Another Summer (3 page)

Andrew’s power over her had been complete. She’d looked to him for her happiness, her dreams of the future, even her career, which she’d chosen to accommodate the children they would have one day.

She’d been so young and trusting and filled with conviction. Other couples might fight andbreak up and go their separate ways, but not her and Andrew. They were the perfect match. Everyone said so.

What was she doing? Was she out of her mind? She’d come to the reunion to put Andrew behind her, not start over again.

What made her think it would be any different this time? If she had any sense, she would thank him for the stroll down memory lane and get out of there as fast as she could.

Instead, she slipped out of her dress and into his clothes, tucking the T-shirt with San Jose Firefighter’s Chili Cookoff emblazoned across the back into the khaki shorts and rolling up the sleeves. She shortened the bright red suspenders and snapped them onto the waistband of the shorts, then went out to meet Andrew on the deck.

Andrew looked up. He’d taken off his jacket and shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs. “Ready?” He held out his hand. She hesitated just long enough to let him know she still wasn’t sure about what they were doing. Andrew let the moment go, taking her hand as he would a friend’s, leading her out the gate and down the stairs.

A full moon had followed the sun into the western sky, marking its position with a silver trail across the water. Along the shoreline, waves deposited shimmering arcs of bubbles that glistened with moonlight. A gentle breeze tugged at a strand of Cheryl’s hair. She tucked it behind her ear.

They crossed the beach to the water in silence, the only sound the soft roar of the tumbling waves. Andrew stopped at the edge of the shore. Cheryl continued moving forward. She closed her eyes, listened to the wave break and roll into itself, and waited for the rush of water. When it hit, she put her head back and looked up to the stars.
I’m home,
she told herself.

The receding wave pulled the sand from beneath her feet. She dug in her toes to maintain her balance and laughed when she teetered to one side. Opening her eyes, she discovered Andrew beside her.

“I’d forgotten how much I love your laugh.”

She put her hand in his again and started walking toward the south side of the mile-wide cove, where a rocky promontory isolated the area from the next beach. Only twenty-five private homes and the state of California shared this cove. With the state the primary landowner, the dense forest of pine and eucalyptus surrounding the houses had remained undeveloped. Only a small parking lot at the trail head that led to the beach intruded on the sense of isolation.

She and Andrew had come there when they wanted to be alone, their friends preferring Santa Cruz beach and the boardwalk, where the action was. This was where Andrew had told her he loved her the first time, where their teenage petting had moved to something more serious, and where he had asked her to marry him.

“Why did you buy a house here?” she asked.

“I would have thought you’d figured that out by now.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He stepped out of the path of a wave, pulling her with him. “In the beginning I told myself it was to be as near the water as I could. I wanted to be able to grab my board and be the first one to catch the big waves. It seemed the ultimate endless summer when I cared about such things. Turned out the big waves invariably hit when I was tied up at the nursery. And even when I wasn’t, the thrill I thought would be there, wasn’t.”

“You could have been close to the water a hundred different places. Why here?”

“I didn’t understand that myself until I became friends with the guy who was renting the house next door. Ken Huntington was a lot like you. He came here from the Midwest, took one look at the ocean, and never looked back.”

“Ken Huntington … wasn’t he the computer guy who died in a car wreck?”

“It wasn’t a wreck, but it was on the freeway. Ken had a heart attack on his way to work. He made me realize it wasn’t just the ocean that held me, it was this cove. I had my choice of beachfront property, some of it a lot nicer than what I wound up with and at the same price, but it had to be here.”

“And how did he make you realize the reason you had to be here?”

He stopped to brush windswept hair back from his forehead. “He fell in love. Seeing him was like looking in a mirror at the man I once was.”

She stared at him until the silence grew awkward. “Was there someone else, Andrew? You can tell me now. I’m stronger than I was then.”

He’d started to say something when she added, “Don’t tell me what you think I should hear. I deserve the truth.”

“There was no one else, Cheryl.”

“I could understand if there were. You were half a state away. You were bound to get lonely.”

Even after all this time, the pain was still there. He could see it in her eyes. She wanted there to be another woman because it was something she could understand. “Would it be easier for you to forgive me if I told you that I left you for someone else?”

She folded her arms across her chest in a protective gesture. “Did you?”

“No.”

“Then why? Make me understand. At least give me that much.”

His reasons for not telling her now were as valid as they had been then. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him or make decisions based on what he’d gone through. “Something happened to me that I couldn’t share with anyone, not even you. It changed me, Cheryl. Suddenly I was looking at the world through a narrow tunnel of time. I thought and acted in ways that seemed logical tome then but now seem like irrational acts committed by someone scared out of his mind.”

