Yes.
This was right.
Everything was settled.
The moment Mike the First got to town tomorrow, I was going to break up with him…if he didn’t break up with me first.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
In fact, so convinced was I that our relationship was over that it never occurred to me that he might put up a fight…or that in less than twenty-four hours, I would seriously doubt the emotion I felt with such conviction right now.
twenty-three
The present
We walk on the beach for a long time.
Not holding hands.
Not arm in arm.
Just…walking.
And talking.
About the past.
Not the past we didn’t share—meaning, the last fifteen years we’ve spent apart.
No, we talk about the past we did share. Our past.
There are more than enough great memories to keep us laughing…at least, for a while.
Then things get serious.
They get serious when Mike asks me, point-blank, “So Beau…do you have any regrets about the way things turned out in the end?”
“Regrets?” I echo, feeling as though I’ve just stepped into a pit of quicksand. “Regrets about what?”
As if I don’t know.
“About marrying somebody else.”
I open my mouth to answer, but he doesn’t let me.
“And about you and me going our separate ways after that summer.”
Going our separate ways. He makes it sound so benign. As though it were a mutual decision, when, in fact, I was the one who made it. I was the one who told him I loved him, then pushed him away.
“Do you?” I ask, mired in guilt.
“Have regrets? Yes.”
“Oh.” Somehow, I didn’t expect such a straightforward answer.
Maybe I thought he was going to tell me how it was the best thing for both of us. Maybe I thought he was going to thank me for setting him free to…to follow his dreams. To marry somebody else, to live leisurely ever after in Florida, to wear white moccasins and pink shirts.
“I never got over you, Beau.” He stops walking and turns to face me, grabbing hold of my upper arms with his hands and forcing me to stop, to turn, to face him.
“Mike…”
“I’m serious. I’ve spent fifteen years wondering what would have happened if you and I had stayed together.”
“No, you haven’t.” I shake my head, reeling. “You got married. You must have loved your wife.”
“I did,” he admits. “In the beginning. But not the way I loved you, back then.”
“That’s because we were young.”
“Maybe partly. But it was also because we were pretty damned good together. You know we were. It wasn’t just me.”
What I see in his eyes is more unsettling than the smell of rain that suddenly permeates the salt air.
I force myself to look away, to gaze at the sky, where thunderclouds loom; at the incoming tide, no longer blue and calm but gray and foamy.
He’s waiting.
And whether I admit it or not, he knows.
But I admit it. I owe him that. I owe him more than that, probably.
“No,” I say slowly, looking at Mike again at last. “It wasn’t just you. But—”
“You can’t tell me you haven’t wondered what would have happened if you’d chosen me instead of him, Beau.”
“I haven’t,” I lie, twisting a bit to the right and then to the left. His grasp on my arms doesn’t flinch. He’s got a hold on me that’s impossible to shake off.
No, it isn’t, I tell myself. You could pull away if you really wanted to. You don’t want to.
“You’re saying that you’re happily married?” he asks.
“Of course I’m happily married.”
“And you don’t have a single regret?”
I can’t find my voice. My thoughts are reeling.
“Why are you here with me, Beau?”
All I can think is that he knows. He knows that there’s a part of me that’s never gotten over him, either.
But I don’t dare admit that. I don’t owe him that. Admitting to him that my feelings are unresolved would open the door to something I’m not ready to face.
Thunder rumbles ominously in the distance; a hot wind kicks up the surf.
My God. This is surreal. I feel as though I’ve stumbled onto a movie set. My life—my real life—is not this dramatic. My life is my children, my husband, my cobweb-and-crumb-strewn house that needs another bathroom under the stairs.
“We have to get back,” I tell Mike, my panic surging like the mounting tide. “It’s going to storm.”
“Wait, Beau…”
“No…I have to go….”
“First just tell me why you’re here. Just tell me why you’re here with me, and we’ll go back.”
“I don’t know why I’m here with you, Mike,” I say. “But I do know that I shouldn’t be. I have to—”
“No, you don’t have to go.”
“Yes, I do. It’s going to storm.” Again, I make the effort to slip out of his grasp.
Not enough effort.
“Go ahead. Tell me that you never want to see me again,” he says. “If that’s really how you feel, then tell me.”
“Why do I have to say it again? I’ve already told you that once in my life.”
“But here you are.”
I swallow hard. He’s right. Here I am.
“I’m not in Florida to see you” is my feeble protest. “I’m visiting my in-laws.”
“You didn’t have to tell me you were coming. I would never have known.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t. I can’t because he’s right.
“You didn’t have to write back to me when I e-mailed you. You could have deleted it.”
