Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (16 page)

The hallways of Jonathan's high school had always been filled with rumors. Whispers flew from locker to locker like moths picking their way among flowers, and they spread beyond the classrooms as well, spilling over into crowded cars, shops, beaches, and homes. So when Jonathan caught wind of rumors that Garret and Thea were dating, he paid no more attention to them than to a whisper of music coming through the windows of a passing car.

Mostly, the gossip was easy to ignore. To Jonathan it had seemed that high school kids were too shallow to understand how he and Garret could be friends with the same girl, and he was glad to have graduation over and done. Everyone had been certain that a friendship of two brothers and one woman could not last—that one brother, the better brother, would “take home the prize.”

But Jonathan knew and took refuge in the truth—that even though Garret was so much more popular and accomplished and praised than Jonathan had ever been, they were equals in Thea's eyes. She did not favor one of them over the other. Her parents had decided not to move away until after Thea graduated, and as far as Jonathan was concerned, that meant they could go on as friends forever, proving the world wrong. They had no secrets among them.

Or so he'd thought.

On the day that changed the course of his life forever, he was supposed to have been at the library tutoring a summer school student, but he'd returned home earlier than planned. His parents' house was quiet—the large, first-floor rooms filled only with sunlight and breeze—and so he assumed no one was home. He climbed the stairs two at a time to the top of the turret, where he often spent long hours reading or playing at writing books, and he ditched his backpack on an old couch. It wasn't until he'd settled into a window seat with a notepad that he realized he wasn't alone after all.

There, at the edge of the property, Thea and Garret sat together sunning themselves on one of the large flat rocks. The ocean water came in around them, frothing playfully at their feet. Thea was leaning on her elbows, her long hair falling to brush the beach towel beneath her, her legs crossed at the ankles. Garret was at her side.

All at once, Jonathan felt time slow to an indescribable crawl—the second hand on his watch unable to click forward, the tops of the trees gentling in their sway. He'd just begun to think to himself,
I'll go down and see them
, when—even before he could finish the thought—his brother's hand lifted—lifted so that somehow Jonathan knew what was about to happen, that the certainty of his place in both of their lives was about to crumble—and he saw his brother reaching to touch Thea's hair, to put his hand around the back of her neck, and to draw her in with all the lazy entitlement of a man who had repeated the gesture many, many times.

The sun ducked behind a cloud. And Jonathan stood there a moment, numb behind the window. Thea had chosen. He wondered how long it would take them to tell him—if they were going to tell him at all.

 

 

A few days a week, Thea snuck away from the coffee shop—leaving it in Jules's hands—and she took her iced coffee and newspaper to the marina not far from Price's Pier. She didn't like to stay overly long away from work, just long enough that she could clear her head.

Carefully, she climbed aboard the
White Whale
, a small pristine yacht that belonged to one of her customers whose family also was close friends with Sue and Ken. Ron Madden and his wife were rarely on the bathtub-white boat during the day, and some time ago they had offered it to her as a refuge for occasional lunch breaks. Ron was one of her favorite customers. She'd watched his son turn into a teenager, summer by summer, growing out of his sneakers and growing into his overlarge feet and hands. She and Jonathan had gone out to dinner with the Maddens a number of times, and always, they'd met as a foursome. Thea wondered: what now—since four had turned to three?

She tried to put the thoughts from her mind as she sat on the deck of the Maddens' yacht, not caring that her skin was warming in the brutal, late July summer sun. On the pier, people were packed in shoulder to shoulder—raised voices, hyper children, the smell of coconut suntan oil, dollar bills flashing—but here on the yacht, she enjoyed the emptiness of the space surrounding her like a pocket of air. She sipped her iced coffee and sketched out her notes for her upcoming article in the local paper. She kicked off her sandals and put her feet up on the side of the boat. She closed her eyes.

“Thea?”

When she opened her eyes, she saw Sue standing on the dock, sounding unsure about interrupting. Thea pulled her feet off the railing and sat up straighter. “Sue? What's wrong? Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Sue said, stepping carefully into the boat. “Don't panic. Everyone's fine.”

Thea let out a deep sigh of relief. “How did you find me?”

“Jules told me you'd be here.” She looked down at Thea, shading her eyes with her hand. Her sunglasses were big and black—old Hollywood. Her blond hair was curled in gently at her chin, bleached nearly white by the bright and relentless sun. In light blue cotton, she always seemed to Thea to be so wonderfully put together, as if she'd never in her life broken a sweat.

“I know you don't have much time,” she said, “so we have to talk.”

“Oh?”

“Jonathan said he had his lawyer draw up divorce papers.”

Thea nodded. “Yes. I have them.”

“Did you sign them yet?”

Thea hesitated, glad her own sunglasses were there to hide her reaction. “No.”

“Oh thank goodness,” Sue said. She walked toward Thea, hugged her briefly and lightly. When she pulled away, the thin line of her mouth had softened into something that neared a smile. “I knew you wouldn't do anything rash.”

Thea leaned back in her chair. Sue didn't want her to sign the divorce papers. That much was clear. But Thea could not go on living as husband and wife with a man she did not love and who did not love her. If she was guilty of something, it was letting things go on for so long.

“I haven't signed them yet,” she said. “But I'm going to.”

“But . . .” Sue flattened a hand against her rib cage. “Why?”

“Because Jonathan's right,” she said.

