Chapter 11
Eleven
Dinner was a boisterous affair full of laughter, old stories, and tasty seafood prepared by Adeline, the cook who had worked for Ted’s parents for twenty-five years.
After dessert, they lingered over after-dinner drinks.
Ted sat next to his sister Tish and her husband Steven at dinner, but he kept one eye on Caroline across the table between Smitty and Parker.
Realizing he might never see her again after this weekend, Ted committed everything he observed to memory.
Earlier he had noticed the little hiccup she got in the back of her throat when she yawned.
Before she’d gotten up from her nap on the lounge, he’d also discovered that stretching was a full-body affair for her, like a lion awaking from a long slumber.
Now, as she talked with Smitty and Parker, he saw that she ran her tongue over her bottom lip when she was listening, and that laughter could explode from her chest or roll softly from her as if she was surprised to be amused.
Smitty kept an attentive arm around her and whispered in her ear to bring her into the loop whenever a person or event from the past was mentioned.
When Ted couldn’t stand to watch their intimate back and forth any longer, he got busy fiddling with his spoon while the lively conversation continued all around him.
As the night without sleep caught up to him, he was suddenly tired down to his bones.
He was thinking about excusing himself to go to bed when he heard his name and looked up to find all eyes on him.
“Are we boring you, son?” his father asked with laughter dancing in his hazel eyes.
“What?” Ted asked, flustered. “No, of course not.”
“You were a million miles away,” Mitzi said.
“I was just thinking about going to bed, actually.”
“So early?” his sister said with a pout.
“I was up all night with a patient. I’m cooked.”
“Good outcome?” his grandfather asked.
Ted shook his head and hurt when he thought of Pilar, who had wanted nothing more than to be a typical teenager.
“I’m sorry to hear that, son,” Theo Duffy said solemnly.
“We were going to hit Nick’s and the Kittens,” Smitty said, referring to two of the island’s more popular bars. Ted could tell that his friend was trying to cajole him out of his funk the way he always did.
“Count me out,” Ted said. Ten years ago he could’ve gone two nights without sleep but not anymore.
As everyone began to get up from the table, Adeline came in to clear the last of the dishes. Ted kissed her cheek. “Thanks for a great meal, Addie.”
“My pleasure, honey. You look like you need some sleep.”
“That’s where I’m heading.” Ted kissed his grandmother goodnight.
“You’re working too hard and not taking care of yourself,” Addie said.
“I said the same thing, Addie,” Mitzi chimed in as she linked her arm through her son’s. “Come on, darling, I’ll walk you over.”
“Hey, Duff,” Chip called from the back porch where everyone else had gathered. “Maybe Mommy will read you a bedtime story if you ask real nice.”
Mitzi turned to him. “You’re not too big to be spanked, Charles.”
“Oh, Mitzi, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Elise smacked him as everyone else howled with laughter.
Mitzi chuckled as she walked with Ted down the stairs to the gravel path that led to the guesthouse. After they had strolled in silence for several minutes, she said, “I’m worried about you, Ted. You’re not yourself today.”
“It’s been a hideous month at work. The worst ever.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“I was hoping you might bring someone with you this weekend.”
“I brought five people with me,” Ted said in a teasing tone.
“You know what I mean.”
“There’s no one to bring, Mom.”
“Your grandmother wants to see you settled down and married before she goes,” Mitzi said, using a line Ted had heard a hundred times before.
Ted raised an amused eyebrow. “My grandmother does, does she?”
“Ted,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “We worry about you.”
“You don’t need to. I’m fine. I just need some sleep.”
She kissed him goodnight at the steps to the guesthouse. “Sleep late in the morning.”
“I’ll try.”
“Love you, honey.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Caroline encouraged the others to go out without her.
She used her ankle as an excuse, but more than anything she wanted some time to herself to absorb the storm of feelings swirling around in her.
Overwhelmed would be putting it mildly, she thought, as she lay in bed in the large master bedroom.
How had she ever ended up in such a situation?
A love triangle, of all things! It was right out of a bad soap opera, for heaven’s sakes.
