The truth was … she was truth.
The day was as beautiful as it was long. And it was long, summer long and warm, but not hot.
Cal had sold the roadster yesterday, and today he drove a rental up a street in downtown Santa Rosa, parking near a fountain of water.
He’d followed her here.
A woman.
Trailing her discreetly since she’d left her house, remaining a few cars behind as she exited the prestigious neighborhood and wound through the picturesque town — all of it like some sort of Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
Cal had shadowed her, but she hadn’t seen him.
In fact, he hadn’t seen her yet, not outside the driver seat of the vehicle.
Earlier, he’d waited a few houses away from hers, feeling absolutely absurd, hunched low in the seat of the rental, reading a book, when finally, after an hour or so had passed, a silver Mercedes reversed out of the garage, a three-car garage attached to a large house in a quaint neighborhood.
A woman, her, the one he’d found twice — once by suggestion and again by necessity … or maybe both times by fate — drove the four-door sedan alone, her face partially obscured by a large white hat.
Now, he stood across the street, north of where she’d parked, a fountain behind him, a sidewalk under his feet, watching as the woman stepped out of the Mercedes. One hand rested atop her hat, its wide brim flopping in the wind, while the other waved to someone standing outside the adjacent café.
Cal thought about crossing the two-lane street.
But didn’t.
His muscles seemed to atrophy.
His chest grew tight.
As he waited.
He’d become quite adept at waiting.
In the sun. Squinting. The wind blowing a stiff breeze through his blond hair.
He had her profile as she made her way past the tall windows, toward the glass doors. Even from this distance and angle, he noted her brown eyes twinkling.
Or maybe he saw what he wanted to.
Those fucking caverns hadn’t lost their luster, and the California sun made them sparkle. Cal filled with the radiance only she possessed — a brilliance she graciously gifted anyone she met — as he stepped to the curb, finally ready to cross the street.
And then she saw him.
Perhaps his movement caught her eye.
Cal knew better than that now.
This wasn’t any man staring at a beautiful woman on a sidewalk. She recognized him. Noticed him. Sensed him. A man she probably thought she’d never see again.
She stood stock-still.
The way he had moments ago.
Separated only by two lanes, or by nothing but time and space, he watched her trifecta of a smile fade, her expression looking more and more like that of a girl filled with anticipation and trepidation. Nerves.
Another woman appeared on the sidewalk, joining the first, and the woman in the white hat turned and spoke to the two of them, seeming to be telling them something mildly convincing, because they stepped away. Her smile resurfaced as she crossed, complementing her confident stride. She was beautiful, so beautiful … watching her literally took Cal’s breath away.
As she drew closer, everything seemed to move in slow motion, each step she took a mile, each beat of his heart the sound of a distant drum. Whatever Cal thought he could handle quickly fell apart, melting off his body, becoming one with the sidewalk.
“What are you doing here?” Jocelyn pulled a few pieces of hair from her lips. And her eyes did sparkle, like smoky quartz over the ocean.
Cal stared at her face, at the veracity entangled with her features — what he saw nearly blinded him.
“Did you...” She fidgeted with the V-neck of her floral dress. “D-did you come here just for me?”
“You’re married.” Cal’s gaze traveled to the octagon-shaped stone on her finger. It couldn’t be missed. But she’d kept her name — a detail that had made her easier to locate.
“Yes.”
“Is he here?” Cal nodded toward the restaurant.
“No…” She hesitated, eyes searching his face. “I’m meeting friends. Why did you come? How did you find me?”
In the same way Cal soaked up the sun, he now filled with her essence.
It was warm today, but he didn’t mind. Jocelyn was the true warmth. He would stand here all day and blister simply to be near her, to absorb her energy, her smile. And she was smiling. The both of them couldn’t stop grinning.
“Are you happy?” Cal asked, needing to hear the answer, not merely deduce it.
“Yes,” she replied, her grin stretching farther, ear to ear. “Cal, I have to go.”
“Don’t,” he clipped.
“I have to.”
