25. Carter
25
CARTER
The journey back to Harborview on Archie’s boat is crisp, clear, and calm. I’m standing at the prow of the boat, right next to Angela, and we’re both taking in the feeling of being out on the water. Every few minutes Angela gets her phone out to snap a few photos, muttering to herself about painting it when we get home. I hope she actually sticks to it, and that her job eases up and she has time for hobbies.
The journey takes us past clusters of small islands, mostly uninhabited, but we eventually make our way into the open sea, where it’s much easier to navigate. Archie will be able to take us right back to Harborview, since our town has a harbor of its own. In years past, it served as a spot for locals to dock their lobster boats or small sailboats. But recently, we’ve been seeing more and more large boats filled with tourists come in, and there’s talk of a yacht club and hotel opening on the other side of the harbor. I’m not sure planning permissions will go through—though if Hunter’s dad has anything to say of it, they will. He owns the most prominent building company on Mount Desert Island, and this business is exactly the type of thing he’d like to sink his teeth into.
I sent Hunter and Jamie a text before we left Isle North earlier, arranging to get a drink at O’Malley’s later. It will be good to catch up with both of them. Angela and I have only been gone for about five days, but it feels like a lifetime. Probably because we’ve come a long way towards mending things between us.
Five days ago I couldn’t imagine a time where she’d be comfortable enough with me to let me taste her pussy like I did last night, or to make her come over and over again. An image from last night, of Angela writhing beneath me with my cum coating her fills my head, and my cock springs to life in my pants.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
It took all the strength of will I possess to deny Angela this morning—to deny myself the chance to slide my cock in between her perfect lips. But for the moment, I want things to be about Angela, not me. Angela and I have come a long way in the last five days, but I still left her all those years ago. I violated her trust, and I’m not sure I’ve earned it back yet, or if I even deserve it.
I take a deep breath and turn away from the water and face Angela. I find that she’s already looking at me, a pensive, almost concerned look on her face.
“Everything alright?” I ask.
“I’m just thinking about last night,” she says. “And what it means.”
Fear lances through my heart, stopping me cold.
“Angela, all I wanted was?—
“About what I think it means to me ,” she clarifies.
“Oh.” I pause and don’t say anything else for a beat or two. “I asked you to give me this time here on Isle North to try and make it up to you.” My chest heaves with breaths coming rapidly now, and I recognize that what I’m experiencing is acute anxiety. Because I’m inches away from it—from asking her if it worked. If she forgives me. “How am I doing, Angel?” I manage to say, though I can tell that the grin I force is more manic than happy.
“You’re doing well,” she says, turning to face the water. Her hair is tucked into a low bun at the base of her neck, but a few curls are flying free.
“Do you forgive me?” I ask, unable to stop myself. I need to know where we stand. And we both deserve a bit of clarity after the last few days of muddling our way through not quite being friends, to all that last night was.
She turns to me once more and looks up at me, her eyes as bottomless and blue as the ocean around us. I feel myself tugged under by her stare, and then torn apart by what she says next.
“I’m not sure,” she says. “I’m not sure if I forgive you. I’m not trying to be evasive. I just…I just don’t know. How I feel about it all.”
“I know how I feel,” I say quietly. My heart is thundering and my hands are shaking at my side, but I know that I owe Angela some vulnerability. I can tell that it’s now or never—I need to make it clear what my intentions are. “You’ll have me until the end, Angel. You and me. I’ll never stop wanting it. I promise. Because,” I pause and take a deep breath before continuing. “Because you’re the chink in my armor.” The words are rough, and not as articulate as I normally am, but from the way her eyes light up, just for a moment, I know I’ve said the right thing.
“I want to believe you, Carter,” she says, and then rubs a spot on her chest, right over her heart, like she’s in physical pain. “But I just, I just?—
“What is it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm and not betray the anxiety pounding through me.
“After you left, I…I tried to move on. But I didn’t know what it was to be hurt like that. To be abandoned.”
