I couldn’t stay standing on the starting block while everyone else raced. Showing Ron that I’d kept working on my swimming suddenly seemed like the best move possible, so I put my goggles on fast then stepped to the front of my block and grabbed the edge between my feet like everyone else.
The starting gun went off and I threw myself forward. My dive was never my strong point, but I did the best I could, then began flapping my way down the pool.
I made it through the first length without too much trouble, but I was panting hard by the time I was only a few strokes along going the other way.
“Get to the end,” I told myself over and over. “Get through it and prove you’re strong and then Ron will talk to you.” He had to.
The last half length was utter agony as my shoulder muscles burned like they’d been set on fire, but I forced myself to keep going. I felt, somehow, like if I could just finish this it would be proof that I wasn’t a screw up.
There was a woman plugging along next to me, and as I kept pushing I realized to my amazement that I was steadily moving ahead of her. I wasn’t going to be last after all. Ron would be proud of me.
I smacked my hands into the wall at the end, then ripped off my goggles and turned to look for Ron.
He was gone. He’d left. He’d seen me and he’d left. On purpose.
My eyes filled with tears but I dunked my head under the water to shock them away then scrambled out of the pool as fast as my exhausted muscles could manage it.
My legs shaking, I stumbled toward the men’s change room clutching my goggles and towel. He had to have gone in there.
I had to get him to come out.
When I reached the entrance, I hesitated. I couldn’t go in. Even if the guys wouldn’t mind, I didn’t want to see any of them strutting around without their swimsuits.
“Wrong door, honey,” an older man said as he walked past me into the change room.
“I know-- wait!”
He turned back.
“Could you please find someone in there for me?” Maybe Ron would come out if this nice grandfather type asked him.
“Um, sure,” he said. “Who?”
“His name’s Ron. He’s about this tall,” I said, indicating with my hand a few inches above my head, “and he’s got brown hair and green eyes. Had on a red t-shirt and black sweatpants when I saw him last.”
“If he’s in there he might well be naked now,” the man said, chuckling.
“I don’t need to see him naked,” I said, though I felt my cheeks getting warm at the idea. “I just need to see him. Please. It’s so important.”
The guy looked at me, and his amusement went away. “Okay, honey. I’ll go ask.”
He walked just out of my sight into the forbidden change room and shouted, “Ron! Lady here to see you. Pretty one. Get out here.”
“If she’s pretty, I can be Ron,” someone in the room said, laughing, and several others agreed.
The man reappeared. “What’s his last name?”
I shook my head. No way was I going to reveal that. Ron might not like it. “Just go ask for him again. Tell him I’m Summer. Tell him please. Tell him I’m sorry.”
He patted my shoulder, and vanished into the room again. “Ron, lady’s name is Summer and she really wants to see you. Come on, man. Poor girl’s begging for you.”
Several highly inappropriate comments about begging women floated out to me, and though I could hear my man talking to someone near the door I couldn’t make out his words.
He returned to me, looking sad. “Sorry, honey, he says no. And I’m pretty sure I got the right one. Want me to try again?”
“No,” I said, my throat tightening. “Thanks, though.”
He patted my shoulder again and went back into the change room.
I stood, leaning my forehead against the cool tiles by the doorway, wondering what to do. I’d been so close to Ron. He’d been right there, just inside. I had to--
So close. Could he still be there?
“Ron,” I said, as loud as I could, before I could decide if this was a good plan, “if you can hear me, I’m so sorry. I screwed up.”
A few people walked by, giving me strange looks for talking to myself, and I could hear a guy chuckling in the change room. I felt stupid and pathetic, and started to turn to leave, but I made myself stay put and keep going. I had to. This was the closest I’d been to him, assuming he was even still there, since the wedding, and I had to go for it.
“Ron, I did screw up and I know it. I don’t deserve forgiveness. But-- no, not but. I don’t. I know that. I want to tell you how sorry I am and why it all happened. You might still not forgive me, I don’t expect you to, but at least you’ll understand why I did it and you can tell them and maybe if I’m really lucky you can tell me if they actually got married because I don’t know and I feel so bad for them and I screwed up and...”
The tears took me over again, but I forced them far enough back that I could say, “I screwed up. And I’m sorry. Please, Ron. Please. Let me apologize to you in person. Please?”
I got no answer, and that made it impossible not to cry. More people were looking at me now, and this wasn’t at all the kind of attention I’d wanted. I felt exposed and vulnerable and alone and those feelings brought the tears up even harder.
I pressed my hand over my mouth to try to stifle my sobs, then jumped as a wonderfully familar voice spoke in my ear.
“Okay.”
My heart racing, I turned to face him. He wasn’t looking friendly, but he was there and that was enough. “Really?”
He nodded. “Get dressed. We’ll talk.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Afraid Ron would make a break for it, I skipped my shower and got dressed as fast as I could. Even so, he appeared in the hall outside the change rooms mere minutes after I got there.
He hitched his bag higher onto his shoulder. “Waiting long?”
