The banner on the screen is for a cosmetics line, and the logo is a bright green. That’s all it takes to send my spirits in a downward spiral.
I bite my thumbnail and try to shake the vision of Dane and Mia together from my brain. Looking up, I see my mother still standing in the doorway.
“What’s the matter, Neely?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on,” she prods. “You owe me after that Mr. Rambis crap.”
Guilt gnaws at my insides. I’d hoped it would be gone by now. I’d prayed that I would put some distance between us, get a shower, eat half a cheesecake, and fall into a carb-loaded bliss and not feel so bad about the things I said. Or implied. Or insinuated.
Didn’t happen.
Instead, there might be a hole in the wall of my stomach from this evening alone. It grows a little deeper every minute.
“Have you ever had a Rocket Razzle?” I ask.
Her eyebrows shoot to the ceiling. “Yes. Why?”
“Well, it turns out those turn off a filter in me, and I say things I’m not proud of.”
Mom sits on the end of my bed. “What did you say? And to whom?”
I can’t look at her, so I look out the window at the dark night sky. “I said some questionable things to Dane.”
“Questionable, huh?”
“Fine. Maybe nasty.”
“Oh, Neely,” she mutters. “You’re better than that.”
“I know.”
She lays her hand on my foot and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Do I want details?”
“No.” I look at her again. “I don’t owe him an apology for anything. He hurt me. But I feel so freaking bad, Mom.”
“Honey,” she says, getting to her feet. “He might’ve hurt you, but hurting him back isn’t going to sort anything. Because you’re the one feeling bad right now, and if I were to guess, you hurt a lot worse than him.”
“This is so not fair. Why do I have to be a good person?” I pout.
Mom laughs. “Because I raised you to be one. Now, I’m not going to tell you what to do because you’re a grown woman and you know what you said and didn’t say. But I’m going to give you some advice.”
“Please do.”
She faces me. “The last time you left here in a fight with Dane, it wore on you for years. I could hear it in your voice. I saw it in your pictures. Your gymnastics even lacked a certain umph you had before.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say, feeling worse.
“You’re going to leave here in a few days. That’s what you say, anyway.”
I shift in the bed, unable to sit still. “What’s your point?”
“Don’t leave like that again. If you have to suck it up and apologize, do that. Be the bigger person. Then you can leave and go back to your life without any extra weight.” She gives me a small smile, then disappears into the hallway. “That half a cheesecake missing from the fridge isn’t going to help either!”
“Hush,” I yell back at her. My laughter softens just as the snap of the door closing floats down the hall. I settle back against the pillows, mulling over her words.
I can certainly survive in New York without apologizing to him. Saying I was wrong after everything that’s happened between us doesn’t sound appetizing.
Glancing down at the unfinished email on my computer, I realize she’s right. If this interview goes well, I could be gone by next weekend. It would be really nice to start fresh with a new job and a new hobby, if I can get back into teaching gymnastics, and without any old burdens I don’t need to carry.
I hit “Save” on the draft, close my computer, and find my shoes.
I watch the house from the safety of my car like some kind of weirdo. There’s a single light on in the front. Through the shadows of the curtains, I’m guessing it’s a lamp.
Surely he’s not in bed already.
Shivering despite the balmy outside temperature and lack of air conditioner inside the car, I kill the ignition. A dog barks somewhere in the distance. It just ups the awkwardness as I climb out of the car, as if I’m being filmed for some made-for-TV movie.
“I’ll knock,” I tell myself. “I won’t ring the bell in case they’re asleep. If they don’t hear the knock, then I can rest assured I tried to apologize. The universe can’t hold that against me.”
The sidewalk is clean, the little rows between sections free from errant weeds or mud. There are neatly trimmed bushes along the front of the blue-gray-sided house with crisp white shutters. There aren’t any gnomes or little flags like many homes on this street have, but the mulch is black and looks new. As I take the three little steps onto the wooden porch, I remember what I told my mother about a tidy lawn and laugh.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I rap on the door. There’s no dog barking. No feet falling. Nobody on the other side announcing they’ll get it. Just silence. I wait a few moments before tapping again.
