15. Thursday #3
“I’ve spent the whole week listening to everyone telling me how gorgeous your ex-girlfriend was.”
“So?”
“So am I just a replacement for––”
“I broke things off with Freya the day I found out you were getting a divorce.”
Sarah stared at him for a moment. There was no way that could be true. Why would he say something that was obviously untrue? “That’s…you haven’t spoken to me in years. You never called me when you came to Toronto.”
“To say what? That I was in love with you? You got married too fast for me to get the chance.”
She was silent again. It was so quiet that she felt like her heartbeat must be audible to the whole world.
He spoke gently. “If I had shown up at Paul’s wedding and told you I’d been secretly in love with you for years, would you have believed me?”
She shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Right, exactly. I know you better than that.” He drew closer, then very cautiously took her hand.
“I know you, Sarah. So I have been trying everything I can to earn your trust back. And to show you that there could be a way for us to be together. To show you that I want to make this work, and maybe in another year, if Jandro goes away to school, I could move to Toronto to be with you.”
The words were coming too fast for her to make sense of them. “You could move to Toronto?”
“Assuming he goes away to high school. But worst-case scenario, in five years he’s in college. But if you won’t even trust me to even—I just don’t understand what you want from me. You seem to assume the absolute worst of me, all the time.”
“Danny left me.” The words poured from her faster than she could stop them. “He got a twenty-four-year-old pregnant and left me for her.”
Ren’s expression changed. For once, she didn’t mind that he was looking at her with pity.
“We were having fertility issues,” she said quietly, “both of us, not just me, but I think he figured he was fertile enough to get someone younger pregnant. I think he deliberately was careless with birth control when he cheated on me, because then he would not only have an excuse to end things but he’d get the baby he wanted in the process. ”
Ren’s voice was low and hard. “What an absolute fool.”
“So if I’m worried about not being a twenty-five year old, it’s because I was left for one. And I had gotten more confident. I liked the way I looked. And then my body failed me and he left.”
“No, he failed you. He was the one who failed. You always date these guys who are never worthy of you. Why didn’t you wait for me?”
She stared at him. “Wait for you?”
“After Paul and Trish’s wedding, I told you I was going to figure things out, I went to therapy, and then six weeks later you were bringing a new boyfriend home. Why didn’t you give me a chance to explain things? Or call me and yell at me before you moved on?”
“Because it hurt too much!” she said, her voice breaking. “Because you always picked me last. Even in Las Vegas, you slept with some stranger the day I arrived and then wouldn’t sleep with me.”
“Because I loved you!”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t get to just…
” She thought about her mother and father—the way her mother had fallen apart completely when she lost the man she loved.
Maybe Sarah had tried to avoid being with men she was madly in love with because she never wanted to break like that. “You don’t get to say that to me.”
“I know.” He was quiet for a moment. “I should have told you back then how I felt. I should have told you years ago.” He sighed.
“I told you that I grew up convinced my mother didn’t love me.
It wasn’t true, but it felt true. So when I met Paola, she had this…
this low-level contempt for me, and I thought, ‘Great. She’s smart, like my mother.
She’s capable and independent. If I can get this woman to love me, that proves I’m worth loving.
’ But Paola never respected me, because I wasn’t like her father.
And I was never going to be this dominant, take-charge businessman.
So our whole marriage, I was trying to prove that I was worthy of being loved, and she was trying to turn me into someone worth loving.
” He paused, waiting until she met his eyes.
The night was wide and quiet around them.
“By the time I got divorced,” he said, “I realized that Paola and I had never really loved each other. Because she never saw any of the good things about me. So when I reconnected with you, and you told me that you saw those things, and that you loved me, I panicked. Because I wasn’t ready.
I went to therapy to figure out what happened.
And one of the things I did in therapy was finally talk to my mother.
She told me she had spent my teen years stressed about her marriage.
None of it was about me. I’d carried all that self-hatred for nothing. ”
“And maybe because of what that older woman did to you.”
“Maybe because of that,” he agreed.
“And now?” she asked, so quietly that she could barely hear her own voice.
“Now I just want to be with you,” he said, sounding almost resigned.
“It’s why I created this whole workshop in Newfoundland.
It’s why I offered you a job. And I know I can’t ask you to wait for me.
I can’t even guarantee Jandro will end up going away to school, and if he doesn’t, it might be five years before I can move closer to you.
I just want to try. I want to see what would happen if we try.
And if you just want the assistant job and don’t want to be involved with me, that’s fine.
That will always be fine. But don’t turn me down because you don’t think I’m serious about you. Because you’re it for me.”
She felt as immobile as one of the rocks. His face was barely visible in the dark, but she could tell that he was nervous, gazing at her. He truly didn’t know what she would say.
“You can yell at me now,” he said after a moment. “If you want.”
“I love you,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’ve always loved you. It’s terrifying.”
He moved closer to her and took both her hands, squeezing them tightly. “I know.”
It was still hard to believe that anything between them could be real, but she wanted to hope. She wanted to have faith that something good could happen to her.
His gaze shifted to look above her head. “Look up,” he whispered.
She turned to see that the skies were now lit around them with a glow of violet and green, like a ghostly echo of a different world.
“Aurora,” he said.
Her heart felt full from the beauty around them, a silent harmony of stars and light. She took a long breath and squeezed his hand. “I guess we should wake everyone,” she whispered.
“Not yet.” Ren put one arm over her shoulder and stayed there, looking at the glowing light, the world spread out in front of them in endless beauty. They were silent together for a long moment, his arm warm around her shoulder.
“Ren!” It was Kyle’s voice calling from somewhere further along the shore. “Look up, man!”
“I see it!” Ren called.
“I’ll wake the others to see if they want to get a shot,” Kyle called. “Hey, everybody! Look up.”
They heard Kyle scrambling through the brush somewhere behind them. Ren and Sarah looked at each other, and then he pulled her against him, kissing her fiercely for just a moment.
“You said no kissing.”
“I did.” He took a deep breath. “I’m hoping Kyle is distracting Elka right now. But it is probably best if we don’t tell anyone about this for the next day or two.”
“I’ve spent twenty years pretending not to be in love with you,” she said. “I can handle another few hours.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “I love you so much.”
“Hold on,” she said. She lifted her cell phone camera to take a photo, posing the two of them against the night sky. “Before we go back, we need a photo of us together with that sky.”
“No,” he said with an affectionate tone. “Not like that. If you take a picture of us with a flash and no tripod, so help me, I will never forgive you.” She laughed as he found his camera to set up the shot.