“I know, but—”
“Why did you write back, Beau? Why did you tell me you were coming to Florida?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. It was because you wanted to see me. You can’t say that’s not true.”
“I did want to see you,” I admit, “but that’s all. Just see you. Not…”
“Not what?” He’s leaning closer. Dangerously close.
“Don’t,” I say, but this time I don’t even try to slip out of his grasp.
I close my eyes, hating myself for the way that I feel. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I don’t want him to let go. I don’t want him to stop leaning closer. I don’t want—
His lips brush against mine.
My eyes fly open.
“No,” I say. “Don’t.”
He does it again.
I can feel myself responding even as my hands come up against his chest and push. Hard.
“Beau…”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
My heart is pounding. I’ve never kissed anybody other than my husband…not since he became my husband.
I knew what Mike was going to do. It was wrong; I knew it was wrong, and yet…
I let him.
I let him because I have no self-control. I’m spoiled, I’m weak, I’m a giddy girl masquerading as a responsible wife and mother.
I hate myself, and I hate him.
I take off running.
“Beau, wait!”
No. I won’t wait. I’m running down the beach with my sandals in my hand, not caring about the shells and pebbles that hurt my feet or the rain that’s begun to fall or the lightning that strikes all around me.
I’m running, running away from him, running away from my shameful self. Running away from temptation, from what might have been.
And what am I running toward?
Toward a white Caprice Classic and three small jet-lagged children, toward a husband whose idea of a vacation is to install a toilet, toward a maid who leaves the cleaning to me, and friends whose lives revolve around teething and diapers
and third markdowns at Baby Gap.
Yet I keep running. I want to look back, but I don’t. I can’t.
I’m afraid I’ll see that he’s chasing after me…or that he isn’t.
twenty-four
The past
“There he is,” Valerie said when the door buzzed loudly that evening.
I stopped pacing and looked at her, then at the security panel. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been expecting him. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t spent the entire day wanting to get this over with so that I could move on unencumbered.
So why, now that he was here, was I caught off guard? Why wasn’t I ready for what lay ahead?
“Are you going to buzz him up or do you want me to do it?” Valerie asked, already strapping her overnight bag across her shoulder. She was going to Gordy’s so that Mike and I could have some time alone.
“You do it,” I said, clenching and unclenching my fists, taking deep breaths.
She did, pressing the button on the panel and saying, “Come on up, Mike.”
“How do I look?”
“Gorgeous, as always,” she said, glancing over my outfit: pleated pink pants, a high-collared blouse with a brooch at the collar, and a gray bolero jacket with shoulder pads.
“I mean, do I look nervous?”
“A little.” She gave me a quick squeeze. “You can do this, Beau.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s the right thing to do. You said it yourself.”
“But are you sure?” I asked again.
“Are you?”
“Valerie! That’s not supposed to be your answer. You’re supposed to tell me that I should break up with him and follow my heart.”
“Well, you definitely should.”
“You don’t look convinced.”
“Neither do you.”
I paced across the room again, feeling trapped. “I promised Mike I would do this,” I said, more to myself than to my roommate. “I promised him I would be with him.”
“Is that the only reason you’re doing it? Because you told him you would? Or because you want to?”
“I want to.” I said it with far less conviction than I actually felt at the moment.
Valerie gave me another hug and reached for the door. “I love you, sweetie. I know you’ll make the right decision.”
“I thought I already did,” I said, but she was gone.
And, moments later, he was there.
He stepped over the threshold and swept me into a bear hug. “I’m so totally glad to see you.”
It wasn’t at all what I expected.
I had somehow convinced myself that because my feelings had changed in the past few weeks since we’d seen each other, his had, too. But one look at Mike’s face told me he wasn’t here to break up with me…and that he sure as hell didn’t see it coming on my end.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, prolonging the hug so that I could bury my face in his shoulder once more and not be forced to focus on the unsettling expression on his face.
“I’m taking the job. I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Which job?” I asked, pulling back, looking up again reluctantly, seeing something in his eyes that had never been there before.
“The one in New York. The dude called me a few days ago. They came through, Beau. They really did.”
New York.
He was moving to New York.
“They offered you more money than the research thing in Silicon Valley?” I asked, incredulous, my heart racing.
“No.”
“Better benefits?”
“No. But it’s a decent package. And the thing that counts is that it’s here.”
I shook my head, stunned. “I can’t believe it. You said you didn’t want—”
“I know what I said. I didn’t want to live here. I still don’t. But I realized that if I wasn’t willing to compromise, I was going to lose you. And I can’t lose you, Beau. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I swiped a hand across my teary eyes, overwhelmed. “But I never expected you to give up a job that you really, really wanted.”
“It’s a job,” he said with a shrug. “Who even knows if it would have been worthwhile? Beau, what’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?”
