16 Leave a Mark on Their Lives
16
Leave a Mark on Their Lives
I want…
I couldn’t sleep, and I kept repeating those two words over and over. I want, I want, I want… They reverberated inside me. It was painful, but I didn’t know how to stop it.
I sat on the windowsill and leaned my head against a pane of glass. Outside, the night swallowed everything.
You just have to believe in yourself , Trey had said. But I also needed to get my thoughts in order, meditate on my dreams, choose which of them mattered most. And that meant no longer being so scared of rejection that I strove to satisfy people, to impress them and live up to their expectations.
Accept all the times I tried to say no and said yes instead.
I thought of all I had accomplished up to then. Being a model student with grades that had brought me the admiration of my professors, an internship at a prestigious publisher that a lot of people would have sold their soul for…and? What else? Those two things summed up my entire life. Study and work. Every damned hour of the day.
And my father still didn’t see me.
Because that discomfort in my chest was always about him.
I felt terrible.
Nothing I ever did would be enough. Nothing.
Another what-if occurred to me. Another maybe.
And I started panting, and my lungs burned.
Why was I still trying to deny it?
I would never win him over. I’d never get his acceptance. Or his admiration. Or his… love.
For sixteen years, I’d been trying to make a place for myself in his life. How much longer would I have to keep going before I could convince myself it would never happen?
To hell with him! I was the one who mattered!
I tried to dig around in myself and find a shred of happiness, no matter how tiny, for all the things I had, for all I’d done, without any help from anyone. And what I found was nothing.
Emptiness.
Just plain emptiness.
I didn’t have friends. Not real friends, not the kind you go out to dinner with, take vacations with, the kind who want to share your thoughts. The closest were my brother and sister. But I hardly ever saw them; we just talked on the phone.
I was totally, horribly alone.
Alone and empty.
I had deceived myself, thinking it wasn’t that way. Had used my time wisely. Had set goals, overcome challenges, kept climbing upward. I’d imagined myself in a big office. My name in the papers. My photo in one of those lists of most influential people. Touching the sky. Being a star. None of it would be enough to make him say those four words, the four words that mattered most to me: I’m proud of you .
I walked over to the bed, tossed the pillow aside, and picked up my book and my grandmother’s letter. I reread it. I hadn’t done that since I’d left Montreal.
…when I look at you, I still see that little girl who would rather put books in order on a bookshelf than go play with other kids. The one who enjoyed making recommendations and dreamed of writing her own stories one day. I still recognize her in you and I still see the flickers of that old wish in your eyes. And that’s why I want to give you the chance to get that hope back.
I put the letter down and glanced around the room, trying to find my computer. Then I sat on the bed and turned it on. My hands were jittery as I opened a hidden folder. I hadn’t looked at it in years. I picked the first file on the list. One hundred twenty pages of a love story set in a fantastical universe, with gates to other dimensions and people with psychic powers. I grinned as I recalled how I’d come up with the idea after binging on all the seasons of Heroes and falling in love with Milo Ventimiglia.
I opened another and scanned the first few paragraphs. Dear Lord. I didn’t even remember this one; I must have been nine or ten when I started writing it. Next.
Dear Mr. Darcy, how much harm you did to my idea of love , I thought, after skimming the sad prologue to yet another of my manuscripts.
I lay back and rested the laptop on my belly and started to read my most recent attempt at a novel. A nearly finished project that I abandoned at the last minute out of…fear? Indecision? It felt like a century since I’d written the last word. Now I couldn’t remember what had stopped me.
I looked up, rubbed my tired eyes, and glanced at the clock. For three hours, I’d been absorbed in pages I myself had written. In those words, I had found so many parts of myself that I could have used them to build a second me. And that encouraged me.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I wasn’t lost. I’d just forgotten where I was hiding. For so long that I might as well have disappeared.
I got up feeling giddy with hope, like a rocket that was about to take off. And I knew. I’m not sure how, but I knew. I knew it in my body. I knew it in my heart. And I stopped falling, and the void beneath me disappeared, and my feet were on the ground. The veil had lifted, and I was walking tall, and at last I was getting somewhere.
Like a rocket, I flew out of the room. My heart was pounding out of my chest. It was late. I should have been asleep hours ago, but I needed to tell him. Out loud. I needed to tell him .
His door was cracked. I pushed it open.
“Trey?” I wasn’t sure he heard me, so I walked close to the bed. “Trey?”
