In Love Again (32 page)

“I get it,” Devon said. “But I’ve seen a lot of shit over the years with Lydia. I’ve seen how she’s hurt her mother and manipulated people and I just…” Sarah gave him another elbow in the ribs. “Okay. I’ll try.”

“Good,” Claire said. “Well, now that we’ve solved the problems of the known universe, I think I’ll beg off. Are we all meeting at Mother’s villa in the morning?”

“Yes, presents at ten,” Sarah said. All four of them stood up. Sarah hugged Ben and then Claire. Devon shook hands with Ben then hugged his sister. He held on to her hand a moment longer and said, “I also want to talk to you about Stembridge. I saw you talking to him and I have some ideas about that.”

“You do?” Claire asked, surprised.

“I do.”

“Excellent. Thanks, Dev. Happy Christmas.”

“Yes, Happy Christmas.”

Devon and Sarah held hands and wandered off into the balmy night, wending through the tropical paths back to their villa.

“So.”

“So?” Claire asked.

“You want to go find Lydia?”

“Where can she go? No. Just let her walk it off. I’ll talk to her when she comes back.”

Walking down toward the beach, Lydia was torn between getting a taxi and heading into Nassau for a night of debauchery, or just lying on one of the stacked beach loungers and staring at the stars. Both offered their own form of oblivion, but the debauchery would be far more effective, she decided rashly, and turned toward the main building with renewed conviction. She sped up her pace before she lost her nerve and slammed into a wall of hard flesh.

“Whoa! Where are you headed in such a rush?”

She could barely see him in the darkness, but his voice was unmistakable. “Of course it would be you.” She pulled a cigarette out of her slim clutch and held it unlit near her lips. “Well, are you going to light it for me or not?”

“Not. I can’t stand cigarette smoke.”

She returned it to the pack and closed her bag with a sullen
snap
. “Aren’t you all pure and perfect.”

“No, my dad had lung cancer last year. I used to smoke. Now, I just can’t be around it anymore.”

“Sorry.” She let out a sigh of resignation. Apparently, the more she tried to find something to dislike about this guy, the more she ended up liking him.

They stood in the dark, there at the turn of the path, neither one saying anything. The sound of the lizards and the whisper of night creatures settled around them.

“Are you lost?” he asked.

She was not going to burst into tears. That was simply not on. But the way he asked—not trying to be a jerk or prying, probably just trying to show her back to her villa—made her want to wrap herself around him like a vine. She felt
so
lost. And he seemed so solid, so sure of himself. So grounded.

“I am, a bit,” she answered softly. “Are you?”

“No, actually. I know my way around.” He smiled, a welcoming, inviting smile, and reached for her hand. “You were probably headed to the beach for a walk, right?” When he spoke to her like that, he made it seem fine, that he was holding her hand and sort of leading her away from that bad, bad decision she was about to make. That he must have known she was about to make, the way she’d been barreling around, probably wild-eyed and looking like she was craving trouble.

She looked down at their clasped hands. “Will you get in trouble for…
fraternizing
?”

He burst out laughing, and it was probably the most wonderful sound Lydia had ever heard. It was deep and rich—the sound of rolling pleasure—and it held her to the earth like an anchor. “You are quite something, Lydia.
Fraternizing
? Hilarious.” He shook his head. “I don’t really even work here. My mum’s brother is the general manager. He asked if I could help out this weekend, with it being so busy, and”—he shrugged—“I tend to be the helpful sort, I guess.”

Lydia exhaled, and it was so obviously the sound of relief that he laughed again.

“Does that put an end to your cabana boy fantasy?”

She looked up at him, her pale eyes sparking with mischief. “Thankfully, yes. I was having a hard time getting my mind around the whole cabana boy part of the fantasy.” Her breath hitched when she said that last word, such a blatant admission.

“Busted,” he said softly, squeezing her hand in his.

They spent the next two hours staring at the stars, holding hands while they lay on adjacent lounge chairs that they dragged down near the edge of the sea. Lydia’s heart was a fluttery mess when he caught her out in that whole fantasy business, but he never pushed her.

Well, he did push her verbally, he taunted her and made fun of her in some ways, but he never let go of her hand when he did. He never pulled away. And it was such a remarkable, lovely feeling, to talk to someone in the dark, with all those stars and the lapping waves, and no
pressure
.

Lydia realized she’d been one big pressure cooker for the past three years. Trying so hard to have more fun, more adventures, more drugs, more guys in her bed. She’d been trying to outrun her own life.

“It’s almost two. You okay?” Alistair asked, after one of those lovely silences when he breathed evenly and held her hand, and she could stare at his profile and wonder how she could fashion herself into the type of woman he might want to be with. Or the type of woman some good man like him would want to be with.

“Thank you, Alistair.” She was on her side, staring at him instead of the stars.

He turned his head slightly. “What for?”

“You know what for. I was so angry and frustrated when I bumped into you a couple of hours ago, and you haven’t asked me any annoying, prying questions. You’re just…lovely.”

“That doesn’t sound very promising.”

Lydia levered herself up onto one elbow. “What do you mean it doesn’t sound promising? That’s probably the nicest thing I’ve said to a man in years.”

He smiled and turned his head back to the dark sky. “I mean,
lovely
? Come on. It sounds like a flower or a frock. Real men don’t want to be called
lovely
.”

“Ooh, so you do have an ego after all. You’re a real man, eh?” she teased. “And here I thought you were all consideration and selflessness.”

“Hardly.”

