Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (31 page)

If he knew what she was talking about, he didn't let it show. “It's supposed to hurt,” he said.

“Not like this,” she'd replied.

Garret had known his mother was up to no good when she'd invited him over to her house on a Friday evening in late September. She greeted him in the marble foyer wearing a pink track suit and diamond earrings. She placed a small kiss on his cheek then led him into the living room, where Tara—the girl who helped Sue with housework—was arranging biscotti on a small silver tray. Beyond the gauzy curtains, the trees were bright red and gold against the blue slate of the ocean.

“Have a seat,” Sue said.

“Why do I have the feeling I'm in trouble?”

“Because you are in trouble,” Sue said. She poured herself a cup of tea, and the smell of lemon and chamomile pervaded the room. “What did you think of Kate?”

“So that's what this is about? You're mad because I didn't get down on one knee and propose in the middle of the piazza?”

“That's textbook rhetoric, dear,” she said calmly. “Exaggeration. What I expected was for you to have a conversation with her. What I didn't expect was to see you dancing with Thea the next time I turned around.”

Garret rolled his eyes and bit off the end of a biscotto. “You told me to make nice with her.”

“Make nice,” she said. “You looked like you wanted to make
something
with her, but it wasn't
nice
.”

His biscotto turned to dust in his mouth, and his face grew warm.

“You don't have to say anything,” she said. “And I won't bring this up again. But Garret—for once in your life—listen to what I'm telling you. Thea's always made you go a little crazy.”

“That's not tru—”

“Hear me out. You get reckless around her. Careless. You and your brother are finally settling into friendship. Don't ruin it. Not now.”

Garret shook his head, looked down at his lap. His task was clear before him: he needed to convince his mother that she was worrying for nothing. But the truth was that Thea had been on his mind 24/7 since the moment she'd left him standing on the lawn at the Breakers. Thoughts of her—memories—popped back into his mind at the most uncomfortable moments. And even when he wasn't thinking a specific thing about her, he felt as if she vaguely permeated every moment of his days and nights, much like the smell of lemon tea that now filled the room.

He had to make it stop—the torture of how much he thought of her in her absence. There had to be a logical way to make the longing end. But in the meantime, he had to convince Sue that she was overreacting.

“You do realize that was the first Gilded Age Society Ball she went to without Jonathan,” he said.

“Of course.”

“I wanted her to feel comfortable. Especially with me.”

“Well, that's very admirable of you, but—”

“And did you or did you not see me talking with Kate later in the evening?”

“Well, you—”

“Did you or did you not?”

Sue sighed. “Yes, counselor. I did.”

“No further questions,” he said.

“I'm trying to look out for everyone's best interests here.” She got up from her armchair to sit with him on the couch. Her eyes were soft, pleading, and she put a hand on his arm. “Just promise me you won't go off the deep end with Thea again. Promise that you'll do whatever you need to keep both feet on the ground.”

He held his breath a moment, then let it go. His mother had seen through him—she always saw through him. He could fool senators and judges, but not his mom. Some part of him almost felt relieved that she knew the truth, even if he felt compelled to deny it. Her reaction made one thing clear enough: Thea did get under his skin, more than any woman he'd ever met. He couldn't think straight when it came to her. Sue was right—he needed to stay grounded going forward.

“You're overreacting,” he said. He put his hand over his heart. “But if it makes you feel better, I'll swear. I won't do anything crazy.”

“I think we have to discuss the meaning of ‘crazy' in this context.”

He kissed her cheek. “And you wonder where I get it from.”

 

 

Thea knew she had a serious problem—Claudine had pointed out that she'd mistakenly made a decaf espresso instead of a regular, Jules had mentioned that she was wearing her shirt inside out, and even Tenke had pulled her aside to ask if she realized that she'd replaced the stack of coffee filters with a pile of napkins.

She'd laughed and made jokes about going senile—which Lettie told her she knew nothing about—and she tried to stay on track. But the fact was, she was uncontrollably distracted. The memory of just three simple words that Garret had spoken—
I want you
—raced through her blood and made her feverish as a virus. Her body went hot and cold, heat spreading through her at the most innocent moments. Her head swam and her imagination took her rational brain hostage, replacing reality with fantasies of seeing him again—at the shop, at the beach, in her bed.

One evening while Thea was closing up alone, Dani wandered in wearing her blue uniform, her face set in determination. Dani locked the door of the café, swept under all the chairs, and when Thea started to say “Thanks so much for your help,” Dani told her to sit down.

“Spill,” she said. “What's going on?”

Thea rolled her head to one side, fighting the muscles that had been tightening bit by bit over the last few days. “You're not going to like it,” she warned.

“I might not like what you have to say, but I'm willing to hear it.”

Thea nodded. “Something happened with me and, okay, with Garret.”

“You slept with him?”

“God no,” she said. “Something trickier than that.”

“Go on . . .”

“He was flirting with me. Hard-core flirting. Like, I want to take you home and have my way with you flirting.”

Dani laughed. “And that surprises you? Thea—he talks to every woman like that. It's just how he is.”

“I don't think it's the same.”

Dani sat back in her seat. “So what are you telling me here? That you want him too?”

