I spend a little more time skimming through my binder, eventually dozing off. I wake up when Will comes in. He stretches out beside me on the bed and starts telling me about the friends he met up with. I hike up my skirt a little bit. Their names are Jason and Thomas. They were his roommates freshman year of college. I unbutton the top button of my blouse. He launches into some story about an archaeological dig in Crete one summer. I’m about to abandon the super-subtle moves and just jump him when he says, “I talked to my dad, too.”
I sit up. “You saw him?”
“He called,” he says. “Mom is really upset. I tried to explain how much stress you’re under, and Dad seemed understanding. He’s going to try to bring her around.”
“Good!”
He smiles at me. “Want to go out? Just the two of us?”
We make it to Mallory Square in time for the sunset freak show. We watch a man walk across a tightrope juggling knives. A woman with a litter of trick kittens. An escape artist. A whole bunch of spray-painted people Standing Very Still. Fortune-tellers, bagpipers, drummers, dancers, acrobats. This scene was a whole lot dirtier and grittier when I was a kid—homeless people, panhandlers, drug dealers loitering at the outskirts of the crowd. The modern version has been sanitized for the cruise ships. But Will is getting a kick out of it.
We find a place to eat just off Duval. A waitress leads us to a booth and starts telling us about the specials. She’s beautiful—tall and curvy, with blonde braids piled on top of her head. And she’s quite taken by my fiancé. She keeps glancing at him while she talks. He’s studying the menu, oblivious.
“That was a special little smile you just got,” I tell him after she walks away.
He looks up. “Really?”
“Really.” I pause. “She must have noticed you checking her out when we walked in.”
“I didn’t check her out!” he cries, blushing furiously.
“I’m not blind, Wilberforce. And neither are you, apparently.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists. “And please don’t call me that.”
“Admit it.”
“No!” But he’s cracking a smile.
“Liar!” I cry. “Admit it!”
He hesitates. “Maybe a little.”
“Aha!”
“She reminds me of a famous statue,” he says. “The Athena Parthenos.”
I crane my neck to look at her. “She also has a really nice ass.”
He nods. “That too.”
We pick up our menus again. I wonder if Will is going through some sort of sexual reawakening. First there was the business in bed this morning, and now he’s ogling the waitress right in front of me? Maybe he’s finally exploring the lusty side I glimpsed when we first met. Freeing himself from all those enlightened, egalitarian ideas about sex that make sleeping with educated, sensitive men like him such a snorefest most of the time.
God, wouldn’t that be something?
He looks up from his menu. “Lily?”
“Yeah?”
“How many guys have you been with?”
“Three,” I say.
“Ha ha,” he says. “Seriously, though.”
So much for a sexual reawakening. I really hate this question. I find it reductive and judgmental. I also have no idea what the answer is.
I put down my menu and take his hand across the table. “Let’s not talk about it. Who we were before we met, what we did—who cares?”
“I think we should talk about it,” he says, drawing his hand away. He sets his menu on top of mine and squares them, aligning them with the edge of the table. “Not necessarily about that—that’s just one question that occurred to me. But there’s a sense in which we don’t know each other all that well.” He looks up at me. “I mean, I know you, but there are things about you that I don’t know. And things about me that you don’t know. Pasts. Experiences. We met, what, six months ago? A lot of people would say that we rushed into this.”
“But Will, you’re the one who proposed to me.”
“Absolutely,” he says quickly. “Because I wanted to. And you wanted me to. And it was exactly how it should have been. But I sometimes think—”
The waitress returns and takes our order. She scoops up our menus and leaves. Will starts fidgeting with the napkin holder.
“Are you having second thoughts?” I ask him. My heart thumps once, hard.
“No!” He takes my hands across the table. “I’m asking because I’m not having second thoughts. Like I said, I know you. But I want to fill in the blanks.” He smiles. “I’m a scientist, after all. I need data. I don’t know anything about your childhood, for example. You must have been exposed to a lot of craziness, growing up down here. Drugs and sex and all that?”
