Soon after Greg left the café, I went upstairs, my spirits dragging. I couldn’t tell which hurt more, my wrist or my heart. Well, I might not be able to do much about the heart, at least in the short term, but I could do something about the wrist. I slugged down an oxycodone, lay on the couch, and waited for it to take effect.
I woke up about forty-five minutes later, edgy and restless, but at least the wrist wasn’t throbbing as much.
Lindsay sat across the room in her favorite chair, reading her latest mystery novel. “How you feeling?”
I shrugged as I sat up. “Blurry.”
She nodded. “Naps and pain pills will do that.”
I stood and glanced out the window. The sun was still shining, and a brisk ocean breeze might be just what I needed to whisk the cobwebs from my head. “I think I’ll take a walk.”
Lindsay laid her book aside. “I’ll come with you.”
In spite of my heavy heart, I smiled at my sister. She was a wonder—true-blue, smart, gifted, and beautiful—even if she did look just like our mother.
“I think I’d like to go alone.” I wasn’t up to conversation, even with one of my favorite people in the world. “Do you mind?”
Her smile was sweet. “Not at all. I was just trying to be a good sister. I’d rather not leave my book. I’m about to find out who the bad guy is, and the hero and heroine are about to declare their undying love.”
At the thought of undying love, I thought of “to everything there is a season” and Clooney’s watch lying on my bureau. And I thought of “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!”
I went to the closet, grabbed my fleece jacket, pulled it over my head, and thrust my good arm in a sleeve. I walked slowly down the street. I passed Cilla’s house, a three-story clapboard place where she rented the first and third floors and lived on the second.
“The ground floor’d be easier with my scooter,” she told me one day at the café, “but if there’s a hurricane or a nor’easter, the second floor is drier.”
I thought of the lovely e-card she’d sent me yesterday, all beautiful flowers being painted by a brush that moved across the screen with no visible hand to guide it. Ah, the wonders of technology.
“Posted about you on Twitter,” she wrote on the card. “You’ve got lots of people praying for you.”
I looked up at her front window and waved. I didn’t know if she was looking out or not, but it felt friendly to do so. For all I knew, she’d post about me again.
I walked by the Sand and Sea and was surprised to see that the hole Chaz had made was still boarded over with the plywood Greg and I had bought. So much had happened this week that our trip to Home Depot seemed ages ago rather than just four days. I wondered how soon someone was coming to make the repairs and if the new owners were giving Greg a hard time over the delay. Not that it was his fault, but did they realize it wasn’t?
I trudged up the ramp to the boardwalk. It seemed extra steep, a sign of how depleted I was after my surgery. Never having had anesthesia before, I hadn’t realized how it sapped you, even when the surgery wasn’t serious. I mean, a broken wrist. What’s that in comparison to cancer surgery or heart surgery or something truly life threatening? But there were still aftereffects, even for not-ill me.
Pushing myself became worth it when the ocean came into view, looking placid and peaceful. The westering sun burnished the foam-flocked waves with a touch of gold, and the sandpipers on their little legs were running in and out of the water’s edge as if they feared getting their belly feathers wet.
A man rose from a nearby bench, drawing my eye. For an instant I couldn’t move, couldn’t even draw a breath. His delighted smile when he saw me confused me. Just over an hour ago he’d rejected me and run.
He lifted a hand and beckoned. “Come here, Carrie.” He reached to me, palm up, welcoming. “I need to talk to you.”
Again? How much more pain did I feel like inflicting on myself today? If I turned and walked away, it would be no less than he deserved. If I went to him, it might prove to be the emotional equivalent of taking up a razor blade and cutting myself for the fun of watching the blood flow.
“Please,” he said.
I took a deep breath and studied him. The glacial chill that had given me emotional frostbite seemed gone from his manner, and he appeared relaxed, more like the old Greg. The Greg I had fallen in love with.
I slid onto the end of his bench and waited, my good hand clenched, my knuckles white. My heart thundered in my ears so loudly it didn’t matter what he said. I wouldn’t be able to hear it.
He caught my hand, rubbing along the knuckles until my fist opened. Then he laced our fingers. I looked at him and tried to squash the hope that insisted on stirring to life.
Be strong, Carrie. Be realistic. Hope can be so hurtful when it doesn’t pan out.
