Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (15 page)

He gathered her closer, as tight as their bodies would allow. As far as he was concerned, she wasn't going anywhere. He would find a way.

 

 

At Garret's apartment, Jonathan watched as Irina and his brother played video game baseball, Irina swinging the bright white controller with two hands. “Your back foot should come up, Uncle Garret. Like this. It comes up. Look. Watch me.”

Jonathan sat back in his chair in Garret's kitchen area, his favorite Le Guin novel open next to his laptop. He'd just checked his e-mail: Thea had sent him a note to say she'd received the papers from his lawyer. And in a matter of time she would no longer be his wife. He was struck by a strange feeling—not the notion that she had been uprooted from his life but that
he
had. She'd been his anchor: now he was supposed to set sail. But to where?

“Hey.”

Jonathan didn't notice that Garret had stopped playing the game until his brother sat down next to him. “What's up?”

“I've got good news.”

“What?”

“I talked Irina into sleeping over. And I texted Thea to tell her not to wait up.”

“That's easily the best news I've had all day. How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You've always had a way with people. I've never been able to figure it out.”

Garret dusted his fingernails on his shirt, blew them off, and grinned.

“How did you really do it?”

“Okay, you got me. I promised to take her with me to the gym tomorrow morning if she stayed.”

Jonathan laughed a little and looked back to the computer screen, where Thea's e-mail stared back at him with unapologetic candor.
I don't know how Irina's been acting with you
and
I know I wasn't the best wife.
Since he'd unloaded all his hurt and anger on her, the feeling of freedom that had come over him had worn off, and he was beginning to doubt himself again. It bothered him that Irina was so hesitant to stay with him. He knew as well as Thea did that they would have to work together if they wanted to be good parents. But could they do that? Or would they become like so many other ex-couples, who spent more time fighting about their kids than raising them?

“What's bugging you?” Garret asked.

Jonathan glanced up to see if Irina was listening, but she'd gone into the bathroom, he guessed. “Has Irina seemed like she's been acting up to you?”

“She seems fine to me.”

Jonathan rubbed his eyes, thinking. Irina acted like a tough little soldier when she was with him, but he didn't doubt that Thea was telling the truth about her deteriorating behavior. Now that the separation was going to be permanent, things were going to change—for good. And he worried that Irina would have a tough time with the transition. “Thea got the papers from the lawyer,” he told his brother.

“And?”

He leaned his forehead on his hand. He'd told Garret of his meeting with Thea. He hadn't needed to go into detail for Garret to understand that it hadn't ended well.

“I don't know what I expected,” Jonathan said. “Part of me wishes . . . I don't know. Wishes that she would have been angrier.”

Garret was quiet.

“I want to separate from her, but I don't want to let her go.”

“I'm afraid it doesn't work that way,” Garret said.

Jonathan looked up at him. “
You
should have married her.”

“Please. I've never exactly had a reputation for being the smarter brother. But I knew enough not to get married. Especially to her.” He clasped Jonathan on the back. “You're going to love the bachelor's life. Trust me. But you've got to embrace it. Start living it, instead of just watching from the side.”

“So is that your way of saying it's time for me to move out?”

“You can live here until you're a hundred and four.” From the living room, Irina called Garret's name, challenging him to another round. Garret grumbled as he got to his feet, but Jonathan could tell he was happy. He wondered how his brother—the most social person he knew—could have lived alone for so long. “Duty calls.”

Jonathan stopped him. “You know, I was worried at first about moving in with you. It's been a long time since we've really spent any time together. But instead it feels like we picked up right where we left off.”

Garret clasped his brother's hand, halfway between a handshake and a hug. “I'm right there with you,” he said.

 

 

The unofficial party for Jonathan's senior class graduation was held at the same beach house where it was held every year, and Garret had no doubts at all about crashing it. Nor was he surprised when it hadn't been difficult to talk Thea into crashing it with him. She sat beside him on a thick tree trunk of driftwood that was twisted and smooth. A small fire surrounded by lichen-speckled stones made her hair shine gold and red. At their backs, a huge clapboard house was lit up against the pitch of night, and newly liberated seniors made their way to and fro between the keg on the deck and the water's edge. Already the party was getting sloppy—couples disappearing together, the sound of someone retching in the darkness, laughter bubbling and boiling over into the night.

“Come on,” Garret said. “Let's get out of here.”

