Always Something There to Remind Me (17 page)

Erin, exhausted from the hour and from everything she’d just spent in passion, wrapped her coat around her and lay down with her head in his lap while he drove. The road hummed underneath the tires and the radio sounded tinny and far away. This was just the way it felt when she’d fall asleep on long trips with her family in the back of the station wagon. Perfectly content. Not a care in the world.

She slept so deeply that when Nate tried to wake her, she was completely disoriented, even though it couldn’t have been longer than fifteen minutes.

“You’re home, baby,” he said gently. “You better go in.”

She sat up and blinked against the faint house lights. “I don’t want to.”

“Yes, you do. You were talking about your bed in your sleep.”

Oh, no. “Are you serious?”

He nodded and smiled. “You were pissed that you couldn’t get the covers up.”

“It
is
still a little cold in here.” God, how clearly did she speak in her sleep? Had she ever said anything else? Maybe something even more embarrassing?

“Come on.” He started to get out of the car.

“That’s okay, you don’t need to freeze.” She put her hand to his cheek. “I can make it to the door by myself.” She kissed him.

For another five minutes or so, he kissed her back, then, before things started over again, he pulled back and said, “Go in to bed.”

“One more,” she said, and kissed him again. She didn’t want it to end. Ever.

He moved his arms around her and drew her close. By the time they parted, the windows were fogged again and the sunrise was starting to light the edge of the horizon.

“Your mother is going to be up any minute,” Nate said, nodding at the light.

“You’re right.” She forced herself away from him. “Want me to open the window?”

He looked dubiously outside. A cold wind was picking up. “I guess so.”

She did, then turned to him. “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you. Talk to you in a few hours.”

She got out and pushed the car door closed slowly and quietly. He didn’t move his car until she’d opened the front door and stepped inside. It was silent. No one had noticed she was gone.

She went up to her room and took off her clothes, slipped her Redskins shirt over her head, then got into bed and pulled the sheets up around her. She smelled like Nate now. Her mouth tasted like him too. She liked that.

Within minutes she was asleep, dreaming of her romantic tryst under the moonlight.

So maybe she and Nate didn’t have the 1950s version of dating. They had each other.

And she couldn’t imagine living without that.

Chapter 12

Present

I started to walk down the street I’d grown up on. The front yard of my mother’s, and of the neighbors’ house, smelled of the boxwoods that had been growing, slowly, for thirty years. An earthy, solid scent that always helped me feel grounded.

I needed to think.

Rick was a great guy. I was one of the luckiest women on earth to be proposed to by someone (1) who was so hot, (2) who I was certain would be a fantastic husband, and (3) who would love me and take care of me and Cam for the rest of our lives.

God, I was being
such
a jerk, even just
thinking
about another man. Even if the Other Man was a specter who had been gone for ages.

I just needed an exorcism. But I didn’t have a priest or even a smudge stick, so, I thought, maybe some perspective would do.

The sun was dipping in the sky, throwing a slant of amber light across the neat row of little brick Monopoly houses and cherry blossom trees. Everything was dramatic—the long, reaching shadows, the way the wind skittered fallen cherry blossoms across the street, and the faint smell of charcoal smoke hanging in the air, like something remembered.

I hated this mood I was in.

I knew there was another side to the mood—it wasn’t normal for me to be dwelling on the past for so long. Granted, it hadn’t been constant by any means—years had passed in which Nate was barely in my consciousness, perhaps just a passing thought now and then.

But now was somehow different. More intense.

I wondered if he remembered us as well as I did.

Then I chastised myself immediately for even wondering. I already knew I was nuts for still thinking about this. How could I even imagine that he was too?

I walked along Victory Lane and then turned right onto Parker Drive, where my old school sat nestled among green trees, grassy lawns, and stone walls.

I was still for a moment, looking at the school facade, thinking about how much history this building held for so many people. And everyone’s story would be different. Every triumph would have a different prize, every heartache a different face.

