“Follow me,” he whispered.
And so I did. I followed him out of Seaside and to the edge of Water Colors. When he turned up the last street at the edge of Water Colors, and then up toward a small rock path, I realized how little I really did know this guy.
“There are unsolved murders all over Savannah,” I said to myself.“Maybe he is the guy. Maybe I have come to the ocean to be mutilated and sent up the river in little pieces. Why did Paige let me go?” My pedaling feet were beginning to feel like lead.
He turned back to check on me, and I was certain his smile had grown sinister. Wicked even.“Sweet Lord above, please keep me safe. You know my life has enough issues. I really don’t need death on my plate this morning,” I whispered.
The small rock path led us down to a dock that crossed over a pond and then out into the middle of the Western Lake. He parked his bike. I pulled up behind him and discovered that my booty had been bruised. I leaned my bike slowly up against the railing and eyed this dark stranger curiously.
“The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be,” I said, limping away from the dock. I was certain I’d be sitting on a doughnut pillow for weeks.
He laughed. Okay, that was a little more soothing.“You don’t ever ride?”
“And that could be lost on you how?” I retorted.
“Miss Phillips needs to toughen her tushy. Come down here,” he said, walking to a small ladder that led to an attached floating dock.
Maybe this was it. Maybe he was going to push me off and hold me under. Maybe he really did have a thing for Amber and needed to get rid of me and planned to do it under the cover of darkness.
“You seem a little nervous. I’m not going to kill you or anything.” He chuckled.
“Ha ha.” I laughed nervously. “You’re so funny.” I climbed down the small ladder as he stood behind me, making sure I didn’t fall. He had seen me knocked off of my feet more than a couple times, so I guess he figured I might need the extra protection. We sat down on the dock, and he reached over and took my leg. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Maybe he would just cut off my leg first. I squinted. Then I heard the sound of Velcro coming undone on my shoes. He slipped off one and laid it beside me, followed by the other. Then he turned my legs toward the water and slipped my feet gingerly into the cool liquid.“ Cold?” he asked.
I cracked one eye open. No death. No knife. “Not bad,” I replied.
He slipped off his flip-flops and put his feet in the water as well. His legs curved over the plank board, allowing the muscles in his stunning thighs to reveal how perfectly perfect they actually were. If he were a murderer, he would have fallen in the Ted Bundy category. Then he stared in front of him.“Right over that dune, you’ll see the sky change when the sun comes up. There are few things so beautiful.” He looked at me.
“Ted Bundy was a charmer,” I said it before I could stop myself.
“Excuse me? Did you say Ted Bundy?”
“Ha . . . no . . . I was saying, Fred Lundy was a farmer. I’m not sure why I was even thinking about that. It just popped into my head. Ever have things just go pop, pop, pop?” I said, flitting my head about. If he didn’t plan on killing me, I might just fling my own self into the water.
“You’re so odd,” he said, his smile never leaving his face. He turned his focus back toward the dune that concealed the shore. “I’ve got some things to tell you.” I could see the first bit of the morning chipping away at the night.
I moved my feet back and forth through the water, forcing the lapping water to hit the edges of the dock as it rocked slowly underneath us.“What things?”
“Just a lot of things I’ve been thinking about. After dinner last night, I’m absolutely certain of how I feel about you.” He pulled his feet out of the water and placed them back on the dock, then turned his body so he could clutch his knees up to his chest and look at me.
I kept looking at my feet. “You’ve been declaring how you feel for two days now. Are you saying there’s more? I’m not sure I can handle many more declarations.”
“I am totally in love with you, Savannah, and everything about you. I think your dad is an amazing man. He’s been so kind to me. Your mother, well, I think we actually made progress last night.”
“That’s because she thinks you like Amber. Trust me, if she knew it was me you were after, you would have begged for an interrogation by the entire cast of Law & Order in lieu of Victoria Phillips.”
“I don’t think so. I got a sense she detected something else was going on.”
“Trust me, the only thing she detected was Amber’s crazy about you, and she’ll learn to like you for her sake. I know this woman, Joshua. She requires strategic maneuvering.”
“Well, if she never does like me, it won’t change how I feel about you.” There was such an assurance in his eyes. So totally calm, obliterating my own insecurities.
I pulled my feet out of the water and mimicked his position. “I’m glad you’re so confident. I’m just an influx of emotion here. And I don’t know what to do with all of these feelings.” I felt something I couldn’t name rise in my throat. He reached over and took my hands. “I mean, one day I’m grieving the loss of what I thought was the love of my life, and the next day I’m staring into the face of a man who has stirred emotions I never even knew existed in me.”
“I know you loved him,but don’t you see how this is different?”
“Yes. I do now. I see that I never loved him the way I should have. And that I didn’t treat him the way he deserved. And that I never felt about him the way I feel about you.”
“So you’re saying you love me?”
“I’m saying”—I raised my right eyebrow and smiled at him—“that things are happening in me I’ve shut myself off to for so long, I don’t know how to decipher them all.”
