“Or maybe he never will, Beale.” Rafe rolled his eyes. “He’s famous now. You and me, even Gage, we were scared, but we didn’t have nearly as much to lose as Jayd does.”
“Yep,” I agreed, less than enthusiastically. “Guess that’s a possibility, too.”
“So why do you care so much about making Jayd comfortable? And do not,” he added, “give me some shit about helping him out because he’s an old friend who deserves support. You’re hoping this’ll make Toby come back somehow, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I admitted defiantly. “Maybe I’m hoping when he feels like he’s free to choose… he’ll choose to come back. Maybe once the way is clear for him, I can tell him that I… I have feelings for him. I know it’s a long shot. I know he’s got a life of his own in the city, and I don’t know if I could be happy there, but… I want to tell him. I want to try.”
Rafe nodded slowly and sipped his coffee again. “I hope you’re right.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, don’t hold back. This is the part where you tell me I’m ridiculous. This is the part where you tell me that I need to stop believing in fairy tales, and I should stop waiting for the Universe to act. This is the part where you tell me I was foolish to fall for a guy like Toby in the first place, let alone for thinking it would ever work out permanently—”
Rafe shook his head. “Not gonna do that,” he said softly. “I want you to be happy, Beale. I wanted you to not be afraid to want something and go for it. That’s all. That’s… that’s it. You know, when Aimee left…” He blew out a breath. “The God’s honest truth is, I was almost relieved. And I felt so, so guilty about that. Felt guilty about everything. Our relationship hadn’t been good for a while, but I’d figured it was circumstances, you know? Money was tight, we were all struggling. I figured things would sort themselves out.” He grimaced down at his coffee. “And they did, but not in a way I ever expected, and I had a lot of regrets. Did I not tell her I loved her enough? Did I just not love her enough, period? Part of the reason I blame Jayd is because I mostly blame myself.” He looked up at me. “But only part of the reason,” he said severely.
“Of course,” I agreed.
“Anyway, the worst part of Aimee leaving was wondering if there was something I could have done to make her stay, Beale. So if you care about him…”
I gave Rafe a long, measured look, and he grinned.
“Oh ho! So it’s like that, is it? Fine, if you loooove him—” He shoved my shoulder good-naturedly. “—then you need to keep trying. But I don’t get why you’re waiting on Jayd. Shit, go find Tr—Toby,” he corrected. “Do it today.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “I need to do this for him first. I need to clear this obstacle. He can’t make a real choice if he’s concerned the media will find him and…” I bit my tongue before revealing Toby’s identity as Hagatha. “I want to make the situation safe first.”
“Pretty sure telling him he’s not alone would go a long way toward making him feel safe. That’s what Aunt Hagatha would tell you, righ— Oh. Hang on, Dad’s calling.”
While Rafe stood up to take the call, I bit my lip and spun my juice glass, thinking about what he’d said. I’d sort of imagined Toby was back in New York, mostly caught up in the whirl of his life again. I remembered our conversation in the pool—how he’d said he couldn’t stand to live too far from a big department store—and figured he wasn’t missing the Key too much. But was it too much to hope he missed me?
Without conscious thought, I found myself with the phone in my hand, and for the first time in two weeks, I let myself type in the HiWire website.
I’d been a little worried that if I read Hagatha’s column knowing it was Toby behind the words, I’d miss him so badly I wouldn’t let myself stick to the plan and do things in the right order, make things good for him the way he deserved. But just then, every instinct screamed at me to do it, and I couldn’t resist.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, as soon as the page loaded and I read the first couple of lines. I read it through… then read it again a second time. My heart beat like crazy, and I jumped to my feet. “Rafe? Come on! We need to get to Littlejohn’s.”
19
Toby
Help Me Hagatha (Issue #2450)
Dear Readers,
For the past ten years, I’ve published five columns a week, forty-nine weeks a year. That makes two-thousand-four-hundred times I’ve told someone what to do, so you might well believe that Auntie has her own life sorted out, and that I am always kind, and brave, and practice what I preach.
Not so much.
Recently, I told a lie to a man I care about. It was a tiny lie. A lie of omission. To protect someone. And the truth was nobody else’s business. I had a billion reasons, a billion excuses. But in the end, when the lie came to light (and readers, they always come to light), I hurt this man I care about.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
When I should have owned up and apologized for my error, when I should have dropped to my knees and begged for forgiveness, when I should have barred the door (in a law-abiding, consensual sort of way) and insisted we not leave until we’d hashed out the truth, instead I let the lie stand and ran away to protect my heart… only to find I’d left the foolish thing behind in his keeping.
So, to that good man I hurt: I’m sorry I let you down. We are real. We are important. I thought you deserved someone more perfect than me, but it occurred to me that what you deserve is someone who really, really loves you… and there is no one who’ll do that better than I will. If you let me, I’ll prove it to you.
Readers, thanks for sticking with me, even when I mess up… because we all mess up.
Love always,
Hagatha
Look, it wasn’t like I’d been expecting Beale to storm the HiWire offices with a half-dozen buff, lightly oiled, and scantily dressed friends, each carrying a bouquet of red roses, to perform a highly choreographed flash-mob dance routine…
Or not exactly that, anyway.
For one thing, I was pretty sure he didn’t know where the office was, and for another, he knew my identity was a secret, for a third, I didn’t think he knew any Bruno Mars lyrics, which was kind of a requirement. And if that weren’t enough, there was the small matter of him never venturing farther north of Whispering Key than the Florida state line.
But I’d kind of expected a phone call.
Or a text.
Or a message delivered via trained plover.
Something.
I’d definitely expected something.
I’d woken up thrilled to greet the sun for the first time in weeks, so secure in the knowledge that I had fixed things that I literally sang in the shower. No, I will not tell you what song. No, we shall never discuss it again.
Fine, it was Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” if you must know, and I danced so aggressively that I bumped my elbow on the tile quite, quite hard, so that pain still radiated through my forearm even half a day later.