Reaching out, Cal took her hand and began to play with her fingers. Like a day hadn’t passed, the magnets still pulled on them. She was the moon, and he was the tide. He followed her lead, reacted to her presence. The place in his throat that always ached when near her caught fire, the flames beginning to choke him yet give him new life.
“Why did you come?” she uttered. “If you knew I was…”
“I don’t know.” He glanced away. Those had been the same three words he’d fed his mother. Bullshit. Lies. Because he did know. Always had a reason. He just didn’t like to tell. “I needed to be reminded of something.”
Cal stared at her beautiful face, still beautiful, hardly looking a day over forty.
“I thought if I saw you... I thought if I saw your face I could … I could remember.” He let go of her fingers, put a hand in his pocket, and shrugged. “I was afraid of losing your face.”
Jocelyn peered at him, then turned toward the bubbling water, shaking her head. “I never thought I would see you—”
“I know.” He shrugged again. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She wiped away a tear.
“Are you painting?” He gazed at her profile.
“What?” she asked, her eyes growing wide, her mouth an O. A smile and a pinch of laughter followed. “You’re something, Prescott.”
“I missed your laugh, Joc.” He brushed a bead of salt from her cheek with his thumb.
“I am painting.” Gently, she brought his fingers away from her face, but despite dropping their hands to their sides, the energy remained. Cal could feel the charge in the deepest parts of his ocean.
“Good,” he said quietly, then swallowed. Jocelyn looked toward the fountain.
“And what about you?” She eyed him again. “Did you accomplish everything you set out to do? Did you conquer New York? Are you still living there?”
“I’ve been in California. I moved back last Christmas.”
Jocelyn again regarded the spray. Cal hoped she could feel his eyes swimming through her entire body even though his gaze remained glued only to her face.
“You’re still waiting for it?” Sighing, she shifted, facing him fully. They stood inches apart, toe to toe, chest to chest. “Aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
She slid a few stray pieces of hair off his forehead while gazing into his eyes so keenly, with such certainty, he almost buckled from the intensity.
“The silver lining…” she uttered. “You’re still looking for peace. Still searching.”
“Jocelyn,” a woman yelled from across the street, “come on. Let’s go!”
Cal had forgotten all about them. Joc glanced over her shoulder, held an index finger in the air, then she turned her attention back to Cal and lowered her hand.
“God, Cal”—she played with the V-neck of the dress again—“don’t come looking for me in ten years from now when I’m—”
“When you’re a grandmother?”
“I am a grandmother.”
Silent at her revelation, Cal communicated with his eyes, speaking his feelings without words, his love for her that had somehow lasted. A love that hadn’t been, nor would ever be, enough. Still, he spoke the emotion, unable to keep it bottled.
Jocelyn Ryan made him feel like no one else ever had, and it was a relief to be in her presence if only for a moment, a reprieve from the cold and the darkness, from the apathy and the chill. Standing close to her was akin to the way he’d felt in the car on his ride up the coast, the way he felt when planting his feet on the board in the ocean.
“You’ll find it, Cal.” Looking square at him, she spoke with the reassuring tone he remembered. “Don’t look so hard for it. Don’t be afraid.” Then she covered her mouth and grinned.
Cal removed her hand, knowing exactly why she’d put it there, and held her fingers again. Peering at what he touched, he ran his digits along the wrinkles, across her knuckles.
“What you’re looking for is already in you.” She rested a palm on his cheek. “And you can give that something within you to someone else. You gave it to me.”
His eyes moved slowly back and forth, endlessly, as he gazed into her brown orbs, wondering what she could’ve possibly meant.
“I started painting again — seriously — because of you and—”
“That’s bullshit, Joc. That creativity was always in you.”
“And what’s in you?” She held a finger straight at his heart, pricking not only the outside of his chest, but the inside too.
“Joc,” a woman yelled again, but Jocelyn only continued to peer at Cal, her eyes rapidly moving the same as his. The intensity of her gaze swept over him the way the wind did.
“God, if you could only see what I see.”