I realized that I was still shaking my head. I forced myself to stop, to smile, to tell him, “Of course I’m happy.”
“You’re happy, but…”
“But are you sure this is what you want?”
“I’m positive.”
And he really did look secure in his decision. Clearly, he was doing this for me. He loved me enough to give up his dreams for me.
And I loved him, too. I really did. I couldn’t turn my feelings off just like that. Now that he was here, standing in front of me…
Well, I still loved him.
But did I love him enough to give up Mike?
“So what do you say? Do you want to go apartment hunting with me in Jersey?”
“You mean…to help you find a place?”
“A place that can be big enough for two down the road. Not right away, but maybe after I get settled in…”
“You’re saying you’ll be willing to live together?”
“I’m saying I’ll be willing to give it a shot.”
He kissed me. His kiss was tender and passionate, comfortably familiar. I lost myself in it, and when at last we came up for air, I heard myself whisper, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
He laughed. “Neither can I. This is excellent.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Being away from you, Beau. I went back out there to my apartment and it felt lonely. I realized that if I moved up north I’d be just as lonely there. I’d have a great job, but I’d still be lonely. I’d still miss you. And I’m really, really sick of missing you. It totally sucks.”
“I feel the same way.” I also felt that he had been living precariously close to the San Fernando Valley long enough. But a few weeks back on the East Coast would banish the totallys and dudes from his vocab.
“Other than summer camp, we’ve never had the chance to live in the same place and have a normal relationship.”
“I know we haven’t.”
But what about Mike? a voice screamed inside my head. You promised Mike…
You promised him something you had no business promising.
How could I have convinced myself it was possible to fall in love with somebody overnight? I had read enough magazine articles to know that whirlwind romances couldn’t last; that what I felt for the other Mike had to be mere infatuation, not full-blown love.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about, Beau. A lot of planning to do.”
Despite my qualms, anticipation bubbled up inside of me, frothy and promising as wedding champagne.
Mike and I had a past together, and we could have a future together, if that was what I really wanted.
Maybe you had to have one to have the other.
But maybe not.
Maybe what I had with the other Mike in the here and now could blossom into full-blown love.
What did I want?
Which Mike did I want?
God help me, I didn’t know.
“What are you thinking about, Beau?”
“I’m thinking that this is all happening so fast.”
“Really? I’m thinking that it’s about time.”
Before I let this go any further, I should be honest about what I had done. I should tell him that I had feelings for somebody else.
“Unless,” he said, and I saw a question in his eyes.
I pulled his face down to mine again and kissed it way.
I was afraid of what he was going to ask me.
Afraid of what I wasn’t going to be able to say. At least, not yet. Not tonight.
The decision I thought I had made evaporated, leaving me more torn than ever.
I knew only one thing for certain. “I’ve missed you s
o much, Mike.”
“I’ve missed you, too. I never want us to be apart like that again.”
twenty-five
The present
“I never want us to be apart like that again.”
“I don’t either,” I tell my husband fervently, allowing him to pull me close, crushing poor little Tyler, who is balanced on my hip.
That our flight was delayed for a few hours—and turbulent—feels suspiciously like poetic justice. I mean, all I’ve wanted since I ran away from Mike on the beach was to be back home where I belong.
Now that I’m here, I’m positive that I’ll be able to get back to normal at last. For the last few days, in foreign surroundings, without my husband’s constant presence to ground me, I haven’t been able to shake the eerie feeling that I’m living somebody else’s life—that nothing is familiar.
I’ve felt this way once before…that summer.
But that’s well in the past; now, thank God, so is Florida. It’s time to go back to the real world.
In the real world, there is no nagging sense of unfinished business.
At least, there had better not be.
“The house was way too quiet without all of you,” Mike says, releasing me from his fierce embrace at last. He takes my carry-on bags and swings Joshua up onto his shoulders, adding, “And now I bet Grandma’s house will be too quiet, too.”
“Oh, I don’t think she’ll mind,” I tell him, deftly unfolding the umbrella stroller and strapping Tyler into it.
“Grandma’s head was hurting really bad last night,” Mikey informs Mike, holding tightly to his hand as we start toward the baggage-claim carousel downstairs. “And so was Grandpa’s. Josh was being loud.”
“I wasn’t being loud,” Josh protests—loudly—from his lofty perch. “It was the fire truck.”
“Fire truck?” Mike looks at me. “What fire truck?”
“The very loud one your father insisted on buying Josh at Toys ‘R’ Us the first minute after we got there.”
“It has a real siren, Daddy. And a bell.”
“Did you leave it at Grandma and Grandpa’s house to play with next time you visit?”