The Idea of Love (10 page)

The girls sauntered away with their giggles and high fives.

“Brilliant, Hunter. Brilliant.” Ella clapped and bowed. “Were you an actor or con artist in another life?”

“Sort of,” he said, and picked up the paddles. “Which one do you want?”

“Red,” she said. “Good-luck red.”

“It is?” he asked.

“It is now.” She was seriously adorable.

For a few minutes they hit the ball back and forth, friendly and slowly. They didn't talk and this was nice, just hanging out with her without thinking so hard about what to say, about the facts that might give him away.

Ella missed the last hit and scrambled off to find it, leaning down to catch it from a warped floorboard. She returned to the table. “Okay, any bets you want to place?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Your call.” She tossed the ball up and caught it in her palm.

“If I win, you have to tell me a story from your childhood,” he said.

“Deal. And if I win?”

“You won't,” he said.

“If I win, you…” She paused. “If I win, you have to tell me a story about you. Anything, but I have one rule.”

“What is that?”

“It has to be embarrassing.”

“That's a cruel bet.” He bowed. “You're on.”

It was hypnotic the way they hit the ball back and forth. He didn't want to make her miss a hit because he wanted to stay there for hours, just letting the ball go between them, spinning and then returning, rotating like the Earth in space, bouncing and then the satisfying thwack of ball on paddle.

The little white ball, so neat and perfectly timed to return to him, flew past his paddle as it twisted downward into a deep dive. “You!” he hollered across the table with a laugh. “You put a spin on it.”

She smiled and he knew he'd been had.

The game ended with a score of 21–3. And he was fairly sure Ella gave him the three. The pi
ñ
a colada girls had been waiting, sipping their frothy drinks and cheering on Ella as if they were all part of a sorority.

Blake didn't so much mind losing to Ella, which was odd because he hated losing at anything. Watching her with her tongue stuck firmly in the lower right corner of her lips, her wrist twisting in instinct to the angle of the ball, he even forgot to drink his JD.

They gave the table up to the girls. “This way,” Ella said, and pointed to a stairwell. “Goes to the roof. It's a great view. The perfect place to cash in on my bet.”

The sun had set and the moon, a dented balloon, rose above the water. Waves, high and full of spray, a ghost cloud of water, battered the docks. Boats swung, drunk and still hitched with ropes, against the buoys.

It was as crowded on the roof bar as downstairs, but Ella led them to a corner where she lifted her face to the breeze and sighed. “Nice.” She took his drink from him, taking a long sip.

“Whoa,” Blake said, and placed his hand on her glass. “Slow down. That is definitely not a chardonnay.”

“Really?” She looked at him, raised her eyebrows and then took another swig. “Or are you just avoiding paying off your bet?”

He moved closer so he could hear her. But only so he could hear her. “I don't have any embarrassing stories,” he said.

“Right. I'm sure. As we like to say in the South, ‘Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.'”

“Okay, let me think.…” Of course he had embarrassing stories. Shameful ones. Devastating ones. But he wouldn't tell those. “I once invited a dead person to our house.” This story, the one he was about to tell, was true. He wanted to tell her about the time he looked like such a fool that his wife left him alone in the pew, red-faced, standing with his daughter, who probably wanted the floor to open up and take her.

“You did what?” she asked with laughter.

“So let me set the scene,” he said.

“Go ahead.” She might have slurred a little, but how could she not after slamming down that double JD?

“Well,” he said, and moved a little closer. “We had these dear family friends named Deenie and Frank. We did everything together. Vacations. Kids' graduations. If we believed in godparents, I would have been their children's godfather.”

“Okay…” Ella looked into the empty glass. “What does this have to do with…?”

“I'm setting it up for you.”

“Got it. Good family friends. You know them really well. You're close.”

“Yes. Very close.”

“So then?”