Abandoned. The word spirals through me, because that’s exactly what I did to her.
“I dated other people and every time I met someone new, I’d give it my all. I’d put all my hope into it, yet I’d still expect it to crash and burn. I’d spend the entire time just waiting for them to leave. And they always did. I can’t make anyone stay, and I’m tired of it.” She chokes out a sob on this last part, and buries her head in her hands.
And I can’t take it, seeing my girl broken like this. I pull her into me and let her sob into my chest, as I stroke her back, and whisper to her that I’m not going anywhere, that I’m here for good, that she doesn’t need to worry about me leaving again.
But I realize that my promises must feel empty to her, the words hollow and meaningless. I might not be leaving, but Angela clearly doesn’t believe that, and I have no idea how to change her mind.
We get back to Harborview by noon, and Archie drops us off at the town marina. Angela gives him a hug that surprises him, but I can tell he’s also pleased. And blushing a bit. She makes him promise he’ll come to Harborview over the summer, and I make vague plans with him to go bird watching again sometime.
Jamie picks us up from the marina, and drives Angela home first, heading down the winding country roads to the small house she’s rented on the outskirts of town. It’s a clapboard siding ranch style house, with a small deck and Adirondack chairs out front.
“Thanks for the ride, Jamie,” she says as she gathers her things and gets out of the car. “Carter, I guess I’ll, um, see you around?”
“You will,” I tell her confidently, deciding that pretending like everything is fine and going swimmingly is a better strategy than showing her how sad what she told me on the boat was.
“Okay,” she squeaks, and then hurries out of the car and up to her house. She opens the front door and I catch one last flash of blonde hair before she’s inside.
Jamie heads in the direction of my house, across town and into North Woods, and stays silent for a few minutes, though I can tell he’s burning with questions. His stupidly handsome face has this pinched look on it, which means he’s trying to reserve his judgment and failing.
“Are you really going to make me ask, man?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Fine,” he grinds out. “What was that? What is going on with you and Angela? Why did she say goodbye to you like that?”
“It’s nothing,” I say, because he’s free to ask me but I’m not obligated to share. And I’m not sure I want Jamie’s opinion on this. He doesn’t know what it’s like. Sure, he and Cat might have dated other people for a while before they figured things out, but he’s never not been sure that she loved him. There’s never been a question that they’d end up together, especially now that they’re engaged.
“Don’t fucking do that,” he says, his curse surprising me. “Don’t do that evasive shit with me, not when you just spent five days stranded on an island alone with the woman you’ve been in love with since we were eleven.”
“That’s beside the point,” I tell him, digging my heels in.
“Oh please,” he says, sighing audibly. “You’re going to tell us about it whether you like it or not.”
“Us?”
“Yeah. Me and Hunter.”
“Where, exactly, are you taking me, James?”
“To your house,” he says innocently.
“And who am I going to find there when I arrive?” I grimace. Jamie has the keys to my house because he lived with me for a few weeks last year after him and Cat broke up for a bit and he moved out of his horrible father’s house.
“Just Hunter. And a few six packs. We just want to know what happened.”
I don’t demean myself by responding to that. I’ll tell them what happened with me and Angela when we’re back together and everything is settled.
Hunter has set up my living room like he’s ready for a full-on intervention.
There’s one chair in the middle of the room, which I assume is meant for me, and two other chairs are facing it. The curtains and blinds are all drawn shut, and I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t added straps to the chair to tie me down.
I take one look at it and turn on my heel to leave. Only to find Hunter blocking my path.
“We just want to talk.”
“You sound like you’re in the mob or something,” I grumble.
“And you sound like an asshole,” he shoots back. “We wouldn’t have to do all this if you would just tell us one thing about what’s going on or answer any of your texts.”
I feel slightly bad. I ignored him and Jamie hounding me for the last two days, asking me what was going on with Angela, and I only contacted them to let them know we were coming back today and wouldn’t need Captain Jones to pick us up.
