by Maria Geraci
“Everyone here is so nice,” Elise says.
“Glad you’re having a good time.”
“Ben seems to really like it down here and I can see why. Although this humidity must get to be a little too much.” Elise makes a panting sound that I think is supposed to make me laugh, so being the polite Floridian I am, I oblige her.
“I guess you’ve known Ben a long time, huh?”
“We went to Columbia together. His sister and I are good friends.”
“Sounds pretty cozy.”
She cocks her head to the side and gives me a long look. “Am I what you expected? Because I have to say, you’re exactly what I pictured.”
“You pictured me?”
“Oh, Ben talks about you all the time. Emma this, Emma that. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you and Ben—well, your boyfriend seems terrific. A really nice guy and all.”
“I’m not—” I’m about to tell Elise that I’m not interested in Ben but that’s not completely true. “I admit, there was a time when I was pretty infatuated with Ben, but that’s over. He never showed any real interest in me.”
Elise gets quiet. “Emma, I love Ben. It broke my heart when he called off our wedding. I’ll do anything to get him back. He’s the one for me. And I think I’m the one for him. I’ve been offered a job down here, and if Ben gives me the green light, I’m going to take it.”
Before I know it, Elise is crying and I’ve got my arms around her. “I’m sure Ben will come around,” I say. “How could he not? You’re terrific! Smart, funny, attractive—”
“Don’t patronize me,” Elise interrupts with a sniffle. “I’m not attractive. Not like you.”
I start to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
There’s a knock at the door. I open it to find a friend of Jackie’s standing in front of me with what appears to be a fresh drink. I snatch it from her hands. “There are five other bathrooms in the house,” I say. She barely has time to look startled before I close the door in her face.
I hand the drink to Elise. “Get comfortable. I have a story to tell you.”
We sit side by side on the cool stone tile, our backs against the wall with our legs stretched out in front of us. I tell her all about my crush on Ben and the night at Captain Pete’s when Amy called me the ugly friend and everything that’s happened since. I even tell her about Nick and how I think he might still be hung up on his ex. We end up hugging and telling each other to “hang in there.” Funny, how with just a little commonality you can connect with a complete stranger in just a couple of hours. Adding some liquor into the mix probably doesn’t hurt either.
It’s after midnight and I’m emotionally drained. I want to go home but first I have to find Nick. I search the pool area but I don’t see him. I grab a bottled water from the bar and head toward the dock. There is a slight breeze coming off the water and it feels good against my flushed skin. It’s now officially Sunday morning. My Trip Monroe article is due to Ben in twenty-four-plus hours and I have nothing. I check my cell phone again but there’s no call, no message from Trip.
“Frazier, what are you doing out here in the dark?”
I whip around. Great. It’s the person I least want to see right now.
“Contemplating throwing myself into the Tampa Bay.”
Ben smiles. “Richard getting on your nerves?”
“Not really.”
“By the way, that Nick is one terrific guy.”
“Yeah, he is.”
He glances toward the house. “Some place, huh?”
“The Trip Monroe article sucks,” I blurt.
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Richard was right. Trip Monroe is a terrible interview. And no matter how hard I try to spin it, it’s just going to be a big bunch of blah.”
Ben shrugs. “Even a big bunch of blah from that guy is going to sell magazines.”
I think about telling Ben about how Trip has checked himself into Betty Ford and how sooner or later every AP agency in the country will know it, only we can’t use it because of the contract, but I think it should all come from Richard, since it’s his source.
Neither of us says anything for a few seconds and I decide, why the heck not? Maybe I’ve had too much to drink or maybe my talk with Elise has inspired me, so I’m going to put it all out there. “You know why I offered up that damn interview in the first place? To impress you.”
Ben shoves his hands into the pockets of his shorts. He turns and stares out at the water.
“You remember that night at Captain Pete’s?” I say.
Ben turns to face me. “Sure I remember.”
“I wasn’t trying to fix you up with Amy. I was trying to fix you up with me. But you knew that.”
“Yeah,” Ben admits quietly.
So, Richard was right all along. I can’t help it. I smile in anticipation of what Richard is going to say when I tell him about this conversation. And I am going to tell him because this is one scenario about which Richard definitely deserves to say “I told you so.”
Ben mistakes my smile as encouragement because he takes a step forward in my direction. I place my hand in the air to ward him off. “Stay back.”
“Emma, you have to know I’m crazy about you.”
I still. “What about Elise?”
“Elise and I…that’s a complicated relationship.”
I frown. “So what happened that night at Captain Pete’s? If you knew I was interested in you and you’re so crazy about me, then why did you blow me off for Amy?”
“I got confused,” Ben says, right before he reaches out and pulls me into him.
I don’t have time to think about what Ben means when he says he was confused because Ben is going to kiss me and I have about three seconds to decide what to do here.
