Love Me for Me (12 page)

L
ibby held
the steamer she’d rented from Wentworth’s against the kitchen wall with one hand while she attempted to reach the putty knife with the other. She fingered it and pulled it toward her, stretching her arms in opposite directions, sliding on the drop cloth beneath her feet, until she had the putty knife in her grasp. Removing the steamer, she scraped the wall to rid it of the old kitchen wallpaper. It was a slow process and she’d been at it for a good part of the morning, and about half the kitchen paper had been removed. The only benefit to stripping wallpaper was that it gave her time to think about all the things she had on her mind.

She’d set up an interview with Riddick Wiesner in New York. The interview was on the Friday before Trish’s bridal shower, at the end of the month. Taxes would all be in by then and work would slow down a little, so she didn’t feel too terrible about asking off that day. She’d set it all up the minute she’d gotten home from Helen’s party.

She had enjoyed the rest of the party. As expected, the crowd gawked at Pete when they walked up from the beach. Jeanie had yelled, “Libby finally hit her limit and pushed you in, didn’t she?” Everyone laughed, and Pete never gave a straight answer. He went in and changed, and once he returned, the chatter about it died down. The worst thing was that Pete was very quiet the rest of the party, and he stayed far enough away from her, that they didn’t have another conversation the rest of the day.

Why couldn’t they just be friends? She knew why, but it didn’t stop her from asking herself the question. She wanted to try and be friends, though. She wanted to be able to stop by and say hello when she came home for a visit; she wanted to text him when something funny happened; she wanted to see his smile again. She wasn’t letting that go. Perhaps, if she could just keep the conversation light, being friends could work.

Libby had spent most of the remaining time at the party with her mother and Jeanie. Surprisingly, Celia hadn’t said a whole lot about her new job with Marty or New York after that original discussion, thank goodness. Probably because Jeanie already knew most of the details and everyone else had been occupied in other conversations. After a few more glasses of wine, more birthday toasts, and some great songs, Libby had politely made her exit. She’d left when Pete was talking to someone, so she’d waved in his direction. It occurred to her that perhaps she should have waited, but she really just wanted to get home.

Once she got to the cottage, she pulled the shell from her pocket and looked at it again. She flipped it over in her hand, deciding which side she thought was more beautiful: the hard, rigid side with its perfect lines and symmetrical shape or the swirling colored side where everything seemed to run together, and she couldn’t find the end of one color or the beginning of another. Still undecided, she placed the shell in her memory box and closed the lid. It would be her reminder that even though jumping would have been fun, it only made things a mess afterwards.

Now, with the job interview set in New York, Libby had a fresh perspective about the future. It was time to get working on the cottage, spruce it up a bit and get it on the market. If she had any luck left, she’d get the Riddick Wiesner job and leave all of this behind her. The only slightly worrisome feeling was leaving Pete and his family now that they were back in touch. She’d miss them. She would definitely come home more often.

Another strip of old paper came off the wall. She balled it up in her hand just as her cell phone rang. The number was Wade’s. “Hello?” she answered, holding the phone with her wrists so as not to get the old wallpaper glue on her phone.

“Hi.”

This was certainly a change.
To what do I owe the honor of a “hi” from you?
she thought. “Hi,” she said back, grabbing a towel and wiping the glue off her hands.

“I just wanted to see how things were going.”

“I’m stripping wallpaper right now. Is that good enough?” she snapped. Everything that had happened to her lately had mentally exhausted her and it made her irritable.

The line was silent.

“I’m going as fast as I can. I have the kitchen torn apart, I’ve fixed a leak upstairs, and I have an interview in New York at the end of the month, so I hope to be gone soon. Is that enough progress?”

“You have an interview? Anyone good?”

Oh, now he wants to get chatty
. “Riddick Wiesner.”

“Not a bad firm.”

“Yes, it looks promising. Did you need anything else?”

“Nope. Just checking on you.” Something in his voice sounded softer, like the old Wade, but she didn’t trust her gut since he’d left her like he had.

