Chapter Fourteen #2
“I’d like that, Mr. Steele,” Porter spoke up and gave both my parents a warm smile. “I’ve thought of moving to New York.”
My head snapped right to look at Porter, bouncing my alcohol-soaked brain around in my head.
Last summer, Porter chose, once again, to go home and work on his family’s farm rather than capitalizing on applying for a prestigious internship in New York and being with me, so this post-college consideration was news.
“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to join too, Mr. Steele,” Charles interrupted.
“My dad would like me to go into the commercial real estate business with him, but I want to explore my options before I settle on a decision. I feel like there’s a lot out there for me once I graduate with a mechanical engineering degree. ”
“You boys can call me Rhodes.” As my dad puffed out his chest with delight, I glimpsed Porter and Charles knowingly catch one another’s eyes.
“How about a round of golf early tomorrow morning before it gets too hot?” my dad suggested.
Porter whipped his head my way. There’s no such thing as four-hour golf games when working on a farm from morning to night. He hadn’t experienced the country club scene like Charles had.
I jumped in to save Porter. “Dad, I’m not sure Porter—”
“Nonsense. The way you two boys play football, you’ll be naturals at golf.
” My dad slammed his palm on the table to punctuate his prediction.
My fresh drink showed up, and I took a long sip and slushed the rum and Coke around in my mouth before swallowing to avoid uttering something that might get me in trouble with my parents.
This was Rhodes Steele’s vacation; we were all just along for the ride.
“We could probably manage that, sir. But golf is a bit more delicate than outrunning two hundred-and-fifty-pound opponents. You’ll have to forgive my handicap before we hit the course,” Porter said with a sheepish look.
I knew that look. And I knew Porter’s physical talents.
Familiar with golf or not, Porter would wipe the links with anyone who stepped up to the tee.
“By the way, Mrs. Steele,” Porter began.
“If you are going to call him Rhodes, then you must call me Helen. I am most definitely not his mother,” Mom declared, jutting her chin at my father.
“Helen.” Porter paused to make sure a first-name basis was truly acceptable.
My mom nodded for him to continue. “Are you still working to expand the after-school art program you are overseeing?” My mom blushed that Porter remembered the board work she mentioned last year at Parents’ Weekend.
I took another long, slow sip through my tiny red straw.
My dad could have learned a lesson or two from Porter asking women about their intellectual and professional interests.
“Oh, I want to hear,” Quinn chimed in, leaning forward at the table. “Maybe I could volunteer there this summer while I study for the LSAT and start working on my law school applications.” My mom was holding court, and it was a nice change in our usual family conversational patterns.
I opened my mouth to speak in support of my mother’s interest, but a gurgling gripped my stomach and pushed into my chest, causing me to release a big belch. Before I knew it, I jumped up from the table with my hand over my mouth, toppling my chair backward.
As I lunged toward the hotel restaurant exit, all I heard was Porter, ever the gentleman, saying “Excuse me” to our table and then running out after me.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” I wept to Porter as I lost my dinner cocktails hunched over the ornamental blue hydrangea bushes in the hotel’s decorative landscape.
“I got you, Callie. I got you.” Porter rubbed my back while I wiped my mouth.
“Porter, I . . . I . . .”
“It’s okay, Callie, it happens. Get it all out.” Porter held my forehead with one hand and pulled my hair back with the other.
My retching smelled like a Coca-Cola factory with too much island fun mixed into it.
I spit once, twice, then sat down on the grass, hoping my stomach would feel a little more settled.
I refused to look at Porter. Shame for what a careless idiot I was, in more ways than yacking in the shrubbery, encompassed my whole being.
Porter sat down behind me, pulled me in toward him, then allowed my too-heavy head to rest against his chest while he continued to brush my hair away from my sweaty face.
“I’m so embarrassed. I probably should have been drinking more water, like Quinn was.
This has never happened to me before.” Never was a bit of a white lie.