“And I want to help you decipher them. I want to help you realize that I’m here for the long haul, but I need to know you are too. I can’t play games with Amber or with your mother. And you shouldn’t either. I want to tell the world. And when we get back home, I don’t want to sneak around and walk on eggshells, afraid someone might see me kissing you or holding your hand. I can’t throw pebbles at your window forever.” He laughed.
“Those aren’t bad things.”
“Savannah!”
“Okay, okay, you’re right. I will tell them. I completely promise. Before we leave here,Amber and my mother and Mr. Modica if you want, will all know that you and I are . . .”
“Go ahead. You know you want to say it.”
“That you and I are a perfect couple.” I smiled.
“They’ll all know?”
“My stars, do I need to take out an ad?”As soon as I said that, I realized the real horror of all of this was that my mother probably would. If not to congratulate me, then to seek all background information on Joshua.
“Ooh, look.” He pointed back to the dune.“You don’t want to miss this.”
And I didn’t. I wished I could etch the scene into my memory. Every feeling. Every sight. As morning began to push back the lingering remnants of yesterday, I knew Joshua and I would be different after today as well. We could never go back to the way we were. We had crossed a chasm, and the bridge had collapsed. And I had no desire to build a new one.
I looked at him. He could still be Ted Bundy. But I tried to assure myself he would have acted before now. “You know,” I said, looking down to inspect my wet feet,“the way you kiss me . . . it really is different than anything I’ve felt before. I mean, Grant never kissed me that way. And well, I’ve never really kissed anyone else. Do you think that’s crazy?” I asked, feeling my face flush.
“No, I don’t think that’s crazy. I think that is rather special.”
“Well, I’ve just always thought that was something you only share with people you really care about. And I’ve never really cared about anyone other than the two of you. I mean, here I am, Miss All I’ve Done Is Kiss! Miss Saving
Myself for the Perfect Man!” I laughed nervously.
“You mean you and Grant were never intimate?” he asked.
“Of course not!” I responded rather passionately, just about scaring myself. “My mother scared me about that years ago. She said, ‘Darling, boys will tell you anything to get what they want, then they’ll get it and they’ll leave.’ I completely believed her. So, no, no, no . . . no touchy . . . no nothing.”
I noticed his countenance change. Serious. His teeth bit down on the underside of his upper lip, pulling it in harelip style.
“What? You . . .”
He finally spoke, but didn’t really look at me. “Celeste and I were together for quite a few years. We were really close.”
“How close might that have been?” I felt my right eyebrow begin to creep up. I tried to make it come back down. It refused.
His nervous laugh frightened me. “What are you asking exactly?”
“I’m asking, howww clooooose were you and Celeste?”
“Are you asking if we were intimate?” He cocked his head.
“I would say that is exactly what I’m asking.”
“Well, since we need to be completely honest with each other . . .” He tried to hide his growing discomfort. “I guess you do need to know that we were intimate.”
My heart sank. I felt the stinging of tears creep their way to the corner of my eyes. A pressure collided with my chest with a thud. I was officially having a heart attack. Why slice and dice me when you could just give me a coronary?
“We were together for three years, Savannah.”As if that were some kind of condolence. “It shouldn’t completely surprise you. And it was before . . .”
“Before what?! Before you thought about it? Before me? Before all of this?” I said, flinging my arms through the air. I could feel myself overreacting, but I didn’t know how to rein my emotions in.
He was perfectly calm through my tirade. “Actually I was going to say, before I made the decision that that wasn’t what I wanted for my life. That I wanted to wait until I met the one I would spend the rest of my life with. So, since her, there has never been anyone else.”
“Do you want me to lick a gold star for your achievement chart?” I stood up, which caused the dock to sway underneath me, forcing my knees to almost give way. Or maybe it was the weight of the pressure of this moment that was about to do me in.
“Don’t be catty, Savannah. This is serious, and I’m trying to be as honest with you as I can,” he said, rising behind me.
“I’ve never been with anyone, Joshua!” I screeched as the tears burned my eyes and as the lump overtook my throat. Just making it a little more clear.Volume did increase clarity, didn’t it? “I’ve saved myself my entire life for one night, one man. Call me crazy!” And anyone who was watching this entire episode certainly would have.“Or call me lucky—that seems to be the word for the week. But I’ve had a vision for my life and the man who would love me, and what it would be like to never have to worry about memories or comparisons or old emotional ties.” Then I paused. But it still came out. Unfortunately it always comes out. “But with you I will never know any of that, now, will I?”
His eyes registered immediate hurt. But I didn’t care, because the tears I had been trying to conceal were running rampantly down my cheeks. And the tenor of my voice had risen about three decibels in volume and pitch.“I’m sorry, Savannah. I never dreamed . . . this is too much for you to handle right now, obviously.”
“You think?” I snapped.
“Yes, I think,” he said, so Joshua calm.“I think you obviously had expectations that I will never be able to fill for you. And I think you need to take some time and let all of this digest and see what you need to do with it. But you do need to know something: I’ve made mistakes in my life and this won’t be the last one, I assure you. So, if you’re looking for perfection, you won’t find it here. But I’ve also made restitution for those mistakes. And I’ve dealt with them with the only One who has ultimate authority over them. And He hasn’t held them over my head. I can’t ask you to change your dream. I can only let you know that I’ve gotten the forgiveness necessary for me to move on. You’ll have to decide if you can live with that.” He reached out to touch me one more time. I flinched. He withdrew. And the look on his face would cause me a thousand heartbreaks. But it didn’t matter. I had waited. He had caved. Good thing I found out sooner rather than later.