I turned and headed back to the parking lot to leave. Passing the tall tree I’d passed every day on my way to and from Nate’s car when he’d drop me off and pick me up. Somehow it was the tree that got to me. It made me tremendously sad, not just because of the time that had gone but because the time had somehow gone without me really noticing it.

For one crazy moment, I remembered what it felt like to walk this pavement without the weight of my world on my shoulders. To head toward the old blue car he drove and get in, tossing my books in the back and sliding against his familiar warmth.

Would Nate and I have the same memories of those times? Not all of them, of course, but if a police sketch artist were to somehow illustrate our time together based on what we said, would it look even remotely the same?

Or had I created a mind full of sunny days and starry nights because I knew I was adored? He’d had cause to doubt that, time and again—would his picture of the same time look bleak and sad, reflecting tension and anxiety instead of a powerful optimism that anything was possible?

It wasn’t that I was a terrible girlfriend. I’d loved him more than I’ve ever loved anyone else—but I was so young and he was so sensitive.… I had a nagging fear that maybe the little jabs I’d tossed around to make him jealous or to bring a reaction out of him might have been more hurtful than I’d ever known or intended.

My adult perspective on the situation was much different than the selfish, childlike perspective I’d had at the time. I knew now that his home life had been turbulent, that his parents were on the verge of splitting up, and that he had probably spent a lot of time feeling out of place in an acrimonious atmosphere.

I just hadn’t realized it at the time.

I left the parking lot and headed back out the way I’d come, pausing for a moment to see the echo of Nate’s car, where he always parked, waiting for me after school.

Then I headed out, along the path I’d walked many times after that. But when I got to the corner of the road, I turned left toward his house instead of right toward mine.

I wasn’t ready to go back to my mom’s yet.

And, honestly, I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the present yet. I’d delved this far into old memories, there didn’t seem to be much reason to abort the mission now. Might as well go all the way.

So I walked down the hill, passing the little houses from the sixties that had looked outdated for as long as I could remember. I’d passed them all so many times in my life that under hypnosis I would probably be able to give an exact and detailed description of each. The only detectable difference between now and high school was the cars.

I remembered walking this way on many summer nights with my friends, and sitting outside of Nate’s house, talking as dusk got heavier and heavier and eventually became night. In my mind’s eye, all of those nights had been balmy enough to go swimming and get out of the pool without freezing. The sky in my memory was always filled with stars. And the neighborhoods were green and lush, and at night they smelled like earth and wet pennies from the sprinklers that hummed back and forth on the many manicured lawns.

It wasn’t like that now.

The road at the bottom of the hill was under construction, with orange traffic cones rerouting cars that drove too fast on the residential street and clunked into and out of the potholes that the hard, salty winters had carved into the old pavement.

I longed for the heat of real summer.

I turned onto Nate’s road, not stopping to think what I would say in the unlikely event that his mother happened to be outside and happened to recognize me (his parents had divorced around the time we’d split up—news he’d gotten the night before we’d broken up, as it turned out—and I had no idea if his father was even still in the area). A quick glance up the street told me there wasn’t any obvious movement in front of the house, so I was probably safe.

I moved as if compelled by some force other than my own will. Next thing I knew, I was there, in front of the house. I remembered a cold night that felt like it had been a hundred years ago when I’d run here in bare feet to beg Nate to take me back after I’d broken up with Pete Hagar.

Odd, how time had shaken out those two relationships. I remembered Nate with crystal clarity, of course, but I had only a few memories of Pete and most of them were from school, not personal. Which was funny because Pete and I were Facebook friends now, so we shared brief exchanges now and then about meaningless things, yet when I looked at pictures of him now I could barely reconcile them with the heavily faded photograph of him in my mind.