“Harper? Are you…are you all right?” His voice was groggy, hoarse.
“I know what I want.”
“What?”
“I know what I want to do.”
He felt around for the lamp on the nightstand and turned it on, then blinked several times and rubbed his eyes, not quite able to believe what I was telling him. I climbed into the bed on my knees, smiling like a lunatic. I couldn’t help it—I was euphoric. So euphoric that I didn’t notice he was clothed only in a skimpy pair of boxers. A little patch of fabric and then skin, muscles, a patch of hair around his belly button, and five stars, each bigger than the one before it, trailing down his side.
That wasn’t there four years ago!
I tried to ignore the tingle I was feeling as well as my memories of the night we’d made love. He was squinting and smirking, but I could tell he thought I was acting weird.
“I know what I want to do,” I repeated. I waited a few seconds to make it suspenseful, then burst out, “I want to write. I want to live surrounded by books. I want to move other people with my words. I want to leave a mark on their lives. I want to create memories and feelings. I want to give people things to dream of. I want to make their hearts race. I want all that. And I want to do it in the only place I’ve ever actually been happy. My grandmother’s bookstore.”
Trey sat up and leaned against the headboard, seeming unsure what to say as he looked me over from head to toe.
“See? You do know what you want. You always did. You just needed to remember where you left that part of yourself.”
“I did! I found it! I can feel it. I can feel that tingle in my fingers telling me to write. That’s what I want to do. Not think about the future or other people. Who cares what anyone thinks? I’ve had enough of being the good little girl who just swallows everything, who always says yes, who bends over and lets everyone get their way.”
“Damn straight. Just because other people like to have an opinion doesn’t mean they have any idea who you are or what you need.”
“Well, to hell with them!”
“That’s right! To hell with them! No one can choose your road. It’s yours and yours alone.”
He understood me. And that made me happy.
“You’re a know-it-all, but I like that,” I said.
I felt something tug at that thread that had connected us those days, and suddenly my head was empty. And maybe that’s why I did the first thing that occurred to me. Stupid as it might have been.
I bent over clumsily and grabbed his chin and kissed him. Just for a second. And he kissed back, and I felt him sigh.
I pulled away as quickly as I could, realizing what I was doing, and jumped out of the bed.
“Thanks,” I said, walking out of the room.
I didn’t know what time it was when I woke. My head hurt, and I was hungry, but nothing could wipe away that warm feeling, sweet like honey, that filled me up inside. I walked out of the bedroom barefoot and headed downstairs.
No one was in the living room or kitchen, and when I peeked out the window, I saw Trey’s SUV wasn’t parked outside, either.
I was disappointed, but I got over it quickly. In my new life, there was only room for positive emotions. I poured myself a cold coffee and drank it out on the grass. It was perfect. The sun toasting my skin, the waves breaking in the distance, the whistle of the wind over the sand. I’d miss all this when I had to go back.
I sat for a while on a boulder, aware of how few moments like this I had left. I felt an unfamiliar inner peace and enjoyed the instant, truly living it. Without a past or a future. All present.
Back inside, I took a shower, then put on one of the dresses I’d stuffed randomly into my suitcase. It was a tiered dress, sheer on the outside, cream-colored, with a print of flowers and leaves. I sat on the bed with my computer, intending to look back at the manuscripts, notes, and documentation I’d been holding onto a long time. Some of my ideas struck me as worth rescuing and working on again.
It was stirring, but also intimidating, the idea that I was taking a step, changing my life, working on something that would make me happy.
After taking a glance at everything, I started to trust in my abilities, and I was ready to prove to myself that I could do it. But I knew the publishing world and how hard it was for a writer to stand out enough to get that first shot. Let alone the second. Let alone maintain your reputation and name enough to get a third.
It wasn’t easy to survive there.
You’re here today, but tomorrow you might be gone, and no one will give you a second thought. One minute you were surrounded by people, getting compliments, feeling important, feeling special. The next, it was silence, oblivion. The phone stops ringing, the doors stop opening.
But I pushed all that aside and focused on the main thing.
Chapter 1
In the morning, when I wake, a thin layer of white covers the grass up to the edge of the lake…
Sometime later—I don’t know how long—I heard a car coming down the road. I could tell by how loud the motor was that it was Trey. Our kiss from the night before flashed in my mind, and I could feel the aftershocks in my body.
Suddenly, I was embarrassed to see him. To face the fact that I had put my lips on his without even asking his permission.
