34 The Gift
34
The Gift
I thought I might fall over dead with every step I took on the bridge from PEI to Lennox Island. I didn’t know if I deserved his forgiveness—probably not. And maybe that wasn’t even what I wanted. I just knew I needed to tell him the things I really felt that night, months before, when I broke his heart and pulverized mine.
I couldn’t keep it all inside. If I did, I’d never move forward. And I had to. With or without him.
The cool air in my lungs roused me. The sun was rising over the trees, but beneath the branches, the fog in the woods refused to lift. My feet sank in mud. My nerves were making me nauseated.
The door opened.
Nicholas was sitting on the porch with the same expression I remembered from before. He was smoking his pipe and blowing smoke from his lips. I noticed the strange shapes it made before it dissipated, paused, and tried to smile as best I could.
“Good morning. I’m not sure if you remember me. I was here a few months ago. I’m Harper, Hoyt’s sister. I’m looking for your grandson, and I was wondering if…” Before I could finish, Nicholas exhaled more smoke and pointed to the corner of the house.
“Thanks,” I said.
I walked around the back of the cabin, saw the camper, and felt my throat close up. Then a ball of gray hair hurried out and leapt at me. I opened my mouth to shout but couldn’t when its sticky, grainy tongue started licking me all over. I tried to turn away, shouting, “Stop! Stop! Sisuei, that’s enough!” I was laughing all the while.
The dog moaned with joy and kept jumping around me, tongue flapping out, pressing his muzzle into me. I kneeled down, reached out, and hugged him, sinking my nose into his soft fur. He was so pretty.
“Hey, big guy, who’s a big boy, you’re a big boy, aren’t you?” I said, holding his head so I could look in his eyes and scratching him behind the ears. He really had grown.
He barked once and tried to lick me again, and I responded with more pets, hugs, and kisses. Then I felt Trey behind me.
I stood and turned, slowly, trying to keep my legs from trembling.
Trey was there in the middle of the clearing, wearing nothing but a pair of half-buttoned jeans. He was barefoot and had a towel slung over his shoulders. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were full of questions.
I whispered his name: “Trey.”
He stepped toward me, but then stopped as if scared. I looked past him. The girl I saw him with that night appeared behind him with two cups of coffee.
Time stopped when I looked back at him, and any hope I might have harbored vanished like mist scattered by the wind.
I’d lost him. I really had.
It’s not that I hadn’t known the possibility was there; I’d imagined every possible version of the story. But still, the confirmation was like a blow to the stomach. I looked at him, and he looked at me. I tried to say something. I’d had a whole speech prepared, but now it was meaningless. I pursed my lips, tried to gather all the courage I had in me, and did what I came there to do. Tell it straight.
“I know it’s too late. I know I ruined everything between us. But there’s something you need to know. I was wrong. I messed up a lot of things, and I regret all of them. I pushed you out of my life when you were the most important person in it. I gave you up. I lost you, and now it’s killing me. You made me realize who I truly am. You helped me to feel again and to want things I’d never have allowed myself to want on my own.”
His face was the very picture of uncertainty. I saw his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed, and there was so much vulnerability in that gesture that I felt even weaker. I continued.
“I miss you so much on some days that it feels like I can barely move. I’m sorry I sacrificed what we had. Especially because it was for nothing. It’s hard, and it hurts, and on some days, I think the pain will never go away. I’m not perfect, Trey, and I never will be. That’s the truth of it. I failed you, and I failed myself, and now I have to live forever with the thought of what things would be like if I’d acted differently.” My voice cracked. “You were right, I’m like a riddle without a solution.”
I looked at the woman, then back at him.
“I’m sorry if I’m putting you in a difficult situation, but I need to be selfish and impulsive for once in my life and get all of this out so that I can move ahead. I know what I did, I had my reasons, they were wrong, and now here we are. It’s possible I’ll make a mistake again, that I’ll be weak, that I’ll have doubts and insecurities. It’s happened thousands of times already. I’m just like that and I don’t know if I’ll ever change because it’s who I am. And that’s the truth. But I know I’ll always put myself together again, and I know this new version of me is better than the old one. I’m happier, I’m more alive, and I’m more in love…with you.”
I sniffled and wiped away my tears.
“I know I don’t have any right to come bursting into your life like this. But I needed to do this to feel complete again.”
I pulled up a smile from somewhere deep inside myself, while he stood there motionless, his fists clenched, his eyes full of pain that I had caused.
Sora took a few steps.
“Trey,” she whispered, with something urgent in her tone. I think she wanted him to react.
I felt small and lost. But also brave, for the first time, because I’d opened myself up without reservation. And sad, too, because the ending I’d been so scared of was now written. And evidently, it wasn’t a happy one.
I turned around and walked away.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. That it was hard to admit that he hadn’t followed me. That I didn’t hear the echo of my name in the air or feel a hand on my wrist holding me back.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt to realize that I’d been talking about an us , but all that was left was an I .
I lost it. The tears came out so hard and fast that I couldn’t see.
Period.
Sometimes love crosses your path, awakens you, and then it goes. Whether you want it to or not. And there’s no one to blame, except maybe your own stupidity.
