by Suzan Colon
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
“Yes, it is. And now I’ve lost you, and I’m never going to have what I had with you again.”
“Daniel, don’t say that. You’ll—”
“Katy, please.” His eyes close, his dark lashes fanning across his pale skin. “Don’t tell me I’ll meet someone someday. Even if I do, you were my first love, and no one’s ever going to measure up to you.” He looks at me again. “There are some things I want to say to you.”
His face is so set and serious, I’m almost afraid to hear them. “All right.”
“I’m guessing that guy has something to do with this,” Daniel mutters. Then he looks at me. “Is he a good man, Katy? Good enough for you?” Not wanting to hurt Daniel’s feelings, I just nod. I can’t tell whether he looks relieved or more upset than before.
“There’s something else you should know,” Daniel says. He takes my hands. “My reluctance had nothing to do with you. Nothing. It’s my fault, Katy. I know what a special person you are.”
My eyes fall downward as tears fill them. “I’m not that special.”
“Katy. Look at me.” When I do, the warmth coming from Daniel’s eyes is almost as good as one of his magical hugs. “You are special. It’s not just that you’re beautiful and talented, it’s your bravery. You think you’re scared to do things, but you do them anyway, even if you do them scared. When you got laid off, you freaked out, but you started writing, like you’d always wanted to. You came from a broken family like me, but instead of being afraid of having kids, you’re looking forward to it, and you know you’ll do better. And you will. Katy, you deserve everything you want and more.”
The tears fall, as I knew they would. Daniel reaches up and softly caresses them from my cheeks, even as his own eyes fill. “Katy, I wish I could have been brave enough to love you right.”
It’s not that Daniel takes me in his arms. It’s not that I go to him. One minute, we’re apart, looking at each other with an aching sadness I haven’t felt in so long, the sadness of goodbye, an end, and the next moment, I’m in the magic circle of his arms, thinking Please, can’t I keep this, please.
“I love you,” Daniel whispers. “Katy, I love you. Always.”
“Don’t,” I cry, sobbing into his shoulder. He thinks I mean don’t say that, so he stops. What I meant was, Don’t let go. I don’t know whether I want to say that to him or to myself.
We hold each other for a time that might have been long but will always feel too short. We try to comfort each other, but it’s hard to do that when you’re the one causing the pain.
The time comes when I know I have to let go. My arms so reluctantly release Daniel. We wipe the tears from each other’s eyes, which only creates fresh tears.
“This hurts so much I know I must have done the right thing,” Daniel says. “Please go before I beg you not to.”
And so, I do. No goodbye. No last look. Just the click of the door and the last train ride home.
32.
“I THINK WE’RE going to need a bigger place,” Carson says, standing in the middle of what was once my living room but now looks like a storage facility. He’s only half visible among a bunch of large cardboard boxes filled with clothes, books, athletic gear, and all the stuff he’d left at the Wakefield mansion. I gingerly hold a lacrosse stick, wondering what need he could possibly have for this.
“Well, if this is everything, we’ll manage,” I say with ridiculous optimism.
“This is almost all of it,” he says, opening a large box that seems to hold only summer clothes, which he doesn’t need as the thermometer drops into early November. “Randy and Evan are sending my things from Costa Rica. Those should arrive tomorrow.”
“Oh, uh, okay,” I say. “How much stuff is that?”
Carson shrugs. “My laptop, my surfboard, some clothes, books. Not much.”
“That’s what you said about all this,” I mention.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. We’ll work it out.” I move some boxes aside, trying to pick a path back to my desk, though with Carson unpacking, even though there’s no place to put away his things, I don’t know how I’m going to get any writing done.
It’s been three weeks since Carson moved in with me, which started the night he proposed. He said he couldn’t live at home, not the way he and his father constantly knock heads. Since we were unofficially engaged, him moving in with me just seemed to make sense. Crowded sense for two people in a studio apartment, even before all his things arrived. But I’m in love, and that makes everything seem romantic, if not incredibly easy.
While all that’s been going on, I got even more fantastic news. My friend Dina at Bon Voyage told me her bosses loved my Costa Rica story, so she’s been keeping an eye out for new travel stories for me to do. In the meantime, they have me writing local restaurant and attraction recommendations. Nothing big, especially not the money, but it’s been steady work. Work I was supposed to be doing this afternoon, but Carson made the trip in the moving van with all his stuff from Long Island in record time.
I sit down at my computer, ready to tackle five hundred words about a great taqueria in my neighborhood. “Kate, where should I put this?” Carson asks, holding an armload of ski gear.
“I don’t know, sweetie. The closet and bureau are full. Maybe you want to go to Ikea and check out shelving?” I suggest brightly, thinking I’ll get some quiet writing time and deal with ugly exposed metal shelves later.
Carson wrinkles his nose and puts the gear on top of a box. “We should spend the afternoon looking at apartments. You know we’re going to need a bigger space eventually anyway,” he says, smiling as he hints at children. “What do you think, an apartment in the city or a house somewhere?”
