Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (36 page)

An awkward quiet settled among them. Thea looked out over the increasingly busy pier, watching an extended family of seagulls fight for a hot dog bun on the ground. “So,” she asked Jonathan, “what are you reading these days?”

Jonathan looked away sheepishly. “Actually, I'm writing.”

“Really?”

“Yep. A science fiction novel.”

“He won't talk about it,” Garret said. “It's a big secret. I can only assume it's about big-breasted alien women who come to earth to enslave the male population.”

“That sounds just like something Jonathan would write,” she joked.

The moment of awkwardness had passed. They stood for a few minutes, making small talk and watching Ken and Sue repeatedly miscalculate their beanbag throws—intentionally, from what Thea could tell. Eventually, Jonathan laughed and went to join them, leaving Thea and Garret alone.

She cleared her throat, searching for something to ask him about, some jumping-off point for a conversation. But all she could think of was the steely heat of his skin under her hands and how much she already missed it. That she was thirty-three years old and hadn't known that sex could be so powerful, so intimate, added a spark of anger to her already overheated thoughts.

“How's it going?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said.

“Irina's having fun.”

“Yes. She is.”

“It's great.”

“She does a great job.”

The wind blew gently over the pier, sending a paper cup skipping along the weather-worn boards. The festival went on around them—the noise of blaring radios, the smells of popcorn and greasy meats, the shouts of cheerful vendors. She and Garret stood side by side, not speaking, and yet Thea felt the firm tug of the things they could not say passing between them. She tapped her hand against the side of her leg; he adjusted his sleeves. Together, they watched Irina instruct Ken on the best way to make a toss with the beanbag. When Garret chuckled, she felt the sound rumble through her whole body.

She started to speak at nearly the same time he did. “So—”

“Your—”

She laughed and turned toward him. “I'm sorry. You go.”

“Your lips are chapped.”

“Oh.” She reached up and touched them instinctively, wetting her lower lip. His eyes narrowed, darkened. The look on his face was pained.

“Don't,” she said. But she was there with him, remembering. Heat coursed through her, her skin burning with a memory all its own. His gaze held hers, and she could not bring herself to look away.

She was glad when Jonathan interrupted. “Quite a saleswoman we've got,” he said. He'd jogged back across the planks of the old boardwalk to join them. His smile was easy and wide. “She just talked me out of five bucks because she said she couldn't make change.”

“Sounds like Irina.”

Jonathan glanced at Garret, then Thea. “Everything okay? You two aren't fighting again, are you?”

“No,” Thea said lightly. “Not at all.”

 

 

The newspaper had made it look so easy.

Around the concession stand at the high school, the parents of good Newport children traded their theories over hot dogs and cans of Coke.
You know it was a temper tantrum
, some said. Veteran fathers joked:
It's always about a girl
.

At shiny, bright salons, where the women of Newport got their hair done and leafed through magazines, all their sympathy was with Garret.
So he made a mistake
, they said.
She didn't have to get him arrested. That was just cruel.

And in the teachers' lounge of the high school, where coaches and tutors sat with the paper open on the old coffee table, the mood was much more somber.
Idiot
, they said, more with sorrow than unkindness. Garret's scholarship to Notre Dame for soccer had been provisional—and now it would be taken away from him.
What
, they asked each other,
had he been thinking?
One moment of overreacting because of a high school crush—and now his dream was gone. Those closest to him who saw how hard he'd worked felt the loss personally, deeply, as if all their own efforts had failed.

But Garret heard none of Newport's chatter. He stopped working at his father's boat shop and locked himself in his room. He ate little, slept less. He'd gone to Thea's that night to win her back; he'd hoped they might start over, that she might ask him up to her bedroom, that with his hands and his mouth and his attention he might heal the wounds he'd inflicted, using pleasure as a balm. But when he got to her house, he saw not only anger in her eyes but repulsion. She looked at him like he was small enough to squish under her foot. And he'd lost control. That he had blown it all—everything he'd worked for and wanted—in a few seconds, seemed unreal. And that
she
had been the instigator of that loss . . . he no longer thought that people were as good as they pretended to be.

In the darkness of his bedroom, his stubble began to soften; the air began to smell stale. Occasionally Sue or Ken came in, tried to talk to him.
Everyone has to get their heart broken
, his father said.
You've always done everything so much bigger than the rest of us. Seems like this is no different.

His mother sat down on his bed and took a more practical approach.
Why don't you come out, let me make you some lunch to take on the patio. You'll feel better once you've had something to eat and some sunshine.

Of everyone who'd come to talk sense to him, there was only one person Garret refused to speak to. Jonathan had knocked on the door, asked if they could talk. But Garret said nothing, staring at the panels of white and the doorknob.

I know you're mad at me
, Jonathan said.
I wish you weren't. But she's not as tough as you think she is. She needs to be treated more gently. I just . . . I just don't think the two of you suit each other, and you should probably—I don't know—try to see that.

Garret was too lethargic to bother saying
go away
. Eventually, Jonathan's monologue wound to a close and Garret heard footsteps disappearing down the hall. It would be a year before he considered speaking to his brother, and even then, the conversation was strained.

But Thea . . . he knew he would never see her again. He'd always counted on her warmth, her kindness, her generosity. And what she'd shown him was a cruelty that he hadn't thought she was capable of—not only because of how quickly she cast him aside and gave herself to Jonathan, but because when she'd found herself with the power to ruin him, she didn't hesitate. If she'd only said
No. No, he's not bothering me.
The police would have let him go that night. Rick Lazear, one of the cops who had showed up, knew Garret personally—knew his family. Rick would have vouched for him. He would have told them to break it up and go home. But the moment Thea said
yes
, she'd compelled the officers to take action.

