23. Alice Enough History
Alice Enough History
“Elliott, I am going to kill you,” I whisper-hissed, stepping away from the party, out onto the sand.
The face that he made was comically horrified. “Never what one wants to hear coming out of the mouth of the Black Widow.”
He smiled at me with that smart mouth of his. Oh, and what a beautiful mouth it was.
“I just wanted to let everyone know that I was here with the most gorgeous woman at this ball.”
“And you thought dancing on the empty dance floor was the way to achieve that?”
“You could have said no,” he said, turning toward me.
I put my hands on his lapels. “I could never, ever say no to you in that tux,” I whispered, biting my lip. That was the most utterly true thing I had said today.
He smiled playfully. “Well, now. That is a piece of information I will be storing for later.”
I took his hand. “I want to show you something.”
“Man, this night keeps getting better!” he said.
I laughed as I led him down the shoreline. “You aren’t drunk, are you?”
“What? No.”
I nodded, hurrying him along past the lights and noise of the busiest part of Juniper Shores, toward the darkness. We turned left into a practically deserted parking lot, and I led him to an old-timey billboard—no lights, no flashing screens—peddling Dollar Beer Night at the Tavern. This was nothing if not a town of inconsistencies, of high highs and low lows, a place where a party that was raising more than a lot of people paid for their houses was beside an Airstream serving slushies.
I bunched up my skirt and put my foot on the first rung of the ladder on the billboard, then looked back at Elliott. Maybe it wasn’t my best idea to climb in a ball gown. “This is why I wanted to make sure you’re sober.”
“Wait. We’re climbing this?”
“Are you scared?”
He smiled. “Doesn’t matter. I could never say no to you in that dress.”
“I’ll remember that for later,” I said, starting to climb the ladder that I had scaled dozens if not hundreds of times in my youth.
I was out of breath by the time I reached the top, less from the twenty-foot climb and more from nerves. It had been at least twenty years since I’d been up here. And never once had I brought a man.
I sat, as I had so many times before, and with more care than I’m certain I took as a girl, I scooted out far enough that my legs dangled over the edge. For the first time, I imagined plummeting to my death. Taking care not to tear my skirt, I scooted back and pulled my legs back on the billboard’s ledge.
Elliott laughed and sat down beside me. “You know, I think of myself as kind of an adventurous guy. But it has never occurred to me to climb the billboard.”
I shrugged. “Well, what can I say? With me, the thrills never cease.”
“You can say that again.”
I’d give Elliott credit. He was true to his word; he was patient. I’d seen him almost every day this week, and we’d held hands and done a lot of talking. And even when the energy was palpable between us, when the air crackled with the electricity we could make together—like it was doing now—he hadn’t so much as tried to kiss me.
“So, um, what are we doing up here? Besides missing the party that Bill Sitterly paid two grand apiece for us to attend.”
I pulled my knees to my chest, crinoline crunching around me. I pointed off into the distance, where we had a bird’s-eye view of the party. The dance floor, the dancers, the food. The music, quieter but still lovely, floated toward us.
“So, you wanted to watch the party instead of attend the party?”
I smiled. “My first job, at fourteen, was right down there, at the Tavern, washing dishes.”
Elliott made a face. “Not a good place for a little girl.”
I shook my head. “Everyone was really nice to me.”
Elliott nodded.
“But I used to come up here sometimes after my shift and watch whatever was going on. The bar scene, happy families getting ice cream, and, once a year, this party. I was a girl with little family and no money and no opportunities that I could see at the time, but I could come up here, and I could watch the rich, fancy people of Juniper Shores dance on that dance floor, and I would dream about being one of them one day.”
Elliott stared at me, and I could tell he was really listening.
“And I guess I just think it’s funny to realize that all that time I was wishing to be over there”—I pointed to the party—“maybe the best stuff was really happening up here. Because up here, I’m just me. No one is talking about my choices or my checkered past. I think there’s an irony in the fact that I used to crave being in those glittering lights, when, really, anonymity was probably better. You know what I mean?”