Just as I turn to head back to the car, relief filling my veins, the door opens.
Standing only a few feet away is a just-out-of-the-shower Dane. His cheeks are smooth and freshly shaven, a pair of red gym shorts showing off a set of toned calves. The gray T-shirt is unnecessary, but I do appreciate the slight clinginess of the fabric to the lines of his body.
His brows are raised, clearly in surprise, as he reaches above his head and grabs the top of the door. There’s no tilt of his lips, no outward expression that he’s happy to see me.
Talk fast. Get it over with.
“Hey,” I say, fidgeting with the hem of my tank top. “I hope you don’t mind me coming by so late, but I didn’t want to say this over the phone. Not that I had your number but . . .” I look down. “I’m rambling.”
I wait a few moments for him to say something. Nothing comes. Holding my breath, I look back up at him. He’s almost grinning.
“You’ve always been kind of cute when you ramble.” His shoulders rise and fall. “Might be your saving grace tonight.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
He blanches. “That beer couldn’t have been that expired,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He steps onto the porch and pulls the door closed behind him. There are two rocking chairs to my right, and he heads that way. “You want to apologize, huh?” he asks, sinking into one of the chairs. “I better sit down for this.”
“You aren’t cute when you’re being a dick,” I tell him, sitting in the other rocker.
“That’s not a good way to start an apology.”
“I haven’t started yet.”
He finally smiles a wide grin that shows off his pearly-white teeth. “So? Let’s hear it.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
We sit in silence, rocking back and forth in the old-fashioned chairs. The motion is relaxing, and coupled with the sweet scent from the rosebushes planted at the end of the porch, my shoulders sink into the chair.
“I bet Mia tumbles across there, huh?” Motioning toward the front yard, I look at Dane. “It’s the perfect length for a tumbling pass.”
“She does. It makes me crazy. I’m afraid she’ll fall on her head.”
Laughing at the tortured look on his face, I shake my head. “It’s good to fall on your head sometimes. It teaches you to keep your hands up.”
His rocking slows. “Is that why you’re here? You fell on your head, and now you’re trying to get your hands up?”
“No. I’m here because I’m a guilt-stricken person who doesn’t want to go home without at least trying to apologize for things I said that I didn’t mean.”
“Here’s the thing, Neely—I think you did mean them.”
“That’s not true.”
“You sure about that?” He rocks faster again, setting his sights somewhere across the street. “I know you have feelings about Mia, and—”
“I adore her,” I cut in. “She’s a great little girl.”
“I know that,” he says quietly.
Most people wouldn’t hear the pain in his voice, but it’s obvious to me. The notes buried in the language have me wanting to reach out. To touch his arm. To make him look at me so he can witness the genuineness in my eyes.
But I don’t. Instead, I fight the constriction in my chest as I search for words. He beats me to it.
“I regret a lot of things.” He flexes his jaw back and forth. “I regret thinking I knew what was best for you and breaking up with you so you’d go to college.”
“What?” I sit up in the chair. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t want to go to New York. I’d just started at the mill and figured it would suit me better than some metropolitan city I had no interest in. The mill suited me, Neely. But New York suited you.”
Someone might as well be trying to explain to me the earth is flat, because none of this makes sense. I stare at him in the moonlight and wonder if I’m hearing things. “I had no idea that’s why you broke up with me.”
“I know. I felt like it was easier having you be mad at me and just going. You needed to take that scholarship, Neely. You were so damn talented, and all you ever talked about was this life of doing all this stuff.” He looks at the ground. “I didn’t want that life, and it wasn’t fair to make you pick between the two.”
My heart sits at the base of my throat. “It wasn’t fair for you to pick for me either.”
His eyes lift to mine, and we rock back and forth, searching each other’s gaze for understanding.
“I loved you,” he says, his voice so soft it’s barely audible over the crickets chirping in the yard. “I figured I’d let you go and you’d come back to me eventually.”
“I would’ve. If we were together, I wouldn’t have gone to New York after college. But we weren’t, and you had Katie and the baby and I couldn’t stomach seeing that, Dane.”