Complications
complications
The next evening, Aaden took Blythe to the Brant Point Grill, where they drank cocktails on the porch overlooking Nantucket’s inner harbor. Ferries, private yachts, and sailboats came and went, passing one another easily through the calm waters. A Sunfish with a bright orange sail loitered near Monomoy.
Aaden wore a navy blazer and a white shirt that set off his new tan and his dark eyes. Blythe wore her most daring summer dress, with a necklace that dipped down into her cleavage.
It was a wonderful meal. They dined on oysters and sea bass. They sipped cold white wine. And for dessert, strawberry shortcake with mounds of real whipped cream. They talked about Nantucket matters—there was always so much to discuss about Nantucket. Rising seas. The new money. Traffic congestion. They were moving through a conversation maze, searching for each other.
“Where are your children tonight?” Aaden asked.
“The younger three are either having dinner at a friend’s house or with their grandmother. Miranda and Brooks are going to a new Marvel movie, so I don’t have to worry that they’re having sex in the house while I’m gone.” She paused. “Not that I know whether or not they’re ever actually having sex.”
And here they were. Their eyes met and held. His gaze on her face was so gentle, so warm. Just this, meeting his eyes, was like kissing. With each breath, a memory moved through her. Their first kiss so long ago. Such a sweet, yearning kiss that broke Blythe’s heart open to a hint of what a woman and a man could have together. Their quick pecks after they were a couple and passed each other on the street or when she slid into his car at the beginning of a date. The heated smash of their mouths when they were alone and desperate for each other’s touch.
The waiter approached.
“Would you care for anything else?”
Without looking away from Aaden, Blythe said, “Yes, please. I’d like a cup of coffee.”
The waiter went away.
She sighed. “I haven’t had a night like this for weeks. Months. Years.”
“You haven’t gone out to dinner?”
“Well, of course I’ve gone out to dinner. With my kids to Five Guys or with my friends to restaurants to eat more complicated meals than our children could tolerate. I’ve even had a few dates in the past three years, and at best they were pleasant, but sometimes—” Blythe shook her head. “I don’t even want to think about those times. I’m here on the island, it’s June, my children are well and happy, the food was perfection, and most of all, Aaden, I’m giddy to be sitting here with you.” Embarrassed, she covered her mouth with a hand, but it didn’t cover her smile. “I can’t believe I said that last part.”
“You always did talk a lot,” Aaden said.
The warmth in his eyes sent her heart racing.
“You always talked a lot, too,” she responded.
“I know. That’s one reason we’re so good together.”
She gave him a skeptical stare. “Present tense? You said ‘that’s one reason we’re so good together.’ Not one reason we were good together.” Blythe didn’t know if she was teasing him or encouraging him. Well, of course she knew, she was encouraging him. He was irresistible.
Aaden crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward her. “We’re pretty good together right now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes,” Blythe agreed. “We are.”
“And we don’t need to account for our actions to anyone else. Not our parents. Not our children—”
Blythe interrupted him. “My children are sometimes around, and they’re impressionable.”
“Very well,” Aaden said. “I won’t ravish you in your living room.”
Blythe shivered and crossed her arms where goosebumps were spreading at his words, at the thought of what Aaden had said, what he would do. Ravish me.
She suggested mischievously, “Maybe you could stage a pre-ravish display if you ever hear Kate bursting into the house again. That might teach her to knock.”
His voice was low. “I’m not sure if I could stop ravishing you once I began.”
Butterflies fluttered beneath her rib cage. She had given birth to four children since she’d last made love with him. She’d nursed four children. She was more than twenty years older and had the cellulite to prove it. But maybe in the dark…but could she restrain herself from wanting more than a few nights with him before he left this island for his own island home across the ocean?
“How soon do you leave Nantucket?” Blythe asked.
“Does it matter?”
Blythe blinked. “We always were more to each other than fast sex.”
“We were,” Aaden agreed. “We always will be. More to each other than fast sex.”
Blythe hugged herself. “This conversation is making me sad. I don’t know why. I’m sorry.” She rose. “I’m going to the restroom.”