I shook my head. I’d have done the same if I’d been waiting an hour. I was far too glad he’d agreed to see me to complain about how long it took.
“Okay.” Another hitch of the bag, and I realized he was nervous too. “Where to?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Lunch?”
He looked uncomfortable.
“Sorry. Coffee?”
His eyes met mine for the first time. “I don’t know. This is tough.”
I nodded. He probably felt like he was betraying Kent. Maybe he was. “We can stay here if you want.”
He glanced at the crowds of people milling around. “No, coffee is good. I swim in two hours so I’ll just have a bagel.”
We agreed on a coffee shop a few minutes away from the pool and set off. I couldn’t help being terrified that he wouldn’t come through and would instead drive away and leave me, but I didn’t believe he could be that cruel and sure enough he pulled into the parking lot right after me.
Once we had our coffees and bagels, which he hadn’t allowed me to buy for him though I’d tried, and had settled at a corner table with my back to the room so I wouldn’t have to deal with being recognized, we didn’t speak for a good minute. I hadn’t realized how long sixty seconds of cool silence were. Finally, I cleared my throat and said, “Well. Thank you for talking to me. Or at least for being here.”
This got me the closest thing to a smile I’d seen from him yet. “Guess I’m not feeling that talkative.”
“I can see that. Me either.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Bet you’ve never said that before.”
“True.”
We fell into another long silence. He took a bite of his bagel, I sipped my coffee, and then he sipped his.
Inside I was screaming.
I set down my cup with a sharp cardboardy click. “Okay, look. I know you’re all mad at me. I get it. And I know I deserve it. All I want from you today is to let me tell you why I did what I did. I did have reasons.”
“I assumed so,” he said, so sarcastically my mi
nd went blank.
When I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t get past the rudest way he’d ever spoken to me, he cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said, sounding like it hurt him. “It’s just, we’ve been trying to figure out your reasons since it all happened, and none of what we’ve come up with makes you look very good. I just don’t understand.”
I nodded. “The truth probably won’t make me look good, either, but it is the truth, and I think you should know it. I want you to understand.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Tell.”
Faced with this blunt command, I couldn’t.
He dropped his elbow onto the table and rested his chin on his knuckles. “Summer, I don’t even know if I should be here, and if you’re not going to tell me...”
“I am,” I said, terrified I was going to lose my only chance. “I am. Okay. So. Right after Kent and MC told us where they were getting married, but before that article got published, I was asked at work for the wedding details. MC was so open on the reunion show, and I honestly thought she’d changed, so I told my boss Simon where the wedding was.”
Ron raised his eyebrows and I went on quickly. “I told him because if I didn’t he would go photograph the honeymoon, be there every second of it, and I decided that having a camera crew at a distance for the start of the church part, not even getting pictures of the ceremony itself, would be better for Kent and MC than having the honeymoon photographed.”
“Not having anything photographed would have been better still.”
I nodded. “But that wasn’t going to happen.”
“No, because you--”
I shook my head. “Trust me, one way or another Simon would have found where the wedding was. That’s what he does, hunt down celebrities. I made a deal that some distance shots would happen but he’d leave the honeymoon alone, and I thought that was better than having Kent and MC harassed at the wedding, at the important part.”
Those words struck me, and before he could respond I said, “Was there a wedding? Did they actually get married?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
I hated that he trusted me so little, and I had to clear my throat to push back the tears before I could say, “I just want to know. I feel so bad...”
Looking ashamed of himself, he said, “They did. MC went and changed and then came back and they did.”
She hadn’t worn the dress I’d made, but they’d gotten married. The first part of that hurt, but the second more than made up for it. A tear escaped, and I swiped it away and said, “I’m glad.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “Okay, so. You made a deal. But that deal obviously fell through because the camera crew was there at the wedding and that Mimi person threatened to be at the honeymoon.”
“Yeah. I thought everything was fine but then I heard that Kent and MC had turned down a million dollars for TV rights to the wedding. That obviously meant they wouldn’t be happy with having the wedding photographed at all, even from a distance. So I tried to get that stopped.”
“You tried,” he said, his voice cool. “You tried hard, I assume?”
Remembering what I’d done with Simon made my stomach lurch but there was no way I’d tell Ron about that so I said as calmly as I could, “I did. I did absolutely everything I could think of to do. But...”
Despair flooded me and I let it and the truth pour out of me. “I’m not smart, Ron, and I screwed it up. I gave Simon a fake honeymoon location and he promised to go there to film, just the arrival not the whole thing, instead of filming the wedding, but he figured out I’d lied. Didn’t tell me, of course, just sent Mimi and her crew to get the wedding pictures. I guess he figured the drama of a ruined wedding was more useful to him than some distance shots of the honeymoon starting. I really thought I’d managed to protect Kent and MC. I really did. But I’m stupid so I didn’t do it right. Simon was playing me the whole time.”
Something I hadn’t consciously realized before hit me as I said those last words. When Simon had made me ‘sweeten the deal’, he’d probably already known I’d lied. Even if I’d slept with him, he’d never have left the wedding alone. He’d used me. I really had been stupid.