At the sight of his grin, my smile is automatic, though my words are sensible. “Both are kind of out of my price range. Unless the Wakefield estate extends to housing for its future heirs?” I ask, half joking.
“Not even to one of its current heirs, I’m afraid,” Carson says, examining a pair of diving fins and putting them in the ever-growing Keep pile. “My father froze my assets a while ago.”
“He what?” I get up from my desk chair and try to walk over to him, tripping over a stray golf club. “Why did he do that?”
Carson shrugs. “I guess because I quit and went to Costa Rica without telling him.”
Wow, these Wakefields really don’t fool around, whether they’re treating a houseguest like royalty or coming up with unique ways to express anger. “Well, have you spoken with him about it?” I ask. From the look on Carson’s face, I add, “I guess not.”
“Does me being cut off matter to you?” he asks.
“Not really,” I say. “But if you want to get a bigger place, we should see what we’re working with here. How much do you have in your bank account?” This could be a fun conversation, the kind had by people who are getting married and planning a future together.
Carson reaches into a box and unpacks what look like tennis clothes. “A couple of hundred dollars, I think. I don’t know. I haven’t really been keeping track.”
My jaw unhinges. “Carson, you used to be in charge of parts of your father’s multi-million dollar corporation. How could you not know how much you have in your bank account?”
“It just hasn’t been an issue. I had my trust fund and my salary,” he explains, as though mentioning loose change. “And in Costa Rica, I didn’t have to spend money on living expenses, food, surfing equipment, anything. Whatever I needed I got as part of my job. I haven’t really had to think about money,” he muses, “ever, I guess.”
I don’t care that Carson doesn’t come into this relationship equipped with Wakefield millions. I’m no gold digger. But this is different. I’m a little taken aback by his lack of comprehension about how money works in a world without mansions and butlers and infinity pools and infinity trust funds. I think I need to sit down and mull this over. Unfortunately, cardboard
boxes that probably contain polo playing gear, including a pony, are stacked on the couch. I notice my yoga mat crushed underneath one.
“Hey, can we go to that cute French place on Fourth Street for dinner?” Carson asks.
“I have a better idea.” I pick my way through the boxes to him. “Why don’t we make pizza together and then talk business. Take a look at our accounts, our assets, what we can afford. Stuff like that.”
Carson wraps his arms around me and smiles. “Bribe me with the promise of at least some naked accounting, and I’ll do it.”
He’s good to his word, both in trying to take my clothes off and in cooperating with me when I shoo his hands away and insist that we have a grown-up conversation about money. We munch on our homemade mushroom and olive pizza while we go online to check our accounts, and I diligently write down everything we have and our expenses.
Together, our financial picture is, well, not going to make me suggest buying a house any time soon.
Carson reads over my shoulder. “Yowzers. I’d better start thinking about getting a job.”
I sit in his lap and kiss his cheek, hoping to lift his glum expression. “We’ll be fine. And I don’t mind the tight living quarters for now. I like being close to you.”
“Me, too.” He rests his head against my neck. “I’m glad we did this. It was great to be a traveling beach bum for a while, but now I have to learn how to be a responsible person,” he says. “I knew you were good for me, Kate.”
As Carson nuzzles my neck, I try to take pride in what he’s giving me credit for, but something about that transformation doesn’t sound like a positive change.
CARSON SPENDS A few days online looking for work, though as far as either of us can tell he knows how to do only two things: business management and surfing instruction. I know he’d rather strangle himself with a necktie than go back to an office, but with winter coming there’s not a lot of call for surf instructors. Occasionally, he asks me whether I think he’s qualified to train dogs, or at least shampoo them, and what it means when a want ad calls for models for an “exotic photo shoot.” I answer, in order; yes, he can find something better, and he’s not allowed to do porn movies. Though considering his expertise and equipment, he could probably make a mint.
Then, one week later, everything changes.
On a day with an early snowfall, I get an email from an editor at Now News, the website where I blogged about my friend’s family in New Orleans dealing with hurricane destruction and the Gulf oil spill. I’d written about how, despite all that adversity, they never gave up or gave in. They had this incredibly resilient spirit. In the email, the editor asks me if I’ve noticed the amount of comments left by visitors. I haven’t, so I click on the link. There are over three hundred comments. Three hundred and forty-six, to be exact.
The rest of the email says that Now News is interested in regular reports about New Orleans’s efforts to rebuild. Not just the facts, the editor writes, but stories from the people who stay and fight to regain their lives, and how they’re coping after so much devastation and change. Now News is willing to offer up to two months of a small but steady reporter’s stipend. It takes me a minute to realize that the editor is saying Now News wants me to be that reporter.
“Carson!” I swing around in my desk chair, though my beloved is nowhere to be seen. “Carson?” I move through the cardboard box maze and find him crouched on the floor on the other side of our bed, zipping storage covers around our surfboards, getting ready to shove them away for long months until summer. I put my hand on his. “Not so fast,” I say. “We might be needing these in New Orleans.”
