It’s been a long time since I’ve been close to the water. We lived on the Georgia border of South Carolina. I’ve missed the waves and the mere idea of seeing the wild horses.
“I hear you, Mom.”
She smiles to herself and goes back to her knitting when I stand.
The walk to the shoreline takes about ten minutes, but it’s ten minutes of total peace. There’s no one out, since it’s September and all the tourists are gone, leaving the locals back to their little slice of heaven. It’s still warm enough that it feels like summer, though. The breeze tonight is light, just enough so the air’s not stagnant.
I make my way over the dunes and see her.
Her back is to me as she sits looking out to the ocean. There’s a bottle of wine beside her, and I’m thrown back in time.
How many nights did we meet this way?
When the world was asleep and we wanted to pretend all our dreams were within reach.
Teagan was my world and my fantasy, wrapped up in one perfect person. I stand here, unsure of what to do. So much time has passed and I’m not ready to deal with the things between us.
So I do what I did thirteen years ago, I turn my back on her—again.
Chapter Ten
Teagan
Present
I know he’s here. I can feel his presence, even in the dark with the wind and sounds of the ocean, I can sense him.
If only I didn’t, maybe his being back in this town would be tolerable. Time has done nothing to diminish the connection I have with him, and that is the saddest part.
The seconds pass and I wait to hear his arrival. There’s no doubt he saw me, but as the numbers climb in my head, he still doesn’t appear.
I turn, shifting to see where he is, and that’s when I see him walk away. “Derek!” I call his name without thinking.
I’m frustrated because I should’ve let him go. It’s clear he didn’t want to talk and I don’t have anything to say—well, that’s a lie. I have a million questions I want answers to, but this place, this beach, is where we came when we needed to think.
Which we both clearly are grappling with.
Derek starts to walk toward me so I get to my feet, heading to meet him.
“Hi,” he says as we stand a yard apart.
“Hi. If you want the beach, I can leave,” I offer.
If he needed solitude, I’ll grant him that. I’ve been here for an hour already and feel no better than when I arrived.
“No, no. It’s fine, really. Not like the beach isn’t big enough for the both of us.”
“Then why did you leave?”
He straightens his back and looks off to the left. “I don’t know.”
“You saw me, right?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” The air escapes my chest in a huff. “I get it.”
He steps forward. “No, you can’t possibly because I don’t get it.”
I don’t know what he means, but my pride can only take so much. He was my best friend. He knew me. He was the only person on my side and he walked away.
He let me down.
“I’m truly too spent for riddles or anything. I’ll head out, take the solitude.”
When I start to walk away, he grips my arm. “Stay.” Derek looks as shocked as I feel. “We don’t have to talk, but I’d like you to stay.”
My heart is racing, and as much as I want to be the one to walk away this time, I can’t. I’d never been able to before, and it seems I’m still not. It’s clear that things are weighing on him.
“Okay.”
We walk down to the shoreline, allowing the water to lap over our feet.
This isn’t the time to ask the one question that weighs on me so heavily…how?
Not why, because I know why. It’s obvious that Meghan forbade him from talking to me. Something happened, I still don’t know what, but we went from some kind of mutual understanding to radio silence.
At first, I thought maybe she knew that I loved him. Although, not a soul was aware of that, so it always seemed impossible.
Then I thought she suspected something was going on between us, but again, it made no sense. Yeah, he was coming to see me once a month, like he did the entire time we were in college, but that was part of our thing.
So it isn’t the why that has kept me up at night, it’s how.
How could he do it?
How could he turn and walk away when he was my best friend?
I look at his face as we walk, but he keeps his eyes down.
“I can practically hear you screaming at me in your head,” Derek says with a sigh. “I said we didn’t have to talk, not that we couldn’t.”
I cross my arms over my chest to hold myself together. Instead of asking about what happened all those years ago, I decide to start small. “What brought you out here tonight?”
“Everly.”
“Teenagers will do that to you.” I try to make a joke, but he doesn’t laugh.
“She’s not handling things well.”
“I would assume not. Losing her mother isn’t easy, I would imagine. She’s probably full of anger and then moving…to here…I would be pissed too.”
Derek huffs. “Oh, she’s angry all right.”
“And you’re bearing the brunt of it?”
“Every day.”
I feel bad for him, but there’s a childish part of me, the wounded part, that’s kind of happy he’s getting shit. “Well, I’m here to tell you that single parenting sucks.”
“Gee, thanks for the encouragement.” Derek nudges me a little deeper in the water.
Thankfully, I don’t fall.
“I’m just being honest. I’ve been taking the hits since Chastity was born and it doesn’t get easier. You are always the bad guy and very rarely the good guy. Nothing you do will ever be right because…again…you suck.”
Derek lets out a laugh, but then turns his head. “I’ve felt that way for a while.”
“Welcome to the club. I’m the owner.”
Then both of us are quiet as we walk at a glacial pace. I’m not in a hurry, even though the proverbial elephant is between us.
“Everything I want to say to you right now seems so trivial,” he admits.
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
We both stop walking, and watch each other.
It’s apparent that we’re both dancing around what we want to say, but I don’t know that I’m fully ready to hear it all either. Once I know, I’ll have to decide how to handle it, whatever the outcome. In the past, I haven’t been known for my fantastic decision-making, but when it comes to him, I’m even worse.
I give him an out. “You never said, how did Meghan die?”
Derek’s eyes break from mine. “It was a car accident. She was running late to get Everly to cheerleading. They were arguing because Meghan was overwhelmed since she got her new job and kept forgetting everything. Including when she had to pick up Everly. I was in surgery and couldn’t get her this time.”
The tightness in my chest grows because I already know the ending. The tragic part is coming and there’s no alternate ending.