Love and Death in Blue Lake (3 page)

She pushed him away again to catch her breath. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I still love you, I’m always going to love you, but we have new lives. Good lives. We have to honor that.”

“You’re still my wife, so if you mean cheating, technically you’re cheating on me with him.”

“Then I guess you’ve been cheating on me a lot.”

They laughed like they used to, and the years tumbled away. He pulled her up and toward the loft. She let herself be led up the stairs even though the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, and stars were visible through the skylights. He pushed her down, just a gentle touch, but she knew what it meant. They’d done this before. A lot.

“Edward. We can’t.” She sat up on the bed and looked around. She’d wanted to see his personal space, that was all. Or that was what she told herself. What she saw was that the rain had stopped and the first pink of dawn lit the sky.

Edward must have seen it too. “Damn if that sky doesn’t match the color of your mouth.”

She remembered wearing bright red lipstick when they were together in public, but in private she always went soft for him. Could he really remember a detail like the exact shade of her mouth? She felt his hot gaze, saw him twist his neck to watch her over his shoulder. She sat on the bed, her purse open, a tube of glossy tint, that yes, she picked it up and saw he was right, matched the dawn which came super close to her natural lip color. She felt unutterably sad. It was the weirdest thing because she had only recently gotten everything she ever wanted. Hadn’t she?

“I’ll throw your bike in the trunk.” His step down the stairs was fast and sure.

“Don’t bother.” And she was down the stairs and out of the house even quicker than he could move.

“Court, honey, there’s no need to be upset.” He caught her hand and held her in place, looking toward the more blue than green water of the Sapphire river, engorged by the recent deluge. “Friends?”

She sighed. It occurred to her that she still loved him with all her heart, and that fact broke her resolve. She squeezed his hand. “Yeah. And more. You’ll always be in my heart. But that’s the only place you have in my life now.” She bit on the side of her thumb until she remembered she gave up that nervous habit fifteen years ago. “You can drive me home. I have to tell you something, anyway.”

She watched him swing her bike easily into the back of the truck. It was the only way to stop this. She had to tell him about the baby.

Chapter Two

Courtney didn’t want to tell Edward about the baby. She had been slowly realizing that her feelings for him had never gone away. They had hibernated. She didn’t love Xander. She didn’t want to raise a child with him. She didn’t want Ruby to be Xander’s legal daughter. She wanted all of that, but with Edward. How had she been so blind?

He wasn’t going to go for the baby. Not if he was the Edward she’d known so well.

“I don’t know how to start, so I’m just going to say it.”

“It’s like we never went away, isn’t it?”

“All those feelings just rushing back.” She let the warm night air hold her close. She was with him again. Her one love. She shook herself. She had to come clean. “Damn it, Edward, now wait. You don’t know everything.” She wasn’t angry at Edward; she was angry at herself for letting her heart feel these things they should not be feeling. It wasn’t gonna work. No way. Sure it felt right, but so did heroin, from what she’d heard.

“I don’t have to know everything. I just need to know one thing. Do you still love me?”

“Yes.” This was only making it more difficult. “But there’s a problem.”

“Ain’t no mountain high enough…,” he sang. He used to sing for her sometimes.

“I’m pregnant.”

“Baby?”

She wished he was calling her baby, but she knew he was asking the big question. The one that had seemed so happy and right before she began planning her return to Blue Lake and started thinking about Edward again. She put her hand on her belly. “Yep. Nobody knows. Not Ruby. Not my folks.”

“He know?”

“Yeah. He knows.”

Edward drove without saying anything. She waited for the accusations disguised as analysis for a few minutes before she remembered that it was Xander who did that, not Edward. Edward didn’t have any degrees to flaunt. He just had songs. He didn’t make her feel small the way Xander could, all the while sounding perfectly logical so that she, a trained therapist, became confused when Xander started in on her. Was he manipulating her? Was he just sharing his wisdom? She never knew. Ugh. A lifetime of that? What had she been thinking? Maybe she could have the baby and just stay here. See what happened with Edward. Suddenly it seemed the only answer.

“Well, I hope you’re happy.” When Edward finally spoke, she heard the clog in his throat. What in the world had happened to them, and why did it have to stop before it could even get started?

“I am, but I wish it was yours.”