He took Thea's hand and led her away from the fire, away from the crowd. He had a slightly dizzy and tipsy feeling, but not because he'd taken a single drink all night. Lately, Thea made him feel that way. He liked the smell of her perfume and the way she felt when he hugged her, which he did whenever he got the chance. She wasn't rail-thin like so many of her friends; he'd been with skinny girls—all their sharp angles and planes. He liked them well enough. But in recent weeks he'd discovered that Thea was more comfortable, touchable somehow.

They walked to the edge of the water, which was unusually calm. Something about the blackness of it, the darkness, brought out its liquid nature, so that the ocean seemed more like itself at night than it did during the day. He led her down along the beach, not giving up the warmth of her fingers. Why hadn't he ever held her hand before? And what kept her from pulling away now?

“I have good news,” he said. “I've been waiting all day to tell you.”

“What is it?”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “My parents said you can move in with us, if you need to, so that you don't have to leave the country. You can graduate with us, here.”

In the moonlight, he saw tears come into her eyes, silvery as the surf that washed up on the sand. “Really?”

“Why are you crying? Aren't you happy?”

“Of course I'm happy. I'm happy your parents would be so kind to me. I'm happy that you are. I don't know what to say.”

He stood to face her, his heart racing in his chest and all of his awareness concentrated on the feel of her hand in his. “Say you'll move in with us and that you won't go.”

Slowly, the hope and pleasure ebbed from her eyes. “I don't know. I think it would be better if I go.”

“But why?” he demanded, frustrated. “Why wouldn't you move in with us? I thought it's what you would want.”

She pulled her hand away from his. “I just can't.”

“Thea . . .” He balled his fingers into fists, too angry to know what to do. Yell at her? Shake her? Beg? She couldn't leave. She couldn't. “I'm telling you . . . asking you . . . not to go.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm not ready to lose you,” he said.

“But what do you mean,
lose
me?”

“Thea—” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration making every muscle in his body go tight. And because he didn't know any other way to show her, to make her believe, he kissed her.

He'd meant—after years of strict friendship—to go slowly, to coax and tease the way he'd learned to when a girl wasn't certain about being kissed. But his head swam, his heart raced, and Thea's arms came around him, her fingers pressing hard into his skin, so that all thoughts of being slow and gentle vanished like a match burning down to his fingers. His hand found the back of her neck, cradling her head, and when her mouth opened beneath his, he felt whole worlds of desire open as if the earth had dropped away beneath his feet. Thea—his Thea—had been holding out on him. There was something inside of her that he wanted,
needed
more of, a light in her like a lantern in the darkness, and he chased it—deepening the kiss, reaching into the shadows of her mouth, seeking more.

He was startled by the punch of cool air when she pulled away.

“I don't want to be just another one of your girlfriends,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“Thea.” He threaded his hands into her hair, marveling at the just-kissed sheen of her lips, the openness that she gave so freely to him. “You're not,” he said. “You could
never
be.” And much to his surprise, the words were true.

In the darkness of his kitchen, where he stood drinking a glass of water in the middle of the long night, Garret knew there were a million reasons he should not be thinking of Thea. And there were a million thoughts of her that he should not have been having.

And yet his mind replayed their conversation in the alley a hundred different ways. He saw the sunlight gleam on her hair. The kindness in her eyes. He thought of her calloused hands, her tired skin. He thought of the little knot of bone at the edge of her wrist when she'd handed him his espresso. He thought of the feel of her against him—he'd thought of it so much that when he'd dozed off earlier, it was to thoughts of being with her, holding her—and then the thoughts that had lulled him to sleep were the exact same thoughts that woke him up with sheer misery and loneliness, because he realized he'd been dreaming.

He refilled his glass of water, drank it down.
Where is she tonight?
he wondered—and then he chastised himself for the thought.

So he'd forgiven her, or she'd forgiven him—or both. Really, it meant nothing. Forgiveness didn't change the way he would proceed in the future, and it certainly didn't entitle him to wonder what she was doing so late at night while he paced the floors.

And yet, despite the strength of his longing, he couldn't deny that forgiveness had made him feel lighter, better, more human than he'd felt in years. In fact, it wasn't worry that was keeping him awake—it was something else entirely. He actually felt fantastic. Liberated. And he wanted to take the feeling—the freedom and joy and shock of it—and do something with it. Put it to good use. He wanted to share the feeling with the woman who'd given it to him.

And this, he realized, was exactly the reason he had to keep his feeling to himself. Why he had to stay away.