“What do you see?” he choked out, naked before her on the sidewalk, naked and choking and supplicant.
Jocelyn stared deeper into him, stripping him even further, going beyond the surface of his skin, through the green, green, green of his eyes, making him want to swim away from this woman and drown within her all at the same time, reminding him of the dream that was once an impossible young man, a graduate with the promise of the entire world before him.
She inhaled deeply, then exhaled. “I love you, Cal.”
Cal stopped breathing.
Flexing her calves, tilting her head up, a hand on the top of her hat, Jocelyn kissed him softly on his cheek, then she turned and stepped toward the curb, looking left and right before crossing the street. Her hair whipping up beneath the brim, hips swaying, skin tanned, the tattoo (covered by the dress) stretching across the small of her back. A face to never forget, a smile to always remember, a light to build upon.
Seeing her face did remind him...
It reminded him of The Lonely he didn’t need to feel but did. She reminded him he could feel love — a true love, a good love, a clean love — but the love hurt too. Everything hurt. Everything ached.
He was afraid.
She hadn’t forgotten his dislike of those words. But no one would know. No one could ever know. But she did, always understanding him the way no one else did or could or cared to.
He watched her.
One.
Last.
Time.
Her face was love... Her face...
It was hard for him to believe that beautiful face would grow old, then older. My God, she’s a grandmother.
If only time could’ve stopped for the two of them. But even then, it wouldn’t have been right. It had seemed right. Looking at her now from where she stood across the street, she was the most infallible thing Cal had seen in a long, long time.
* * *
“Who was that, Jocelyn?” one of the women asked as she joined them.
Jocelyn looked across the road, watching Cal turn and take his leave. “A former student.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, bursting inside, ready to die and explode, ready to run across the lane, tackle him, to bury herself so far inside him she may never come out.
“He’s hot.”
“Shut up, Wendy,” Jocelyn replied.
“Are you sure he was just a student?” the other woman teased.
“Look, ladies,” Jocelyn said, “we’re done with this conversation, okay? He’s an old friend.”
Jocelyn may have been finished talking, but she wasn’t done thinking and musing and reminiscing in her heart.
Cal had a piece of her heart.
He had taken it with him, and he would always have it with him. She wanted to remember him forever. She hoped his face would burn itself into her memory. She hoped she would never lose his face, his mouth, or his hands.
Or his love.
She wanted to die an old, old lady — remembering.
* * *
“John Allen, please,” Cal said into the mobile flip phone with the pointy antenna.
“Cal Prescott,” he replied, then paused. “No, he has the number. Do you know when he’ll be back?” Pause. “Yes, tell him I’m on my way.”
He tapped his fingers across the roof of the black sports car.
“No, he has the number. Tell him I’m on my way,” he repeated. “From California ... by car,” he went on, his voice rising. “Can you do that?”
Cal glanced around downtown — at the fountain, the storefronts, the patrons at the window seats inside the café where Jocelyn lunched with friends.
It all looked empty.
The sun had gone down behind some gray clouds.
Jocelyn had gone as well.
And he knew it was for good. She would never look for him, and he would never again look for her.
It had never been that way before.
It had never felt final, and now, with her married, now a grandmother, with a life here in this quaint little town, he could feel the end of his reliance on this woman through every part of his person. In ten more years, his life and hers, God only knew what it would be. Cal would be almost forty. Half his life over in a fucking blink, and here he stood on a sidewalk, still thinking of his past, unsure of his future, and trying to escape something, foolishly believing Jocelyn held an answer or a truth.
The truth was … she was truth.
Her eyes and her smile embodied truth and beauty, not because she was beautiful, and she was beautiful, but because she was beauty.
Like the beauty one imbibed while watching the rising and setting of the sun, the ritual eternal. She’d set now. Jocelyn had dissipated over the horizon. But unlike the sun, tomorrow morning, she wouldn’t return.
She’d disappeared … for good.
After punching the “end” button, Cal flipped the phone closed and looked up and down the two-lane street, thinking he only had to keep going forward in order to move on.