Did I ever really get over the shock of seeing Claire and my brother kissing? I’d ask myself that after enough time had passed that it wasn’t something I thought about every day. I’d forgiven her, I had, but I’d been changed by it. We’d been changed by it. And not in the ways I might’ve thought. I didn’t distrust her. I didn’t think she was going to end up in the arms of another man. I didn’t think she was going to leave me for Tim.
But did I feel like I had some credit? Some bad deeds stored up, some chips to cash?
I guess I did.
But that doesn’t mean that when I cashed them in, I didn’t feel guilty at the payout window.
The morning of day two at the retreat was taken up with putting together prize packs for the golf tournament and a couple extremely boring lectures on “who we are” and “what we want to be.”
The only good thing about it was knowing I’d be playing golf all afternoon, and the shy, proud look on Tish’s face as she inscribed copies of her daughter’s poetry book for the prize packs.
I’d been assigned to the prize committee, as had Lori, the woman Tish was replacing at the retreat. As part of the team-building aspect of the weekend, we were supposed to put something personal in the prize packs — a kind of adult show and tell. All I could come up with were prints of pictures I’d taken of people from around the office on my phone at candid moments. Since Tish was late to the party, and Lori hadn’t been organized enough to put something together before she got sick, the only thing she had time to bring was her daughter’s book.
“You’re showing off,” I teased Tish as she wrote I’m a proud mama in copy after copy of the slim volume. There was a prize pack for everyone, fifty of them in all.
Apparently “winning” meant being there in the first place.
“If you can’t live vicariously through your kids once in a while, what’s the point?”
“So you have someone to look after you in your old age?”
“There’s that too.” Her pen paused. “Do you think it’s weird, me signing these instead of Zoey?”
“Do you think she’d mind?”
“No. She was kind of embarrassed when Brian ordered so many copies in the first place … and you should see our garage. We can’t even park in there anymore.”
I flipped through the deckled pages. “I’d love to meet her someday.”
“I’d like that,” she said, but there was a hesitation in her voice. I had a flash of her meeting Seth, and I felt weird.
Cold.
We finished our task and went to the buffet lunch. At some point, I slipped away to check our golf assignments; Tish and I were playing together, I saw with pleasure. In fact, we were a twosome in a sea of foursomes, presumably because of our low golf handicaps. Tish had listed hers as a four. Halfway into the second hole, I knew she’d lied.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked after she’d landed on the green in eagle position.
“What?”
“Lie about your handicap? You clearly don’t have one.”
She shot me a look over her collared shoulder. Her expression was hidden by the shadow cast by her cap.
“Didn’t I tell you I suck at putting?”
“Did you? When?”
“The first time we met.”
“I don’t remember you saying that.”
“Well, I did.” She tapped the side of her head. “I have perfect recall of conversations.”
“That must come in handy.”
“Sure. Especially at three in the morning. You’re away.”
I was the farthest away from the green, by a long shot. Unlike hers, my third shot wasn’t even on the green.
You know how you think you’re good at something until you see someone who’s really good at it?
I pulled off a tricky chip shot that was more luck than skill, but I took Tish’s “nice shot,” anyway.
I picked up my ball as a loud horn blasted through the air.
“Storm warning,” Tish said. “We should head for cover.”
She was looking into the distance at a massive black thunderhead that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago.
“I thought it never rained here?”
Her reply was silenced by a zigzagging flash and concomitant boom.
“What’d you say?” I yelled.
“Run!”
She pointed at a decrepit wood structure about five hundred yards away, a rain shelter that had been sorely neglected because it never rains in Palm Springs. Except when it does.
A second burst of thunder clapped us to attention, and we sprinted towards the shelter, abandoning our clubs. We reached it as the rain began to fall, fast and loud, thrumming against the sloped metal roof, running off in a curtain.
We stood there listening to it, our breaths escaping rapidly.
“I guess there’s going to be flowers this spring,” Tish said.
“Too bad we’re going to miss it.”
“It is.” She watched the rain. “I did lie to you before.”
“I knew it.”
“Not about my golf handicap.”
“What then?”
“About why I didn’t tell you I was coming.”
“Lori Chan wasn’t sick?”
“No, she was. She is.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because I wasn’t sure I was going to.
Not till the last minute.”
“Why?”
She turned to me. “You know, if we were in a movie, this is when we’d have our first kiss. In the unexpected rain.”
She blushed and looked at her muddied golf shoes.
“You’re right,” I said as my heart sped up. “Tish …”
She raised her head. We were inches apart. I could smell her sunscreen and feel the warmth of her body as the air cooled around us. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted. It took an act of will not to pull her towards me, put my mouth on hers, and finally taste this person I knew so well in some ways, and so little in others.
She started to raise her hands, then lowered them. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because of the possibility of this.”