During the third week of freshman year, Quinn and I had a dual prayer meeting over the porcelain pulpit.
We were not yet trained up for the typical dorm party that occurred every Saturday night, but we learned fast. At least, I thought I had.
“I know,” Porter chuckled, peeling a few more errant moist hairs off my cheeks. “It happens to the best of us.”
Truth is, Porter could hold his liquor, and nothing mortifying ever happened to him.
He was mature beyond his years, judicious with his time, and an all-around good guy.
Porter was supportive, kind, and by my side, and the biggest part of me did want him to talk with my dad about job opportunities in New York.
Even though we weren’t graduating for over a year, I needed the reassurance—early, often, and from everyone—that Porter and I would be together long after Princeton.
“It’s not exactly like you to pound booze, though, Callie. What’s up with that?”
I rolled my lips together to hold in the truth, like Quinn told me to. “Oh, I guess just a little too much enthusiasm for a first vacation with you. I also brought way too many bikinis,” I said with my eyes squeezed shut, not liking lying to Porter.
“There’s no such thing as too many bikinis.
” Porter laughed and then kissed my shoulder lightly, letting his lips linger.
“And it’s nice being here with you,” he whispered in my ear, his breath hot and rapid, matching the heartbeat I could feel against his chest. “Callie, I have something to ask you. I’ve been trying to get up the nerve, but, well, it’s not easy for me to say certain things. ”
My body stiffened. Oh God, I thought, does he know my period is late? Did Charles overhear Quinn and me at the pool, and he said something to Porter when they were getting ready for dinner? My stomach felt queasy all over again.
“Porter, I want to tell you something too.” Quinn’s going to be disappointed in me, but I didn’t hide things from Porter, and I wouldn’t start.
“Okay, you go first.”
“No, no you,” I said, stalling a bit longer before I shared that our lives might be turned upside down and that I believed there was only one answer to our potential predicament.
“I know we have said it before, but Callie, I love you. Like really, really love you,” Porter said with an importance in his voice that felt new.
“You are my everything. You look at the world the way you want it to be, pure positivity and full of possibility. You are a ray of sunshine—luminescent. I grew up more cautious, wary of the world. I think together we make a good team.” With Porter’s declaration and his strength, he turned me around to face him, drawing my right leg and then my left over his and pulling me up and onto his lap.
A half smile turned up toward his right ear once he got me positioned where he wanted me.
“And I was wondering, you know, if maybe you feel the same, like really feel the same.” Porter spread his massive catching hands over his heart.
“Oh, Porter.” I grabbed his face and looked deep into his eyes. A floodgate I had barely been able to hold closed in my heart broke wide open. “I most definitely love you. You’re my everything too.”
I went in for a kiss to make sure there was no doubt in his mind that he had me fully and completely, but Porter pulled back. “Maybe we could seal the deal after you brush your teeth?”
“Okay. That’s fair.” I giggled and threw my head back, unable to contain my sheer joy of what I had suspected: that this incredible man was truly, madly in love with me.
“Wait, you had something you wanted to tell me,” Porter remembered, a grin stretching from ear to ear on both of us at the newly elevated status of our love.
His posture was relaxed after getting off his chest what had obviously been making him unable to slow down and unwind during the first two days of our holiday.
“Oh, it was nothing as important as what you just said to me,” I declared as I stood up.
Quinn was right: There was no reason to ruin our perfect week in the Bahamas, let alone our lives.
Whatever might happen, Quinn and I would handle it together.
“Come on, let’s go back to my room so I can brush my teeth.
I’m dying to kiss you. And then undress you, if I can make it that long. ”
Porter looked at me, slightly terrified, and I couldn’t help but laugh again.
“It’s okay, I promise. Warden Helen won’t catch you in my room right now,” I assured Porter, and he hopped up faster than I had ever seen him move on the football field to grab my hand and run to my room.
“Nothing gets between my mother and her gimlet at dinnertime.”