Yet this—the house Nate had grown up in—was almost as familiar as my own. Obviously I used to pay a lot more attention to my surroundings than I do now, because the pattern of bricks on the walkway to the front door, the gold and black mailbox, even the small gap of cement where the garden was just a little bit lower than the front stoop, were all things I could draw with my eyes closed.

I stood out front. It was a stupid compulsion, I was completely aware of that. Under any circumstances, I’d feel like an idiot if anyone who knew me caught me down there because it wasn’t exactly the normal route for a walk from my old house.

But I had to do it. I wasn’t sure why. In a way, I think I kind of felt like if I saw the house, I could glue some pieces back together and not feel so fractured when I remembered those years.

Like I said, I know it was stupid, but I couldn’t stop myself.

For years, every time I’d passed this street, I’d looked for his car in front of the house where I stood now. Obviously it hadn’t been there; it had been an old model back then, so I’m sure it was long dead.

Still, it was weird standing where he used to park and having it not be there, since, like the rest of the landscape, not much had changed.

Suddenly there was the metallic clang of a trash-can lid from the garage.

I froze.

Oh, shit
.

Shit shit shit
.

Someone was there.

Someone who, if they saw me, would undoubtedly recognize me and mention to Nate that I’d been walking past, like a freaky stalker. I mean, really, how could this not seem weird?

I started to turn and walk back where I’d come from, but then I saw him.

And I couldn’t move.

He was wearing ratty old clothes, splashed with paint. From this distance, he didn’t really look very different, same presence, same posture. His jaw was shaded by a day’s worth of growth, and added to the sense of him being older, yet his movements were as youthful and powerful as ever.

What the hell was he doing here? Hadn’t he moved away ages ago? Last I’d heard he was in Arizona. How was it even
possible
that I was looking at him right here, right now? Had I somehow conjured him? Was this the first—or maybe last—step to going certifiably nuts?

Panic built in me, but I wanted to see him. Yes, I could have walked away undetected at just about any point up to then, but I had to see. It was like standing in front of an accident, terrified of seeing dismemberment but having to know.

He was putting bags into the trash can. Paint flecked his pants and forearms. As I carefully moved closer, I could see his triceps flexing as he moved them and was surprised to realize that the movement of his muscles was something I still recognized. The jut of his elbow. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen a man’s arms in years, but I still knew Nate’s when I saw them.

Then he turned.

My first impulse was to hide. Turn around, dodge behind a car, dive into the sewer, maybe simply evaporate.

But there was no way to slip out of view. The stupid home-owners’ association had insisted on planting Japanese maples all over these neighborhoods thirty-five years ago and they’d all gotten diseased and died and been replaced more recently by immature trees that afforded no hiding places.

So I stood there, feeling naked, in front of his house.

We made eye contact.

And there it was—recognition.

Now, I know the normal thing to do at this point would have been to perhaps wave, say hello, approach him with some sort of plausible reason I happened to be passing his house. Out for a run after a heavy meal of grilled burgers and wanted to stay off the main roads, maybe.

But I was mute. Really, I couldn’t think of anything reasonable to say. Just about everything that crossed my mind would have been such an obvious ruse, including—and I’m embarrassed to admit I thought about this—pretending not to recognize him.

So I said nothing. I just watched the shock in his eyes as he took me in, and knew mine probably looked the same. Shocked, glad, scared … it was hard to read both what I saw and what I felt.

But I couldn’t look away. And when I saw him try, I realized he couldn’t either. He glanced down, a muscle in his jaw tensed, but then he looked back at me, still unspeaking.

And, following an impulse unlike anything I’d ever felt before, I walked toward him, holding his gaze the entire time.

As he held mine. Standing there. Silent. Watchful.

It’s hard to describe what was happening because I don’t entirely understand it myself. All I know is that one minute I was walking down the old streets, feeling melancholy and drenched in the past, and the next minute I was completely in the present, facing a Nate who looked the same only older and, to me, even more beautiful
because
of the years that were beginning to show in his hair and around his eyes.