Do I push him away? It’s what I should do. I have a boyfriend. Plus, now that I’ve gotten to know Elise and have discovered that I like her, I feel that I’m betraying her too. But I’ve fantasized about this kiss for so long, I owe it to myself to see if there’s anything between us. I don’t want to go the rest of my life wondering if Ben was really the guy for me. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone.
Ben leans down and kisses me. My head is swirling with thoughts and the crazy emotions behind them. First and overriding all is a sense of triumph. My instincts about Ben were right all along. It was that night at Captain Pete’s that screwed everything up. I know what Ben means when he says he was confused. Amy showed interest in him, and like a dolt, I gave up. I let her shove me aside because deep down, I didn’t think when given a choice, Ben would actually pick a girl like me over a girl like her.
When Amy called me the ugly friend, it tapped into a well of insecurity that I let take me over. I remember that moment in time, when Amy and Ben were playing darts, and I wanted to march up between them and snatch him away from her. But I didn’t. The funny thing is, I know now that it would have worked.
Be good to Nick, okay, Emma?
Tricia’s voice snaps me out of my trance.
What am I doing? I was so sure that I could never be like Shannon. That I would never cheat on Nick. But this isn’t cheating. It’s just a kiss and it’s never going to happen again because I realize now it’s all wrong. Nothing about this kiss feels right. There’s no passion, no tenderness, no anything except a whole lot of regret. I think I needed it, though, to finally get over the last traces of my Ben crush. All the lemon drops I’ve drunk tonight are roiling around in my stomach, threatening mutiny. Throwing up on Ben was never in any of my fantasies. I break off our kiss.
Ben stares down at me, his eyes a little wild-looking. More confusion? Lust? I’m not sure which emotion I see there. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Tell me about Elise,” I say again. “What happened between you two? Why didn’t you get married?”
Ben looks away. “Cold feet.”
“Yours or hers?”
“Mine,” he admits.<
br />
“That’s too bad, because I think she’s perfect for you.”
Ben’s head snaps around to meet my gaze. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I know why Richard and Jackie were so anxious to have me meet Elise. If I am being brutally honest here, Elise is not nearly as attractive as me. Elise is a five on a good night and Richard and Jackie do not understand what Ben sees in her. In their minds they think I have one-upped Ben by nabbing someone as attractive as Nick.
I think about all the hours I wasted being jealous of Amy. Seeing Ben with Elise tonight, I realize why (despite Amy’s many alluring attributes) Ben could never be seriously interested in her. Elise is everything Amy is not. She’s a brilliant conversationalist—quick-witted, well traveled. Yet for all her accomplishments, surprisingly modest. But most of all Elise is kind. She is exactly the type of woman my mothers hoped I would one day become.
“Do you love Elise?”
Ben looks startled by my frankness. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Aren’t you the guy who told me to stop overanalyzing? Either you feel it or you don’t. You’re thirty-four years old, Ben. If you don’t feel it, then tell her so she can get on with her life.”
A part of me hopes Ben takes my advice and goes back to Elise. But another part of me wonders if he simply isn’t good enough for her.
I leave Ben standing at the end of the dock with his hands stuck in his pockets gazing out across the water like some lone romantic figure trying to sort out the meaning of life. The whole scene is like a Nicholas Sparks novel gone bad.
chapter twenty-eight
I find Nick deep in conversation with Richard. I would ask them what they are talking about but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with fishing. I tell Nick I don’t feel so well and we leave. It’s almost one in the morning by the time we reach my place.
“I think we should move in together.” Nick hits me with this the moment we walk in the door.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” This is one of the first completely spontaneous things I’ve ever said to him and I can tell he doesn’t like it.
“Why not? I’m crazy about you, you’re crazy about me, and in a couple of months you won’t have an office to go to. You can work from anywhere.”
You have to know I’m crazy about you.
This whole night seems surreal.
“Can we talk about this some other time?”
“What’s wrong with right now?”
I take a deep breath. Instinctively I know this is a terrible time to be having this conversation, but my encounter with Ben has me reeling. I don’t want to play games anymore. “Do you love me?”
“I just said I was crazy about you, didn’t I?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
Nick pulls me into his arms. “Babe, we both know where this is going. We’re not kids anymore. Let’s take the plunge.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Okay, yeah, sure, of course I love you. Emma, we can have a great life together,” he says, bending down to kiss me.
I cannot let Nick kiss me because I’ll probably agree to anything he wants and I know this is one thing I’ll definitely regret in the morning. I slide out from under his arm. I know what Nick says is true. I could have a happy, satisfied life living in Nick’s house by the lake, filling it up with babies (well, at least one or two). I could still work for the magazine, still have a career. It’s almost a dream scenario, except…
“Nick, am I your dream?”
“Is that like your soul mate or something?”
“Kind of.”
“Emma,” he says carefully, “life doesn’t work like that. It’s not all some big romantic sap story. The truth is, you meet someone and if you’re lucky it works out. There are no big lightning bolts or fireworks. You just have to be grateful that the important stuff is there. Like trust and respect.”