“Greg, I can’t deal with another go-round of attention, then withdrawal. I don’t have the emotional strength. Weak heart, you know?” I managed a small half smile.
He made a noise of regret deep in his throat and slid his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. I ought to push away, but he felt warm and comforting and right. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, both studying Tennyson’s wrinkled sea with a calm we didn’t feel, or at least I didn’t.
“I’m an idiot,” he finally said. “Can you live with that?”
I frowned at a gull flying by. What did that mean? Not the idiot part. I understood that very well and even agreed. Only an idiot would throw away what had begun between us. It was the can-you-live-with-it part that threw me. Did he mean live with it as in he and I living together as in marriage? Or was I reading my heart’s yearning into his words that in actuality meant nothing more than he was going to be hanging around Carrie’s and could I put up with him as a customer?
Because I didn’t know what he meant, I said nothing.
He put a hand under my chin and turned my face to his. “I’m sorry, Carrie. I was wrong.”
I studied his expression and saw only sincerity, but I was still afraid to believe. I stomped on my burgeoning hope, Army boots crushing a grape. “For what? About what? You mean for not calling to see how I was after my surgery?”
His face twisted and he nodded.
“That hurt a lot.” I blinked against tears as I remembered the loneliness, the bewilderment.
He dropped his forehead to mine. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
His obvious regret made me feel a little better, a little more hopeful, but I sniffed dramatically. “Or do you mean for telling me you weren’t interested in me after all? ‘You deserve better.’ ” I snorted. “Talk about a bad breakup line.”
“You do deserve better.”
But I didn’t want better, so I pushed. “I should forget the heated looks and the amazing kisses? It was all a sham?”
“That’s just the thing.” He sounded almost desperate. “It wasn’t a sham. It was as real as anything has ever been in my life.”
I shrugged and stared at the sandpipers. Advance, retreat. Advance, retreat. I would not accept a sandpiper kind of love. I would not, could not settle. “Right. And guys brush their girls off every day.”
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “But not girls they love.”
I went still all over. Even my pulse paused as I took in the monumental thing he’d just said. “You love me?” I whispered. Dared I believe him?
“With all my heart.”
He gave me a soft kiss, little more than a brushing of lips, but I went soft and gooey inside, not that I was ready to let him know. It wouldn’t hurt him to squirm a bit after the agony he’d put me through. I was not a pushover, never would be, and he needed to know that.
Besides, petty as it was of me, I liked having the power for a change.
He leaned back and looked me in the eye. “I’m a very flawed man, Carrie.”
Like this was a secret. “An idiot,” I agreed solemnly, quoting his own word.
He looked a bit grumpy. “You don’t have to agree.”
“Why not, if you’re right?”
His frown intensified as I looked blandly back. I think he must have expected a quick capitulation on my part with my immediate forgiveness and my arms thrown around his neck as I kissed him in gratitude that he’d taken me back. After all, my hurt had been obvious.
I just continued to look at him.
“What do you want me to say? That I was an idiot to think I could walk away from you? I already said that.”
“Feel free to repeat,” I said primly. Then I ruined my cool stance by touching a finger to the frown lines in his forehead and smoothing them away.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re playing me. Making me sweat.”
I tried to look innocent. “Me?”
“You.” He swallowed me in a great hug.
I gave a yelp. “My arm!”
He let go so fast I almost lost my balance. His face had gone pale. “I’m so sorry! Did I hurt you a lot?”
I lowered the zipper on my jacket and looked inside as if I expected my arm to have disappeared. Everything looked fine inside the sling, and I zipped up again. “I’ll be fine,” I said, as brave as a pioneer woman about to have her baby on the Oregon Trail.
He looked at me as if he wasn’t certain whether I was still playing him. He must have decided I was because he said, “Can I expect you to make me get on my metaphorical knees every time we have an argument?”
“Yes, if you ever try to throw me over again.” I was serious now, and he was smart enough to realize it.
“Never again, Carrie. I can’t promise I’ll always be the man you want me to be, but I can promise I’ll always try.”
I put my hand against his cheek and looked right into his eyes. “I’m holding you to it, champ.”
His shoulders relaxed and he grinned.
“A time for every season,” I said.
“A time to dance.”
“A time to laugh.”
We sat cuddled close and watched the sun disappear.