“Oh God, not that again. What are we doing? Repeating history?” Edward played it straight. She could always count on him to say what was really on his mind. And if he wasn’t sure, he didn’t say anything until he was.

“I know. Edward, I’m sorry. It’s just happened maybe six weeks ago. It wasn’t planned. But I found out, and well, you know how I’ve always wanted…” She didn’t have to finish the sentence. They both knew what she’d always wanted. The one thing he’d never wanted to give her.

“So now he wants you and Ruby all legal and sewn up. And he has the perfect prize. Better than any precious gem.”

That had been, until just hours ago, the truth of it. “He’s still married, too. He’s been living with me, but neither of us ever got around to the paperwork, and his wife needs him. She doesn’t have a job. She relies on him.”

“Huh. So, then, this baby, it’s not legally his until you put the name on the birth certificate. We could stop this truck right now and do the things we used to do, and then this will be
our
baby.”

****

Eddie couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of his mouth. But she sighed and took his hand. Her hand was so soft.

“You don’t mind that it’s his?”

“I…listen.” He needed to make like a bicycle and back pedal. Fast. They didn’t call him Fast Eddie for nothing. “I don’t know what to think. I love you. It’s like you said. It all came back like you were never gone, like I got a do-over, and I won’t lie, I wanted one from the minute you walked into my bar. But babe. I have never thought one minute about ever having kids. And marriage? I’m married. We’re married. That’s my thoughts on marriage. My wife lives in California, and I have not seen her in eighteen years. It’s gonna take some time to wrap my head around all this.”

“Well, that’s why the divorce. We can still do that. We’ll get a divorce, and I’ll marry Xander…” Why was she saying that? Letting him off the hook so easily?

“If he in fact divorces his wife. Sometimes they don’t. I wasn’t planning to.”

“You weren’t?”

“Nope. I was gonna take my shot with you. I was gonna see how this weekend went, and if it went the way I thought, I was gonna ask you to stay. I mean, not move in or anything right away, but you know, date.”

They both laughed, breaking a little bit of the tension Eddie felt. Married twenty years and dating. Only them.

Then he parked the truck in front of her folks’ house, and it really felt like high school. He turned to her, his eyes full of unshed tears. “Shit,” he said.

She blinked, and a few drops fell from her own eyes. “I know.” She wiped the tears away quickly, impatiently. This was not tear and tissue time. This was brass tacks.

“I have to ask,” she said.

“Go ahead. Not sure I have an answer.”

“You said you were going to, like past tense?”

“Oh, damn, you know I hate grammar. But okay I get it. I had a plan, and now that plan has a wrinkle in it, and I shot my mouth off about raising a baby that isn’t even mine but belongs to some geezer out in LaLa Land, and listen. I need a minute. Okay?”

Well, okay. She wasn’t going to say she wanted the baby and him and Ruby to be a family. She wasn’t going to say dating first for a while seemed right. She wasn’t going to say anything. She was giving him permission to think about things. This was a big fat complicated mess. He’d worked hard to simplify his life since she’d gone. Now in a matter of hours she’d thrown everything into disarray.

Eddie got out of the truck and unloaded Courtney’s bike. He kicked the stand down and left the bike there on the sidewalk. For some reason, she was still sitting like she was glued or something to the seat of his truck.

He opened the door on her side and light flooded the cab of the truck. They stared at one another. She put her hand over her mouth, let out a tiny gasp. Eddie forced himself to stay silent, to not ask “what?” He moved to one side, and finally she slid out without saying a word.

He opened his arms and held her. “I need to think about some things,” he said again. And then he took both her arms, moved her away like a chess piece, and walked around the road to his side of the truck. He got in and drove away.

****

Eddie seemed damn happy to Bob Bryman. Man loved his bar. He’d told Bob once that it was perfect because he didn’t have to think about anything but serving his customers. Eddie tapped a beer and set it on a cardboard coaster in front of Bob, who was waiting for Lily. She was late. Lily was always late. Not that they’d seen each other much since he’d gone to architect school and she’d gone off to learn videography. Bob was thinking of an earlier time, when he’d been with Lily every day for an entire summer. He wanted more than anything for this summer to be the same, except better.