“I don’t know,” I say slowly. I’m trying to find my footing in this conversation. What is he driving at? Did I do something this morning that made him suspicious? Did my behavior at lunch make him afraid of what other surprises might be in store? “I guess I was never really aware of it as crazy. It was just … what adults did. Naked people running around, weirdos on drugs. Men dressed as women. People having sex outside. We were always stumbling on people going at it on the beach, or in the park.”
Teddy and I loved to sneak up and steal their clothes. Once, we were chased down the street by a guy who—
“We?” Will asks.
“Me and my … my friends. But like I said, it didn’t really affect me. My life was school, and homework, and, you know, typical kid stuff. It might not seem like it, but Key West is a really small town. We’re one of the old families, and everybody knew us. And then there was Gran’s work. In fact, the weirdest part of growing up here was probably hanging around with her clients. Drug dealers and gangsters calling the house, showing up at all hours.”
“Why did you leave?”
“It was time for me to go,” I say. “As I got older, everyone began feeling apprehensive about the influence of this place, especially on a girl. And the school system sucks.”
All true. Totally incomplete, but true.
Our food arrives. “Your turn!” I say. “I want to know everything about life in the ‘burbs with Anita and Harry, and science projects and skipping grades in school.”
He smiles. “It wasn’t exactly like that, you know.”
“Sure it wasn’t,” I laugh. “Come on. Give me the details. I can take it.”
“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay. It’s just that I …”
And he gives me this strange look. There’s something in his eyes that I can’t read. Indecision? Fear? Something else?
“Will?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Will, did … something bad happen to you?”
“No! No, not at all.” He laughs. Then he tells me all about the suburban hell where he grew up.
“I was so shy,” he says. “Painfully shy. And awkward. I even had a stammer.”
“That’s so cute!”
“You wouldn’t have thought so,” he replies. “The library was my only refuge. I loved to read. I loved to study. I was fascinated by archaeology and classical languages, and I spent most of my time lost in the ancient world. It was a lot more fun than junior high.”
He proceeds to describe life with what sounds like the tiger mom from hell. “Anything that wasn’t academics was a waste of time, as far as she was concerned,” he says. “In one sense it was perfect—that was the direction I was heading in anyway, and she instilled a great work ethic in me. But anything else I wanted to pursue—hobbies, or sports, or … girls,” he glances shyly at me, “I basically had to keep secret from her.”
“I didn’t want to disappoint her. I should have been more honest. I still have a hard time communicating with her.” He pauses. “Maybe I should get plastered and meet them for breakfast tomorrow. Give them a taste of the real me.”
I cringe. “I’m so sorry, Will.”
He takes my hand across the table and kisses it. “I know.”
After dinner we walk down to the docks. Will stops to examine a weedy patch of soil in front of a bar. He’s always doing something like that—scuffing through dirt with his shoe, absentmindedly gazing down at the trash in the subway tracks. Professional habit, I guess. Now he plucks out a few long blades of grass and tugs at them like he’s testing them for strength.
“Did you run out of floss?” I tease him. “You can borrow some of mine.”
He only smiles at me and slips them into his pocket.
We share an ice cream cone on the way back to the hotel. Guilt is nagging me. He told me so much about his childhood. Shouldn’t I have told him the truth about what happened when I was fourteen? Why I really left?
But it’s ancient history. He can’t know me from my past. As an archaeologist, he might quibble with that statement. But it’s true. Will knows the important stuff. Most of it, anyway. Or he will. After we’re married.
Because we’re getting married.
I’m done with the dithering and the indecisiveness. Symmetry, cohesion and continuity. That’s what I want.
Okay, but the lying. The lying is bad. Still, I can change. I’ve been in an adjustment period, and now it’s over. No more cheating, no more lying. No more feeling bad about the cheating and the lying. It’s good-bye to the old me. Everything that came before, up to this very moment? It’s in the past.
And the past doesn’t matter.
We walk up the drive of the hotel. “What should we do now?” Will asks.
I smile up at him. “You really have to ask?”
He laughs and holds the door open for me. “This morning wasn’t enough for you?”
Here we go—the perfect opportunity to try out my new approach! We walk into the lobby. “That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Then I stop.
