these things."

  With a few final sniffles and a brief enough-about-me change of topic so Allyson could whine about all the petty annoyances of her life, Erika ended the call. After tossing her cell phone onto her night table, she sank back onto the bed, stared at the high ceiling above her, and took a few deep breaths. Then she sat up again and leveled her gaze on the wall beside her closet. A framed picture hung there, of two lovers in bed, with donkeys watching them.

  Why had he drawn donkeys on that picture? He'd always liked donkeys, and she'd loved horses, and ... who knew? The drawing had worked. It had moved her enough to frame it. She'd stashed it in her parents' house while she'd been sailing across the ocean, and while she'd been sharing a flat with two other girls during her year of menial labor and theater auditions, and when she'd headed out west to attend business school. Once she'd moved into her quaint little apartment in a grand pre-war building in Gramercy Park, however, she'd retrieved the drawing from the depths of the closet in the guest room of her parents' home. She'd brought the drawing back to New York and hung it on the wall.

  Not because she loved Ted or missed him, she'd told herself at the time, but because it was a work of art. A work of genius. Intriguing and odd and beautiful.

  She stared at it now, stared at the intertwined lovers at its center, and tried to figure out what she wanted. To get back together with Ted?

  Getting back together with him was impossible.

  If she couldn't have him, if she couldn't go back and reclaim what she'd tossed away all those years ago ... what else did she want?

  To find another man who could make her feel the way Ted had. A man she could trust as much as she'd trusted Ted. A man who could make her laugh the way he did, and who could see through her shit and call her on it and keep her honest. A man with bedroom eyes and strong arms and big, sturdy shoulders, the kind of shoulders a woman knew she could lean on. A man with an artistic streak, an abundance of energy, and the intelligence and wit to conquer worlds.

  Another Ted. That was what she wanted. Either another Ted or no one at all, which had suited her fine until that evening.

  She shouldn't have agreed to meet him for that drink. She'd been perfectly content until he'd reentered her life and reminded her of what it was like to be in love.

  Being on the receiving end of a breakup can be agony. But being on the giving end wasn't exactly a walk in the park, either. When you use a knife to whittle away a space between yourself and someone else, you are as likely to nick yourself as to cut the other person. You both wind up bleeding.

  Ted had never thought of that when Erika had broken up with him all those years ago. He'd been so deeply wounded, so angry, so utterly certain that she was wrong and he was right. He'd never wasted an instant imagining what she might be experiencing, whether hurting him had hurt her as well.

  Breaking up with Marissa hurt. The waves of her pain washed over him and dragged him under. "What do you mean, it's over?" she wailed. "How can you just end things like this?"

  He gazed around the living room of their Brooklyn apartment. It was nicely decorated, mostly reflecting Marissa's taste-which she had in abundance. No complaint about the choices she'd made, the shades on the windows, the area rugs, the old sofas jazzed up with colorful accent pillows. Ted was artistic; he knew how to make a room look good, but he'd left her to her own devices, figuring she'd turn the apartment into a warm, welcom ing residence.

  Or maybe he'd allowed her to decorate the place because he hadn't been fully invested in it. Maybe he'd been thinking, Marissa can't fix up my heart, but she can fix up the apartment.

  "I'm sorry," he said, realizing at once how feeble that sounded. "I never wanted to hurt you, but-"

  She froze him with a lethal look, then took a sharp, quick gulp from the glass of Stoli she'd poured herself. "If you didn't want to hurt me," she snapped, "we wouldn't be having this conversation."

  "I'm not doing this because I want to." He sighed, accepting that he was hurting her, despite his protestations. "I really hoped this would work out, babe, but-"

  "Don't call me babe."

  He sighed again. At that moment, he would have liked nothing more than to be at that neighborhood bar in SoHo with Erika. After so many years, after the pain and the resentment and the silence, he'd still felt more comfortable with her than he'd ever felt with Marissa. "If we were meant to be, we would have been there by now. I wasn't sure. You kept asking me when I would take the next step, and I kept telling you I didn't know. That was the truth. I didn't know."

  "And now you know? Now you know you'll never take that step?"

