The One That I Want (6 page)

Analise was singing along with some Taylor Swift song on the radio. She seemed happy on this Friday morning. Her sleepover last night with Lindsay and Brooke had agreed with her, and Yvette’s daughters had pumped her up—at least temporarily—with enthusiasm for summer camp. I prayed everyone was right about this thing being good for her.

In any case, while she was happily occupied, I clicked on Ben’s message, subject line:
Franklin’s Reunion
, to see what he’d written. Though it was addressed to me specifically, it soon became clear that it was an impersonally constructed thing. He wrote:

Dear Julia,

Our Reunion of Franklin College’s Secondary Education graduates will be here in just a two weeks! What have you been doing in the years since you completed your coursework?

Like José Rodrigo, are you teaching at one of Chicago’s finest magnet schools?

Working with gifted teens like our own Helena Kazuya?

Or maybe, like Natalia Ginsberg, you’re globetrotting to Europe and Latin America with your high-school Spanish students?

I’m pleased to say that I’ve been busy with archeological digs in the Baja Peninsula and around Mexico with my honors students at Lincolnshire North Academy and couldn’t be having a better time. Next year, we’ve got Ixtapa and the Xihuacan site on our agenda!

Hope you’ll be ready to share all of YOUR exciting teaching adventures with your former classmates when we get together on July 10th. We’ve got a cash bar with cocktails, plus some appetizers, starting at 6:30pm. Dinner at 8:00pm. Bring your significant other and your best stories!

May the spirit of teaching touch your heart, as it has mine.

Warmly,

Benjamin J. Saintsbury

Associate Dean and History/Archaeology Instructor, Lincolnshire North Academy, a Blue Ribbon School

I tried to keep from scowling at the screen. Ben’s tone, even in email form, irritated me. He’d always been hungry for love, for approval, for admiration, and even for envy. He
wanted
people to be jealous of him and never failed to slip in a boastful phrase when he could. I always suspected that was why our breakup had been so hard on him. It wasn’t that he truly missed
me
. No. He was just afraid other students would find out that I’d left him. That they might feel sorry for him for something.

I clicked out of email and surfed the Internet for a while, looking up recent news stories on Dane Tyler.

What a disappointment meeting him had been! I still couldn’t get over his jerky behavior. As my daughter transitioned to a song by Katy Perry, I read one of the
International Tattler
articles (I know, hardly a reputable source) on Dane’s breakup with actress Emily Brennan.

Details divulged from “individuals close to the couple” included an impressive collection of action-packed verbs and descriptive adjectives that spoke of Emily’s “agitation” and “despair” at the relationship’s “fiery demise,” and so on.

“It’s been coming for months,” one anonymous “friend” told the magazine.

“Emily was distraught because she was sure Dane was cheating on her with his longtime ex,” confided yet another “close pal” of the couple. That “ex” being Kendra Leigh, with whom he’d had some
very
steamy love scenes about fifteen years ago in their Western romantic comedy
Love at Cedar Ranch.

I didn’t doubt the asshat slept around. It would serve him right if someone like me were to contact one of the tabloids and tell those paparazzi sleazebags about his lousy backstage behavior. After last night, I was sorely tempted.

But, of course, I refrained.

Much as I didn’t appreciate Dane’s accusations and his bad attitude, the guy probably had a right to be paranoid about reporters. From the looks of this latest article, they seemed overjoyed to have the opportunity to skewer him in their papers.

Having finally had my fill of sensationalism, I turned off the computer and asked Analise if she wanted me to take her to the pool.

She threw her arms around me. “Yes, if you’ll come in the water with me! I’m going to miss you so much when I’m away at camp, Mommy.”

I was aware that she was trying to manipulate me. She knew I preferred to sit at the pool’s edge and read rather than swim. But I didn’t care. Her words hit me like a rock.

“I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand it for four whole weeks away,” she added, a note of genuine melancholy finding its way into her voice.

Truth was, I didn’t know how I’d be able to stand it either.

Despite the ultra-peppy teenybopper music still blaring in the background, her body grew still in my arms, as if the meaning of her own words suddenly dawned on her. My eyes filled with tears that I tried to blink away before she saw them. This upcoming separation was going to be torture.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll be in contact the whole time,” I reassured her, even though I knew this was only a half truth. The campers were able to bring up cell phones or tablets, but they were only allowed to use them for one hour each day, in the evening between the after-dinner group activity and bedtime. The rest of the day, the devices were kept locked up, except if one was needed in the event of an emergency.

At the pool, I played with my daughter in the shallow end—a task that used to always fall to Adam, since he was a lover of waterslides and pool games. She didn’t ask me to do any of the things he used to do with her—she knew from experience that my skill level at such activities wasn’t as high—but she seemed to delight in just being outside in the water and sunshine. In jumping, splashing, plunging, and even swimming a stroke or two. Anything to see my baby girl smile.

Because we were in the pool for two hours, I didn’t get the text and voicemail messages on my phone until we were ready to leave. Both were from Kristopher.

Hmm. He didn’t waste any time.

The voicemail said, “Hey, Jules! Great seeing you at the play last night. So, Wednesday? My work schedule is very flexible right now. I can meet almost anytime. Just let me know when!”

Then the text: “Me again. I
love
texting. So much easier than passing paper notes in social studies, LOL. Just wanted to let you know you can reach me this way, too, if you prefer.”

I remembered those paper notes from high school. I’d even kept a few of them, slipped in between the pages of my journal. If we’d had text messages back then, I never would have had any record of our dating months… Did teenagers even write on paper much anymore? Even keep journals?

Then again, how much good did physical reminders of those old memories do for me now?