He nodded. “Alice, they don’t get to decide who you are.”
“Don’t they? I mean, an anonymous Instagram account is now dictating everyone’s next moves. These people who say I killed three husbands and am running a cult kind of do shape public perception.”
“But public perception isn’t truth.”
I thought back to Julie and her plan to clear Bill’s name. That entire scheme hinged on public perception, and I realized that I was a little jealous that the women under my roof were putting so much effort into fixing Bill’s reputation but hadn’t considered fixing mine. Although I wasn’t wrongfully imprisoned, so perhaps that was selfish.
“Sometimes I think about going somewhere new,” I said, sighing. “But then, even still, even now, I can come back to the top of this billboard and suddenly be a kid again. There’s something about a place with your history, that knows all your secrets, that’s kind of hard to move on from.”
Elliott took my hand and kissed it. “You don’t have to explain the lure of history to me. I spend my days engrossed in it.” He cleared his throat. “I came back here for it. If you can consider you and me a year ago history.”
Below us, I could see, under the glow of the string lights, the massive food table being disassembled, the stage in the center of the dance floor being erected, the band beginning to come in. That was one of the coolest parts of Belle Epoque. The band was in the middle, not on the end, so wherever you were, you were in the action. “Enough history,” I said. “Let’s go dance.”
Elliott smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.” I moved to get up, but he said, “Hey, thanks for sharing your special spot with me.”
I nodded. “You’re the only man I’ve ever brought up here.” I paused. “What I’m saying is, don’t screw it up.”
He laughed. “I absolutely will not.”
Elliott stood, so dapper in his tux, his bow tie ever so slightly askew from the climb. He took my hands in his and pulled me up. As I smoothed my dress, he never took his eyes off me. And I felt, quite simply, loved. Admired. Adored. How was that even possible? How could this man just look the other way, ignore all the things said about me, and love me anyway?
He ran his index finger down the side of my neck, along my collarbone, leaving chill bumps in its wake. I took a step closer to him, closing the small gap between us. “You really don’t care what they say about me?”
“I know you, Alice.” He stooped down so we were eye level. And he repeated, “I know you.”
The deepest calm settled around my chest, my stomach, the parts of me that always felt a little off-kilter.
“Can I be honest about something?”
“Always.”
“Elliott, I underestimated you. I mean, I loved you. And I believed you loved me. But I thought you were kind of a good-time guy. I didn’t believe you could handle the messy parts of me, the dark parts, the scary parts that I think we both need to face will never fully heal.”
He nodded. “That’s why I knew I had to come back. Because I realized that you have been through so much that just assuming you knew certain things—like that I was never going to leave you, that I didn’t need you to take care of me—wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to say those things out loud.”
Now he had. Several times, in fact.
He put his finger under my chin. “And I need to tell you out loud, Alice, that I can’t explain it. I don’t know why or how except for destiny and magic, but I love you in a way that feels like breathing, in a way that I cannot stop, even when I try.”
In that moment, on top of that billboard, in the dark, with the music of the Belle Epoque orchestra floating up and encircling us, I finally decided to let myself fall—into Elliott. Not off the billboard, to be clear. As he slipped his arms around my waist, I lifted my head, just a little, and let myself melt back into the kiss that I had missed for so long, the one that I had dreamed about. I let myself savor the way his lips, plump and soft, felt on mine, the way his hand felt in my hair.
It wasn’t a first kiss. Not really. But in some ways, it was. Because it was my first kiss with Elliott where I knew that I was willing to change my life for him, that I was willing to move into this next step together, that I was willing to set aside my fear and my pain and the routines that felt like they were saving me to create something that might set me free in a way I had never expected.
I would let go. I would take the leap. Because, as Elliott had reassured me dozens of times this week, he was man enough to catch me if I fell.