“Can’t you just make the right decision for once without making every single wrong one first?”
His voice stopped me, and I turned. He was looking at me with a face that was part-anguished, part-infuriated.
“What’s the right decision?”
“Staying here.”
I took a step toward him, he took a step toward me, and we were drawn together like two magnets.
“You want me to stay?”
He nodded, smirking, just barely, but that was all I needed to come back to life.
“You were just standing there, though, immobile, not saying anything, and I thought you didn’t care, and…”
He interrupted me. “You needed to say all those things, and I needed to hear them. I needed to know that you had missed me, too. That you still love me, that your life had been terrible without me, too.”
I approached him slowly. “I’m sorry.”
“Why’d it take you so long?”
I didn’t even know myself, but I tried to tell him, stumbling over my words. “I thought I was doing the right thing at first. The best thing for everyone. And when I realized I’d screwed up, it was too late, and I didn’t know how to fix it. You said you’d never come back, that you couldn’t just keep coming and going while I waited forever to figure things out. You were gone, and I didn’t have the right to come looking for you.”
His hands cupped my face, and he kissed me. And the tears that emerged from me now were tears of relief. Of joy. I could feel his heart beating against my chest. How I’d missed him. But then something occurred to me.
“Wait,” I whispered, pulling away. “This isn’t right. Not like this. You…you’re with that girl. This isn’t fair for her. And it isn’t fair to me, either.”
Trey looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Then he understood and laughed. What the hell was he laughing about?
“Are you talking about Sora? Harper, Sora and I are nothing.”
“I saw you together, though.”
“Sora’s family. Her mother and my mother were cousins. We met a few months ago, when she moved to Lennox Island. She’s a lawyer. She’s been helping me out with the legal aspects of my project. That’s all.”
“But she…”
“She’s a friend. She’s the only friend I’ve been able to talk to about you.”
“You told her about me?”
He grinned and wiped away my tears with his thumbs.
“Every day. About how much I missed you, about the awful death I wished on that boyfriend of yours. I hated it when I saw you with him.”
“Trey, I didn’t go back to Dustin. I didn’t even want him in the restaurant with us, but he wouldn’t stop following me around.”
He leaned in toward me. I could feel the heat of his breath. There was a spark there, lighting us on fire. Our bodies still reacted that way every time they touched. And once again, I felt that tingle in my belly.
“So now what?” I whispered.
“You decide,” he responded, looking me straight in the eye.
It was a dare, and I could feel my mouth dry out. Decide. That word had always been a nightmare for me. I took a deep breath. Everything I wanted was there in front of me. I had found myself now. I knew who I was. And so did he. And he accepted me with all my defects.
“You and me. Together. Forever. Here or anywhere in the world. I don’t care as long as we’re together.”
He pulled me tight to his chest, and said, “I can think of one place we might go.” Then he let me go and took my hand. “Come with me. There’s something I’ve been wanting to give you for a long time.”
“What?”
“Something that belongs to you, but that I didn’t know how to give back to you.”
I was confused, but I let him drag me into the camper, and I kneeled down on the comforter while he looked in his trunk. He took out a large manila envelope and handed it to me.
I looked at him timidly, and he motioned for me to open it. I undid the hasp and looked at the documents inside. I brought my hand to my chest, my eyes struggling to take in all the clauses and conditions.
It was impossible!
The world started spinning beneath my feet.
“You bought the bookstore!”
“And the house,” he replied, a little nervously.
“Why?”
“I knew what they meant to you, and I couldn’t let you lose them. I just figured I’d hold onto them for you, and some day… I don’t know, maybe I just needed something of you in that moment. I didn’t know how to let you go.”
“But…where’d you get the money from?” Before he could answer, I knew. “No, Trey! You didn’t sell your project!”
He ran his hand through his hair and gave me a look that was meant to calm me down, but it was just too much. “I handed it over in exchange for the company buying those two properties for me.”
“That was your dream, though. Your legacy. You were going to find investors and do it on your own. You wanted it so bad, remember? ‘Because without art, life would be an error.’”
“Without you, life would be an error.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t…don’t just give up like that.” My mind started racing. “We can still fix this,” I said. “I’ve got the money. I haven’t spent a cent. If I transfer it to you and you call those people, you can still get it back.”
He shook his head, making me feel worse. “They’ve already started building. There’s no going back now.”
“But…”
“It’s fine. I’m okay.”
“I still have to give you the money back, though.”
“That I can live with.”
“Trey! It was your project, your dream, and you gave it up for me.”
“Harper, you still don’t get it. You’re my dream. I would do anything for you, no matter what the price. The only project I actually care about, the only one I’ll never give up, is you and me being together, and all the things we can build.”
“You want a future with me?”
“I guess it sounds nuts, but yeah.”
“You’re a disaster,” I told him.
He laughed and said, “I love disasters. And I love you. I guess I’m just crazy like that.”
I lost myself in the gold of his eyes and couldn’t resist any longer. I jumped at him, captured his lips between mine, pressed my body desperately into his.
And as I melted in his arms and his hands climbed under my clothes, we became that happy ending we had begun writing all those months ago.