One To Watch (42 page)

Sam opened his mouth, then closed it. “Actually, I’ve been thinking. I know that in the past, men have treated you like you weren’t worthy of a real relationship. And I know you’re concerned about me—as young as I am, whether I’m ready for a commitment. Bea, I want to prove to you that I’m taking this seriously. I’m not just here to have fun, I’m not feeding you some line so you’ll sleep with me. Let me show you that I’m ready for this, for us. Let’s wait.”

Bea’s stomach dropped, and her body felt suddenly cold. She understood his rationale—in Sam’s mind, he was showing her (and all of America) that he really was grown-up. She didn’t know how to tell him, here, with the cameras rolling, that no one watching this show would think he was declining to sleep with her out of some sense of chivalry. They’d simply think he didn’t want her.

Maybe he doesn’t,
a voice in her head rang out.

Bea shook this off—of course he wanted her. Hadn’t he made that clear in the hammam? She assured herself that this decision wasn’t a matter of Bea’s insecurity, but Sam’s immaturity. He and Bea hadn’t had a single moment together off camera, and here, with the possibility of a whole night to get to know each other better—hell, just to be alone in a room together for the very first time—he was saying “no thanks” for the sake of an ill-thought gesture. Was this really a man who was ready for a serious relationship, let alone marriage?

She told him she understood, and he kissed her passionately, as if to erase her doubts, but something about it felt wrong, felt like performance. Before they parted ways, he hugged her one last time and whispered into her ear.

“I love you, Bea. Okay? I love you.”

But this time, Bea found it was harder to believe.

When Bea learned she’d be traveling to France for her overnight dates, she knew exactly where she wanted to go with Asher, and she was thrilled when Lauren agreed: Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, her favorite village in Provence. Moustiers was just east of the plateau Valensole, where in summer every hectare burst with blooming lavender and sunflowers and the thick, hot air was densely perfumed with sweet honey. But now, in spring, the region was much more quiet, scattered only with wildflowers and the occasional tourist, a far cry from the droves who would soon descend.

Lauren had originally proposed that Bea and Asher take a kayaking adventure near Moustiers, but Bea had swiftly vetoed this; there was absolutely no chance of her agreeing to wedge herself into a kayak on camera. Instead, a compromise was struck where the two would go pedal boating on the Lac de Sainte-Croix, right near the opening of the Gorges du Verdon.

“You’re here.” Asher stood smiling on the dock where they were meeting, the outrageously turquoise lake shimmering behind him in the midday sunlight.

“Hey, you.” Bea ran into his arms, and after all the uncertainty Sam had instilled in her, it felt so simple to kiss Asher in the plain, bright light of day.

Getting outfitted in life jackets (Bea was forced to wear a men’s XXL, which was comically long on her) and into the pedal boat was something of a production, but once they were off on the lake, surrounded by canoes full of camera operators, Asher and Bea pedaled through the green waters into the mouth of the gorge, where limestone cliffs towered over them.

“So, my kids loved you,” Asher said, unable to suppress a grin.

“Excuse me?” Bea was skeptical. “Gwen tolerated me at best.”

“Nope,” Asher corrected. “Last night she emailed me an
article
she thought you might enjoy about the handlers who work with animals in Hollywood. That’s basically Gwen-speak for ‘be my new best friend.’”

Bea was genuinely surprised. “And did they like the movie?”

“Bea, I swear to you, I’ve heard of little else since you left. Linus wants to know when you can come back to teach him how to contour his cheekbones to look like Katharine Hepburn’s.”

Bea cracked up. “Do you even know what contouring is?”

Asher looked affronted. “I’ll have you know I once spent two hours of my Saturday at a Sephora in Burlington learning exactly what contouring is and how one achieves it. It was terrifying.”

“I cannot
believe
you went to a Sephora class.”

“Yeah, well. I tried to persuade Linus we’d have more fun at a Revolutionary War reenactment, but he was unconvinced.”

“So, tell me, young grasshopper.” Bea gathered herself up very seriously. “What did you learn in Sephora school?”

“Well”—Asher traced the lines on Bea’s face with his fingers—“when you contour, you want to use bronzer under the cheekbones, here, and along the jaw. To create shadow.”

“Don’t forget the hairline.”

“Yes, of course.” Asher pressed his thumbs to the center of Bea’s forehead, then ran them down to her temples, massaging her gently. “The hairline.”

“Good.” Bea relaxed into his touch. “What else?”

“You highlight all the places that draw light—the cheeks, the bridge of the nose, and just above the lips.”

He rested a finger on her cupid’s bow, and she kissed it softly.

“Did you know you can also contour your décolletage?”

Asher smiled, somewhere between turned-on and incredulous. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. But I can’t show you that right now.” Bea was holding back laughter too. “Because it would be very dangerous to remove our life jackets.”

Asher shook his head and grinned. “Can I please just drop the pretext and kiss you?”

“I swear to God, you’d better.”

It was a little too cold to dine outside that night, but Bea insisted—they were eating at one of her favorite restaurants in the world: La Bastide de Moustiers, Alain Ducasse’s boutique Provençal property, where they also had rooms for the night. The restaurant’s terrace was built into the hillside, and all the tables faced outward so diners could eat while gazing at the beautiful mountains. The waitstaff brought out thick woven blankets to keep them warm, then course after course of the most bright, delicious food she’d ever tasted. They had the whole place to themselves to eat and watch the sunset, the mountains drenched in orange, then pink, then gold.

