That next, unspoken step required me moving out of Greer’s house, cleaning out her closets. It required untangling myself from her family and likely even McCann Media.
It was the only thing that was blocking us from moving forward, the one thing we really needed to address before making a lifelong commitment to each other, whatever that looked like. And yet it was the only thing we couldn’t talk about.
It was between us every time we made love, every time we held hands in a movie theater, every time we spent a long Sunday on a couch reading the same book and laughing at all the same places… Even now, as we held hands on flight 794 from New York, New York, to New Bern, North Carolina, Amelia’s head resting on my chest, dozing.
I laid my head on hers, and felt more than ever the fear I had that if I told her the truth it would all be over, the terror that if I didn’t, my secret would eat me alive or, at the very least, blow up in my face. I couldn’t lose another woman I loved. And so I sat, smelling the organic fragrance of her hair, listening to the beautiful sound of her breathing, holding my breath, praying she couldn’t sense what I wasn’t saying.
“Can you believe this is happening?” she asked sleepily.
I kissed the top of her head but didn’t answer.
“What do you think they’ll say?” she asked.
In the dark interior of the plane, passengers sleeping all around us, I said, “I think we both know that they’re going to be thrilled.” I felt the panic welling up in my throat again. When we told them, it was all going to become incredibly real; our bubble was going to burst. That’s what did it: the thought of the way my mother was going to look at me. She wouldn’t say anything, but I would know that she knew what I wanted and that I hadn’t told the one woman I professed to care about more than anyone else in the entire world. But it was so late tonight. We would sneak into our respective houses and (hopefully) sleep. We would wake up to big breakfasts, mine cooked by Mom, Amelia’s cooked by Aunt Tilley if she was having a good day, which I hoped she was because that woman made the best cinnamon rolls in the entire world, and I wanted one or three or four.
When we arrived in Cape Carolina an hour later, I was prepared to kiss Amelia good night in the driveway. She smiled in a way that made me suspicious. “I’m not tired,” she said.
I was exhausted. “Oh no?” I asked teasingly, deciding that whatever she wanted from me was more exciting than sleep. She dropped her bag in the driveway and took my hand, pulling me in the direction of the dock.
“I will not do it,” I whispered.
“Will not do what, sweetheart?” she asked entirely too innocently.
As we reached the end of her dock, the moon so bright on the water it looked like daylight, she pulled her shirt off over her head.
“Amelia Saxton,” I whispered again. “Don’t you even think about it.”
“Think about what?” She batted her eyelashes at me.
Her skirt fell to her ankles and she stood on the edge of the dock, bathed in light. “Amelia!” I hissed again as she walked toward the end of the dock and raised her hands up over her head.
She knew how terrified I was of the water at night. There could be sharks or snakes. But she didn’t care. She dove right in. Damn her. And bless her. Because that, more than anything, is what made us work. I stood back. I calculated. I planned. I watched. I took notes. And Amelia? Amelia jumped. Maybe I had spent a long time betting on the wrong horses, taking the wrong risks. But, God, looking at her as she came to the surface, laughing, the moon shining on her wet hair and face, I didn’t want to think anymore. I just wanted all of her, whatever that entailed.
As I took my shoes off and unbuckled my pants, I made myself a promise. Whatever it took, whatever I had to sacrifice, even if it was my chance at fatherhood, I would do it. Because being with the woman who made everything in my life seem right was worth sacrificing anything.
And so I dove headfirst into the deep, dark, scary waters. I pushed aside the thoughts of what could be waiting for me. I pushed aside the millions of ways it could go wrong (or that I could be eaten by a shark). And I came to the surface, back to my girl, the one whose arrival in my life had, in some ways, shocked me and, in others, seemed like the most natural progression in the world.
I pulled her to me, treading water. And her body went limp. “For a girl who almost drowned, you sure aren’t afraid, are you?”
She looked me straight in the eye, and I saw something shift in hers. “I have been terrified my entire life, Parker. But a man who saved me once isn’t ever going to let me drown. And there is so much comfort in that.”
And, just like that, everything changed. She was mine. I was hers. Sure, a part of me would always belong to Greer. But Greer was gone. And in my arms, in the dark water, was the woman I had dreamed of since I first imagined what love would be like.
Love was here. Love was now. There was no sense pining for what could have been. And there was certainly no use risking the perfection of these simple moments with the woman I loved for something as dangerous as the truth.
Elizabeth
A SENSE OF URGENCY
I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY EYES. At first, I wanted to call the police. Who were the vagrants swimming outside my house? I was about to walk outside to tell them to scram when I realized it: That girl laughing with wet hair streaming down her back? That was my daughter.
I got out my phone. LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW.
Olivia: I am trying to sleep, which you know is almost impossible these days.
Elizabeth: OLIVIA, GET UP.
Olivia: Is your phone stuck on caps again?
Elizabeth: No. I am trying to convey a SENSE OF URGENCY.
Olivia: All right. I’m getting up.
Olivia: Call 911! There are intruders in the sound.
Olivia: Wait. Is that who I think it is?
Elizabeth: Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?
Olivia: No way. Absolutely no way. They aren’t together. Are they? Wouldn’t they have told us?
This was getting ridiculous. I called her.
“Are they together together?” Olivia asked breathlessly.
“Yes,” I whispered sarcastically, tiptoeing out of the bedroom. “I’ve known for weeks, and I’ve just been keeping it from you.”
“Ha ha,” she said. “Okay, fine. I knew Parker was coming home, but I didn’t know he was coming with Amelia.”
“What if this is just a fling?” I asked. “Like, they met up at the airport and they are drunk and making out in the sound.”
“Don’t even tease about that,” Olivia snapped.
“I’m not teasing, Olivia.” I glanced down at my coffee table, my eye catching Greer’s last book. Other People’s Problems. I grinned, because wanting their kids to be happy… That was someone else’s problem. For now, it seemed that mine both were.
“Whatever you do,” I said, “do not ask them about this. If they want us to know, they’ll tell us.”
“But…” she whined.
“But nothing, Olivia. Promise me.”
“Well…”
“If you don’t promise me right now, I’m going to quit sharing these fun secrets with you. When I see something scandalous, I’m just going to keep it to myself.” We both knew that was a lie. What was the fun of even knowing a secret in the first place if you didn’t have a best friend to tell?