Prayer (26 page)

~oOo~

He knocked but didn’t wait for an answer. When he opened the door, he saw Katrynn sitting cross-legged in the middle of a twin bed with a brass headboard and footboard. A worn, intricately pieced quilt served as a bedspread.

She had a notebook open on the bed in front of her and a pen in her hand. When she saw him, she dropped the pen on the book, jumped up, and stood with the bed between them. “Goddammit, Mom.”

She had clearly spent much of the day crying; her face was puffy, her eyes swollen behind her glasses, and she looked exhausted.

“We need to talk.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Katrynn said nothing.

John came all the way into her room and closed the door. He had more pressing concerns than the décor of the room she’d never changed, but he did notice an old, roll-top desk near the door and a big bulletin board on the wall above it, covered with papers. A bookcase near the window was empty.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, went to his messages, selected Giada’s thread, scrolled to the message he wanted, and held out his phone. “I want you to take a good look at this.”

Katrynn didn’t move, except to shape her face into a mask of revulsion, so John came around the bed, holding the phone out to her.

She shrank back as if it might leap from his hand and bite her. “I don’t need to see that again. You need to get out.”

“Yes, you do. I’m not leaving until you do and I’ve had my say. Now fucking look.”

When she unlocked her arms, John thought she’d take the phone. Instead, she knocked it out of his hand. He caught it with his other, and then advanced on her until he had her against the wall. He held the phone in front of her face. “READ.”

Like a willful goddamn toddler, she closed her eyes.

Frustration—no, this was full-on anger now—burst out, and John slammed his free hand on the wall beside her head. Katrynn flinched but didn’t open her eyes. “I SAID
READ
.”

She opened her eyes, gave him a nasty look, and finally read. He waited—and saw when she had read enough to understand. Her posture changed, and she raised a hand and took the phone from him. As she scrolled through, John took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her earlier posture.

When she made her way through the thread to that fucking selfie, she flinched again, but she turned a pale face and stunned eyes on him. “John…”

What she’d read was, in essence, a summary of his history with Giada over the past few months, a history which had not, on his part, been sexual or even flirtatious since the night of the storm. A history in which he’d actively aimed to cool things off since then.

“If you had waited until I got out of the goddamn shower and just fucking
asked
me, I could have explained.” He took his phone back. “If you’d needed proof, I would have shown you this then. I did nothing wrong. I can’t help what somebody else sends me.”

“I don’t…”

“Shut up. I’m not done. I love you, Katrynn. But I can’t do this anymore. I spent the past five hours feeling frantic with worry and guilt, and I didn’t fucking
do
anything wrong
. I’ve been trying to make up for what I did on New Year’s, but it feels like we’re never going to get past it. You’re never going to trust me enough. You’re never going to believe in us enough. You say you’re afraid that you’ll fall and land alone in a heap on the bottom, but I’m
there
. I’ve been there. Since the storm, I’ve been there. But I’m there alone.
I’m
the one who fell in a heap at the bottom.”

She was crying, but she said nothing. John’s eyes burned, and his chest felt like he’d been punched in the heart. He’d had no idea he was going to say all that, but as much as it hurt, it also felt like what had needed to be said.

Swallowing past the boulder that seemed to have lodged in his throat, John put his phone away and pulled the small box from his other jeans pocket. “I’m sorry this is going down on your birthday. This is part of your present. I bought it for you, so it’s yours. You can keep it or, I don’t know, have it melted down or something.”

He held out the flat velvet box, but she didn’t take it. She was staring at the floor, letting tears run unimpeded down her cheeks and drop onto the wood at her bare feet. He set the box on her bed, went to the door, and opened it.

Before he went out, he said, “I love you, Katrynn. More than I’ve ever loved anybody. With you is where I want to be. But I’m there alone, and I…I just can’t.” His voice cracked on the last words, and he knew he had to go before he embarrassed himself.

As he left, he thought he saw her nod.

~oOo~

Back in Quiet Cove, John stopped at Corti’s Market and bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and a twelve-pack of beer, then went home to sit alone and get completely wrecked. But once he was home, he was too damn depressed even to drink. He just sat on his sofa and stared at the television—which he hadn’t bothered to turn on.

It was a weekday, and even in the summer, the beach tended to thin out markedly by dinner time. John’s own private stretch was completely empty as the sun began to slide below the horizon. Feeling a need to find some peace in his heart, he picked up his Alvarez off its stand next to the sofa and went outside.

He sat in one of the Adirondack chairs around his fire ring, facing the horizon. For a long time, he just sat there, staring at the calm ocean, letting his mind wander away, watching the sun roll through its sunset hues: pink, orange, red. It was nearly full dark before he came wholly back to the present.

