Yes. I don’t understand a word he said about his parents, but hisneedto say it connects with me on a very personal level.
“Scarlet?” he calls before I close the car door. “I think you should see a doctor. It’s time.”
I smile. “Thank you for lunch.”
*
I haven’t spokenthe wordcanceraloud since I’ve been here. Yimin has been treating my body for something that he may or may not know exists. The word-filled pages of books written by spiritual teachers have made my reality emotionally manageable.
Shit happens.
All we have is now.
Better give thanks.
I don’t know if I drank too much or if the summer I spent with a Frenchman, who convinced me to smoke with him, had some monumental impact on where I am right now. Maybe random sex wasn’t the best form of recreation in my late teens. An STD sat in the back of my mind during my recklessness, but never cancer. Maybe in this toxic world my body burden hit a tipping point and my wake-up call came a little too late. But it all comes down to this: does it matter?
All I have is now, and I will take every single now I’m given.
As soon as I open the back door, I hear a voice—someone singing. I creep up the stairs, not wanting to make a noise, fearful the voice will disappear. That would be tragic because I could listen to this voice—hisvoice—forever.
I stop at the top step. Theo has nailed down some sort of underlayment for the tile. I don’t know if I’m allowed to step on it, so I sit on the top step and listen to him. He’s on his hands and knees with his back to me, several feet away, earbuds in his ears, and he’s singing a song I have never heard before.
My name is Scarlet Stone and my first concert was Rod Stewart. In the front row, where the sweat dripped from thesexiest man alive and the roar of the crowd shook the stadium, I vowed to one day marry a rock star.
It’s a love song and it’s dark and… heartbreaking. I don’t recognize the voice, it’s tangled with emotion and veiled by sexy grit that is so not the Theodore Reed with whom I’ve become acquainted. The longer I listen, the more I feel like I’m intruding on something personal. Is he singing this for Kathryn? As I ease to my feet to leave and give him privacy, he stops singing. I halt and wince, feeling his eyes on me before I even turn.
“Hey,” he says. I feel zero hatred toward me at the moment because his “hey” is said in a friendly, un-Theo way.
It’s the first word we’ve shared since my breakdown in the bathroom the morning after we had sex. Lots of sex. I don’t know what scares me more—our uncontrolled physical attraction or our mutual need to not talk about it, at all, like it never happened, like it was…nothing.
“Hey. Sorry. I heard a voice so I came up to see what it was and then…” I shrug as if I’ve been caught doing something wrong.
Theo stands and pops one earbud out and then the other. I came to Savannah to see where it all began… where I began. But right now, I swear to God I flew to the other side of the pond just to see Theo in a dirty white T-shirt and faded blue jeans with holes in the knees, a red bandana wrapped around his head, and the most vulnerable look in his blue eyes. In this moment, I don’t even recognize him.
“You’re fine. Did you just get back?”
I nod. “Nolan asked me to lunch.”
He leans against the door frame, boots crossed at the ankle. “A date?”
I smile. It feels painful on my face and even more unbearable in my heart. “No. Just lunch. I’m quite possibly the most un-datable person on Tybee Island.”
“Because you’re engaged?”
I shake my head. “Your voice. I’m starting to think your lie is the truth. If I have…” I bite at my lip, wincing at my likely fate “…a little extratime, maybe I can be a groupie for your first concert.”
He pushes out a long breath. “Maybe we can play at your wedding reception.”
Ouch. This hurts. Does he have any idea how much pain I feel right now?
“The Amazon river has a species of freshwater dolphins. When they get excited they turn pink. Very human of them, don’t you think? Anyway, they have this mating ritual. The male throws a piece of driftwood around—which he can do because unlike other species of dolphins, they can turn their heads from side to side. If the female catches it, that means they will mate.”
Theo smirks.
“My dad told me that. He fed my insatiable hunger for knowledge more than anyone. Books. He gave me books. Some quite rare.”
I look up just as Theo quirks an eyebrow. “And he purchased these books from some little hole-in-the-wall bookstore that happened to have some hidden treasures?”