  "I'm sorry, but ... yes."

  "Stop saying `I'm sorry."'

  Okay. No babe, no I'm sorry. Maybe he should ask her for a list of prohibited words and phrases.

  He tried again, selecting his words carefully. "There's always been ... something ... holding me back." The truth was, there had always been someone, not something. Until he'd seen Erika, though, he'd thought it was something. What, he hadn't been sure of. A block, a wall he couldn't get around, a gate he couldn't unlatch. Something holding him back, preventing him from opening his heart again.

  The fear of getting hurt the way he'd been hurt by Erika. The fear of allowing himself to be that vulnerable ever again. The knowledge that a person who'd survived one heart attack was less likely to survive another.

  If he broke up with Marissa-no if about that; it wouldn't be fair to continue with her, feeling the way he did-when he broke up with Marissa, he would want to see Erika again. Yet he would never allow himself to be vulnerable to her the way he'd been vulnerable years ago. He didn't want the second heart attack. If she broke up with him again, it would kill him.

  But he wanted her. There was no question in his mind about that. Ever since he'd seen her sweep into Fanelli's, her face glittering with raindrops, her eyes so wide and warm and her body. .. Christ, her body.

  He wanted her. He wanted to make love to her properly, not like a breathless kid but like a man. Slowly. Gently. Wildly. He wanted to make her melt and moan his name. He wanted to do it right.

  For all he knew, she had no interest in him other than as an old high school classmate, someone to have a beer with while reminiscing about the good old days. He might break up with Marissa and wind up with nothing, no one. Erika might say, "Ted, you asshole. I broke up with you. Remember?"

  But he couldn't stay with Marissa, not feeling the way he did. Love wasn't like buying a car; you didn't accept the red sedan because the silver sedan wasn't in stock.

  "It's for your own sake," he told Marissa, knowing she'd want to add that to her list of things he mustn't say, but saying it any way. "It's for your own good. You deserve a guy who can give you one hundred percent. I can't. I've tried, but I can't."

  "I hate you," she said.

  He didn't blame her.

  And he knew there was nothing he could do to make things better for her. Leaving her was for the best. She might not realize that now, but maybe-hopefully-she would someday.

  And maybe someday, he'd realize that Erika's having broken up with him sixteen years ago had been for the best, too.

  A few weeks later, she heard from Ted again.

  She'd needed those few weeks to screw her head on right. To remember that she and Ted were just friends, that he was in a relationship, that if he wanted to see her again, it was probably because their last mee
ting had been kind of short and they hadn't really finished catching up.

  And that was fine, she assured herself. Her bout of tears after she'd seen him at Fanelli's had been one of those weird hormonal things, nothing more. A reaction to the comprehension that she was no longer the naive young girl she'd been so many years ago. A pang of nostalgia, nothing more.

  That was what she'd told her mother during their most recent phone call. Her parents had moved to Florida. They'd reached the stage in their life where the occasional hurricane seemed less of a hassle than the frequent snowstorm, and Erika was happy to have a warm place to visit when the New York winters dug their icy claws into her.

  After her mother caught her up on what was going on in her parents' life, Erika filled her mother in on developments at work, what she liked and didn't like about her new job. "We're so proud of you," her mother said repeatedly.

  Erika smiled. Her parents were always proud of her. They'd been proud of her equestrian achievements, proud of her good grades, proud of her for graduating from a top-notch college and business school. Even proud of her for sailing across the Atlantic, although they'd also panicked and tried to talk her out of that escapade. Once she'd flown home and they'd seen for themselves how much the experience had changed her, how it had made her even more independent, more confident of her abilities, more joyfully fearless, they'd allowed that perhaps it hadn't been the stupidest thing she'd ever done. "We can say that now that you're home, safe and sound," her father had conceded.

  "So," she told her mother, "Guess who I had a drink with not long ago? Ted Skala."

  "Ted?" Although her mother was down in Florida, Erika could picture her mother's startled expression as if she were sitting just a few feet away in Erika's apartment. She could picture the arcs of her mother's eyebrows, the circle of her lips shaping an 0 of surprise. "He's in New York?"