She loved his voice, some high-low admixture of plummy Etonian and Bahamian patois, with some American slang thrown in. He’d lived in England for a few years when he went to Eton, like his father. Lydia wasn’t even sure what to make of that, what it must have been like to be one of only a few black students at a school so steeped in white tradition. Still, she didn’t want to ask about it in that way, as if he were some sort of sociological science experiment in her mind. He talked about Eton matter-of-factly, like so many of her friends talked about it: it was the place where his father went, so it was the place where he went. Nothing more.

When she asked him about his time at Cornell, he brushed her off a bit. She sensed it hadn’t been what his parents had been hoping for, but she didn’t press him.

“So if not
lovely
, then how shall I describe you?
Brawny
?”

He laughed again, low and rumbly, and she loved to see the way it enlarged his chest. She wanted to reach across the small distance and rest her hand on that chest of his, but it felt wrong, too soon in some strange way. If she’d had a few more drinks in her, and they’d met on a sweaty dance floor near Leicester Square, she would have been on her knees and undoing his pants by now. But he was clear and direct, and it forced her to be the same, rather than some drunken girl who wanted to get laid. She turned away from him at the realization that that’s what she’d become. Her first year at St. Andrew’s and then these past months in London, that’s all she’d wanted—the oblivion, the forgetting that she usually found after a few stiff drinks and a meaningless shag with some guy she picked up at a dance club or a party.

“
Brawny
makes me sound like a cartoon hero. What else?”

“Are you actually asking me to think of words to compliment you?”

“Yes, I guess I am.” He smiled at the idea, turning to catch her eye for a second then looking up again. “Tell me what you like about me.”

Her heart started flipping around. She wanted to tell him that lying there under the stars with him was the finest thing she could recall. She wanted to tell him that his hand holding hers was like a tether to the earth, saving her from flying away and self-destructing like one of those wispy paper lanterns that are so lovely until they are consumed by fire and disappear. Instead, she said the very thing that she used to think—as recently as that afternoon—was so despicable. That thing she’d always mocked as the narcissism everyone mistook for love. Because it happened to be true, and she finally had a tiny glimpse of what it really meant. She said, “I like the way you make me feel. I like how you look at me.” Her heart was pounding from the unfamiliar honesty. “I like you,” she whispered.

He squeezed her hand and smiled to the stars. “I like you too,” he answered with that low-slung confidence of his.

Sometime after three that morning, Claire woke to the murmurs of Lydia talking to a man outside the villa. She took a deep breath and tried not to imagine the worst. Had she gone into Nassau and picked someone up? Had she wandered on the beach and found some stranger?

“Do you want to go talk to her?” Ben whispered.

“You’re awake…” She sidled up against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. They pulled their bodies together, and she felt the sheer relief of him, the blessed feeling that she wasn’t alone in her bed worrying about Lydia, as she had been for so many years. They were starting to knit together, so their worries didn’t feel so hopeless. The two of them could figure it out.

“Do you mind?” she asked quietly.

“Of course not,” Ben said. “I mean, come back to bed soon.” He winked. “But go talk to her.” He kissed her forehead and then held an extra beat. He let go of her and watched as she got up to pull on a robe. “Good luck,” he whispered.

“I love you,” she whispered back as she left the room.

Claire crossed the living room and rapped lightly on Lydia’s door. No answer.

She opened the door a crack, seeing the light on beneath. Lydia was on the bed with her earbuds in and watching something on her smartphone. Claire knocked louder and waved one hand to get her attention. Lydia pulled one earbud out and tapped the screen to pause whatever she’d been watching.

“You okay?” Claire asked.

Lydia shrugged and pulled the other earbud out. “Not really.”

“May I come in?”

She sat up straighter and put her device on the bedside table. “Sure. Fine.”

Claire shut the door and sat at the edge of Lydia’s bed. She tried not to fall into the old pattern of looking at her eyes to see if she was high or drunk, but she must have been doing it anyway.

“I’m not buzzed, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Lydia.

“I wasn’t— Oh, I don’t know, maybe I was…” Claire faltered.

“It’s okay.” Lydia’s voice sounded softer somehow.

“I’ve always—no, I don’t want to talk about
always
.”

“Nor do I,” Lydia agreed.

“So.”

“So.”

“So how can we move forward? I mean, is there anything I can be doing better, for you?”

Lydia stared at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “Mother…” When she hesitated, it was hard for Claire to resist filling in the silence, but she stayed quiet.

“I’ve been so lost,” Lydia faltered, her voice cracking.

“Oh darling.” Claire reached out and pulled her into a fierce hug. “I’m so sorry. Please talk to me. We’re all lost, you know.”

Lydia was weeping in her mother’s arms, and Claire was soothing her with all the strange and unfamiliar words she’d never been able to express when Lydia was an errant teen. Freddy had always said she’d never grow up if Claire continued to coddle her, even as he accompanied her to drunken parties and late nights in London. As if partying and gallivanting around Mayfair were the hallmarks of adulthood.

“Oh Lydia. I don’t want you to hate your father. But I can’t—” Claire hesitated to collect her thought. “I can’t cover up for him anymore either. He’s been quite terrible to both of us.”

“Please.” Lydia pulled back and wiped at her face with a rough pull of her fist. “Don’t. It’s not about Father—”

“But it is, darling.” Claire kept her voice soft. “It is for me. And if we’re going to start being honest with each other, I need you to see me for who I am. He weakened me, Lyd. He belittled me for years. Forever, really. I don’t want you to think that is okay.”

“I know it’s not okay how he treated you.” Lydia took a trembling breath, then whispered. “But you could have been stronger. You should have been.”

Claire took it. It was true, and she had asked for the truth, but she still felt it like a slow poison spreading through her veins. Cold and penetrating. “Lydia.”

“I know. It’s a terrible thing to say.” She looked down at her hands on the tropical bedspread. “It’s a terrible thing to feel,” she added softly.