She heard Donovan from behind her. “Great idea Lloyd.”
Telling herself to pretend that she hadn’t heard, Becca hurried into the bathroom to avoid the conversation she didn’t want to have. Once she was in there the major flaw in her plan came to light. Monica’s truth sharing bothered Becca, and it was written all over her face. The questions came faster than her mind could answer them.
Making use of the little time she had, Becca paced in the bathroom. She had no right being upset. It was before they were married. She had no right being upset. It wasn’t like he said he was in love with her when he proposed. She had no right being upset. He married her. She had no right being upset. The phrase, “six months” came back to haunt her. She whispered, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” This is how it always happened. She’d let a guy get close to her and then it all fell to pieces. Donovan was there with her for every one of them. If she could trust anyone she’d have picked him. She did pick him.
A conversation outside the door had her scrambling to the sink. Just as she began applying her lipstick, Monica walked into the bathroom. Playing the part of the ignorant wife, Becca faked a smile and gave the best lie she had. "The tropical food is wreaking havoc on my digestive system."
Monica’s expression changed from wearing tight lined lips to exhaling in relief. “I was afraid you were in here because of what I said. Sometimes I don’t know when to keep quiet. It isn’t like you husband knew I tagged him on the site.”
Becca agreed with Monica’s self-assessment. Then again, Monica probably saved her a lot of heart ache. What if she found out about Donovan’s online dating profile after she grew attached to the idea of being married to him? She turned off the water and said, “I appreciate your honesty. It’s better knowing I married a philander than to go through life obliviously unaware.”
She used her forearm to move the handle of the paper towel holder. Monica waited for Becca to throw the paper in the trash and opened the door to reveal Donovan who had been waiting on the other side the entire time. Monica spoke to him as though Becca weren't right behind her. “It’s alright. She wasn't mad.”
It took everything in Becca not to respond. Instead, she faked a smile and returned to her seat. The server brought the appetizers to the table. “Are you ready to order?” She heard them ask for food, but was too distracted to hear what it was they requested. When it came to her, Becca was at a loss. She had no appetite. “I’ll just have a salad.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Monica spoke up. “With your stomach being upset with the new food. You should try eating something with substance.”
“It could be morning sickness,” Lloyd suggested. “They have been honeymooning.”
“Impossible,” Donovan answered. “I made sure of it.”
“There have been exceptions to birth control.” Lloyd elbowed Monica and winked. "Who knows? We might be the ones to say we were there with the first changes in their marriage."
For their sake, Becca hoped it wasn’t true.
Male to Female Ratio
When Keane’s wife was alive, he’d occasionally say, “A quiet woman is a dangerous thing.” Donovan wanted to text Keane to find out how to undo the silence.
Becca reached for a slice of fried zucchini. She was mad. When Becca was mad, she didn’t eat. Lloyd and Monica, on the other hand, filled their plates with appetizers. Monica, oblivious of the discord she had caused, gushed about their trip. “I’ve been here for less than a day, and I never want to leave. It is so beautiful here.”
“I may be biased, but Three Creeks is beautiful too,” Lloyd directed his attention to Becca. “Wouldn’t you say there are a lot of things that make it just as nice as here?”
“I’m sorry what were you saying?” Becca sat at the table, but Donovan could tell her mind was elsewhere. Probably rehearsing the conversation she planned to have with Abigail when she was free of the constraints of an audience.
Lloyd didn’t get the hint. “I was trying to tell Monica some of the nicer things about where we live.”
“Yeah, it’s so great you have to go to a dating site to meet women.”
Donovan who was just as guilty as Lloyd didn’t know whether to cringe or laugh at his wife’s comment. Self-preservation advised him to go with the latter.
“What is the male to female ratio where you live?” Poor Monica probably said it to help Lloyd. Becca wasn’t having it.
“No. The ratio is fine. I imagine the men are looking for a different kind of companion. The ones they have been around all their lives know what they’re getting. Or at least they should.”
At this point in the conversation, Donovan knew better than to eat anything. Lloyd, in his lack of perception, had taken a huge swig of beer and choked on it. Monica rubbed his back and offered him a drink of her water.
“Could you two excuse us for a minute?” Donovan didn’t give Becca a chance to refuse his request. He tugged at her elbow to follow him. She offered Lloyd and Monica her biggest fake smile and scooted out of her chair to join him.
In the waiting area closer to the entrance, the restaurant had chairs in front of an aquarium full of live fish. Donovan brought Becca there in hopes that the lack of an audience, but being in a public place would foster a healthy discussion. In other words, he wanted witnesses if she tried to kill him.
“Let me explain.”
“There is no need to explain anything. What you did before we were married is none of my business.” Sadness tinted her voice.
Donovan was prepared for anger or hostility. Sadness was an emotion he had difficulty decoding. He went for the safest word he knew. “I’m sorry.”
She turned to face him. “What are you sorry about?”
“I’m sorry that you are upset.”