Sue shook her head. “How can you say that? Thea . . . this is just a bump in the road. You can't give up so easily. If every couple threw in the towel at the slightest bit of discomfort, no one would be married at all!”

“I know that. But Jonathan's right. People who save their marriages are people who have something to save. But Jonathan and I, the way we got married wasn't exactly well thought out. We rushed. You know that. We can't restore our marriage to what it was, if it wasn't much to begin with.”

Sue's perfect posture faltered. “Maybe that's true. That you rushed into marriage. I always thought you got married way too young. But that's exactly why you shouldn't make the same mistake again, and you shouldn't rush into anything permanent until you're sure.”

“I'm sure,” Thea said.

“And what about Irina?” Sue asked. “You're not even going to try to keep it together. Not even for your daughter?”

Thea had to look away. Irina was a sore subject. Her tantrums were getting bigger by the day. “Plenty of couples raise their kids together, even if they're not married.”

“Name me one.”

The wind blew, cooling the sweat on Thea's skin. In the sky, the clouds were bilious and white—the innocent-looking harbingers of a storm. “I can't,” Thea said.

Sue nodded, her expression softening. “You know I love you like a daughter. I always will. But I feel no small responsibility for this family. And so I just want to be sure that we exhaust all avenues before . . . before it's too late.”

“I understand that,” Thea said.

“All I'm asking is that you not make this final until you're sure.”

Though the day was hot, goose bumps rose on Thea's skin. “So what do you think I should do?”

“Don't do anything final until you talk to Jonathan. In person. None of this e-mailing or Twittering or whatever it is you young folks do. You have to meet him, and you have to talk.”

“But he won't see me,” Thea said. “We tried talking . . . It didn't work.”

“Oh really?” Sue pulled up straight. Though she was a tiny woman, she sometimes summoned a kind of bigness and gravity that made her seem three feet taller than she was. “I'll take care of Jonathan,” she said.

 

 

Garret had learned enough about persuasion to know that where logic and emotion competed, emotion usually won. It was not logic that convinced the public to pass a law increasing the penalty for sex offenders; it was emotion—the feeling stirred by images of the victimized and abused. It was not logic that compelled senators to vote for a complex restructuring of the financial sector; it was emotion—the anger of the people at big business, the restless urge that something be done.

And so Garret knew well enough that he could not fight his own emotions with logic—though he had mastered every rhetorical argument technique in the book. Emotions could not be talked or reasoned into submission—especially not when they were as deep-seated as those he'd felt for Thea ages ago. For unwanted emotions to stop, they had to be cut off at the source.

On Thursday evening, he and Jonathan sat at a pub on Newport's quieter side, away from the edge of the harbor and away from the crowds. The Black Horse Tavern was a tiny, dark pub—Garret had seen walk-in closets on Ocean Drive that were bigger than the old watering hole. A limited selection of liquors lined the shelf behind the bar, and there was room only for a few tables and six seats at the bar. But Garret liked the place. Heavy timber beams in the ceiling still bore the marks of axes hundreds of years old. Tiny, four-paned windows let only the barest amount of light reach the dark-stained pine of the walls. It made for a nice stop on the way home from his parents'. He took a long swig of beer, preparing to make his gambit, easing in.

“So I've been thinking,” he said.

Jonathan waited, then laughed. “About . . . ?”

“You still haven't got word on the divorce papers?”

“Nah.” Jonathan took a sip of beer. “Maybe she's having a lawyer look them over. That's what I'd do.”

Garret turned his beer in a circle, where it left a puddle on the wood of the bar. He couldn't claim to know Thea very well anymore, but he did know that she was trusting to a fault—to the point of not hiring a lawyer. Garret wondered why Jonathan didn't see the same thing. “Are you anxious?”

“About getting it finalized?”

Garret nodded.

“Oh yes. Anxious isn't the word. I feel like I can't move on until it's official. Like there's things I'm not allowed to do or think about doing until it's all over.”

“Like what?”

“Like—” Jonathan cut himself off, shook his head.

“You mean like other women,” Garret offered.

“That's part of it,” Jonathan said. “It's about getting on with my life. Whatever that means.”

Garret signaled the bartender for another beer. If Jonathan was thinking of dating again, he could probably handle the scenario that Garret was about to propose. “Do you think it's time to start picking up Irina by yourself?”

“Why?” Jonathan asked, turning toward him. “Is something wrong? Has Thea been giving you a hard time?”

“She couldn't give me a hard time if she tried. No—nothing like that. I just wanted you to know that whenever you're ready to take over, let me know. I'm not going to stand in your way.”

“I didn't think you would!” Jonathan laughed. “If it's getting to be too much for you . . .”

“Not at all.”

“Are you sure? Because . . .”

“No really. It's fine. I don't mind,” Garret said, but already he could feel control slipping away from him, his plans failing. He couldn't bear to see Thea anymore. She was making him feel tangled up and anxious, more each day. And yet he'd sworn to be there for his brother—Thea or not.

“I owe you,” Jonathan said. “It's not for much longer. I think I'll feel better about the whole thing once it's official. Once the papers go through.”

“It's no big.” Garret shifted on his barstool, and the bartender brought them another couple of beers. In the dim light from the stained glass lamp over their heads, the ale shone a crisp, deep amber. “This isn't any kind of talk for two bachelors at a pub,” Garret said. “We need to be talking about sports. Or women.”