“Well—”

“Because that absolutely can't happen.” She smacked her hand on the table. “If you want a rebound lay, you're going to have to pick someone else. I know I've been encouraging you to try new things, but I don't think anyone was talking about your ex's brother.”

Thea got up, not because she needed to stand, but because she felt too close to the conversation. Dani always had a way of cutting right to the bottom line when she had a problem to solve—and whether she hit the bull's-eye or not, she stood by her convictions.

Thea paced, caught in the sting of pent-up frustration. Dani was right to suspect what Thea hadn't allowed herself to suspect—that she was looking for a rebound, that it was only natural. After years of a lackluster love life, she was overdue for some toe-curling, sheet-twisting sex. But even before Garret had told her he wanted her, she'd been feeling uneasy—leading her to suspect that her sex life was part of the problem, but not all.

“It's not entirely about that,” Thea said. “It feels like something else.”

“Like you need closure.”

She nodded.

Dani leaned an elbow on the table. “Oh I see. It makes sense. You've got closure from Jonathan. It's probably in a drawer in your filing cabinet with the Rhode Island notary seal on it. But with Garret, things are still a little open-ended. You've got to find a way to close things off.”

“How?”

“Get it all out in the open. And then, you just . . . let it go.”

“Let it go . . .” Thea thought of a balloon lifting toward the sky. A wave pulling out to sea. Lovers coated in sand. She swallowed hard. “You think so?”

“Talk to him,” Dani said. “You've got to march straight up to your problems and face them head-on. As soon as you can.”

“You're right,” Thea said.

 

 

The week following his graduation, the local paper did a story to highlight where some of the more successful students of the senior class were headed during the coming year. Garret's picture had been on the front page. A soccer ball was suspended in space just before contact, his body was lifted off the ground, and his lips were open and drawn back into a roar that rang out even from the silence of a photograph. Garret's parents had cut out the clipping and hung it on the refrigerator, and his mother had planned to have it laminated for future family albums. That way, when Garret was signing autographs and getting sponsorship deals, his family would have proof that he came from the same place as the rest of them.

That was the vision that Garret's family had of him—their boy who stood on the brink of a dazzling future. But in the weeks after graduation he carried a vision of himself that was much different than what the paper showed.

Once, when he was young and his family still lived in New Jersey, he'd gone to summer camp with Jonathan. The camp was in the northwestern part of the state, so that the hiking trails and lean-tos of the Boy Scout–owned property were surrounded by green hills and crystal lakes. Garret had thrived at summer camp—playing pranks, sneaking to the girls' cabin at midnight, kicking ass at scavenger hunts and other games.

But one day, while everyone gathered at rows of picnic tables to eat their desserts, the winds changed. Garret was struck suddenly by a hot, gnarled pain low in his stomach. He fled to the boy's room. His guts turned themselves inside out in every way possible, leaving him gasping for air and wiping tears from his cheeks. Later, they would tell him it was food poisoning. He splashed water on his face and did his best to put himself back together. He didn't want to look weak, and he thought no one would notice. But when he got out of the bathroom, his cabin supervisor was waiting for him in the hall.

What he didn't know was that while he was getting sick, one of the camp counselors had quieted the group of a hundred middleschool campers for announcements. And everything that had happened in the bathroom—the puking, the shitting, the stomach turning inside out—had echoed through the high rafters of the mess hall. He had to walk through the crowded cafeteria to the infirmary, his eyes on the floor and his face burning, as the other campers, all seated and looking up at him, laughed and laughed. He'd vowed to himself never to be in a position that could cause him so much embarrassment again.

And yet, what had happened in the barn with Thea could not even begin to compare to his childhood humiliation. The way Thea looked at him with her big, trusting eyes said that she was prepared to put not only her virginity in his hands but everything else too. And he knew that when he slept with her, it would be more than just the sweaty and greedy sex that he'd so often begged her for on the floor of her bedroom. It would be the equivalent of getting married.

He'd told himself, as he sat bouncing his legs beneath his chair in Spanish class, watching the clock tick closer to his rendezvous in the barn, that he was just having a little performance anxiety—and that the edginess was a good thing: nervousness electrified him before an especially big soccer game and made him run faster, play harder than he might have played if he simply didn't care. He and Thea had made plans months ago for the specific time and day that they were going to do it. He would not let himself be so cowardly as to back out.

He'd had to accept failure instead. What happened between him and Thea in the barn had seemed to be an event entirely separate from the stream of hot encounters that happened on her bedroom floor. He felt removed from her—as if he was carrying out an act. He let his body dictate the terms, and afterward, he was horrified to see that Thea had been crying. He was a boy walking through the mess hall—having just committed the most humiliating act of his life—all over again. But this time, there was more at stake.

In the days that followed, Thea had made a couple of awkward attempts to speak to him—not to say
I miss you
or
I love you
, but to say, in not so many words,
You were a horrible disappointment
. Eventually, she stopped speaking to him altogether.

The days grew longer and hotter. The nights were suffocating and damp. And there, on his parents' refrigerator, was a picture of him snapped at the height of his power, a good-looking, promising young winner about to kick a game-changing goal. He really wanted to be the guy in the photograph, but deep down, he wasn't. Especially not to Thea—who would never look at him that way again.