Once the food had been cleared and the light was almost gone, they nestled together, drinking a champagne toast, the intensity of their connection—how strong her feelings were getting, the fact that his children were now involved—both reassuring Bea and, in its own way, unnerving her.

“I didn’t expect this,” she murmured, “any of it.”

“I know.” He leaned in close. “After Vanessa, I thought I was done. For a long time anyway. But now …”

“Now?” she urged.

“I’m rethinking things.”

He kissed her, and she stayed close to him, caught between her curiosity and her desire to preserve the moment.

“You never talk about her,” Bea said quietly.

“Vanessa?”

Bea nodded, and Asher sighed.

“I keep expecting that one day I’ll wake up and it won’t hurt anymore. That I’ll finally understand what happened, and I’ll be past it. It’s been seven years, and still. No such luck.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Do you?” Asher looked at her. “The guy who hurt you last year?”

“Of course it’s not the same,” Bea said quickly. “I would never compare the two, she left her children. But waking up every morning, not wanting to think about it, but not being able to help it? That part I know really well.”

“I thought that meeting someone new would help,” Asher admitted. “And in some ways it has—to be with you, to feel so hopeful for the first time in years. But in other ways, I find I’m thinking about her even more. With every milestone you and I cross, I think back to what it was like with her. I don’t mean to compare you, and I hate that I’ve been thinking of her so frequently.”

Bea exhaled. “Asher, it’s only natural that we’re comparing this experience to past ones. How could we not? Especially if we’re looking for warning signs to make sure we won’t be hurt again.”

“I suppose we could will ourselves to forget them, focus on moving forward.”

“That doesn’t really sound realistic, does it?”

He took a sip of wine. “Perhaps not.”

“So, um. How did you meet her?” Bea asked, hoping this question was small enough to draw him out.

“In college,” Asher started. “She had this brilliant energy, and I was enamored. There was this shop near campus where we’d order tea rolls and Nepalese chai, and we would sit there for hours, arguing about moral determinism and the nature of humanity. I was so in love with her—and I was hardly the only one, men always fell all over themselves around her. But she told me she loved how reliable I was. How I never let her down.”

Bea tried to imagine him, this young, earnest person who hadn’t yet become untrusting. She grieved a little for what he’d lost—and what she had.

“Senior year, we started talking about whether to stay together after graduation. She wanted to travel, but I was accepted into a PhD program. We didn’t want to break up, but we thought we had to. Then we found out she was pregnant.”

“Oh wow.” Bea exhaled. “Did you consider an abortion?”

“Of course. But we were taken in by the romance of the situation. She said it would be a new adventure, and we would be homesteaders, raising our little family. It was a sign, she said. We were meant to be together. I couldn’t believe I was so lucky that she wanted to be connected to me for the rest of her life.”

“What happened after you moved?”

A dark expression came over Asher’s face. “We didn’t have any idea how hard it would be. We had no money and this tiny grad-student apartment, I was working all the time, it was freezing cold in Ithaca and she was cooped up all winter long with only an infant for company. I made friends through my program, but whenever I tried to include her, she would make some excuse, say she couldn’t leave Gwen. I didn’t understand how depressed she was.”

“That must have been so hard for both of you.”

“It did get better,” Asher asserted, “for a while anyway. When Gwen got old enough for daycare, Vanessa got a job in town, working at the local co-op. She started working on their farm, making all these friends. We finally moved into our own house, and she seemed happy again. She was always cooking some exotic new vegetable, bringing people over, hosting dinners, music circles in the yard.”

“Music circles?” Bea raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t really sound like you.”

“It wasn’t,” he conceded with a laugh, “but I was so happy that she was happy. When we found out she was pregnant with Linus, I thought,
This time will be different. This time, we’ll be the family we were always supposed to be
.”

“And was it? Different?”

Asher shook his head. “It was worse—much worse. After Linus was born, Vanessa was angry all the time. She would fly into rages over the smallest things, me bringing home the wrong brand of milk, whatever; storm out of the house and not come back for days. She refused to be around the kids, spent all her time at the farm. I started to feel like I was keeping the love of my life in a cage, and she despised me for it.”

“So what happened?”

“I guess I should have known,” he clipped. “All that time she spent away from home, you’d think it would have been obvious. But I was still devastated when I found out she was cheating.”

“
What?
” Bea gasped. It hadn’t been obvious to her. Asher nodded sadly.

“I went to the co-op one day to pick her up, and there she was, kissing another man in broad daylight. Not just a peck on the lips, either.” Asher shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of the memory. “She said she forgot I was coming, but I think the truth is she wanted me to see. Maybe she’d wanted me to see for a long time, but I refused to look. I couldn’t take it. I knew we were unhappy, but to see her, to actually see her with someone else—I just lost it. I felt my whole life collapsing on top of me. I kept hearing that word in my head, ‘reliable’—thinking, Is this who I am? Is my character defined by my capacity to be used and punished again and again by someone who thinks so little of other people’s feelings?”

“That’s not true,” Bea protested. “You deserved so much better than that.”

“I didn’t think so.” He looked pained. “I wish I could tell you that I screamed at her, that I stood up for myself at all. But I did the opposite. I sat on our couch sobbing, begging her to stay. After everything, how angry I was, how much I hated her by then, how much I knew she hated me, I still couldn’t let her go. It didn’t matter. She left anyway.”