For the Best (26 page)

“Why did you ask him surfing?” I
whispered.

“Can’t I ask a fellow surfer to catch some
waves?” He crushed the cigarette below his shoe, waived away the
smoke.

“You can ask anyone anything you want,” I
said.

“Okay, are you still in love with him?”

My head snapped. He may as well have slapped
me. “God no. Why would you ask that?”

“Because it is obvious he is still in love
with you. Because you’ve never fucking said the words to me.”

“You haven’t either.” I ran up the steps,
with the dogs in pursuit.

Ansel caught me at the door. “I’m sorry.”
His mouth was hot on mine, desperate.

“Saying it out loud is scary for me,” I
whispered between kisses.

“Me too,” he answered with a last gentle
pressing of our lips.

With one mind and one heart, the words left
our mouths in unison. “I love you.”

Tanner

“I think you cause her mind chaos,” Ansel
said steering us away from the schoolhouse towards Vilano, a
stretch of beach with rough current and heavy riptides.

“How so?”

He shrugged. “Once she would have wanted to
please you. I woke up this morning and saw her staring out into
space. She didn’t have to tell me your little visit last night
brought her down.”

“I came to apologize for what Skylar did and
said.”

He dismissed my explanation, “You are always
sorry. You fucking wreck her life every time you come round.” He
shook his head. “She is with me now and no way are you messing this
up for us.”

Jealousy stirred. “I never messed anything
up for you. Sounds to me like you did that all on your own.”

“She lost her way and you led her.”

When he spoke it was less like an accusation
and more like he was just saying.
She had lost her way so many
times, and yes I was right there refusing to let her go
.

“So what makes you think you deserve her?” I
asked wanting to turn the tables.

“Because I love her. Because I’m faithful.
Because for me she is the one.”

I took him in, the angular nature of his
face, the lines beginning to form from too many days surfing, maybe
the life he’d once led.

“She told me you were a recovering
alcoholic. It’s hard to remember who you love when you’re
drunk.”

“Not as hard as when you’re stoned,” he
volleyed back on information she had to have given.

I took the defense.
Was this an
attack?
I put the ball back in my court. “You don’t even have a
real job. A photographer. Really, Hanna probably pulled in more
working at the laundromat than you could provide.”

He laughed. “Think what you want.”

The way he said it, so confident. I knew he
must have never been broke a day in his life. “So you’re some rich
kid?”

He laughed. “This is coming from the guy who
is dating the daughter of a Fortune 500 company CEO.”

Incredulous I asked, “How do you know
Skylar?”

“She gave Hanna her name. I figured any
bitch who could make Hanna cry for days should be Googled.”

“Hanna doesn’t care about money.”

“I know. Just one of many of the reasons she
is so amazing. She doesn’t do anything for the money but for the
pleasure. You trying to steer her into another direction made her
unhappy. You should have realized clicking a mouse and thumping a
keyboard would have killed her spirit.”

He drove the car straight through the soft
sand, sharply cutting the wheels yet he didn’t apply the brakes and
the car leaped through the drifts to the safer surfaces of hard
packed ground.

“Don’t fuck with her head.” The car came to
a stop.

We got out. Each grabbed a board.

“I mean it. You try to be more than her
friend, you stir up shit and I’ll drag you down.”

He and I hit the waves at the same time,
paddling out. He glanced over his shoulder at me. Within his
expression, I saw no anger, no jealousy. I think he felt sorry for
me.

Hanna

As I bandaged my wound after clipping a
Chihuahua’s nails I mulled over the eccentricities of some of my
clients. The very owner whose dog broke my skin between my index
finger and thumb had recoiled when she saw Bowzer and Pinkie
napping on the floor.

She’d asked, “Is that a Rott and Pitt?”

“They aren’t pure. They’re mixed.” I almost
told her to take her business elsewhere and quit acting like I was
running an illegal dog fighting operation. Now nursing my wound, I
wished I had. Instead, I comforted the spoiled little lap dog and
made a note in his file should he visit again.

I wondered how the surfing had gone.
Probably Tanner was telling Ansel about my lack of ambition and why
I needed to go to college. I smiled thinking about Ansel. He didn’t
care that I hadn’t furthered my education. To him it didn’t matter
that I wasn’t connected, he wanted to distance himself from people
like that. We came from totally different backgrounds and he liked
the middle class perspective I had on life. Most of all he loved
me, more than I think Tanner ever had.

Tanner

In a fit of jealousy, I called up Skylar
then the university and made arrangements to do the paid internship
at her father’s firm for the fall semester. I was scheduled to
depart in August.

The rest of the summer I spent working
relentlessly and hanging with Trev. Doing the things we’d always
enjoyed together. Casting the net into the intracoastal off Guana.
In line skating as he pulled me on that rusty, old, heavy framed,
single-speed beach bike. Watching cartoons or catching one at the
theatre. Hell, even doing trampoline flips while he sat cheering me
on, all were moments that made us brothers. We’d never shared a
beer, never razzed each other about the other being whipped over
some girl, never vented about jobs like I imagined other brothers
did. That was okay, Trev was still the best brother a guy could
hope for in life.

Hanna, however, was constantly in my head.
Mostly, my dreams.

“
Tanner?” She bent down to nudge my shape
under the blanket.

“
Hmmm.”

“
I want to talk to you.” She kneeled
beside me on the mattress. I drank her in…the glow of the TV
backlighting her hair. Her eyes filled with tears and she bowed her
head.

“
What’s wrong?”

Her words were choked. “Why did you wait so
long to come back to me? Everything is so messed up.”