“You’re not stupid,” Ron said absently, his eyes focused on the wall beside me. “So... they didn’t get the real honeymoon location from you?”
I shook my head, then gasped, afraid I knew why he’d asked that. “Wait, did they show up? Were there crews?”
“Nope,” he said, flooding me with relief. “Mimi said she’d be there, but Kent and MC never saw anyone with official-looking cameras on their cruise or at the airport. We wondered why.”
“I told them Jamaica.”
He tipped his head to one side. “But they said no islands in that article. Didn’t your work people know that?”
I nodded. “I claimed Kent and MC said that to throw people off.”
I got an actual real smile from him, the first one all day. “And you say you’re stupid. Good job.”
The warmth and happiness that compliment sent through me made me grin back, but the expression and the emotions faded quickly when he went on with, “But honestly, why didn’t you tell us? We could have changed the wedding location or something.”
“But MC wanted it to be there,” I said, feeling stupid once more as I realized how weak that reason was in the face of impending camera crews. “And I thought I had it under control.”
“Any other reasons?”
I looked at him, wondering what he was thinking. He definitely seemed to be expecting another reason.
And he was right, I did have one, but I didn’t want to admit it.
He waited, though, and I gave in. “Yeah. I didn’t want to let you guys know how stupid I’d been to trust my boss. I kept thinking I’d figured out a way to make it all work and then he’d get ahead of me again and I’d try again but he kept changing the rules. I just...” I sighed. “I didn’t want to admit that I kept getting outsmarted.”
Ron leaned back in his chair. “Okay.”
“Yeah?”
He shrugged. “It makes sense. I do think you should have told me, at least. I could have helped.”
Remembering how horribly alone I’d felt throughout the whole mess, I had to blink hard to hold back tears. “I wish I had. You could maybe have figured out a way to fix it. And that would have been so much better. And you guys wouldn’t all hate me.”
The spot where he could have said, “I don’t hate you,” went by without a sound.
I sucked down half my coffee, hoping it would somehow wash away the pain, then said, “Ron? Why did you agree to talk to me today?”
He tapped his finger against the table. Without looking at me, he said, “It was what you said. At the pool.”
I’d said a lot of things. “Oh?”
He raised his eyes to my face. “You said you didn’t deserve forgiveness. That you just wanted to tell me why and you weren’t expecting to be forgiven. Your messages before were all about you, and this time you were about letting us know why. It was different.”
His separating me from ‘them’ hurt, but I knew it was fair. “I’d love to be forgiven, obviously, but I meant it that I don’t deserve it. I screwed up big time. I know they hate me, and you do too and--”
“I don’t hate you.”
Suddenly so happy I couldn’t speak properly, I whispered, “No?”
He shook his head. “I was mad at you. Very mad. Still am, I think, although not as much now. You should have told me. I’d have thought you trusted me enough to do that. And I was on your side afterward at first, because I couldn’t believe you’d have done it to cause problems, and that made Kent upset with me, and I didn’t much like being... set against my brother like that. But I think I get it all now. And I don’t think you were stupid. You really were trapped. Your boss is an ass.”
“Thank you,” I managed. After a quick sip of coffee to calm myself, I added, “He is. But the others, they do hate m
e, right?”
He gave me a sad smile. “What do you want me to say? They’re not thrilled with you, that’s for sure. And a big understatement. And MC being--” He cut himself off fast. “Never mind.”
“I know she’s pregnant,” I said.
His eyes widened. “How? And who else knows?”
“Nobody knows from me. And I overheard the two of them talking at a grocery store.” I shivered. “Fighting, really. I’d never heard them fight before.”
“Nobody had.” He sighed. “Can’t lie to you, Summer. You did screw things up big time. They’re still married but it’s shaky, and I’d never have thought that could happen. I thought they were perfect together.”
Their marriage was coming apart? I pressed my hand to my mouth. Through it, I said, “I can’t handle this.”
He nodded. “Then I won’t tell you that Liv is also furious and Aaron kept talking about how he knew you were bad news.”
I winced, and Ron said, “He stopped that, though, when I pointed out that cheating on you at the party wouldn’t have exactly made you want to confide in him.”
“True, and it didn’t help my emotional state much either. Hard to think things through when you’re upset.”
We sat quiet for a moment, then he said, “I will tell them that we talked, what you told me.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I’ll do it. Even though they’ll probably kill me.”
The depth of what he’d done just by coming here and how much more he was going to do for me hit me hard. “Ron, thank you so much for that, and for listening. I didn’t even try to contact Kent or MC or anyone else, because I thought you were the only one who might listen.”
The last time we’d been in a coffee shop together, when we’d both considered kissing for the first time, shimmered between us but I didn’t let myself think about it. That was long gone, and I didn’t know if we could ever get back there. He was here, and he was going to try to help me, and that was more than enough for now.
At least, it should have been. It was more than I deserved. It hurt so much, though, to have lost such a great relationship right as it began.
Fifteen Minutes of Summer Page 17