There’s a man sitting on a sofa, a man in a suit. I can’t see his face—he’s half turned, as if something in another part of the room has caught his attention. He’s rubbing his head absently, his hand moving back and forth over his short hair.
He looks nervous. He never used to look nervous.
Now he turns toward the door and sees me. He stands up. My stomach drops. I have this overwhelming urge to turn and run toward the elevator, but somehow I resist.
We’re watching each other. Waiting it out.
“Hi,” he says at last.
And with that one syllable, the spell is broken.
“Teddy!” I run up to him and practically jump into his arms. He stiffens, then gives in, his arms encircling me reluctantly. “What are you doing here?”
“I—”
“Will!” I cry, turning to look for him. He’s standing right next to me. “There you are. Will, this is Teddy! You were asking about my friends. Teddy was my friend, growing up. My best friend in the whole world. Teddy, this is Will.”
They shake hands, both doing that wary man-nod thing.
“We’re getting married, Teddy!”
He turns back to me. “Yeah, I heard you—”
“Do you want to come?”
Will laughs. “Let the guy breathe, Lily.”
I stop talking. Teddy doesn’t say anything. How did I recognize him? He looks so different. I used to have two or three inches on him. Now he’s the tall one. His hair is darker. And so short. Why is it so short?
At the same time, he hasn’t changed at all. Same face. Same big ears. Same grey eyes, giving nothing away.
“Let’s get a drink,” I say. “Catch up.”
“I can’t. I’m working.”
He’s watching me steadily. Is he as calm as he looks? I keep talking, desperate to fill the air. “What do you do?”
“I work for the FDLE,” he replies.
I burst out laughing, but his expression doesn’t change.
“Seriously?”
He pulls out his wallet with the air of amused tolerance I remember so well. He has a badge. Special Agent, Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “And you live here?” I say, examining it. “You’re back?”
“For the last six months. Stop looking through my wallet.”
I take one of his business cards and hand the wallet back. “How’s being home?”
“You know. It’s home.”
I look at the card, then up at him. He’s still watching me.
“I’m beat,” Will says, startling me. I’d almost forgotten he was there. To Teddy he says, “It was great to meet you.” He gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and heads for the elevator.
Teddy and I sit down. He’s so grown up, so professional-looking. He’s wearing a suit, for God’s sake.
It’s impossible. Any second now he’s going to toss the badge and the awful tie and say, “Had you going there!” And then we’ll have a good laugh.
Because Teddy can’t be a cop. He just can’t be.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “I mean right now. At the hotel.”
“Meeting someone,” he says.
“A girl?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
“A witness. Someone I need to interview.” He looks around, as if the witness might be lurking somewhere in the room.
“I can’t believe you’re a cop.”
He turns back to me, the ghost of a smile on his face. “I can’t believe you’re a lawyer.”
“Touché. How’d you know?”
He shrugs. “Word gets around.”
Chatty as ever. The ice is thawing, though. If ice is what’s between us.
“It’s so good to see you! How have you been?” I reach out and touch his knee.
He yanks it away. “Don’t, Lily.”
“What?”
He stands up. “This was a mistake.”
“What was a mistake?”
“I have to go.”
“What about your witness?”
“There’s no witness,” he says. “I wanted … forget it. I’ll see you around.”
“Teddy, wait!”
But he’s walking away, he’s pushing through the door. He’s gone.
I poke my head into the lobby bar, but I don’t see anyone I know. I wander outside. The pool is empty, a breeze whipping up little waves on the surface. I walk down to the beach and sit on an empty chair, watching the water.
When I get up to the room, Will is just coming out of the shower. I stretch out on the sofa. “Do you want something to drink?” he asks.
“No thanks.”
He opens a beer. “So, Teddy.”
“Teddy.”
“Were you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Nope.” The door to the balcony is open, and it’s chilly in here. I pull my sweater more tightly around me.
“No?” Will asks. “I thought I detected … I don’t know. Something.”
I smile at him. “Jealous?”
“Absolutely. He knew you when you were all pimply and moody, and I didn’t.”
“I was a real prize back then.” I lean my head back against the arm of the sofa and look out at the night. “But no. We were just friends. I left, and we lost touch. That’s it.”