“Frank's father passes away. Mr. Cameron. That's his name to me. He was very formal. A pipe-smoking intellectual who I played poker with a few times. The funeral was in Saint Stephens. A huge, multi-steeple church with stained glass windows casting crucifix shadows everywhere. This is Mr. Cameron's funeral.”

“You can tell you're a writer,” she said.

“What?”

“The way you say things. You know, like that thing about the shadows? You can tell you're a writer.”

“That's kind. Thank you.” He turned away for a moment. “Anyway, we went to the funeral. My wife, Marilee, and my daughter, Amelia, and I. We sat behind Deenie's parents—well-dressed, lawyer types who were both in the entertainment industry, always on the lookout for style and fame, always talking to the right people at the right time. Well, Deenie's father, Carlos, leans over to shake my hand. He says, ‘Good to see you. Even under these terrible circumstances.' We make small talk about the weather and the kids and then he says, ‘Saw your house in
Architectural Digest
last month.'”

“Your house was in
Architectural Digest
?” Ella raised her eyebrows.

“That's not the point.”

“Okay…”

“So Carlos says that and then tells me, ‘You know, I'd always wanted to take Marcus to visit that house.' I nod, solemnly because solemn is how you should be at a funeral. I reply with sincerity. ‘Feel free to bring him by any time.'” Blake paused and shook his head. “And then it hit me, in the stunned silence of my wife and my daughter, and in the nauseated expression of Carlos, Deenie's father, that I had just invited the man in the coffin at the front of the sanctuary—
Marcus
Cameron! I had just told the leading entertainment lawyer in L.A. to bring his dead friend, his son-in-law's dead father, to my house.”

“Oh, my God.” Ella burst out into such rowdy laughter that people stared. “That is the best. Seriously the best story I've heard in a long time.”

“It's great if it's not you.” Blake took her elbow and squeezed it, not to steady her, but to touch someone who could laugh that freely.

“How did you get out of that one?” she asked.

“I apologized. What else was there to do? And then I sat alone at the funeral because my wife was embarrassed and my daughter saw her best friend, and I was mourning the loss of a man whose first name I didn't even know.”

“You're a nice guy, Hunter.”

“Thanks, Ella.”

“I think I need to go home,” she said, and closed her eyes. “Everything is sort of moving in circles.”

“Let's get you home,” he said.

He guided her through the crowd and out the front of the restaurant. “Let me drive you home in my fancy turquoise rental car,” he said.

She shook her head with such force that he thought she might fall. “No. I'll get a cab.”

“It's not a big deal,” he said. “It can't be out of my way.”

“No.” She motioned to a cab parked a few feet away. “Thanks, though.”

The bright red cab with the words
BEACH TAXI
on the side pulled up. “Hey, Billy,” she said. “Take a girl home who accidentally drank too much?”

“Sure thing, Ella. Get in.”

Ella turned to Hunter. “Thanks for the fun and so sorry to kick your ass.”

Blake was still laughing as the taxi drove off.

six

Her tongue had been replaced with a sheet of sandpaper. Her head felt heavy on her shoulders. What the hell had she been thinking? She knew better than to drink hard liquor.

Ella gripped the steering wheel of the car and turned the air conditioner one notch higher. The bridge was backed up as she tried to get to Bluffton, where she'd told Hunter she would meet him to show off the best farmer's market in the area. They'd texted that morning; he was concerned, wanting to know that she'd made it home safely the night before. She didn't tell him about the headache or nausea, just pretended that all was well. He seemed like the tough kind of guy who never suffered from a hangover. She didn't want to seem fragile. This fake Ella was strong and could drink Jack Daniel's while beating him at Ping-Pong. Oh, righto.

She didn't want to run the risk of running into Sims again at a caf
é
or riverside store, at the park or Good Day Grocery, where they both still shopped. She would show Hunter the town next door, the place she went when she needed to feel far away, even if she wasn't. Sims had always promised to take her somewhere far away: Paris, Rome, romantic names of cities that now seemed like characters in a novel, not at all real.