“Thanks, Eddie. House hold up okay under the storm last night?” Bob was proud of his first work as an architect, and would not have asked the question, would not be in the bar but at the site, if he didn’t already know the answer.

“Tight as an enchilada rolled from Tomas Sanchez’s own hands,” Eddie confirmed.

Bob nodded. “Good to hear.” But really, he didn’t hear, not really. He was too busy thinking about Lily. They had kept up a sporadic connection through college. He refused to go on Facebook, but she found him on another site he frequented, a group of M.Arch. majors. Like a little detective, she found him, and from there they emailed once every month or two. A few texts, fewer calls, never anything personal, except once she said she’d been considering becoming a lesbian. Could you do that? Decide?

He’d always thought sexuality was determined by DNA, but he looked into it a little deeper and found that it wasn’t quite so simple. Some women had such bad experiences with men that they deliberately crossed over. But then, after a few months, Lily mentioned a guy. Then another guy. Many guys, never the same one twice.

Eddie set another beer down. Bob hadn’t realized he’d drained the one in front of him, so busy had he been looping round and round his non-romance with Lily. Except she seemed, the last few months, warmer. Called him sweetie, for one thing. Bob pulled out his wallet before he remembered the deal.

“Your money’s no good here. You built my house, and that’s that,” Eddie said, not stopping to chat. Typical summer evening and the place was hopping. Here came Lily, looking lovely as she ever had, not one day older, and not a bit like a lesbian, whatever they looked like, which had to be because they looked like everyone else, far as Bob knew.

“Hi, sweetie!” She kissed him. On the lips. Before she scooted her barstool closer to his and sat down. Eddie was there in a flash, and she pointed to Bob’s beer. “Same.” Eddie poured the beer pronto. “And could I have a shot of Stoli?”

Eddie brought Lily’s shot in a pretty little glass. The kind his brother’s wife liked to buy at antique stores. That’s how Bob met Lily, because of Eva. Lily was not from Blue Lake. She had blown into town, a teenaged runaway who worked for Eva, Bob’s sister-in-law, at Blue Heaven. Then he and Lily went off to different universities, and his brother Daniel and Eva got married and made Bob’s childhood home into a place of their own. Blue Heaven was now run by a staff, and Eva had taken over the bachelor pad Bob had grown up in. That’s just the way it was. He’d had five years to get used to it.

Lily slammed down the vodka and batted her eyes at Eddie, asked for another. Eddie obeyed with alacrity. So it wasn’t just him, Bob thought. All men were putty in Lily’s hands.

Now he totally understood about Eva and Daniel. Bob had only been home a few weeks, and he already needed to get out of there. His brother and Eva kissed all the time. In front of him. They chased each other down hallways and up stairs, and Daniel grabbed Eva’s ass once when he didn’t know Bob was coming around a corner. It was truly excruciating to witness. He’d be that way with Lily, if she’d let him. God, he’d been so lovesick back when they were kids that summer.

After Lily had two vodkas and a half beer, she turned to him with a brilliant smile. “How’s Eva?”

“She says hi.” There was a red flag waving in Bob’s head he was trying very hard to ignore. Meanwhile, Lily finished her beer and put it on the ledge of the bar like a regular. Eddie filled it with a big smile.

“Hey, you’re the gal doing the reunion video, am I right?”

“Yes,” Lily said, not looking away from Bob.

Lily videotaping the reunion? This was news to Bob. Wait. Maybe Daniel had said something about it last night. Bob had been busy thinking about Lily then, too. She’d texted asking to meet at Fast Eddie’s tonight, and he had thought of nothing but this moment since reading that text.

“One more for the road?” Lily asked.

Eddie had kept the vodka bottle close and poured out a neat shot. That gave other people ideas, and soon Eddie was lining up lemons and sugar and vodka shots down the bar. Bob also noticed only Lily got the special glass. He wondered where they were going next. Dinner? The bungalow at Blue Heaven? Lily had texted that she was staying there. Eva only let friends and special customers stay in her bungalow. Eva loved Lily almost as much as Bob had. She’d missed her too, but then Eva had Daniel and Bob had nobody. Now here Lily was, wearing short shorts and a tight sleeveless shirt, showing way too much skin for such a dive bar, no offense to Eddie, but really, the place was a burger joint with a band.