“It’s not easy to explain,” I say, settling for honesty. “And I’m not sure where I’d even start. Or if you’d even want to hear the whole?—
“Hey, where were you when I left my dad’s house and had nowhere to go?” Jamie says, passing me a cold, open beer. “We want to hear the whole thing.”
“It’s just messy, and I, uh, I don’t know. I wanted to have a solution before I told you guys about it,” I admit, already feeling uncomfortable.
“Messy is exactly why you need to talk about it,” Hunter says firmly, and then starts ushering me into the living room.
“Can I at least sit on the couch?” I ask, pointedly avoiding the chair in the middle of the room.
“Sure, sure,” Hunter says.
I move the chair out of the way, and sit on the couch facing him and Jamie, who are both looking at me with expectant looks on their faces. For a moment, I feel really fucking grateful to have such good friends.
“So, uh, I guess I need to start at the beginning.”
“Oh my god,” Hunter says under his breath.
“So you know that party at the beginning of the summer when we were twenty? At Huddle’s Cove? Right before I did that internship.”
“Yes,” Jamie says slowly. “I guess I remember that.”
“Cat chased you around the fire and she almost fell in,” I tell him, and understanding dawns on his face immediately, and he smiles.
“She’s so cute,” he says.
“Shut up,” Hunter mutters. “This is about Carter.”
“Anyways, that was the first time Angela and I hooked up.” I plunge on, and tell them how we spent one perfect week together before I left for my internship. “I fucked up,” I tell them. “I knew I was in love with her and I guess I got scared. I was overwhelmed. I had all this stuff I wanted to do, so many more years of school and grad school and work before I got to where I wanted to be, and I guess I thought if we tried to be together then and there, it would never work, and I’d lose,” I pause and take a deep breath. “I’d lose the love of my life before I even got the chance to really have her.”
They both sit there in stunned silence.
“I can’t believe you hooked up all those years ago,” Hunter says, shaking his head.
“I understand what that feels like, man,” Jamie says after a moment. “To be so scared of ruining something you don’t even try. I was scared to tell Cat how I felt about her for a decade.”
“Thanks,” I say, my hands shaking a bit. “It’s stupid because I ended up losing her anyways. And even if my actions back then are understandable, Angela still got hurt. Badly.” I don’t tell them anymore than that, about how abandoned she felt, or what she told me about other men she dated. That’s her story to tell. “She doesn’t trust me now. Not even after last week.”
“What happened on the island?” Hunter takes a long swig of his beer, as if preparing for me to brush him off.
But I don’t. Instead I say, “I asked her to give me until we were back in Harborview to make things up to her.”
I give them the reader's digest version of our time in the cabin and at Margery’s, including things like our trip with Archie, but leaving out the way she licked whiskey from my neck, and how I had my hands and mouth all over her. Hunter and Jamie aren’t stupid, and I think they understand what I mean when I tell them that by the last night on Isle North, Angela and I were starting to work things out.
“And I don’t know what to do now. She said she’s not sure about me—about how she feels.” My voice cracks on the last words, and I can’t help but get choked up. Fucking hell. My first time talking to my best friends about Angela and I cry. Jamie hands me a tissue silently, and Hunter grabs me another beer.
“She should be sure,” Jamie says. “It sounds like you spent all week making up for things and if she can’t see that you’re sorry then?—
“No,” I say vehemently. “None of this is on Angela.”
“But—
“I know you’re just defending me, Jamie, but not—not everyone is like you and Cat,” I say.
Hunter nods in agreement.
“Not everyone has trust that goes that far back or that deep. Angela doesn’t trust me to stay by her side because in the past, I left. I did that. Not her, me.”
“So what are you going to do?” Hunter asks.
Renewed determination fills me, and an idea starts forming in my head.
“Show her that I’m still here,” I say. “And that I’m not going anywhere.”