She held herself steady, wearing one of those slight smiling faces people wear when they pass through a dining room, as if invisible voices were complimenting her.
She entered the bathroom and swung the door open to a private stall. Shut the door and leaned against it.
She had to center herself. She had to slow down. She hadn’t been prepared for this when she began her summer. She probably had never been prepared for seeing Aaden again, and her emotions were in turmoil. Their love had been so deep, so complicated, spiritual as well as sexual, and they had been best friends as well as lovers. Often, back then, when she left him after an evening, she fell into a state of panic. When would she see him again? How could she make the hours pass fast enough for her to be with him again? She wanted to superglue her body to his, and remembering that, remembering when she’d told him that, Blythe laughed out loud. She was laughing, crying, hyperventilating. If another woman entered the restroom, they’d think a madwoman was in this stall, and she was a madwoman, because she absolutely wanted to make love with Aaden, and being with him made her realize she had never stopped loving him. Beneath all the love that she’d once had for Bob, beneath all the love she had for her children, her love of Aaden was still there in the deepest part of her heart. She had been struck by lightning. The mark would always remain.
Dashing out of the stall, she washed her hands and caught sight of herself in the mirror.
“Damn, I’m like a teenager again!” Blythe said.
A voice from another stall said, “Enjoy it, honey.”
Blythe skittered out of there before the woman saw her.
By the time she returned to the table, Blythe had recovered her sense of humor.
She slid into her chair and inclined herself across the table to whisper to Aaden. “I was talking to myself in the bathroom, and I said I was acting like a teenager, and a woman from a stall—I didn’t see her—called out, ‘Enjoy it, honey.’?”
“That’s good advice if I ever heard it,” Aaden said, grinning. “Shall we go?”
Blythe drew back. “Oh, Aaden, I didn’t mean…I’m not ready—”
“Don’t look so alarmed, woman. I’m not going to ravish you. I want to get to know you again first.”
Relieved, Blythe said, “Me, too. I mean, I want to get to know you again, too.”
They left the restaurant and stood for a moment on Easton Street. It was after ten o’clock and the sky was polished silver above them.
“Let’s walk to the lighthouse,” Aaden suggested.
“Yes, let’s.”
Aaden reached for her hand and held it as they walked down the long, beautiful street, lined on one side with summer homes facing the water and on the other side a large open field. They had the sense of being in the town and the country at the same time, and then they came to the beach, which curved out and around, and on the expanse of sand, right at the corner, the squat white Brant Point Lighthouse stood, only twenty-six feet high, a welcoming sight to travelers as they rounded the corner into the harbor.
Blythe steadied herself on Aaden’s shoulder and bent to slip off her heels.
“Ah,” she sighed. “The sand is still warm.”
Aaden had kicked off his topsiders. Taking her hand again, he led her past the ramp from the beach to the closed lighthouse door and around to the sloping shoulder of sand. They settled with their backs against the lighthouse, looking out over the harbor, with its gathering cluster of big and small boats, and to the beach at Monomoy with its summer houses and lights glowing like lanterns.
After a while, Blythe said, “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. I certainly never dreamed I’d be sitting in the sand on Nantucket with you.”
“No? Because I dreamed of you often, especially when I was stressed out, when Eileen was a screaming terror and I had no love for her or she for me.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me more? Maybe about the worst times? Not so that I can judge. I’m sure I’ve been a terror myself.”
After a moment, Aaden said, “Sure, the poor woman was probably driven mad by me. I was never home, it’s an old story, the man works day and night to keep the business thriving while the wife is alone with two wailing babies. There I was, working nineteen hours a day and giving no help to Eileen, but I was pulling the company out of the grave and into the light.”
He paused, picking up a pebble, throwing it into the water.
“That happens a lot,” Blythe told him. “Women with the home and children, men with the work.”
Aaden asked, “Is that the way it was for you?”
