Oh no.… Was he asking me on a date? Sweet Mr. Joe. I looked down at myself. If a man asks you out when you’re wearing a stained, ripped Big Rock Fishing Tournament shirt from fifteen years ago, he really likes you. Gary, the owner of this shirt, had been the mate on the boat that won the Big Rock in 2005. He got $50,000 of the $1 million prize and went on a month-long bender in Vegas. Blew through every cent of that money and then came crawling back to me. Needless to say, I did not answer the door.
It was right about the time Mr. Joe asked me out that I decided to look at the bright side and assume that Gray had given me the job because she needed me and she was a nice girl. No harm, no foul. Just a little white lie. Lord knows I’ve told my share. And it was also right about that time, when I heard myself say, “Oh, Mr. Joe, that sure is nice, but I’m seeing someone,” that I made up my mind about Frank too.
I put the Tums back, deciding I didn’t need them, seeing as how me settling everything had settled my stomach.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I knew I had to go talk to my brother. Instead of heading to Frank’s, like I thought I was going to, I went to Cape Nursing. Phillip was really luckybecause he didn’t have a roommate right now. The girls at the home had moved the other bed out of his room, and I’d put in two chairs I’d found on the side of the road in Gray’s neighborhood—I checked them for bedbugs before I took them—and I’d picked some flowers from Gray’s yard and put them in a mason jar on the windowsill. The carpet was still old and stained and dirty, and the window unit was still real loud, but it made it look a little better in there.
The TV was on when I walked into Phillip’s room, and he was staring at it, but he looked over at me. “Hi, buddy,” I said. “Can I turn your TV off?”
“Okay,” he said, as I hit the button on the remote.
I sat down in the other chair with the starfish cushions on it right beside him. “How you doing today?”
He didn’t say anything, but he smiled at me, light behind those green eyes of his.
“You won’t believe it,” I said enthusiastically. I had gotten so good at having mostly one-sided conversations with him, at being as excited as I could manage to maybe give him a bright spot in his day. “I’m finally working on opening a restaurant. On a boat!”
“A boat,” Phillip repeated.
I nodded. “You’ve met my friend Cheyenne. She comes by to see you sometimes. Her husband is helping me get it all fixed up, and I’m saving up some money to get it started. You’ll work there when I get it open, right? Help me some?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t. I could see it clear as day. The two of us in my little boat restaurant, rambling around ournew place together at night… with Frank. When I saw Phillip and me together in my head, Frank was there too. And that’s what gave me the strength, I think.
As I pulled into Frank’s driveway a few minutes later, I thought about the first time he ever brought me here.
I felt sick to my stomach looking out onto the beach, remembering that right there on that dune, that’s where we’d made that baby. At least, I think so. There was something so special about that night. I knew then that Frank and me, we’d be together forever. I turned to the house, but before I even got a chance to walk up the steps, I heard Frank’s feet thudding down. When he turned the corner, I was standing right there on the bottom one, just waiting and smiling.
He put his hand on his chest, a little out of breath. “Di, you always did know how to get my heart racing.”
He leaned in to kiss me, but I backed away.
That handsome face fell.
“Please, Di. Please don’t be here giving me bad news. I can’t take having you and then having to be without you again. Please.”
“Frank, I’m so mad at you,” I said. “Still. All these years later. You abandoned me just like the rest. Worse than the rest because you knew how hard it was for me to let anyone in. How can I ever trust you again?”
He took my hand, and I let him. “Di, it isn’t an excuse. I realize that it isn’t. But I was twenty-two years old, and I wasn’t just in danger of losing those stores. I was in danger of losing my family.”
My ears perked.
“Look, like I said, it isn’t an excuse, but my momma and daddy weren’t taking away the stores; they were taking away themselves, our relationship. Everything. I loved you. I wanted you, and I see now that I made the wrong choice, but at the time I couldn’t imagine my life without Christmases around the tree at the beach house and Easter lunch at Grandma’s. It was too much. It was too big a choice. So I didn’t choose. I just hid.”
Now, I know for most women, that wouldn’t be a good explanation. But for me, it couldn’t have been better. Because I had never had a family. At least, not in the way I wanted to. And if I ever had, I wouldn’t have let it go either. I’m damn sure about that. I was okay on my own. I was. But when you have a family and then you lose it, all you want forever is to get that back.
“I have never moved on past that day you walked away.” He put my hand up to his heart. “I’ve carried you right here all these years. I love you, D. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”
I could feel the panic rising in me that he couldn’t ever really love me, that he was going to leave me, that if I let myself fall, even a little, it would be over, just like everything else. I couldn’t bear it. “You don’t even know who I am, Frank,” I practically shouted, my voice suddenly shaking with fear and anger and passion. “You have no idea.” I could feel myself trying to push him away; I was terrified that he would find out who I really was and leave me. I had to tell him now. He had to knowthe real me. It was easier for him to leave me now than later. “Two months ago, I had sixty bucks to my name. I was homeless. I was living in my car. I was washing my underwear in a sink at the marina.” I was so worked up I had to pause to look away. “That isn’t something new for me, Frank. I’m not some shiny, hopeful eighteen-year-old anymore. I’ve been through things that I could never even explain to you. Life has worn me down. Life has won.”
He took my face in his hands. “I don’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done. I don’t care about any of it, Diana.”
“Your mom was right,” I said, my voice still raised. “I’m a trailer trash orphan. That’s all I’m ever going to be. I will never be good enough for you.”
“Diana,” Frank said quietly. He rubbed my arms, trying to soothe me. I was having trouble breathing. He bent down just a little so his face was even with mine. “She has always been shortsighted and she has always been wrong about you. You are more than enough for me. Hell, you are theonlyone for me.”
I was calming down now. I was hearing him. And this huge part of me knew that he was right. We were meant to be. There was no other way to describe how it felt.
