He rested his head on my shoulder, and I stroked his cheek, bathing in guilt that I had brought him and, even worse, that I had kissed Parker. No, not kissed Parker. Made out with Parker like a teenager for much longer than I would like to admit, totally unable to pull myself away from him. “Poor baby. I am so sorry. This is my fault. I should have known.”
“We won, Amelia. They won. All that glory, and poof! Just gone.”
“I know, Harris,” I said soothingly. “But it’s okay. It isn’t the end of the world.”
He sat up and looked at me seriously. “They will hate me forever now. I will never be a part of your world the way I want to be because of this stupid, stupid thing.”
“No, no,” I lied. “They’ll all forget about it.” They would never, ever forget about it. And, unlike the other scenarios I had imagined, it would take a long time for any of them to treat this like a funny anecdote. Yeah, maybe it was stupid that a fishing tournament was so important to them. But it was. Yeah, the loss of nearly seven figures worth of prize money hurt. But I knew it was the loss of the bragging rights of a lifetime that bothered my dad and Mr. Thaysden most of all.
* * *
Later that night, I finally convinced Harris to show his face. Harris; my friends Sarah, Jennifer, and Madison; Parker’s friends Spence and Watson; Robby and Trina; and, of course, Parker were milling around the Thaysdens’ porch. It was a tradition of sorts, that the “kids” gathered for dinner at the Thaysdens’ after the tournament and the “adults” gathered at Dogwood. Our hometown friends were all married now, but the spouses that weren’t Cape Carolina natives had politely bowed out after the first year. This was an old-school Cape Carolina tradition. It was awkward when other people joined in. But we couldn’t very well tell Harris to stay in my old bedroom.
We had all gotten the routine down over the past two decades or so: Parker cooked the steaks on the grill, Sarah was in charge of twice-baked potatoes, I handled the asparagus, which couldn’t have been simpler—olive oil, lemon, salt, pan—and Spence made his famous sangria. We had garlic bread if Watson wasn’t so drunk from fishing all day that he burned it. It hadn’t happened yet, but we were holding out hope.
I was feeling mightily uncomfortable, not only about my boyfriend ruining half the lives in that room, but also because of the night before with Parker. I stole a glance or two at him, looking so competent and strong in his apron at the grill. He wanted to be with me. The night before, I had been more than certain that I wanted to be with him too. But then there was Harris and the fun we had and the plans we had made.… So I avoided it. I sat here on a teak bench overlooking the marsh, with my friends gathered around drinking their beverages of choice, as Trina said, “So, of course, the teacher says, ‘Well, Robby Jr. was calling a girl at school ‘butt face,’ and when I told him he couldn’t call her that anymore, he started calling her ‘poopy-pants.’ And it’s awful, and I know it, and she is so serious, and what do I do? I burst out laughing. And she looks at me like, No wonder your kid is a delinquent.”
And then we all burst out laughing because, well, it was funny, and also Trina was so animated and adorable as she told the story that you just couldn’t help but join in the fun. Harris’s arm was around my shoulder, and he squeezed me to him and kissed my temple right as Parker caught my eye.
So I did what any woman in my position would do: I finished off the rest of my beer and reached down into the cooler beside me to get another one. The fact that this was my fourth beer was perhaps not totally ideal, which I realized as I stood up for dinner.
I have plenty of friends who are the good kind of drunk. You know, the ones who get really quiet so as not to make fools of themselves? Well, not me. I am the kind of drunk who doesn’t exactly realize that she’s totally wasted, instead finding herself more charming and adorable than ever. So I just get louder and tell more stories, and everyone else is laughing their heads off, partly because they’re drunk, too, thank God, partly because they actually think I’m funny, and partly because I’m embarrassing myself so badly.
After I served the asparagus on the fine china, I sat down at the head of the table. And who was to my left and right? Why, Harris and Parker. Charming. Comfortable. So now I was drunk and nervous, which made me drink more and talk more, which is the only reason I can possibly imagine that I said, through my second bite of dinner, “I’m lucky that my pee never smells like asparagus.”
Spence, from the other end of the table said, “It’s not that your pee doesn’t smell like asparagus. It’s that you don’t have the gene to be able to smell it.”
“Wait, wait, back up,” Jennifer said. “So what you’re saying is that everyone’s pee smells like asparagus, it’s just that only some people can smell it?”
“Exactly,” Spence said, looking very self-assured.
“I can’t smell it,” Trina said.
“Me neither,” Robby chimed in.
“Oh, I can,” Parker said. “Definitely.”
“Me too,” Harris said. “Just a little fun fact about the man you’re moving in with.”
Everyone around the table was chattering loudly, and I was finishing my beer, which is the only reason I can imagine that I said, “I want to see if my pee actually smells like asparagus. Who will smell it for me?”
The table quieted down, I think sensing that something pretty exciting was happening at our end, and, as Harris said, “Gross, Amelia. No way,” Parker chimed in, very seriously, “I’ll do it.”
The drunk version of Amelia who believed she was charming said, “Oh, yay!”
And then I proceeded to stand up and teeter down the hall to the master bathroom, Parker on my heels.
As he closed the door behind him, I think I sobered up just enough to realize that this was crazy and also inappropriate. So I said, “Oh, Park. You don’t have to smell my pee.”
He laughed. “Lia, if the past thirtysomething years haven’t proven this to you, there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you. I will even smell your asparagus pee.”
Even though he laughed as he said it, I knew he was serious. And it felt so heavy, that statement.
“Hey, Park,” I said, “if my trying to have your baby didn’t prove it, I’d do anything for you, too.”
I leaned back against the vanity, the edge cold and hard through my sundress. I glanced over at the silver tray Olivia kept perfectly organized with makeup. When I was little, Mom never let me play in her makeup. But Olivia always did. I almost wanted to pick up one of her softer-than-air brushes and swirl it in powder just to feel it on my face.
Parker took a step toward me, and that’s when I realized, once and for all, that I wanted him to keep walking toward me, that there might have been a man out there who was handsome and smart and strong, but when I thought about love, how it felt, it wasn’t him that I thought of. It was Parker. Spending time with him again was the first time my guard had really been down since… since, well, ever. My entire life I had these walls up when it came to men, when it came to actually really, truly loving someone in a way that could shatter my world. I had gotten the exact type of love I had given, guarded and self-protective. And I had received the type of love I had believed I deserved. But I was starting to see that maybe I could have more.