He climbed the stairs with a much different stature than he had come down. He walked silently to his bike and pedaled away, leaving me there on the dock, alone, in the blazing morning sun, with nothing but my lucky self. Had I been able to grasp the hands of Father Time, I would have wrenched them backward until they broke. But, yes, this had officially become a moment from which I could never return.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The entire city of Seaside had grown quiet. Well, to be honest, no one was even awake yet, but it was all the same to me. Death by silence. The only sound I heard was the rubber of my tires as they met the brick-laid streets. Everything looked different on the ride back to the house. My Technicolor world had been swallowed by the land of black-and-white. My life was black-and-white. This was wrong. The choice he made was wrong. And just like that he had taken with him all the color that I had finally been enjoying after such a season of shadows.
The breeze stuck the salty tears to my face. Dad and Mr. Modica were sitting at a table in front of the market, having coffee. Dad threw up a hand to wave as I pedaled through the Town Center. My arm was too heavy to lift. The only thing I could raise was my eyebrow. I saw Dad’s brow furrow.When I reached the gate to the house, I leaned the bike up against the white picket fence. And as I closed it behind me, I shut out my last hopes for a Leave It to Beaver life. I had just arrived in reality television. And it was all too real.
“Savannah Phillips, where have you been? I know you are not just getting home.” My mother’s tone bounced off my numb self.
I wanted to throw myself into the shrubbery at the side of the walk.
Amber followed her out the front door.
Maybe death would have been sweeter than this.
“Oh my side, Savannah!” Amber’s singsong voice tried to penetrate my stare. “Were you out all night with your new fella?”
Mother’s hand flew up to her face.“Oh my Lord, have mercy, my daughter is a hoochie-mama. You finally meet another man, and down come all your standards!” I felt the heat in my face begin to rise.
“I was not out all night, and I am not a hoochie-mama,” I said, trying to make my way down the walk.
Mother blocked the stairs. “You will tell me who you were with, young lady, and you will tell me now.” I might have taken her a lot more seriously had she not been holding Maggy, who wore a silk bandana that matched the eye mask still perched atop Mother’s head. Obviously she was having trouble sleeping.
“I will tell you no such thing, because you are accusing me of something I haven’t done. I’m not going to lie. I was out with someone. Someone I was going to introduce you to, but there is absolutely no reason to now. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed and may never arise.”
I pushed past her.
“Ooh, I think I’m having chest pains!” I heard Mother say.
“Sit, Miss Victoria, sit. Not you, Magnolia!”
I let the door slam behind me.
“You want a Coke?” the face asked as it knelt down by the side of my bed. I had buried my face in my pillow.
I lifted my head to look up. I blew a lone hair out of my eye. “No.”
“No Coke? What happened in the span of an hour that is so completely horrific?”
“I don’t feel like talking.” I turned my head to the other side of my pillow.
Paige would not be denied. She walked around.“You have to tell me. I’m the only one whose relationships go south in the span of less than a week. Yours last for decades.”
“I’ve only had one,” I mumb
led.
“Which lasted for a decade. I rest my case.”
“This one’s not worth talking about. This one’s over, and it never should have started. And you should be happy now, because I’ll be all yours again,” I said, trying to fight back the welling tide of tears.
She rubbed my head and then slapped it.
“Ow!”
“That’s what you get for being so stupid. I don’t want you to be alone and pathetic like me. I want us both to be happy and enraptured like you. The last thing in the world I want is both of us crying on our pillows.” She sat down on the floor in front of my face.“Now you have to get a grip and tell me what is going on. It can’t be so bad to justify such words.”
“It is that bad.” I cried.“He’s a whoremonger.”
She screeched with laughter.“He’s a what?”
“He is, and don’t laugh. He’s been with that girlfriend of his. The one who is about to get married.”
“Been with how? Movies, carpools, what?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“He’s slept with her?”
“Yes, why would I call him a whoremonger if he hadn’t slept with her?”
She wiped her face. “Please try not to spit on me.”
“Sorry,” I blubbered.
“Sleeping with a onetime girlfriend does not a whoremonger make. At least I don’t think it does. Does it?”
“It does to me. It’s one too many.”
“Savannah, I know you’ve never been with any man, but most men have been with a woman.”This is how Paige comforts me.
“So, all the virgins are gone?” I wailed.“Well, we should just make T-shirts that declare it so!”
“Well, let’s not get drastic. I was thinking a billboard would do.” I hated her. She made me laugh when I didn’t want to. “You’re hurt. I understand that.You’ve waited a long time for some nooky.”
“You did not just say nooky!”
“Well, what did you want me to say? Lovin’? Hanky-panky? Rafter raising?”
“I want you to not say anything else.” I sat up and pulled the pillow that I had soaked to my chest.
Savannah by the Sea Page 22
