Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (7 page)

Her feelings astounded her: she couldn't make sense of them. No single word could pin them down. Back in eighth grade the three of them had discovered that if they took twenty breaths very, very fast they could make themselves lightheaded, dizzy, so that the world spun on its side. They would compete to see who could take the most breaths, who could stand the sweet and terrible dizziness the longest. Now, when Thea saw Garret coming down the hallway, he made her feel just that way—as if her head might lift off her shoulders. He spent less and less time with her. She wanted to believe that it was soccer that was keeping him away. But it wasn't.

Garret had splintered off from their little group and struck out on his own. He started hanging out with a new crowd, going to parties, forcing her or Jonathan to be his alibi. She and Jonathan could do nothing but speculate. Without Garret between them, some of the energy had gone out of their shrunken tribe.

Sometimes she saw him in the hallways, leaning near a locker. And when she went to say hello to him, she realized he was not alone, and that he was not leaning against a locker at all but was leaning on another person, a girl. She wondered, with bitter envy, if he was having sex. She figured it was a given.

She also saw him on the soccer fields, since she and Jonathan had not stopped going to his games simply because he'd stopped hanging around with them quite so incessantly. He'd changed in the last year. His face was different, though she couldn't put her finger on precisely what feature—his nose? his jaw?—had changed. His body grew lean and hard from days of practicing, cuts of new muscle just beneath the surface of his skin. When he ran into the end zone, he left her breathless with his confidence. His teammates crowded around him, all wanting to be the first to congratulate him for a big win, and from the bleachers, Thea clapped and called his name. Sometimes he would wave in her direction. But there were many people in the stands—and Jonathan at her side—so she was never perfectly sure that he was waving at her.

Her friends, many of whom seemed to have a crush on him as well, commiserated with her in the line for the cafeteria. And Thea hated them for it. The way they loved him was different from the way she loved him. They had not seen him step in and take the blame (and the grounding) when Jonathan had accidentally scratched his father's Mercedes. They had not seen him the day he grabbed her by both arms and pulled her up from the side of the breakwater before she fell in. They had not seen him working on his algebra homework, Jonathan patiently helping. They did not know he got so frustrated sometimes that tears came into his eyes.

“Why don't you go out with Garret?” her friends would ask her, agreeing that if anyone among their little circle had a chance, it was her.

Thea's reply was always the same, though it killed her to say it. “He doesn't like me that way.”

And it was true. He didn't. Not then.

“Thea?”

She knew his voice immediately, though it was the middle of the day on Wednesday and there was no sound on earth she'd expected less than the chill of her name when he said it. Around her, the coffee shop was busy with the lunch rush, locals stopping in to pick up fresh fruit and simple sandwiches on whole grain bread. Jules had just spilled an entire pitcher of scalded milk down the front of the counter, and Rochelle was about to break into tears before an angry customer who'd been given regular vanilla syrup instead of sugar-free. Hell was breaking loose, the calm of morning cracking open and chaos bursting through.

But Thea stepped away from it, the phone to her ear. Stepped away, behind the black curtain and into the quiet of the storage closet, as time slowed down. For an instant, pandemonium gave way to the jolt of memory, and she was in the dark of her bedroom, when he held her and they whispered together for hours.

“Yes. It's me,” she said.

“It's Garret.”

She closed the black curtain behind her, the closet going dark. “I know.”

“We need to talk.”

“All right.”

“About Irina. Jonathan wants to set up a regular visitation schedule. He wants to see her again.”

“I want him to see her too. We just have to figure out the best way.”

“I'll come pick her up for the day on Saturday mornings. Let's say ten. And I'll bring her home in the evening around eight.”

“That sounds okay.” Thea leaned her shoulder against the cluttered shelving. “What else?”

“Nothing else. What else would there be?”

“I don't know.” Thea took a breath. “I just don't see why Jonathan can't talk to me about this directly.”

“Well, what did you do to him?”

“Sorry?”

“Jonathan acts like it's his fault. But I know better. What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she said, hating how defensive she sounded. “I didn't do anything.”

“My brother isn't the type to cheat, and you know it. You must have done something wrong.”

Thea was quiet. Garret had always known just how to strike her deepest nerve. For weeks she'd suspected herself of being more guilty than Jonathan—even though it was he who broke his vows. She loved him—she always had. And if he hadn't left, she would have stayed with him forever. But did that make her blameless? She had her doubts.

“So what did you do?” he pushed. “Steal money?”

“Garret . . .”

“Did you apply the wifely thumbscrews? Crowd him? Not let him breathe?”

“None of those things,” she said, trembling now.

“Did you cheat on him?”

“No!”

“You're lying.”

“I'm not,” she said, anger rising like fire within her. “I never cheated. And it's only between me and Jonathan if I did.”

“Then what did you do, Thea? Because when Jonathan married you he was the happiest person I knew. And now he's a shadow of that guy.”

“Are you talking about him? Or yourself?”

“Please,” he said. “Don't give yourself so much credit. Life's moved on.”

“Has it?” she asked, surprising herself. She had no intention of having this conversation with him today. But here it was, astonishing as a ghost manifesting before her eyes. She took a step deeper into the closet, not wanting to be heard. “If that were true, Garret—that you've moved on—then why haven't you said two words to me since we were eighteen? If what we were doesn't matter anymore, then why can't you even write your name on the bottom of your e-mails to me?”

He laughed, as if they weren't on the brink of a meltdown. It was a practiced, perfect laugh. When he spoke his voice was cool. “As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist. I don't want to hear about you. I don't want to see you. And I sure as hell don't want to be talking to you. I'm only doing this because Jonathan asked me to. I'm not interested in a trip down memory lane.”

Thea held her breath, fuming. Fury choked her. She couldn't stand this new side of Garret—the side of him that had become so callous, so willfully obtuse. Didn't he know how much she'd thought of him over the years? How much she wished things were different?

“Why can't you forgive me?” she asked.

“What would be the point?”

She let her forehead rest against the shelving. All those days she'd thought herself in love with him. All those nights her conscience had gnawed like rats on her heart. All the years she'd wished she could go back to do things differently.

“There's always a point,” she said.

In the dream it goes differently. She's eighteen—beautiful. She's wearing the same clothes she wore that day: an aqua T-shirt that shows a little of her belly. Denim shorts that are frayed to white at the bottom edge. Garret pushes open the door to the falling-down barn, knowing what he'll find on the inside: old tires, a coil of rope the width of his leg, rust-crusted shovels, flattened beer cans, remnants of charcoal and ash.

But instead, as he leads Thea inside the barn inside the dream, he doesn't find the detritus of a falling-down silo, but instead, he walks into paradise: pinkish sunlight, pillows and candles, grapes and wine.

She's not nervous and neither is he. This isn't their first time anymore—not in the dream. They've been doing this forever; he knows every inch of her body, every inch of flesh that's round or sharp, dry or wet. He's in no rush as he leads her to the plush and silken bed, the promise of her soft, slim fingers in his, the slight sheen of her lips where she's licked them. Desire is restless but tender, greedy but patient—the want of old lovers, not new. The kind of passion Garret's never known with anyone, least of all Thea, except in dreams.

 

 

On a peninsula jutting westerly into the waters of the Narragansett, the Pennant Inn appeared to Thea to be overwhelmingly regal, as if the perfect green lawn sloping away from the building was created to display the architecture like a velvet pillow displays a crown. At a table in the restaurant, Thea and Sue sat before a long line of curved bow windows that offered near panoramic views of the shoreline and foaming white breakers. Though they'd never explicitly talked about it, it was always understood that Sue paid.