I took her hands in mine. It felt like touching a lightning rod right after it’s been struck.
“You don’t have to worry.”
“I don’t?”
“No.”
She dropped her arms to her side. I let her hands slide away.
“So I’ve been imagining it?” she asked. “There’s nothing happening between us?”
“You haven’t been imagining it.”
“Then I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“Because we shouldn’t. Because I should say no. But I don’t think I can. Not if …”
“No, Tish. It’s okay. I mean it.”
“How? How is it okay?”
I looked at her and I thought about how hard it was to say things, even though it was easy to think them, to feel them.
“Because I’m not going to ask you for anything. I’m going to keep myself from saying and doing what I want to say and do. I’m going to make that effort. So you don’t have to worry. You really don’t.”
She let out a long slow breath that sounded like relief.
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
“It’s what I’ve decided too. Not because …”
“No.”
Her wide eyes met mine, all at once happy and sad, mirroring the feeling in my heart.
“Did I make a mistake, coming here?” she asked.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’ll always remember this.”
She smiled as the rain stopped, the water still dripping from the roof.
“Me too,” she said. “Always.”
We sat at different tables at dinner that night. We could easily have fudged with the dinner assignments, but we didn’t. Instead, I sat with seven people I didn’t know from her office, and she sat with seven people she didn’t know from mine. I made polite conversation with the twenty-something sitting next to me. I think she might’ve been flirting with me—or maybe she was someone who always repeatedly touched the leg of the person she was speaking with—but I was too distracted to decide. My mouth answered her questions when necessary, while my brain was still half on the golf course, in the rain shelter, and what had almost happened. I couldn’t decide if the twist in my gut was guilt or regret or a combination of both.
My eyes darted across the room to the back of Tish’s head, the white of her neck below where she’d bunched her hair into a knot, the side of her face when she turned towards the man sitting to the left of her, the right.
I ended up behind her in the food line again, but this time it was no accident.
“How’s your table?” she asked.
“A notch below a Safety Minute.” Her hand hovered over the chafing dishes. “What do you reckon? Pasta or fish?”
The fish looked dried out, even though it was drowning in a thick white sauce. “I’m thinking pasta.”
She nodded and helped herself to a small serving of shaped pasta in an orangey sauce. It looked like something from a can.
I guess the consultants hadn’t specified that team building worked better surrounded by creature comforts you couldn’t regularly afford.
“The sun and the moon and the stars,” she said.
“I … what?”
She nodded at the shape of the pasta on her plate. “Seth would love it,” I said.
“Zoey used to make galaxies with hers. Did you know there’s a conjunction tonight?”
“What’s that?”
“Jupiter and Venus are at their closest point. They’ll be lined up in the sky in a row with the moon. It’s rare and pretty cool.”
“How did I not know you liked astronomy?”
She shrugged. “There’re lots of things we don’t know about each other, right?” She paused. “Zoey and I usually watch that kind of stuff together.”
“Will you watch tonight?”
“I might do.”
I waited for her to invite me to come along, to go with her and lie out in the grass somewhere and watch the heavens. But I also didn’t want her to ask. On some level, I didn’t want to have to face the choice I knew I shouldn’t be making.
“Well, I should be getting back,” she said.
“Right, me too. How about a drink after dinner?”
She bit the edge of her thumb. “How about … breakfast tomorrow? Yes?”
“Yes. Sure. That sounds good.”
“Have a good night, Jeff.”
“You too.”
She turned to leave, then turned back quickly, her plate tottering on one hand. She leaned in close to my ear for the briefest moment, her breath a tickle.
“This is hard,” she said, her lips touching my skin. Then she turned away and walked to her table without looking back.
I would have stood there, frozen, if it wasn’t for the person behind me in line knocking into me, propelling me out of whatever dream world those five seconds had sucked me into. As it was, I don’t really remember going to my table, starting to eat, knocking back half my glass of wine in two gulps. I came to when my maybe-flirtatious dinner companion took up where she’d left off, touching my arm, saying my name once, twice, to get my attention.
“Pardon?”
“Did you look in your prize pack?” she said, swinging the small party-favour bag.
“No need. We … I helped put them together. No surprises there.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re no fun.”
I agreed and took another swig of wine, trying to decide if I could take one of the bottles and leave without it being remarked on.
It was only later, in my room, after too many glasses of wine and too many speeches, that I found that my prize pack did contain a surprise, after all. When I up-ended it onto the bed, looking for the souvenir wine bottle opener we’d included to keep the party going, Zoey’s book slid out. It fell open to the inscription page, the page where Tish had written the same thing over and over. Only, somehow, she’d managed to inscribe this copy to me personally and sign it. And though the three extra words — To, Jeff, Tish — weren’t much, I held them against my chest and thought: Always.