“Huh? Where?” he asks. My words tumble over each other as I try to explain, but I know he’s getting it when I see that sparkle in his eyes. The return of the light in those sea green eyes that have been too far from water is reason enough for me to take a chance on an adventure I’d once have thought was crazy. “My mom has been doing great, and Vic is with her, and I’m a quick flight back if anything happens, and it’s only for a month or two,” I breathlessly tell him. “The pay would barely cover our jambalaya, but it’s an incredible opportunity for my writing. The exposure I’d get is amazing. And you’d be able to surf again, maybe even get a job as an instructor. So,” I say, grinning in anticipation of his answer, “what do you think?”
He doesn’t say anything. His smile is so beautiful it could break my heart, and he hugs me and peppers me with kisses that become longer and deeper and take me to that place where I don’t need to think. I’ve never made love surrounded by surfboards and over-packed cardboard boxes before, but what Carson can do when he’s happy and excited, well, the porn company with that want ad is really missing out.
33.
“GOD, I HATE BEING stuck in traffic,” Carson groans as his head falls back against the headrest. The windshield wipers on our second-hand truck squeak a tune as they part enough rain to show us that the Monday morning rush hour in downtown New Orleans is a parking lot. Carson sighs heavily and puts the truck in neutral. We spent a luxurious extra half hour in bed making love, but we’re paying for it now. “Traffic,” Carson grouses. “The bane of every man’s existence.”
I look in the mirror on my side and tsk over the frizzy mess that is my hair. I didn’t have time to fix it this morning, nor did Carson have time to shave. I pull my hair back and convince myself that if I were French, I’d somehow look chic. I don’t need to use such imaginative tricks on Carson. He still looks like a male model, despite his stubble and his construction worker’s outfit of dark blue T-shirt, work jeans, and heavy boots. Carson looks at his watch. “We can’t do Mother’s for coffee and muffins,” he sighs. “And I’m still going to be late to work.”
“I’m sure they won’t be too hard on you,” I tell him, touching his shoulder. “Especially considering that they don’t pay you.”
“Hey, free rent for helping to rebuild houses in the flood zones is a good deal,” Carson says.
He smiles at me, and that smile can erase traffic, the hair-frizzing humidity, and even my worries that our time together in New Orleans is going better for me than it is for him. I thought I was the one who would have the harder time moving to a new city, living in temporary housing, and turning down freelance work to take a risk on this amazing assignment. But I’ve been writing steadily since we arrived six weeks ago, updating my original Now News article on my friend’s family and their community, how the oil spill hit their fishing business hard, and their struggle to find new work. Carson can relate to that. Of all the things New Orleans is famous for, surfing isn’t one of them. He made a connection with the sole surf shop here, and he does get to give lessons, but only from time to time. He said he’d try to find work in an office or as a hotel manager, but the look on his face reminded me of when the woman at the orchid garden in Costa Rica told me some species just don’t transplant well.
Through my research for Now News, I found an organization looking for workers who wanted to rebuild houses in the flood zone. Carson liked that idea, possibly even more when he found out they were funded generously by none other than Wakefield Media. He found some sort of joke there that I only partially understood as getting back at his dad. So far, no one on the job site had made the connection between the billionaire father and the hammer-wielding namesake.
I look over at Carson as he scrubs his angular, unshaven jaw. I think he’s happy. I know he likes doing this charitable work, even though it’s hard and exhausting.
“Oh, come on, are you freakin’ kidding me?” Carson yells as we were just inching forward and someone cuts us off.
“It’s okay, baby,” I soothe, stroking his shoulder again. “We’ll get there.”
He puts his hand on top of mine to keep it pressed against him. “How many interviews today?” he asks.
“Just one. A family of four still living in a trailer next to what’s left of their home. Kind of gives us some perspective, huh?”
“Wow. Sure
does,” Carson says, impressed. “Your book’s going to be amazing, Kate.”
I smile at his encouragement, remembering our night of celebration when an agent emailed me about that very idea after reading some of my Now News blogs. Me, writing a book! I still can’t believe it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I never really thought it would happen.
Daniel did. Whenever I spoke about writing, he would correct my if with when.
Carson turns on the radio, and a melancholy chorus ends with a bittersweet guitar solo. The DJ announces the song as “For You” by the Wailing Walls. I knew it sounded familiar. That was one of the songs on the album Daniel was engineering when I met him. He was the one who had the idea of ending the song on that plaintive, hopeful guitar note.
Finally, the traffic begins to break. Carson quickly puts the truck into drive, moving forward however and wherever he can.
34.
THE COLOR OF mischief is clear, ocean green. I know this because that’s the color of Carson’s eyes right now, and his face is mirthful, more excited than merely bringing in groceries would justify. He went shopping to restock our kitchen at home, the cupboards bare after our two months in New Orleans, and I stayed behind to keep writing. I’m barely going to make the deadline for my book. I know Carson doesn’t want to interrupt me, but I can feel he’s got something he can’t wait to say. It must be pretty good, too, because this is the happiest he’s looked in weeks. I turn away from my computer. “Okay, what could possibly have happened at the Food King to put that smile on your face? Was there a sale on passion fruit or something?”