“Well, you don’t need to. I know this is half your house, but I’m taking care of things as quickly as I can.” She said goodbye and hung up the phone. Sitting there, she felt uneasy and very much alone. She leaned against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest. She rubbed her hands. They were sore from stripping paper. As she sat there, she worried that Pete might be upset with how she’d left the party, but she couldn’t think how to approach him. She worried about bothering him. Maybe she would send a text. He could ignore it if he wanted to.

Hey! How are you?
She began, and then paused. She needed a pretext for contacting him before apologizing for how brusque she had been at the party.
I’m stripping wallpaper and I’m gouging the wall
, she continued
. Do you know how I can fix?

She put the phone down and resumed stripping the wallpaper when her phone pinged with a message. It read:
Wentworth’s has people who can help you.

It wasn’t just because it was in writing, and it wasn’t just her reading into it. That text was short and not very friendly. Pete, no matter the situation, would not usually offer such a suggestion; he’d run right over and try to help. The more she analyzed the situation, the more she started to look inward instead of outward. She’d blown it. What was wrong with her? She had just texted him as if it had been twelve years ago. Did she really expect him to drop everything to help her? Suddenly, she wanted to apologize. She tested the waters first. She texted back:
You okay?

He responded:
Yep.

No, he wasn’t okay. Twelve years ago, he would’ve been so concerned by the question, that she’d receive at least a two-liner about how fine he was. But, again, his reply was short. She shouldn’t have texted. She needed to just leave him alone, but now she didn’t want to.

She turned off the steamer and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. She was already planning what to ask him, what to say. She wanted to call him or maybe even go and see him. She didn’t like this feeling at all. In usual form, she started to run through their last conversation. He’d suggested she hurry back to New York. She’d thought he was just upset with her for not jumping, but was that what he actually wanted? With the water on, she lathered her hands with soap and scrubbed. Her scrubbing became slower as she thought it through, the sound of the tap the only noise in the room. She rinsed her hands and dried them on a towel. Maybe if she made light of her last text it would diffuse things.

She texted again:
Do you want to come over? I won’t make you fix my wall. :)

He responded:
Sorry, Libby. I’m really busy.

Was there something wrong with Pop? He would’ve said. It wasn’t Pop. And now she’d texted so much that she’d seem weird if she pressed further. She sat on the floor, holding her phone.
What’s wrong?
she wondered. Maybe he just felt the same way she did about being friends… that it’s too hard. A waste of time.

It was clear that Pete was frustrated with her. As she thought about why he had responded the way he had, she realized that she’d been very selfish. She was so busy trying to convince him that she was someone different, that she hadn’t stopped to consider how different
he
may have become. She didn’t really have the right to send him such a casual text. It wasn’t her place. She was stuck again in that empty space between the past and the present, and she needed to grasp the fact that they were two different people and she couldn’t just expect him to drop everything and respond to her. The realization made her feel awful.

C
atherine had offered
to have Libby over to her house for dinner. In the back of the rental car, she had two gallons of canary yellow paint for the kitchen and a bottle of white wine. She’d spent a total of an hour and forty minutes in town with no sign of Pete. Only about ten minutes remained before she needed to be at her friend’s house, so the prospect of running into him wasn’t looking good.

Libby had asked Catherine if Celia could tag along. She thought perhaps her mother may like to do something with
her
friends for a change. So Catherine had planned a ladies’ night, inviting her own mother and grandmother as well. Catherine and her husband, Scott, lived just a few minutes away from town, down a narrow, winding road that allowed snippets of the water through the woods every so often. Catherine lived close enough to the water to allow the humid sea breeze to rush in through the open car windows. Libby pulled the rental onto the gravel drive to Catherine’s house, the bottle of wine tinkling against the paint cans in the back.

Catherine had been one of the few people Libby had kept in touch with sporadically over the years. She never seemed to judge her, she never questioned why Libby had moved to New York, and she seemed to completely accept who Libby was now. Since their lives had moved in different directions, they hadn’t ever initiated more than the correspondence they had, but there was a mutual fondness and respect there that Libby really loved. She always thought how nice it would be to spend time with her, so she was glad to be visiting for dinner.