Unfortunately, it was all too real, and she was smack in the middle of two decent guys whose friendship meant more to them than almost anything in their lives.
She adored Smitty. He had been exactly what she needed as she waded back into the dating pool after her disastrous engagement.
Brad had broken her heart when he called off their wedding a month before the big day—and after she had quit her job at The Times to focus on their relationship!
She’d been left with no marriage, no job, and no hope.
Fortunately, she had invested her money wisely and had the time to weigh her career options while she recovered from the horrible disappointment and embarrassment.
Her career had rebounded as one freelance job led to another.
Her love life, on the other hand, had remained on hold.
After a year had passed, her friends began pressuring her to get out and meet new people, which is how she had ended up in a Greenwich Village restaurant with Chip, Elise, Elise’s sister, her boyfriend, and Smitty.
They were part of a large crowd of educated, accomplished young New Yorkers, and while Caroline usually hated fix-ups, she trusted their judgment and agreed to meet Smitty.
Besides, by then she was getting tired of her own company and was ready to rejoin the land of the living.
Caroline had liked him right away. He was fun, and he made her laugh harder than she had in ages.
When he called the next day to ask her out, she hadn’t hesitated to say yes.
From the very beginning, she had enjoyed the contrasts she found in him.
He knew the wine list at “21” inside out but could tell the raunchiest jokes she’d ever heard.
As comfortable in a three-thousand-dollar suit as he was in fifteen-year-old Levis, he cared for his friends like they were family but had no family of his own.
And he too had been hurt by a past relationship and was wary of commitment.
In that way, he was the ideal man for her just then.
He often called to tell her he had tickets to a Knicks game, a Stones concert, or a gallery opening in SoHo.
She teased him that she never knew what adventure she would be on before the day ended.
Life with Smitty was all about the pursuit of fun, which was fine with her since she was in no rush to embark on another serious relationship.
They’d had three dates before he kissed her—a chaste peck on the lips at her front door after they’d been to dinner with Chip and Elise.
The next night had ended in a more heated make-out session on her sofa.
He had finally coaxed her into bed the week before he took her to Newport for the first time—the week before she met Ted and found the man of her dreams in her boyfriend’s best friend.
How she wished now that she had waited a little longer to go to bed with Smitty.
But how could she have known then that her whole life would change just a few days later?
You’re not thinking about Ted right now. Focus on Smitty. You have to figure out what you’re going to do about him.
Sex with Smitty, like everything else, was fun and uncomplicated, and with neither of them looking for anything lasting, it was hard for Caroline to be disappointed by the lack of a real connection between them.
Because that connection was missing, she had assumed their relationship would end when one of them either met someone else or wanted something more substantial.
Then she began to suspect he had fallen for her.
He hadn’t said the words, but the signs were hard to miss: a look, a touch, a word uttered in an intimate moment, the way he gazed at her when he thought she wasn’t aware, the tender way he had cared for her after she broke her ankle.
In a way she felt betrayed by his feelings for her.
They had gone into this to have fun, not to fall in love.
But she couldn’t be mad at Smitty. How could she be mad at him?
Especially when he had rearranged his life around her after her accident.
And then there was Ted with whom she’d had the kind of immediate, spontaneous, overwhelming connection people search for their whole lives and often never find.
Now that she knew he was out there somewhere, how was she supposed to just go on like she had never met him?
Was she to pretend her whole world hadn’t been permanently altered during one momentous weekend?
With a deep, pained sigh, she realized that was exactly what she had to do unless she wanted to be responsible for the end of a long and important friendship between two exceptional men, neither of whom would ever be happy if being with her caused their friend pain.
She had replayed that first weekend with Ted over and over again until she thought she would go crazy.
Everything about him appealed to her on the deepest possible level.
His compassion toward the kids he cared for, the grief he experienced when he lost one of them, and the close bond he shared with his friends and family were just a few of the things she admired about him.
Of course she was also attracted to the more basic things like his muscular physique, his thick blond hair, those amazing blue eyes . . .