The One That I Want (21 page)

“Seriously?” my sweet neighbor hissed at me. “You’re asking about our vacation?” She laughed. “You’re here with
Dane Tyler
. I clearly missed some very important news, Julia.”

Andy nudged me and added, “All my wife could say for the past half hour was, ‘That’ll teach us to leave Mirabelle Harbor for nine days.’”

Yvette and Andy had been away since the weekend before Dane’s radio interview. Their plan had been to drive directly from the quaint Wisconsin resort town they’d been staying in to come to Camp Willowgreen for Parents’ Day. And though my friends were joking with me, I suddenly realized just how much had gone on in my life in only the past week.

“Kind of an involved story.” I smiled at Yvette, who looked at me with the sort of exasperation I usually only got from Shar. “But I’ll fill you in when we’re all back home. I promise. And,” I added, “I also have your mail.”

“Bring it over tomorrow,” Yvette said. “Early. Plan to stay for breakfast and lunch. I might hold you hostage through dinner if you don’t give me enough details.”

I laughed, waved at them, and wandered back to Dane, who whispered, “Analise said there’s an awards ceremony next.”

“Yes, last thing on the schedule, from what I was told.”

“Excellent,” he replied, turning his attention back to the penultimate skit and seamlessly transitioning to the final event of the afternoon.

When it was time for all of the parents to leave after the awards ceremony, the pang of missing Analise was almost as strong for me as when we’d had to part two weeks ago.

This time, though, she was flanked by quite a few more kids than just Lindsay and Brooke. Even Justin from the skit was hanging nearby, watching her say goodbye to me and to Dane.

I hugged her tight. “I love you, my beautiful girl,” I whispered in her ear.

“Love you, too, Mommy.”

Then she thrust her hand out at Dane. “Thanks for showing me how to remember my lines,” she told him sincerely. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I think you could have, but I was glad to help. You were brilliant up there, kiddo,” he said.

And, somehow, I managed to tear myself away from her and make it to Dane’s car before I started to cry and before a horde of his admirers could awaken from their awed trance and descend upon him.

We rode the first twenty minutes in silence before he broke in. “It’s hard to leave her, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “It was just a tiny bit easier this time, though, knowing she’d had such a great day. I can’t thank you enough for that. Truly, you were wonderf—”

“It was nothing.” And, as was his usual reaction to praise, he brushed it away and fiddled with the radio instead.

I reached out and touched his hand. “No, Dane. It
was
something. What you did meant a lot to me, and to Analise, too.”

He grasped my fingers in a quick squeeze then, just as quickly, pulled away.

“You’re welcome, Julia. Now,” he pointed to the radio of his rental car, “choose a station and let’s get out on the open highway.” He pushed the button for the window to roll down and let a gust of wind blow in. Then he hit the gas pedal and smiled. “God, I miss driving in the Midwest.”

“You do? Why?”

“Ever visit New York or L.A.?”

“No. Neither.”

“Both coasts are a traffic nightmare. This, though—this is fun.”

As he turned onto the Interstate and increased his speed, I found a radio station that was playing Roxette’s “Dangerous” and settled into the return drive. Just listening to music. Enjoying the wind whistling through the car. And chatting with Dane about nothing and, yet, everything.

When we arrived back at my house, I immediately invited him inside.

“Look,” I said, “after all of the things you did this weekend, the least I can do is make you dinner before you have to go to the theater to strike the set. Are you a lasagna fan?”

“Homemade lasagna? You may not have leftovers tomorrow.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll throw it together.”

And, somehow, the magic that had swirled around us up at the camp followed us into the early evening. I opened up a bottle of wine. We drank half of it while the lasagna baked. We nibbled on crackers and cut-up veggies. And we kept talking. It was as if we hadn’t already spent more than twenty-four hours together. We should have been sick of each other. I should have been looking forward to finally having a bit of quiet time. He should have been itching to leave.

Instead, I found myself wishing he didn’t have to go at quarter to seven, and not just because I missed my daughter and didn’t want to be alone in the house. I wanted to be
with him
.

He sighed. “I think I’m gonna go into a carb coma if I eat another bite. They’ll have to roll me into Hotel Royale tonight.”

I laughed and we both glanced at the clock. 6:46. Damn.

“I know you have to leave now,” I said, “but thanks again for the party yesterday and for today. Every bit of it.”

I walked him to the door.

He paused before pulling it open. Took a step closer to me…and then another. Put his arms around my shoulders and waited until I raised my gaze to meet his.

Then he said, “I can be a few minutes late to the theater.”

I swallowed and licked my lips.

He grinned. “I warned you about that, Julia.”

“I know,” I whispered.

And he brought his mouth down on mine.

It wasn’t a peck this time. No little brush across my lips. It was fully engrossing. Utterly transporting. Dane had pulled me so far out of myself that I was all but levitating. Even in my most imaginative state as a teen, I could never have fantasized
this
kiss. It wasn’t a sensation I would have known could exist when I was that age.

When he stepped back, he shook his head and said, “I’m not leaving until you tell me when we can see each other again.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“How about tomorrow afternoon
and
night?” he countered.

“Deal,” I said, and he kissed me again. Then he slipped away.

In a zombie-like haze, I wandered back to the kitchen, finished putting everything away, and then meandered through the rooms of the house, one by one, until, at last, I came to a stop in front of my bedroom dresser. I stood and stared at it for the longest time.

On one side, there was a family photo of the three of us, taken about two years ago when Analise was in third grade. On the other side, there was a picture of just Adam and me, taken on our wedding day. I picked that one up, kissed the smiling face of my late husband, and set it down again.