“
We aren’t messed up. Maybe life is but
our love isn’t.” I held her head between my hands and forced her to
look at me, the watery hazel abyss of her eyes stealing my heart. I
smiled reassuringly stroking her brown hair. “I don’t think I’ll
ever love anyone like you,” I whispered against her lips.

“
Don’t…” Ignoring her pleas I continued,
wrestling her into bed. She went still and each place I touched her
was so icy. My hands froze. When I released her, she melted
away.

I woke with a resolve. Despite Ansel’s
warning, I would go find Hanna and tell her my story, all my
regrets. I knew she would take me back once the truths were
revealed, take that risk that we could mend the hearts my stupidity
had broken.

Hanna

Someone
knocked. Keb popped his head up from scooting on the floor,
and babbled as if to notify me in case I hadn’t heard.

When I opened the door to
find Tanner on the other side a moment of hesitancy gave him an
advantage.

“
Hi Hanna.”

“
Tanner.” I
nodded.

“
Can I come in?”

I stepped aside for him to
enter
. Keb was sitting on the floor at the
far end of the room amidst his toy corner. He was pushing a rubber
truck across the rug.

“
You
want a drink?”

“
What do you
have?”

I walked into the kitchen,
checked the contents of the fridge. “The latest microbrew and
milk.”

“
I’ll take the
beer.”

Pouring him a cold one and
myself a glass of milk I retreated to the couch. “That’s Keb.” I
pointed.

He nodded, didn’t attempt to
engage the baby. He studied the dark brew contemplating.

The program in the
background was
The
Wiggles.
Keb’s body was bobbing in time with
the music as he scoot/crawled. The ludicrousness of the moment made
me want to laugh.

“
I
was hoping to find you alone. I wanted to explain
myself.”

“
This
is about as alone as I get these days.”

He
started talking, going back all the way to when he was in
Europe, ticking off confessions.

“
You
don’t have to tell me everything,” I insisted
quietly.

“
I
need to.”

Tanner

I
finished with, “I’m sorry, Hanna. I didn’t mean to hurt
you.”

“
Not
your fault. I let you do it,” she answered nonchalantly as if
my apology was meaningless.

“
If
it makes a difference, it was hard on me as well.”

Keb stole her attention. He
was cooing along with an annoying song coming from the
TV.

“
So
your boyfriend…Ansel has made it clear you are off limits. How
do you feel about that?” I waited for her to recognize the cage
Ansel was trying to pen her in.

She smiled. “I like that he is
protective. Makes me love him more.”

“
You love him? When did that
happen?”

“
I always felt something for
him, maybe it happened the moment I met him.”

If she was attempting to
piss me off she was doing a good job.
“All
the time we were together he kept calling but you never
answered.”

“
When I went to Glacier I
stopped keeping in touch with him over a silly disagreement we had.
The night Keb was born I answered his call.”

“
You
told me you slept together but weren’t lovers,” I
accused.

She squashed a smile. “I said that to make
you wonder. Thinking you’d
replaced me much quicker
than I did you. In all honesty we did sleep together once in Utah
and a lot in California. Back then we were never lovers. He
couldn’t have filled the void you caused.”

I
found it hard to speak over the massive lump forming in my
throat.

She
didn’t look my way when she spoke, “You know I was going to
surprise you with this place when you got back from Europe. I
thought you would be impressed. I had these grand ideas that you
could build us a rooftop garden. I ended up having Jace knock out
the back wall of my unit and install a door just so I could go out
on the roof and look at the stars.”

“
I’m
sorry.”

She shrugged. “So last year
of college for you, are you excited? What are your
plans?”

I told her about the
internship making it seem more than it was.

Tanner

The internship was a desk job training for a
career I was not the least interested in pursuing. From a
windowless cubicle on the seventh floor of a high rise out in the
suburbs I whiled away endless hours of work.

Hanna

“
It’s
bath time
mister.”

Ansel and I were on baby duty. Scooping up
Keb like
a sack of potatoes, Ansel flipped him over
his shoulder making him squeal.

I ran the tepid water, some
Bubble Bath and put in all the bath toys, removed his t-shirt,
little jeans and little socks.

Ansel was kneeling on the bathmat playing
superheroes, making Aquaman and Batman deep sea dive in a bath of
bubbles.

“You are really good with kids,” I
complimented

“You’re not so bad yourself.” He smiled
pushed up and kissed my nose.

“Do you want kids?”

He froze.

I backtracked, “I didn’t mean with me. I
mean maybe someday. But I wasn’t meaning us…together,” I rambled
trying to cover up words a young woman should never say to a fun
loving, free spirited guy under thirty.

His teasing eyes twinkled.
“I was thinking Slash for a boy and Matilda for a
girl.”

“Seriously?” I asked in sarcasm.

“What names did you have in mind?”

I cupped water in my hand and rinsed the
suds off Keb. “I have none in mind.”

“Really, when you were trying for a teen
pregnancy you didn’t consider any names?”

“Maybe I should have. Put a fun spin on a
very depressing point of my existence.”

He stared down at Keb. “After we get married
we’ll put together a list.”

I laughed off the butterflies flitting
through my stomach and let the subject drop.

Done we emerged from Della’s bathroom. Keb
freshly scrubbed was ready for bed. Della came home looking beat.
Keb reached for her and she kissed his head rocking him in her
arms.

“He’s all ready for his nighttime story,” I
said.

Exhausted she flung herself onto the couch
as Keb laughed in delight. “I can’t. I just finished a mountain of
paperwork and Jace’s taxes.”

“You can file an extension this far out?”
Ansel asked.

“You shouldn’t,” she declared as Keb settled
his head in the spot between her neck and shoulder. “He is in real
fix. Not a lot of work. Daytrippers isn’t very lucrative. Money is
tight. Michelle likes to spend.”