Garret paced the floor in his room, stepping over hummocks of dirty laundry, aching for vengeance. Though he didn't think it consciously, something changed in him during those dark weeks. He would show Thea. He would show everyone. But first he had to get through his summer and the endless, aching sadness of hours spent alone.

 

 

The sound at the door came long after Thea had sent Irina off to her father's house for the weekend, long after she had slipped into her pajamas, and long after they'd packed up the beanbag toss and free samples of coffee at the Taste of Newport fair. Her heartbeat picked up speed as she made her way to the door. She knew Garret was there even before she let him in.

He walked past her into the kitchen. Beneath his jacket, he was still wearing the same dark jeans and green V-neck sweater that he'd been wearing at the pier. His face was pulled tight, his features strained. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Don't you know?”

She shut the door and stood across the room from him in jogging shorts that had been relegated to her pajama drawer. She crossed her arms over her thin white tee. “We said once.”

“I know what we said. It's not enough.”

“It has to be.”

“You know it's not just sex,” he said, stepping toward her.

“But that's what you're here for, isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said. “That. And more.”

She moved around the table instinctively, putting it between them. Her hands grasped the top rail of a chair. “You can't just show up like this after all these years and expect to pick up where we left off.”

“That's not what we're doing. I want to know you all over again. I want this to be
new
.”

She laughed—an ugly sound. “We can't. Don't you see that? We blew our chance.”

“You don't have to remind me,” he said, his voice low. “I lost more than you did. You took my entire future from me.”

“That's an excuse. If you'd really wanted to stay in soccer, you would have found a way. Played at a smaller school or something. Instead, you turned yourself into this . . . this
actor
.”

“Excuse me?”

Thea pulled herself up straight, feeling as if a deluge of words was on the brink of spilling out, and she realized that in some strange way, she had been talking in her mind to Garret all day long—having this conversation again and again with him, so that if she ever got the chance to vent her feelings aloud, she would be ready. She cautioned herself to be moderate, to go easy. But when she thought of what they might have had, what they never would have, anger knocked out sense.

“I see glimpses of the real you from time to time—the guy I used to know,” she said. “But it's like you hollowed yourself out over the years. What did it prove, Garret? That you're smart and good-looking? That you're powerful? Rich? That you're
happy
? Because I don't think you are.”

He came toward her, moving around to the other side of the table. “Of all people, you've got no right to lecture me about being authentic.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But at least I tried. You gave up years ago.”

“You don't know anything about it.”

“No?” she pulled herself up straighter. “I know that while you got to be angry and bitter and furious at me for what happened, I had to listen to your parents talk about you as if you'd hung the moon, knowing that you hated me—
hated
me—even though I never had the satisfaction of hating you back.”

“Hold on here.
You're
pissed off at
me
?”

“Yes!” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Yes, I'm pissed off at you. You took something from me too, you know. I loved you, dammit. And that feeling—it never went away. I thought it did; I wanted it to. But it never went away.”

She caught her breath. He was listening. When her anger settled, she saw that he was looking at her differently. His head was tipped slightly to the side where he stood before her. She could smell the saltwater on his jacket, and beneath it, the warm, alluring scent of his skin.

“You're still in love with me,” he said softly.

She looked down, trying to think of how to recant. She didn't want to think of herself as having been in love with Garret for all this time, since she'd put him out of her mind on the day she got married. And yet, just because she'd closed her eyes to her feelings didn't mean they weren't there. “Maybe I was in love with the person I used to know.”

“And what if he was standing right here, right now, with you?”

Her body felt very, very heavy. “Then I'd be in love with him too.”

“Thea . . .” His arms came around her.

She reached up with both hands and touched his face. His eyes were as deep and sparkling as the bay on a spring morning. “I know,” she said. She knew what he wanted—the desire in his eyes warmed her like sunlight on her skin. He made no apology for his kiss. Instead, it came fast and strong.

And then he was tugging her shirt over her head, her skin tingling as the cotton left her body, and her breasts ached in his hands. She tugged his undershirt from his jeans, all anger and worry turned to vapor by the force of need. He turned her so her palms were on the table, the wooden edge biting into the bones of her hips. Her shorts puddled around her ankles. His hands brushed the base of her spine as he loosed his zipper.

Once
, she'd told him. But he was right: it hadn't been enough.
Once
was before. Once upon a time. But the sting and hot pleasure of his hands gripping her hips and tugging her flush against his body, the sound of table legs scraping the floor as they moved—this wasn't once. In fact, it had never been like this, so good that heat raced like particles of light along her every nerve. His hand clutched her hip, went seeking between her thighs, and moments later she was doused in pleasure, waves and waves of it racking her body like the surf washing the shore. This was now. A second time, a second chance, almost too much to stand.

He collapsed on top of her, his forehead pressed against her spine, and moments after her knees gave out beneath her, she was filled to bursting with love, with gratitude, and only the dimmest regrets about what might come.

 

 

That night, Garret dreamed of Thea—the same dream he'd had a thousand times. He dreamed he was holding her, that they were curled together comfortably skin to skin, safe, warm, happy. He always hated the dream; when he woke from it and discovered that he'd been dreaming, the emptiness ate holes in him. The momentary comfort and rightness of the dream had never outweighed the pain of waking up from it. He did his best to stay asleep as long as possible, to forestall the inevitable loss.