When the car slowed to a stop, Catherine’s thin frame came into view. She was on her porch, barefoot, waving with one hand, a glass of wine in the other. Celia was already there, getting out of her car. Libby reached into the back and pulled the bottle of wine from the floorboard. As she got out, she held it up. “Just in case you didn’t have enough,” she smiled.

“One can never have too much,” Catherine said.

“Hi, Mom,” she said as Celia pattered up to her, an enormous grin on her face. She was wearing a matching silk tank and trousers set with sandals, clearly spruced up.

“Hi, honey,” she said, kissing her cheek. The smell of musk perfume nearly overwhelmed her. “Hello, Catherine! It’s been so long since we’ve had a chance to chat! How’s your mom?”

“She’s well! She’s inside,” Catherine said, opening the door and allowing Libby and her mother to enter. Catherine’s home was the type of house that made her want to curl up with a mug of hot chocolate, even in the summer. Two large denim sofas flanked the room, a whitewashed table in between them, and everything sitting on a shaggy area rug. Her mother and grandmother were already chatting and both looked up to wave at her.

Esther Mullins was Catherine’s grandmother. She was a hefty woman with white hair that was pinned back on each side, and large, jade earrings that matched a ring on the ring finger of her right hand. On the other hand, she wore a single gold band. She looked exactly the same as she had so many years ago when she would visit Catherine. Esther was chatting with Catherine’s mother, Leanne.

Leanne stood up to say hello, her long, thin arms reaching out toward Celia. “How are you?” she said, her cheeks naturally rosy and her eyes almost squinting as she smiled. Celia embraced her and said hello.

“Want a glass of wine?” Catherine asked Libby and Celia. “It’s from the winery.”
The
winery meant Sandy Grove Winery down the road. It was the only one in town. It was also the one in which Pete had invested quite a bit of his money.

“I’d love one. Thanks,” Libby said.

“Yes, thank you!” Celia agreed, as she sat down next to Catherine’s mother, Leanne. “Anyone else need anything from the kitchen?” The other ladies shook their heads, already involved in a discussion of the local bank’s new hours.

“I’ll come with you,” Libby said, following her.

Catherine handed her a glass and set the bottle on the counter. “So, what’s
up
?” she said, pulling another glass from the cabinet as Libby filled her own glass with Pinot Grigio.

“Still getting the Roberts’ cottage ready for sale. I bought it with my ex-fiancé.” She took a sip of wine.

“Ex…?”

“Well, he wasn’t my ex at the time,” she grinned.

“Girl, I don’t care about the cottage!” She poured wine into a glass for Celia. “What’s up with you and Pete? I heard y’all have been hanging out lately! Anything exciting happen?”

How did she hear that? The mere thought of people discussing her and Pete gave her a queasy feeling. That was exactly why she wanted to get back to New York. Didn’t people here have anything better to do than stick their nose in her business? In New York there was plenty to do, so no one bothered with anyone else’s lives. “Who told you about that?”

“Pete told Jason that you came to his mom’s birthday party, and Jason’s still good friends with Scott.” All those names together pulled her toward the memory of a colder day, fifteen years ago. Even though it had been cold outside, the memory was as warm as any she had.

On the first full weekend of every November, things began to change. In the town of Urbanna, a few towns over, no-parking signs and other festive decorations suddenly appeared. On the Friday night, sirens blared, lights flashed, and standing there, she nearly had to cover her ears from the sound of it all. Fire trucks from everywhere in Virginia paraded down the main street, and people with unrecognizable faces began filling the whole town. They’d come from all over the state. The Oyster Festival had begun.

So many people showed up, that the school buses couldn’t get through the streets, so every year on that Friday, school was closed. When she was only fifteen, Libby and Catherine had spent the whole Friday getting ready just so they could meet their friends behind the fire house after the parade. That was where the beer garden was, and, although they weren’t old enough to drink, they liked to hang around near the older crowd; it made them feel mature. So, with a brand new sweater and her favorite jeans, a fresh haircut and paint on her nails, Libby waited for her friends. Pete, Scott, and their friend, Jason, had shown up not too long after the girls had gotten there.