As I was looking around for where to hide, the door opened and he was standing there beaming on the threshold, shaking a greasy paper bag. He tossed it to me, and I caught it in flight.
“It’s grilled turkey and cheese. Eat it, it’s getting late.”
“Late? Are you in some kind of rush?”
He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and took out two folded pieces of paper, looking like a child on Christmas morning.
“ We are. We’ve got two tickets for the ferry. It leaves in an hour. Throw enough clothes in your bag for a couple of days. We’re going to PEI!”
A thousand questions passed through my head, but he was gone before I could ask them. I jumped up, tore the sandwich wrapper, and took a bite. With my mouth still full, I went to his room. He’d opened a suitcase on the bed and was stuffing T-shirts inside.
“So you just up and plan a trip to Prince Edward Island without asking me?”
“You don’t ask people before you give them a gift, Harper. You just do it, and the other person accepts gracefully.”
“So this is a gift? What’s the occasion?”
“There are things to celebrate. I finished my blueprints, and you made your big decision.”
“Trey, I don’t know if I want to go to PEI. The day after tomorrow is Labor Day, and I need to go home after that. I like this place, and I think I’d rather stay here until then. Hang out with Adele, go back to eat at Ridge’s…” I lifted the hand with the sandwich in it, and a piece of lettuce fell out. I caught it before it touched the ground.
“I get it, and I’m not going to force you, but I’d really like you to come with me. We’ll go out, have fun. We had a bad start here. Here, and maybe in general. We barely know each other, and I’d like to change that. Make it better.”
“How?”
“By getting to know you and letting you get to know me. I’m not as bad as you think.”
“I don’t think you’re bad, Trey. Maybe just something of a mystery.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to be a mystery anymore.”
He looked nervous as he said this, but only for a moment, then he was back to his jaunty old self. I wondered how it was possible for everything to change between us in just a few days. All of a sudden, the villain wasn’t such a villain, and the princess had to admit she wasn’t such a princess, either, and she’d come down from the tower where she was imprisoned, and she wanted to live. It had taken her a long time. She’d had to realize she’d always had the key, but that a part of her hadn’t wanted to leave because she felt safe behind bars. That she’d gotten used to the ambiguity, the chaos in her mind, even as it was slowly poisoning her heart.
But now she was strong, and she was ready for a plot twist in this story that had been sad since the beginning. She was tired of thinking so much, tired of turning over the same things, looking at them from different angles and perspectives and trying to find an answer. Enough examining the possibilities only to push them aside and forget about them. She wanted to live them. She wanted to be open to everything.
She no longer hated her memories or her desires. But she did hate how scared the word us made her. And the longing that shook her when he wasn’t there. The need for him. And not knowing if they both felt it, or only her.
He dropped a pair of socks, and I leaned over to pick them up.
“Fine. Let’s get to know each other. Even if I doubt there will be many surprises after everything we’ve told each other,” I said, holding out the socks to him.
He smiled in reply, but there was something in his eyes I didn’t know how to read. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me close. That pressure made me shiver. He had that mischievous expression again that put me on tenterhooks. My poor heart was tired of pumping so much adrenaline.
“There’s one condition, though,” he added. “I’ve planned these days out, so I need you to trust me and go with the flow.”
I remembered how Trey had ground my heart into dust years ago. Now he was holding that dust in his hands and molding it, shaping it like clay, trying to give it back its original form.
As if it were that simple.
But maybe it was? Because it seemed to be working, and in a strange way, that made me feel vulnerable, because if he could put me back together, that meant he could break me again. I knew it was stupid to think of things that way, that it didn’t make sense because we weren’t the people we’d been in the past. We had changed, and this time…
This time was different. Real. Something was happening between us. What, though? I was scared to ask.
“You’ve made plans, then?”
“Yes!”
He bent forward, and I closed my eyes as I heard him whisper, “Trust me. Do you think you can?” His voice sounded sweet as molasses.
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure? Because it seems like you’re waffling.”
I grinned and pushed him away slightly. It wasn’t fair, how handsome he was, how irresistible. I needed a break and walked toward the door.
“Harper.” I looked back over my shoulder. With a devilish smirk, he said, “About that kiss last night…”
The heat in my breast, in my neck, in my cheeks made me stop. I had tried to tell myself I’d forget it ever happened. Apparently he hadn’t.
“Kiss? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He bit his lower lip. And it took my breath away.