“Thank you for your honesty,” she replied. “I’ll be fine after a while.”
After a while? “Does that mean you accept my apology?”
“There is nothing to accept." She shrugged her shoulders, "It isn’t like we had a real engagement. One minute you were single and the next we had to plan a wedding. We never said anything about dating other people. I just assumed.”
She didn't have to say it for him to know what she was thinking. His hands-off engagement policy was working against him. “I wasn’t seeing anybody else. What we have is real, Becca.”
Keane was right. As soon as Monica dropped that bomb of information, Donovan should have followed Becca into the bathroom and straightened things out.
Instead, he allowed the giver of the message go in and take care of things for him. In doing so, Becca had at least a good twenty minutes to forge a wall. A wall he taught her to build. He used to say to her, “Look for the signs. Infidelity has a way of making itself known if you know what to see.” He never expected to be on the receiving end of his wisdom.
“We should get back to the table. We're being rude.” Becca motioned to stand but never made it because Donovan pulled her back to sit.
“After I made my decision to propose to you, I went on Meet My Match to delete my profile. While I was on there, I got a call and went on to do something else. Until Monica mentioned it, I forgot about it. In my mind, I deleted my information.” He pulled her hands into his and leaned forward to force her to look into his eyes. “You have to believe me.”
“I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
She said yes with her words, but her face lacked the small barely perceptible smile of reconciliation. Her eyes were distant, and her jaw was slack.
“Good,” Donovan stood. “I’m going back there to tell Lloyd and Monica that we’re ditching them to go make up.”
Becca stood and gasped. “You can’t say that.”
Her desire to be discreet charmed him. “I can and will. Are you joining me?”
She scanned the area. Other than the woman at the hostess stand, they were alone. Becca half whispered, “I don’t want to go and make up.”
“Trust me you
will.” He stopped to offer a sly grin. “Unless of course, you want me to go back there and spend an entire meal helping Lloyd convince Monica that Three Creeks is the place to be.”
Donovan’s wife said the three words that proved he knew her better than she thought he did. “We’re making up.”
Ever Since
The waves crashed onto the shore. Oddly, the collision of land and water made a sound that soothed Becca’s heart. She watched the crash and retreat. The ebb and flow of water meeting the land and returning from wherever it came from. Donovan walked alongside her in silence.
“When I was sixteen, I got sacked so hard I was unconscious for a couple minutes. And somehow. My ankle took the impact of the fall, and I couldn’t walk off the field. At first, everyone thought I had a concussion and a broken ankle.”
Becca remembered it well. It was all her father talked about for days. If Donovan were benched for any considerable amount of time, their chances of going to state were gone. The team had other players to fill in his position, but none of them had reached the level of maturity of their starting player.
“You brought me a get well soon card and wrote the sweetest note.” He took her hand in his, and they continued traversing the shoreline.
The train of thought eluded her. “It’s funny that you’d remember that.”
“It was the only one.”
“I doubt that. You had girls carrying your books. One went so far as to get your lunch and bring it to the table for you. It was almost ridiculous.”
“Don’t get me wrong. That was nice. What guy wouldn’t want girls fawning all over him? But they were public displays of affection. They were getting as much out of it as I was.” He looked off into the horizon. The sun had fallen low enough to look like it was melting in the water. Slivers of orange changed the color of the coastline. “But you dropped the card off with my grandmother and left. You do that all the time you know.”
She didn’t know.
“You do something to get someone’s attention, and then you shrink away.”
Pinpricks touched her cheeks, and the urge to be anyplace else struck her. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. I just remembered wanting to thank you. But every time I got the chance you’d vanish. It was a game of cat and mouse, but there were a lot of other mice there to pull away my attention.”
She pulled her hand away from him to push a hair away from her eye. “This is a crappy way to make up with a person.”
“No, it isn’t. Because I won. You hid, and I still found you and made you mine. We can both pretend that what Monica said matters. But it doesn’t. What matters is those little gestures of kindness over the years stuck. What matters is you trusted me enough to say yes. What really matters is you are here with me. I want you to know this Rebecca Garrison. When I promised to love you, I meant for it to be forever. I will build a bridge over every divide. I will climb mountains to find you.” He placed his hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “And when you stop running, you’ll see that us being together was worth it.” He took her hand in his and resumed walking.
They walked hand in hand in silence, giving Becca time to consider what he had said. She hoped that Donovan remained her best friend. His ability to stay playful in their adulthood was one of the facets of his personality that kept them together. She didn’t want him to think that because they were married that what they had up to this point in their relationship wasn’t special.
It was almost like he read her mind when he said, “Let’s have a race.”
Becca found herself wondering if she said what she was thinking aloud.
Donovan must have taken her silence as acceptance of the challenge. “We can jog. The first one to stop and walk loses.”
“I don’t know about you and your contests,” Becca answered. “The last time we had a contest I ended up engaged. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you want to have a baby.”
“That’ll never happen,” Donovan replied.