“Why were you scared?”

She was right. She deserved the truth. “I had cancer.”

“Cancer?” She frowned, her expression going from confused to disbelieving. “How could that happen without me knowing? I saw you every–” She peered into his eyes, questioning, remembering. “That’s why you didn’t come home for Christmas. And why you wouldn’t let me go down there for spring break.” Still struggling to understand, she added, “How could you have had cancer? You were never sick. You never even had a cold the whole time we were together.”

“That’s how I reacted, too. At least in the beginning.”

Her confusion turned to anger. “You had no right not to tell me.”

He started to reach for her; she slapped his hand away. “You
bastard.
How could you do that to me? How could you let me believe there was someone else? You had to have known that’s what I would think no matter what you said. All these years I’ve doubted myself, believing I wasn’t good enough.”

She was wrong. He hadn’t known. “I’m so sorry.” The words sounded hollow. “If I had it to do over …” What did it matter what he would do differently now? “I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?” she echoed. “A mistake is whenyou show up for an appointment on the wrong day or when you put the wrong check in an envelope–not when you destroy the reason another person gets up in the morning.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor. At the time it was something I believed with all my heart.”

“How could you have had cancer? You were so young.”

Finally, he understood. He’d had eighteen years to come to terms with what had happened to him, she’d had less than a minute. “Testicular cancer happens to young men.”

She started to cry, angry, frightened, accusing tears. “Make me understand why you didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“But we told each other everything.”

He led her to a log that had washed up on the beach during the last storm, brushed the sand from its smooth, gray surface, sat down, and brought her down next to him. She tried to pull her hand free, but he hung on. “The cancer was happening to
me,
Cheryl, not to us,” he said as he gently wiped tears from her cheeks. “No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t have understood what I was going through, and I didn’t want you to have to try. It was my problem.” He looked down at their clasped hands, and then up to meet her eyes. “And to be honest, it was easier for me not to talk about it. Not even to you.”

“I might not have understood exactly what youwere feeling, but I could have helped. How could you have excluded me? You didn’t even give me a chance. You didn’t give
us
a chance.” She turned her face to the sea.

“As I started to say before, if I had it to do over again, I would do it differently.”

“But you don’t,” she said with finality. “What might have been is gone.”

Fear traveled his spine like a sharp-clawed cat. He’d barely found her. He couldn’t lose her a second time. “The years we would have had together are gone, but there are a lot of years left.”

“I have a good life, Andrew. I like my friends, my job, where I live. It took me a long time to get over you the first time. Why would I want to take a chance on being hurt again?”

He reached over and took one of the suspender straps between his thumb and forefinger and slowly moved from her shoulder to her waist, feeling her tense when the backs of his fingers lightly brushed her breast, hearing the quick intake of air. “Because you’re not over me,” he said. “Any more than I’m over you.”

  C
HERYL ROLLED TO HER SIDE AND STARED
at the narrow line of light coming through the drapes in her motel room. She’d planned to drive home this morning, taking the coast route and stopping in Half Moon Bay to have lunch with her cousin and do some shopping. That was before Andrew talked her into staying another day. She still wasn’t sure staying was wise. Too much had happened. Too fast. She’d come for closure and had been broadsided by openings she hadn’t dreamed existed.

She was scared. She’d expected to feel a mix of emotions if she saw him again, but had been unprepared for the raw power. Thank God for the fear. Without it she would have been in his arms and in his bed and ready to start over.

He was the man she remembered, the man shehad loved, the man she would have followed to the ends of the earth. Being with him again was as easy as if they’d been together the day before.

Nothing real was that easy.

If only he’d told her about the cancer. How different their lives would have been. Even if, in the end, he’d still chosen to leave, she would have understood and could have gone on with her life.

Or so she wanted to believe in hindsight. But could she have gone on as easily as she imagined? No matter how they parted, she would still have loved him, would still have dreamed about him, would still ache for what might have been. Her heart would always be heavy with thoughts of their lost years. Nothing could change it or make it go away.

She glanced at the clock. Ten after six. She was to meet Andrew back at his house at nine for breakfast. Over two and a half hours. Too much time to think.

She got out of bed and headed for the shower.

An hour later she was standing on his front step, her hand raised to knock, when he came up behind her wearing jogging shorts and shoes and nothing else. Her heart skipped a beat and then raced as a wave of pure, naked lust washed over her.

“So you couldn’t sleep either,” he said.

There was no use denying the obvious. “I was hoping you’d be up. We need to talk.”

He reached around her to open the door. “Hungry?”