My heart wilts a little at his response. “What if I want the fireworks along with the trust and the respect?”
“Then you’re going to end up alone. I found that out the hard way.”
For a second I feel like someone has knocked the air from my lungs and I’m going to die. But then I take a breath and my body keeps going. I’m sad, but I’m not heartbroken. I am not Nick’s dream. And the truth is, he is not my dream either. Deep down, I think I have known this since the beginning.
Maybe Nick and I should have this conversation tomorrow, when we’ve both had time to think. But it seems unfair to keep him dangling when I know in my heart what I have to do.
“Nick, you shouldn’t have to settle for me.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing? Jesus,” he swears under his breath. “Okay, I think it’s way too early for this, but if you need it, then I’ll give it to you. You want to get married?”
Count to ten, Emma.
“You and I…we aren’t going to work out. I care about you so much and I know you care about me, but this isn’t a forever kind of thing we have.”
“You’re serious,” Nick says.
I nod.
His face grows hard. “Does this have anything to do with your boss?”
“What do you mean?”
Nick studies me for a second and shakes his head in disbelief. “No way. You and Gallagher?”
Damn my face that gives everything away.
“No, I mean…yes, I did have feelings for Ben, but that’s in the past.”
“Un-fucking-believable.” He stomps into the bedroom.
I follow him. “Nick, it’s not like that.”
“Not like what?” He begins gathering up his clothes and stuffing them into his overnight bag. “All this time I’ve been running around acting like some moonstruck calf and you’ve been sleeping with your boss?”
“Sleeping with my boss? Where did you get that from?” On second thought, I think I know exactly where he got that from. “Nick, listen to me, I’m not Shannon. I didn’t cheat on you. I did kiss Ben tonight, but it was more like…an experiment. I swear. It didn’t go any further.”
Nick goes into the bathroom and starts collecting his toiletries. “An experiment? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He jams his shaving gear into his bag and zips it shut with a ferocity that makes me wince. “Am I’m supposed to be grateful it ended there?”
“I just want to be completely honest with you.”
“Thanks, sweetheart, I appreciate it. I have to admit, you got me. I never expected this from a girl like you.” Nick starts rummaging through his things. “Where the hell are my keys?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? A girl like me?”
Nick looks like he’s on the brink of saying something, then changes his mind. I remember what he said to me last weekend in his kitchen. I have you now, and you’re nothing like Shannon. At the time I thought it was an odd thing to say, but I think I understand now what he meant.
“You never thought I’d cheat on you because you never thought anyone else would want me.”
“I never said that.” But Nick’s eyes give him away. I have to give him credit, he could easily lash out and hurt me with those words, but he’s too much of a gentleman. “Emma,” he says, gentling his voice. “I’m sorry. I blew everything out of proportion. Let’s start over. Baby, I fixed the downstairs bedroom into a den for you, so you can use it as your office. Let me show it to you. Let’s drive back to Catfish Cove. Right now.”
“Nick—”
“Or tomorrow, we can drive back tomorrow. You’re right, we’re both tired. I shouldn’t have brought up the whole moving-in thing tonight.”
He looks at me so hopefully that I can’t help but reconsider. What if Nick is my last chance at everything I want in life? A husband. Kids. Family.
But Ben’s words come back to haunt me. Don’t overanalyze. Go with your instincts. My instincts tell me that Nick isn’t the one. I think if he listened to his, he’d know I’m not the one for him e
ither. I think Nick fell for me because in his mind I was as far from Shannon as he could get. In time, he’ll come to realize that and thank me, but now isn’t that time. If you had told me two months ago that I would be the one ending our relationship, I wouldn’t have believed it. I was so certain that it was only my heart that was on the line.
“It’s not going to work, Nick,” I say gently.
He stares at me for a long second and begins picking up his things again. “Where are my goddamn keys,” he mutters.
“You’re not driving back to Catfish Cove tonight? Nick, it’s late and you’re tired—”
“I’m not staying here, that’s for sure.”
He searches my dresser and finds his keys.
I can feel the tears start to flow. I really don’t want to cry in front of Nick. “You’re upset. Let me have Jason pick you up. If you don’t want to stay here, you can stay at his place.”
“Fine. Call Jason.” Nick stomps off to the kitchen. I hear the refrigerator door open and shut and the sound of a beer-can top pop open.
Jason answers his cell on the second ring. “Hello?” says a female voice I’m positive I know. Did I dial the wrong number? I glance at the screen. It’s Jason’s number, all right.
“Amy?”
“Yes?”
Good grief. “It’s Emma. I’m trying to reach Jason.”
“Oh! Emma, hold on a sec.”
I hear the rustling of…sheets. Sheets?
“Emma?” Jason says in a groggy voice.
“Jason, what have you done?”
“What’s going on?” Jason asks, sounding more alert.
“I need you to pick up Nick and take him home with you. What’s Amy doing at your place? Forget it. I already know what she’s doing there. I just didn’t think, well, I told her to go for it, but I never thought—”