She smiled softly. “Says the man who said we’d be married after the both of us were forty. I’m thirty-eight.”
“No, I’m serious,” Donovan said. “For my thirty-fifth birthday, I got a vasectomy. There will be no children, accidental or intentional in my future.”
It was going to take time to process that nugget of information. She thought they talked about everything as friends. Apparently, her bestie had all kinds of secrets. Rather than belabor the issue, Becca opted to focus on his intent to reconcile with her. “Okay, loser gets the shower last.” Becca took off jogging before he had time to agree or disagree.
Donovan pulled up alongside her. “That isn’t much of a prize. Shower first.”
Becca kept her pace steady. Jogging with a pair of shoes in her hand altered her balance and required more attention than usual. “It’s the best I had in the current setting.”
“You’re just saying that because you know you’re going to lose,” Donovan goaded her.
“Famous last words,” Becca wasn’t taking his bait. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the lights from the boardwalk took over for them to see. Even in darkness, the beach had a way of being beautiful. If there wasn’t so much for Becca to see, she might have stopped. But there was more.
Scents of grilled meat came from one of the restaurants on the boardwalk. She wanted to run to the restaurant for a fish taco. But that would mean losing to Donovan.
She slowed down just enough for him to think she was tiring. He didn’t say anything. His smile illuminated by the moon light was enough for her to know he thought he was winning.
Becca put her hand on her waist to fake that she was massaging a cramp. She slowed to an almost walkable jog.
Donovan stopped to ask, “Are you okay?”
Becca returned to her normal pace and turned to jog backwards. She boasted, “I won. You stopped.”
Donovan’s mouth fell open, and he charged in her direction. He was running so fast, Becca squealed and ran toward the water. He curved to follow her. When the water got to knee level, she tried to run back to the shoreline. In a yet another unanticipated turn of events, he crouched and ran into her with his shoulder. The next thing she knew, he had picked up Becca and was striding into the waves. She kicked and squealed to get away, but his grip was firm.
When the water reached his waist, Donovan dropped to his knee and released Becca to fall into the water. The water broke her fall, and she was submerged in a matter of seconds.
Sputtering salty water and pushing her hair out of her face, Becca howled, “What was that for?”
“Now getting in the shower first is a prize,” Donovan teased.
“That is not funny.” Becca splashed water at him.
He flinched. But it was the change in his expression that caught her attention. The next thing she knew, a wave pushed her into Donovan’s arms and knocked them both into the water. They both recovered and ambled to the shoreline. Becca alternated between gasping to catch her breath and spitting out more salty water.
Donovan pointed while laughing at her reaction. “Haven’t you heard? Cheaters never prosper.”
She leaned back to give him a hard look. The salt had given her a bitter stomach.
He approached her and lowered his face to be even with hers, “You can’t be mad. We’re married.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she grumbled.
“It means we get to do this,” Donovan pulled her to him and quickly kissed her. Then he stepped closer to her, so their bodies were touching. His voice was ragged with desire when he furthered his explanation. “It means, wife of mine, we get to kiss and make up.”
I Love It When You Use Big Words
Best friends went home to their own houses when they grew tired of the other person. Married people somehow learned to endure the barrage of stimulus. The first time she wanted to escape the sound of Donovan’s late evening ice cream chewing with no place to go, Becca though
t she was going to die. It was rude to complain, but who chewed their ice cream, really?
How he failed to understand that sometimes a long bath without repetitive interruptions from the other side of the door was beyond her. First, it was, “Do you mind if I use the bathroom. I’ll be quick?” He closed the curtain and stopped mid-stream. “You’re not peeking, are you?”
Truth be told, Becca had sunk her head under the bubbles to avoid hearing the sound.
No less than two minutes later, he was at the door again. “Do you think you’re going to come out any time soon? I want to watch The Shining and don’t want to start without you.”
“Go ahead, Donovan. I don’t want to watch The Shining. It’ll give me nightmares.”
“It’s okay if you want me to hold you in the middle of the night.”
They argued back and forth about whether or not she was going to watch the movie. At the pinnacle of frustration, Becca yelled, “If you do not go away I will leave smidges of jelly behind in the peanut butter jar.”
His parting words of, “You’re harsh,” gave her the false impression that she’d have the chance to enjoy the end of her bath in peace.
A couple minutes later, her husband was at the door. “How about if I go in there and just talk with you until you’re done?”
The method to his madness clicked. “You are feeling amorous. Aren’t you?”
For their honeymoon, Donovan had been openly affectionate with Becca. Once their plane landed, beginning with allowing her to get her own baggage from the carousel, he had fallen back into the person she’d known all her life. She sighed and reminded herself of the adage that she suspected she’d have to repeat more than once in the near future. Once a best friend always a best friend.
In lieu of affection, the attention he gave her came in the form of texts, phone calls, and randomly appearing in places she wasn’t used to him being. It was as if the wedding ring gave him license to sacred places like the bathroom.
Get Well Soon Page 6