Oh, my heart. I still missed him. I’d
always
miss him, and I knew it. But it seemed our daughter wasn’t the only one who had changed significantly in a relatively short period of time. I just hadn’t realized until this very moment that I had, too.

I reached for my gold wedding band, twisted it on my finger a few times and then, finally, pulled it off.

Chapter Fifteen

The next several days were, as I tried to explain to Shar on the phone at the end of the week, the kind that a person would always look back on and remember in chunks, rather than as distinctly individual days.

I’d felt this way even while they were happening.

That they were grouped as a set.

That one day blended into the next like watercolors on wet paper.

That certain themes echoed for me over and over again within those merging twenty-four-hour periods until I didn’t know when or where the ideas originated anymore.

It was like living within a romance film montage—those joyous moments in every movie where the characters were shown interacting in a bunch of different scene snippets, all set to music. Viewers watched the onscreen couple talking, laughing, ice skating, feeding each other pasta, or whatever, but the only words that were heard were those of the lyrics to the song playing loudly.

For Dane and me, it was like having the soundtrack of LOVE FM ballads on high in the background as we chatted, ate meals together, and made out behind closed doors.

Dane and I spent so much time together—but in very few locations—that, later, I could no longer disentangle where, exactly, we were when one conversation began or another one ended. All I could say for certain was that, from the moment he picked me up on Monday afternoon (the day following our camp visit) until Friday (when all hell broke loose), he and I were almost constantly together. Conversationally, we were as intimate as two people could get, but physically, we’d self-imposed some limits.

Dane had been quick to remind me that he was leaving Chicago at the end of July, and that he knew I was still processing the death of my husband. He said it didn’t feel right to push our relationship too far, too fast. Logically, this made sense to me, of course, so we only gazed at each other on the rare occasions that we were out in public. We held hands in elevators and other semi-private spaces. And, in the privacy of his hotel or my house, we kissed. We didn’t go much beyond that—at least not initially—but there was lots of deeply enchanted kissing.

“Back up,” Shar said to me. “You need to explain what you mean by the ‘deeply enchanted kissing’ bit because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know how when you kiss someone and you’re not only enjoying what’s happening in that moment but, also, there’s a part of you that’s daydreaming—simultaneously and spectacularly—about what your future with this person would be like? When you project all kinds of fantasies onto someone else that are totally fictional, but you don’t realize it at first because, for a while, the fantasies feel just as real as what’s actually going on?”

“No,” my best friend said.

I tried to think of another way to explain it.

“Take the Cinderella Story as an example,” I said. “Every little girl wants to be Cinderella at the end of the fairy tale. She gets whisked away from the meanies, her sad life of drudgery is over, she’s going to be a rich princess with a handsome prince, and she’s even got a fairy godmother waiting in the wings, looking out for her best interests, right?”

“Yeah, okay. I follow you that far. But what does this have to do with enchanted kissing?”

“When people in the real world look at life as if it’s a fairy tale, we might find ourselves projecting that happily-ever-after ending in any kind of Cinderella/Prince situation we’re in and not even bother to question the daydream. If the guy looks like a prince and acts like a prince—”

“And kisses like a prince?” Shar interjected.

“Yes. If all of that is true, it makes it so easy to buy into the enchantment. Too easy. But something very important is missing when we do that.”

“A glass slipper?” she suggested. “Is this your sneaky way of saying you need to go shoe shopping?”

“No, Shar.” I paused. “We’re missing the Prince’s perspective. The Cinderella Story is told entirely from her point of view. It focuses on her struggles, her attitudes, her motives and needs. But what about the Prince’s viewpoint? How well do we ever get to know
him
and what he wants, aside from hooking up with that mysterious woman from the ball? What motivates a wealthy, powerful man like him to find that one elusive young lady whose foot fits the slipper? How much of the Prince’s interest in Cinderella has to do with her actual personality, rather than his
projections
about her? What does he really know about her, anyway, beyond the most superficial details? Or is his attraction really just a reflection of him falling in love with his own self image? Is he, maybe, captivated by the idea of himself as a hero? A man who can solve a mystery, successfully pursue an attractive woman, rescue her, and then earn her gratitude forevermore because, after all, he took her away from a hard life and handed her riches and a royal title?”

“You may be over-thinking the fairy tale, Julia.”

“I doubt it. But, even if I am, that’s the power of enchantment. And the danger of it. When
both
people are projecting fantasies onto each other and no one is seeing the relationship clearly. I might second guess myself and my own motives when it comes to Dane Tyler because, let’s face it, I’ve been infatuated with the public image of the guy since I was a teenager. But what I’d completely overlooked was that he’d been infatuated with the
idea
of
me
since he was a teenager.
The Girl Next Door
. And that’s just as fake—just as much of an illusion—as my enchantment with him.”

There was a long moment of silence on the line. “What did he do to you?” my best friend asked. “Julia, did he hurt you in some way?”

But I couldn’t tell her a quick “yes” or “no.” It was much more complicated than that. I needed to start explaining from the start of last week, not just its fiery conclusion.

~*~

The more I discovered about Dane, the more I realized just how much there was that we didn’t know about each other. So much private history we had yet to discuss.

And, yet, like a paradox within a paradox, I had the strangest sense of certainty that I knew the essentials about him. Many of his core values. Some of his fondest wishes and longstanding dreams.

In a way, it was as if the most amazing part of my teen fantasy had come to fruition. Not just the fact that Dane Tyler and I had met—or even kissed—but that we were truly similar and we genuinely had important things in common. That he really
did
like me, once he’d gotten to know me, as I’d always suspected he would. My adolescent self would have felt so vindicated by this.