She caught a hint of shampoo and aftershave and something spicy and masculine mixed with the saltiness of sweat. She flashed back to the illicit mornings they had spent together when she’d sneaked off to spend a weekend with him in San Diego, telling her parents she was off with a girlfriend. They’d pooled their money for a motel room and had stayed up all night then, too, only together. They’d made love and talked and made love again until hunger drove them from their cocoon.

To save money to see each other, they limited their phone calls to twice a week, late Wednesday evening, after the rate change, and Sunday mornings. In between they wrote letters, his long and poetic, hers filled with details of her day. Later, compulsively, she had read and reread what he had written, looking for clues to help her understand why he left. Her darkest moment came the night she burned the letters, one by one, in the backyard at her parents’ home.

Two days later she was in the hospital with pneumonia. While there she realized she needed to either start going through the motions of living again or curl up and die. The next month she started school, graduating with honors two years later.

“All right, so you’re not hungry,” he said, when she didn’t answer. “How about some coffee?”

She looked up into his gaze. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for not telling me the truth about your cancer.”

The light left his eyes. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

“One of the things.”

“Can we go inside and talk about this?”

“Yes,” she conceded.

“Can I get cleaned up first?”

The question brought a smile that surprised them both. “Actually, I would prefer it.”

“Sorry. I smelled a lot better an hour ago.” He backed away, indicating she should go first. “I thought maybe you were having trouble sleeping, too–actually, I hoped you were–and figured you might show up early so I got up and did the spit-and-polish thing. And then when you didn’t come I went jogging. It was either that or pace a path in the carpet.”

It was the “too” that reached her. “I was awake; I just didn’t think you would be.”

“Come on, Cheryl. You know better than that.”

“All right, maybe I just didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t sleep.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“Take as long as you want. I’ll make coffee.” She shouldn’t have volunteered. Making coffee was too familiar, too domestic.

He disappeared down the hallway. A minute later she heard running water and the click of a shower door. Slipping her purse strap from her shoulder, she dropped the bag on a table beside the sofa and looked around, something she hadn’t done the night before. As always, Andrew chose comfort over style. The eclectic furniture ranged from a futon that was a step past its prime to a magnificent, custom-made bookcase that ran the length of one wall. Two Mission-style chairs faced a stone fireplace; the table in between held a fanned stack of orchid journals. Specimen seashells lined the mantel, each an exquisite piece of nature’s art. The paintings were watercolors of local scenes, beautiful in their simplicity and execution, the artist, Peter Wylie, one of the most sought after painters of the decade. She was impressed, not because of the small fortune Andrew had hanging on his walls, but because he had settled enough to actually collect something of value.

She realized with a sinking feeling that instead of freeing her mind of him she was filling it with new, fiercely compelling images.

She went into the kitchen and spotted the coffeemaker on the counter beside the sink. She found the coffee in the refrigerator, and with her stomach reminding her that she’d not only skipped dinner the night before, but lunch, too, she tucked a carton of eggs under her arm and dug around for something to add to an omelet.

If making coffee was too domestic, cooking was over the top. He’d invited her to breakfast. Would he get the wrong impression if she–

What was the matter with her?
Did it matter what
impression she gave him? Wasn’t it time they moved past playing games and were honest with each other?

NOT CARING THAT SHE WOULD KNOW HE
didn’t want to waste a minute of their time together, Andrew skipped drying his hair and applying cologne, even skipped putting on shoes and socks. He did grab a comb to run through his hair as he walked down the hall, tossing the comb on the futon before entering the kitchen.

In a glance he took in the eggs in the bowl, the green onions on the cutting board, and the cheese beside the grater. He was about to protest that he’d invited her to eat breakfast, not to cook it, but couldn’t get the words out. Seeing her working in his kitchen as if she belonged there, as if she wanted to be there, left him speechless with hope.

Without turning, she asked, “Who lives in the house across the path?”

Andrew’s kitchen had large picture windows on two sides, one facing the ocean, the other the Chapman house. He moved to stand beside her and picked up the cheese. “No one right now. The friend I told you about who died a couple of years ago used to live there. His widow married another friend of mine, and they lived there until his ex-wife moved to Virginia. He and Julia followed to be close to his kids.”

“So the house just sits empty now?”

“They get here as often as they can in the winter, but with a baby on the way and Eric’s writing career taking off, they’re never here in the summer. Instead of selling, they’ve decided to try renting it out again, a month at a time. If that works, they’ll keep it, if it doesn’t, they’ll put the house on the market this fall.”

“You said ‘again.’ If they’ve done it before, why would they think it wouldn’t work this time?”

“The couple who owned the house before Ken were the ones who did the renting. The people they rented to came back every summer for over ten years. They were more like extended family who loved and cared for the place as if it was their own.”

“And none of them want to come back?”

