He peeked out from under the towel and looked up at her with a clean-shaven face and unlocked eyes. The image was so radiant that Rae had to squint through her sunglasses.
“Are you sure Wall Street can survive without you for five minutes?” he deadpanned with a diaphragm-deep smile.
“It’ll be tough, but they’ll manage.” She tossed her sunglasses onto the sand and draped Dustin’s towel over both their heads. It felt like the bedsheet tents they made in the Lorimer Loft but not as dark, and warmer, too, with the sun strumming against their bare legs to an island melody.
“The Great Rae-cession,” Dustin said. “I can see theWall Street Journalheadline now.”
Rae tried to smile, but it snagged on her lips.
“It’s just work,” Dustin said. “Don’t let them get to you.”
“It’s not that. It’s—my dad called and asked me to dinner tonight. Apparently he’s on a work trip to New York.”
“He didn’t give you a heads-up he was coming?”
“No. He didn’t. But he asked if I could help his company get some Wall Street money.”
“Are you serious?”
Rae started to put on a sarcastic smirk and then remembered she didn’t have to hide her emotions around Dustin. “Very serious,” she said, letting her hurts and hopes show in plain sight. “But it was sort of nice to talk to him, actually. He’s not the villain in the simple little story I’ve repeated to myself over the years, is he? He’s just a hurting, imperfect human like the rest of us—a fifty-something-year-old man who’s still a lost boy at heart and doesn’t know how to be anything other than what he’s seen.”
She’d never articulated it quite like this before, to anyone else or even to herself, but she knew she was being fairer to her dad than she’d ever been. Looking back on the divorce a decade later from this newish adult vantage point, she didn’t have to grip the black-and-white guardrails for safety anymore. She could venture farther into the grays and try on her dad’s shoes for a few steps—contemplating more how the scars from his own father’s absence might have stayed etched on his heart like a cruel calligraphy note telling him he wasn’tenough, subconsciously compelling him to chase validation from new people and new places to fill the void, ultimately leading him to follow his dad’s footsteps right out the door despite all those happy, healing years he’d spent raising a beautiful daughter with a beautiful wife. A sorry sort of softness rose within her as she recalled how he’d swelled with pride at how he was the family man his dad had never been, only to fulfill that wretched destiny in the end because he just couldn’t help himself or let himself be helped.
The heavy analysis made Rae feel a bit lighter. Maybe she could find it in herself to extend compassion to her dad without condoning his actions. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t so much an offering to the other person as it was an offering to yourself. A precious key to freedom so you didn’t give your past the power to lock up your future. An inner antidote to help you heal enough to stay by someone’s side your whole life, finally breaking the cycle of brokenness.
Rae picked up the pen and jotted the fragments onto a page of the Stall Street Journal.
Dustin looked at her while she wrote, wincing a bit at the words. “Your dad doesn’t deserve you.” He paused, then added, “Neither do I.”
Rae looked at Dustin through the filtered light. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true,” Dustin said, pressing his face to hers, their eyelashes overlapping. “Your give-to-get ratio has been way too high.”
“It’s not your fault,” Rae said. “Depression isn’t something you can control.”
Dustin matched her exhale and gave her a squeeze. Even after many months together, Rae constantly craved being closer, closer, closer to him, and there was nothing better than those times, like today, when he seemed to feel that way too. “I wouldn’t blame you, you know,” he said, “if you—”
“Stop.” Rae cut him off. “We’re not talking about this.”
“You promised you wouldn’t steal from your own sunshine to keep my soul out of the shade,” he reminded.
“And I’m not.” She yanked the towel off, craving metaphorical proof that there was enough sunlight for both of them. In a smaller voice, she added, “Just maybe try … not to take things out on me … when you’re feeling down?”
Dustin pulled her closer as his voice drifted farther away. “I hate myself when I do that,” he said. “So damn much.”
Rae’s chest tightened. He didn’t need another reason to be hard on himself. “I love you,” she said. “All the time.”
True love had no term sheets, no disclaimers, no conditions, no maturity dates.
“I love you,” Dustin said. “Forever.”
At the wordforever, Rae braced for the jolt of fear that she’d thought she’d always feel after watching her dad walk out. But the fear didn’t come, just a blast of blue-sky freedom.
Dustin reached over and picked up the Stall Street Journal. Carefully, he tore a strip from one of the blank pages and folded it into a thin cylinder that he slipped onto her left hand.
Rae looked at Dustin, then down at the paper ring, then up at Dustin again.
“I didn’t mean it, that stuff I said before about not wanting to get married,” he said, tone laced with self-hate about the weaponry he’d let slip out as words. “I do want it, more than anything and more than everything. I just need to work on myself more before I can propose for real … but I’m yours, for as long as you’ll have me.”