We returned home to find a Post-It note from Flowers4U stuck to the front glass door.

“Delivery attempt #1 at 2:07pm,” it read. “Will return between 4:30 - 5:00pm.”

“Flowers?” Analise read, sounding worried. “Who’s sending you flowers?”

The last time we had floral deliveries, they came with condolence cards. I didn’t blame my daughter for being apprehensive.

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly, “but my best guess is that they’re from an old friend of mine from high school.” I flashed my phone at her. “He’s left me a couple of messages, too. He just got back into town and wants to get together to catch up over coffee this coming week. Probably on Wednesday when you’re at your jazz dance class.”

Analise visibly relaxed, but I could see that crease between her eyebrows and I knew she still had questions.

“Was he your boyfriend?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said finally. “His name is Kristopher Karlsen and we dated for a few months. But it was a
long
time ago. Years before I met your Daddy. Once I met him, there was no other man for me.”

She smiled, if a little weakly. She was somewhat reassured, just not quite enough yet.

“Do you think your old boyfriend is someone you’ll marry now?”

I swallowed. “I—I barely know him anymore,” I told her, which was the God’s honest truth. I wouldn’t pretend that it was impossible for me to marry Kristopher—I’d very much wanted to at one time—but I was a teenager then. Sure, he was still very handsome and polite, but a lot had happened since the end of eleventh grade, and I still didn’t know why he’d remained single all these years later.

Maybe he’d never found “The One” he’d been looking for.

Maybe he was secretly (or not so secretly) gay.

Maybe someone else had broken
his
heart and he’d never recovered.

Who knew?

When the doorbell rang an hour or so later, my daughter, who was faster and lighter on her feet than me, rushed to open the door for the flower delivery guy.

“Are you Ms. Julia Meriwether Crane?” the college kid carrying the (enormous!) floral arrangement asked my daughter sweetly.

Analise shook her head, staring in awe at the dozens of flowers pouring out of the delicate pink glass vase. She pointed at me, and the college guy said, “Somebody really likes your mom.”

I was a bit speechless, actually. Kristopher had really outdone himself with this one.

After thanking the nice young man and bringing the arrangement into the kitchen, I pulled out my phone, preparing to text him or maybe even call.

Analise bounced around the kitchen table admiring the flowers. “Oh, oh! Can I open the card?” she begged, picking up the small white envelope that had been decoratively placed into the center of the arrangement.

I laughed, pleased by her enthusiasm over such a small thing, and figured, hey, what could be the harm? Kristopher wasn’t one to say anything too suggestive (I hoped!), and if he wrote in cursive, Analise wouldn’t be able to decipher it anyway. Kids these days considered script akin to a foreign language.

So I told her, “Sure! Tell me what he says.”

Then I hit Reply on Kristopher’s last text and began to type, “Thanks so much for—” when my daughter started reading.

“Sorry for jumping to conclusions, Julia Meriwether Crane…”
Analise paused and squinted at the writing.

I was more confused than she was, though. Kristopher knew my full name of course, but what had he been jumping to conclusions about?

“I didn’t mean to take my bad mood out on you,”
Analise continued.

“What bad mood?” I actually said aloud. Kristopher had been in relatively high spirits last night—or so I’d thought. Had I misjudged him somehow? Been too concerned with my own feelings and completely misread his?

My daughter shrugged and finished reading he card.
“I hope you’ll accept both my sincere apologies and these two tickets to Closing Night and the VIP party that follows.”
She paused and pulled two smallish, golden colored tickets out of the envelope and handed them to me. Then my sweet little girl said, “Who’s D.T., Mommy?”

I put down my cell phone. “No,” I whispered. “It can’t be.”

“I thought you said your high-school boyfriend was called Kristopher.”

“He—he…is,” I stammered.

“So, this is another guy?”

I nodded. “Not an old boyfriend, though.”

“Is
he
somebody you might marry?”

“What? No! God, no.” I studied the card. It was carefully handwritten in very precise block print. Printing that I recognized immediately from signed movie posters I’d admired on eBay and would have loved to buy a decade or two ago, had they not been so expensive.

So I knew—Dane had written this note himself.

My daughter regarded me with all the skepticism her ten-year-old self could project before finally shrugging and skipping away to watch TV.

I was left to try to puzzle out what on earth could have induced Dane Tyler to send me this message, to say nothing of the gazillion flowers taking up half of our kitchen table. And how had he managed to find me?

The guy was insane if he thought I’d go to this VIP shindig of his, but I couldn’t help but feel weirdly flattered by the invitation and, yes—I had to admit it—more than a little vindicated by the apology.

Chapter Six

“So, what have you been doing since you returned home to Mirabelle Harbor?” I asked Kristopher over French vanilla lattés at Not The Same Old Grind on Wednesday afternoon.

The coffee shop in the middle of town was bustling, as usual, but we’d found a table in the back corner that was fairly quiet. It was comforting being here. Safe.

He blew on his coffee with lips I remembered thinking were so sensual back in high school. I still thought so, and was unable to keep from watching as he glanced around the shop and took a cautious sip. Lingering, in a way that left me convinced that he was stalling because he didn’t want to answer my question.

“Uh, well…lately I’ve been the number one handyman for my mother,” he joked. “She’s got a to-do list twelve pages long. I don’t think she’s had any repairs done on the house in the three years or so since my dad died.”

“I was sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thanks,” he said, but he flicked his hand as if brushing away the sentiment.

I knew Kristopher had always had an uneasy relationship with his dad, but I was sure it was still hard to lose him. My parents had relocated to South Carolina about six years ago for the warmer climate and the superior golf. And though they were both in good health, Mirabelle Harbor wasn’t the same for me without them. Or without Adam.