Forty. He was forty years old, and still alone—and not by choice. He’d wanted a family of his own for a long time, but it just wasn’t there for him. Even when he was with someone, there was no chance. He couldn’t make it work. It had to be him, right? Some flaw in his character that kept the pieces from clicking into place. What he felt for Katrynn threatened to devour him whole, and even that wasn’t enough.

He’d written her a stupid song. At the time, he’d thought it romantic and a perfect complement to his other present, but now it felt ridiculous. He could put words to music well, but he wasn’t especially talented with lyrics. Elisa’s lullaby was a better song than he could write, and she was five years old. But he’d done it, and he’d been excited to share it with her.

His fingers took up the tune without him entirely realizing it, and he began to hum along. Soon he was singing to the dusky ocean. As always, playing helped settle his mind and his heart. When he missed a note and stopped to catch it, he started over and played the song in earnest, performing for no one but the last shore birds.

When I play I pray

That’s the way it’s always been.

When music’s in the air

Then I can feel my God within.

I close my arms ‘round

This sleek, sweet form and I know

That my fingertips will

Sing all the need I cannot say.

When you are with me

I know you’re heaven-sent.

The love that consumes me

Is more than this one world can lift.

I close my arms ‘round

Your sleek, sweet form and I know

That your warm touch will

Speak all the love you cannot say.

I didn’t even know it,

But now it’s clear as day.

Each time I wrapped my arms

Around this old guitar,

Each time I put my fingers

To the strings and closed my eyes,

Each time

Each time

Each time I played

I prayed for you.

He played it again. A couple walked by, hand in hand between him and the tide, and they paused and smiled. John nodded a greeting but didn’t stop singing. After a line or two, they continued on their way.

By the third time through, he felt better. He had to take a breath and compose himself, but an ounce or two of weight had lifted from his shoulders.

“John.”

He nearly wrenched his neck turning in his seat at the sound of Katrynn’s voice. Then he nearly wrenched his back leaping to his feet to face her. He set his guitar on the seat he’d just vacated.

She wiped at her cheeks with both hands. “That’s beautiful. Is it…is it about me?”

Struck dumb, he nodded. He cleared his throat and found his voice. “Meant it to be part of your present.”

She smiled and put her hand to her chest, lifting something in her fingers. Dusk had settled in heavily, so he couldn’t see it clearly, but he assumed it was the gift he’d left with her: a white gold pendant and chain. The pendant was the treble and base clefs joined to make a heart. There was a pearl, which the big poster at the jewelry store had informed him was the June birthstone, in the tail of the treble clef. Two diamonds made the colon of the bass clef.

“This is beautiful, too. Thank you.”

He nodded again but didn’t otherwise move. “Why are you here, Katrynn?”

She came closer, and now he could see the glint of the tiny diamonds in the moonlight. “Because I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John.”

What was he to make of that? Was she apologizing for the fact that they couldn’t work out? Was she apologizing for going off half-cocked that morning? What? He stood where he was and waited for her to clarify.

Finally, she took a deep breath and spoke again. “You’re right. Almost everything you said earlier is right. I should have talked to you this morning. I should have given you that trust and respect, and I’m sorry. I’m also sorry that I’ve been holding back. I want to let go, and I keep thinking I can, but then I don’t. The one thing you got wrong is that it’s not about New Year’s. I’m not holding that against you. I barely even think of it anymore. I don’t know why I’m so scared. Maybe it’s my folks, but it seems like at some point we have to stop blaming our parents for our fuckups, and thirty is probably past that point. I just know I love you so much that I’m afraid all the time. The more I love you, the more afraid I get. I’m so scared that if I let go and then you leave me, you’ll take me with you. If that makes any sense at all outside my head.”

It didn’t, not to John. All he felt was frustrated. He didn’t know what else he could do to prove that she could trust him, and he didn’t think it was good for either of them if he was the one doing all the proving.

He opened his mouth to say…something, but she held up her hand. “I know that’s not fair. I know that you’re there, waiting for me to get my head screwed on right. Or, anyway, that you’ve been there. So I have one more thing to say. If it’s not too late, I really am going to jump now. There’s something I want, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I don’t know if you want it, or if I ruined the chance for it, but I do know that I have to jump to say it.”

She stopped, and the new moonlight illuminated the anxiety in her eyes. John took a step toward her, bringing them nearly into contact. Katrynn looked up and smiled with trembling lips. “You’re my choice. I would like to marry you.”

John blinked and tried to suss out whether there was another interpretation to those words, if maybe she’d meant something other than what he’d heard. His surprise was too strong to allow room for any other feeling. “Are you proposing to me?”

“Yes.”

Surprise gave way to something like elation, and John took her in his arms and kissed the shit out of her.

When he let her up for air, they both needed it. Panting, Katrynn asked, “Is that a yes?”

He wanted it to be a yes. He wanted to marry her, start a life, have children, grow old together. Never had he thought that he would be proposed to, but he liked it. She was right, too, that it went a long way to showing that she was finally jumping—with both feet.