Andrew took a plate from the cupboard to catch the cheese as he grated it. “That last summer turned out to be pivotal for all of them. Their lives changed dramatically. One actually became a movie star.”

“Anyone I would know?”

“Chris Sadler.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re kidding. The girls I work with at the clinic would go crazy if they knew I was even this close to a house Chris Sadler had lived in.”

“He’s a terrific kid. Or at least he was when I knew him. I can’t imagine he’s changed.”

She finished cutting the onions and scoopedthem into a bowl. “How long have you known him?”

“As long as I’ve lived here.”

“There’s so much I don’t know about you. It seems so strange that I came here thinking I knew everything.”

“Whatever you want to know, just ask.” Anything to close the gap, to fill in missing pieces.

“Seventeen years …” She gave him a lost look. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“I told you about finding my grandfather.” What he hadn’t told her was that after six months of cancer treatment, the less-than-wonderful meeting had nearly delivered an emotional knockout punch. Knowing better, he’d gone in with high hopes that someone had been looking for him, too, that someone, somewhere cared.

“When that didn’t work out, I took off and hitchhiked across country, and ended up in Virginia Beach. I figured one ocean was as good as another and tried to settle in, but it didn’t work. A year later I was on the road again, headed home.

She started to say something. He waited, finally prompting, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

She opened drawers until she found a whip to beat the eggs.

“Cheryl?” He put his hand over hers.

Without looking at him, she asked, “Did you miss me? Did you ever think about me?”

He didn’t know the words to tell her how hard it had been to wake up to a sunrise and know she would never share another morning with him or how many times he’d composed a conversation telling her about something new he’d seen or experienced that day. Would she care how many letters he’d written and destroyed? Or how, slowly, he came to recognize that she was more than a habit he could get over, she was an integral part of him, the best part.

“Always,” he told her. “Every moment of every day.”

“Just not enough.”

“At the time I believed I loved you more than any man had ever loved a woman. My inflated sense of nobility kept me away, but not so far I didn’t secretly hope we would run into each other if I came back.”

“No one told you I moved?”

“I couldn’t ask about you and still maintain the self-sacrificing fantasy that I’d left for noble motives. I know how hard this is to understand all these years later, but I believed it was only a matter of time and the cancer would be back. I didn’t want to put you through that. Even if I’d somehow managed to beat the disease, I was only half a man. I could never give you the children you wanted.”

She let out a harsh laugh.
“I
can’t give me thechildren I wanted. Turns out I’m only half a woman, and I don’t have cancer as an excuse. I was just made that way.”

Andrew did something he’d sworn he would not do. He reached for her and brought her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

She held herself stiffly, resisting the comfort he wanted to give. And then, with a soft moan of letting go, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen.”

“Me too.”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

He closed his eyes and nestled his chin against the top of her head. “Nothing.”

“I’ll give you this much–even though I shouldn’t. I’ve never felt as if I really fit in anyone else’s arms.”

A fire raced through his midsection, settling in his loins. It was everything he could do to resist a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to taste the lips he remembered as if he’d kissed them the day before. Only knowing he was embarking on the most important journey of his life kept him from giving in to that urge. It wasn’t momentary satisfaction he was after, it was a lifetime.

“Welcome home,” he said tenderly.

With more effort than he would have thought possible, Andrew released her. Then, needing something to do, he took out a pan, put it on the stove, turned on the fire, and added a pat of butter.

Cheryl stood back and watched him. For thefirst time she allowed a glimmer of hope to take root in her heart. She’d seen the hunger in his eyes and felt a reciprocal hunger in herself. She knew she wouldn’t have, that she
couldn’t
have, resisted him, but she also knew that later, when she was alone, she would have questioned whether they were building something real or if they’d simply been caught up in physical longing.

His back to her, his hands planted on the counter, staring out the window, he said, “I want you to know that letting you go just now was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I meant it when I told you I was playing for keeps this time.” He turned. “We have a lot of years ahead of us–and a lot of years to make up.”

“How do we do that, Andrew? How can we possibly make up for seventeen lost years?” She feared if they tried to go back, they would end up mired in what might have been. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just concentrated on the here and now and see where it leads us?”

“Do you really think you could fall in love with me again without dealing with the past?”

Falling in love with him again was a moot point. She’d never stopped loving him. Unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes. “If only you’d told me.”

The butter crackled in the heated pan and started smoking. Andrew reached to turn off the burner.

“No, don’t,” Cheryl said. “We’ll save it for later.

I’m not ready to go over it again now anyway.” She was mentally exhausted and needed a break.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Want me to do that?”

He smiled, plainly trying to make the transition easier. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve become a pretty good cook.”