The dock where they had agreed to meet was empty. Ella walked down to the water, sat at the edge of the wooden plank with her cell phone in her hand. A man and a woman passed by on a kayak. They moved slowly so as to barely make a ripple in the water. They waved at her and she waved back. Her cell phone sat faceup on the dock and then it happened—Sims's face appeared with the word
hubby
. Yes, she'd left it like that because he was still her husband, if only on paper.

She allowed herself, for one false moment, to pretend that he was calling her to say hello, or better yet, to say that he missed her and that he needed her to come home because he'd made a terrible mistake. He loved her and her alone.

She picked up and used her happiest (fake) voice. “Hello?”

“Ella, we need to talk.”

“Okay.” She pulled off her sandals and reached her toes down into the water, scooting farther to the edge of the dock.

“You keep promising me that you'll get a lawyer so we can get this going. You can't just ignore the papers. You can't. You lied to me.”

“
I
lied to
you
? Isn't that your ground to cover?”

Ella closed her eyes; her stomach knotted up. She'd done it again, even as she'd told herself a thousand times not to. She'd been sarcastic and rude when she could have been nice. This wasn't going to win him back.

“You feel good about getting in those stabs, Ella? Does that make any of this better?”

“No.”

“Have you found a lawyer yet?”

“A lawyer for what?”

“This is how you want to play it?”

Ella swung her feet from the dock, back and forth, back and forth, like she once had as a child. When she'd felt free, when she'd believed that life was full of possibility. She opened her mouth for another sarcastic comment, something to catch him off guard, but what came out was this: “I miss you.”

Shit. Had she really said that? She wanted to take it back. Oh, God, how she wanted to take it back. She closed her eyes because whatever he said would hurt.

“Don't,” he said. “Don't make this worse, Ella. Do not make me feel bad.”

“I have to go,” she said. “Now.”

“Ella,” he said quietly in that voice that made her melt, in that voice he used right before they made love.

“Yes?” She was hopeful for something kind, even as her mind, her guardian mind, screamed at her,
Don't even hope; do not hope.

“You have to accept that this is happening. The divorce is happening. Please let's make it easy on each other. Sign the papers. Get a lawyer.”

“Sims…”

“I heard you were at Sunset last night with some guy.”

“What?”

“Drunk,” he said, and she heard the disgust in his voice, the loathing.

“No,” she said with the lurch of the lie in her stomach curdled with the whiskey.

“Listen, Ella, let's end this civilly, okay?”

“I need some things from home. It's not all yours … and I need…” She stopped because the end of the sentence was
I need you.
She refused to say it one more time. It changed nothing—the truth that was supposed to set you free? It didn't.

“Soon. As soon as all the paperwork is done, you'll get all of that. But what's the use in giving it to you now if I have to come take some of it back?”

“Because you have to have at least one decent bone left in your body. Because you loved me.”

“Okay, Ella. Okay.”

“Or did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Ever really love me?”

“Do you want to torture us or move on in life?” His voice was so dull.

Where had he gone? Who was this? Ella felt the tears well up in the back of her throat, in the places of panic and fear. She'd messed up the conversation with her desperation and her need, with her idiocy. Why couldn't she be cool so that he'd know he lost the best thing he ever had? That's what all the books said to do; she'd read them. Be a “bitch”; have your own life; show him you're too busy for him. But here she was again showing him how much she needed him.

“I have to go,” she said. “I'm meeting someone.”

“Me, too.”

Ella hung up and let the tears fall. If she didn't cry, her throat would hurt with the effort and she'd get a headache. Let the tears out and they dry up.

Something new for the list:
accept that this is happening.

Great.

Why would she even want him back? The lies. The pain. And yet here she sat wanting him back more than she wanted anything else. It didn't make sense. Love didn't make sense.

“Ella?” Hunter called her name.