Blythe steadied the back of her head against the lighthouse. “No. And not because I was the perfect mother. No, I had plenty of help. Wonderful friends and babysitters at home. On Nantucket, Celeste, my mother-in-law, and her husband adored them and helped so much. And Kate, my sister-in-law, well, you’ve met her. She’s highly efficient and extremely dictatorial. And I was glad. Back then, I was grateful for her support.”
“And Bob?”
Blythe chuckled softly. “In the beginning, he came home in the evening and helped out. He diapered our children and walked the floors with them at night. As they grew older, he was busier with work, and of course he was being paid more, handling harder cases. We became sort of a partnership. Thank heavens for his parents. They love our children, and Celeste often came up to take over when I had the flu or was overwhelmed. I love Celeste. I’ve learned so much from her.”
“What about your parents?” Aaden asked.
“Oh, you remember my parents, Aaden. They were busy with their own careers. My father was a doctor and Mother taught. They were fond of Miranda and Daphne, but they were philosophically opposed to my having four children. They were shocked and disapproving.” She sighed. “For their birthdays my parents send the children one annual subscription to National Geographic to share. For Christmas, they donate money in the children’s names to several charities.”
“And now?”
“The children will be in school. I could continue to substitute teach. But I’ve been offered a job teaching English full-time in seventh grade.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I don’t know. The children are growing up so fast. I want to make sure I can be there for them.”
“I understand. Still, I wonder, with Bob and Teri in your children’s lives here on Nantucket…what if you could get away and come for a week or two in Ireland?”
It was as if he’d reached behind his back and magically brought out a beautiful box with a golden latch. All she had to do was open it. For a few moments, Blythe couldn’t think. Two weeks away from her children? She thought of Pandora’s box. They had been clever, those old storytellers.
She reached over to put her hand on Aaden’s arm. Oh, what a warm, strong arm. “That is a shocking suggestion. Truly, Aaden.”
“You’ve never been away from them?”
“No, not really. I’ve never even thought about it. I’ve never even had the time to think about it.” Suddenly, she shivered, as if she were on the very edge of a cliff high in the air and if she took one step forward, she would plunge into a vast unknown. “I don’t think I could, or should, leave my children for two weeks.”
Aaden said, his voice very low, “Blythe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shock you or frighten you. It’s too soon for me to ask such a question.”
Blythe forced herself to do the deep breathing she was counseled to do when she was confused. “Aaden, aren’t we too old for a…a fling?”
Aaden was quiet. Then he said, “Sure, that’s possible. But we’re not too old for a relationship.”
She felt trapped, caught, torn between hope and fear. “Oh, you Irish,” she said, almost angrily, “you and your bewitching words.”
“I want to bewitch you,” Aaden told her. “But I’m in no hurry. I’ve waited twenty-four years for you. I can wait for a while longer.”
The clock on the Old South tower chimed eleven times.
“I need to go home.” Blythe scrambled to her feet. “The children…”
Aaden rose, too, and he didn’t touch her, but he stood close to her. She could feel his warmth.
“Blythe. I had no idea you would be on the island when Arnie invited me. When I set eyes on you at the yacht club, I felt an electric shock. It was as if my eyes had been opened and I could see my future.”
Anxiety made her insolent. “You saw all that in one moment?”
Aaden did not back down. “I did.”
“That’s…a lot. Aaden, I think I should go home. I think I need to take a moment.” Blythe tilted her head back, studying his face. “I still love you. But I love my children…I love my life. I don’t think I’m ready to go to Ireland yet.”
He reached out his hand and cupped her cheek. “No. Of course you aren’t. I’ve gotten all ahead of myself. I apologize. But it’s true, Blythe, what I said about first seeing you here.”
Blythe slowly moved her head so that her lips touched the palm of his hand. She kissed him, and felt him tremble, and tears stung her eyes.
Then she pulled away from him. “Aaden, I’ll think about it. But it might take some time.”
“I’m here,” Aaden said. “I have time.”
Screams interrupted the air as a pack of adolescents swarmed over the sand around the lighthouse.
“I’ll take you home now,” Aaden told her.
He took her hand in his, and they walked together up the beach, away from the dark, lapping water, to his car.