The Perfect Love Song (6 page)

Kara shook her head. “It’s fine. He doesn’t bother me.”

“God, he bothers me.” Charlotte shivered.

Kara smiled. “You know, it just makes me understand how much I love Jack. There is this peaceful feeling that comes with loving the right person, a calm that I never had with Peyton, and it has nothing to do with what kind of life I do or don’t want. It has everything to do with just loving. Just that.”

“Just that.” Charlotte smiled now also. “Exactly. I mean, if I look at it all rationally, loving a man who is gone most of the time isn’t the best scenario.”

“We can help a lot of things,” Kara said, “but you can’t tell a heart who to love or not love.”

“No, you can’t. But wouldn’t life be easier if you could?”

“But not nearly as much fun.”

Their laughter blended into the evening, into the music and into the night.

T
wo weeks later, the brothers returned to Palmetto Pointe. Now, there are firsts for everything in a relationship: first kiss; first “I love you”; first fight. Well, this was Charlotte and Jimmy’s first big disagreement. There must always be one, and this was theirs.

In the Palmetto Pointe Bridal Boutique, Charlotte waited in a room washed in white fabrics, couches, curtains, and wedding paraphernalia. Kara poked her head out from behind the dressing-room curtain. “Okay, if I come out, you have to be honest,” she said.

“I always am,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, fortunately or unfortunately, you are.” Kara opened the curtain and walked out in her mother’s wedding dress, a simple satin sheath that gathered under the breast in a crisscross pattern of crystals and pearls. The fabric hung to the floor, cream poured from a pitcher, flowing to the ground in ripples. “Is it too . . . old-fashioned?” Kara asked.

Charlotte shook her head. “God, no. It is so beautiful, Kara.” Charlotte couldn’t help but remember the last wedding dress fitting when Kara had emerged wearing an elaborate wedding dress that had looked like a chandelier, and she had, for the first time in a decade, spoken Jack’s name when she should have been speaking Peyton’s.

Kara twirled around. “Mama was a little smaller than I am, so we had to add some fabric in the back.” She turned to
display a panel of fabric that had been sewn into the back of the dress to look like a corset, pearl buttons in a line like bridesmaids waiting to walk down an aisle.

“I’m not sure this dress could be any more beautiful,” Charlotte said, curling her legs underneath her on the white slip-covered couch.

A commotion began in the outer part of the store, laughter filtering into the fitting room.

“I know that voice,” Kara said. “Don’t you dare let him back here.” She ran back into the curtained area.

Jimmy’s voice first, always first and always loudest, burst into the room, Jimmy in his blue jeans and black T-shirt, his unshaven face and booming voice entering a bridal fitting room. “Okay,” he said as he loped toward Charlotte. “There is my girl.” He picked her up, twirling her around, squeezing her until she gently bit his ear.

“Put me down,” she said, and then took his face in both her hands and kissed him the way you kiss a man you love and haven’t seen in two weeks.

Kara poked her head out from behind the curtain. “Okay, y’all get out of here. And you,” she pointed to Jimmy, “are not allowed to see my dress. Go.”

“That’s only the groom who can’t see the dress. Me? I’m just the brother.” He took two large steps toward the dressing room and pretended he would fling the curtain
aside, but didn’t. He turned and smiled that smile—that one that makes her heart flip over—at Charlotte.

She moved toward him and wrapped her arms around him. “Go. We’ll meet you guys in an hour at Marshside Mama’s, okay? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but go.” She made a shooing gesture with her hands.

He kissed her one more time and then left.

“It’s safe to come out,” Charlotte said to Kara.

Kara emerged from the dressing room fully changed into her jeans and white linen shirt. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Wow, that was quick.” Charlotte laughed and grabbed her purse from the couch. “Yes, let’s go.” Together they ran out of the bridal shop to catch up with Jimmy and Jack before they climbed into their pickup truck.

“Wait on us!” Kara hollered as Jack stuck the key into the driver’s side door.

Jack smiled as he faced Kara. “Hey, baby,” he said and held his fiancée. “You know how hard it was not to peek and see you in that dress?”

“Thanks for waiting,” she said, kissing him. “I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat. I want to tell you all about my photo shoot last week.”

M
arshside Mama’s didn’t have an empty table, and the foursome ended up at the long bar, hollering up and down, voices overlapping as the friends tried to catch up on two weeks’ worth of stories and words.

“Charlotte,” Jack said, leaning forward, “you should have seen the crowd waiting for Jimmy’s autograph outside the bar last Wednesday. Here we are in Nowhere, Virginia, and Jimmy closes with your song, and the next thing we know—girls everywhere.”

Charlotte tried to smile, but you could see the shake at the edge of her lips. “I’d line up for him any day,” she said.

“They all think they’re in love. It’s so ridiculous.” Jack took Kara’s hand and kissed it. “As if that’s love—seeing a guy onstage and thinking it’s the real deal.” He rolled his eyes and then turned to Kara to hear about her photo shoot.

Charlotte looked at Jimmy, and he smiled at her. “He’s exaggerating,” Jimmy said.

“Oh, it’s okay if he’s not.” Charlotte took his hand.

“Hey,” he said. “Let’s get out of here, take a walk. I want my girl to myself for a while.”

With a wave over the shoulder to Kara, Jimmy and Charlotte left the restaurant, strolling down the long dock to the water’s edge. Summer hinted at the edge of these May days, a sigh of soft humidity sifting itself into the air, clinging
to the skin like the closest lover. Together they sat at the dock’s edge, their feet swinging over the incoming tide, an osprey flailing overhead, fighting to hang onto a fish.

Jimmy took her hand. “God, I’m so glad to be home. Tell me about the Carson job. Has she let up on you at all?”

They caught up on the facts and figures of a life lived apart, and then Charlotte rested her head on his shoulder. “You know, I understand why all those girls line up for you. I just hate it.”

“Seriously, Jack was totally exaggerating.”

“But how do we know, I mean really know, if this is love or infatuation? I mean, how do you tell the difference?”

He lifted her head off his shoulder and placed his fingers under her chin, looking her in the eyes. “Are you serious? You can’t tell the difference with us?”

“Of course I can. I’m just asking how do you think
you
can tell the difference? I mean, how would you define it?”

“I don’t know, Charlotte. I don’t know if love can be defined. Can it?”

She shrugged and placed her head back on his shoulder. “Whatever it is, this is it.”

“I don’t think we have to find a
Webster’s
definition to know it is what it is.”

They were quiet for a time, one breathing in while
the other breathed out until Jimmy said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Mmmm . . . ,” she said as an affirmative answer.

“Jack heard that Kara was with Peyton while we were gone. That the three of y’all were together in the bar one night. Is that true? Say it’s not.”

“It’s true,” she said and lifted her head. “But not that way. He found us here and sat down to tell Kara she was making the wrong choice with her life. It was silly and stupid.”

“What else did he say?”

“Do you really want to hear this? It’s ridiculous.”

He nodded.

Charlotte let out a long exhalation. “He asked Kara if she really wanted this life—this life where her man was gone all the time. He said that the only reason we were all together was that it was convenient to have two best friends and two brothers dating. He inferred that she’d have a better life with him. After his tirade, he left quickly.”

“Not from what I heard.”

Charlotte lifted her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t think it was quick.”

“Well, it seemed interminable to me, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes really.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, but his voice held doubt the way a shot glass holds whiskey.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I think sometimes we protect our friends.”

“That’s not what I’m doing, Jimmy. It really was stupid, and he embarrassed himself. So, I’m supposed to believe that all those girls who flock around you are an exaggeration, but you won’t believe me about this?”

He looked away, and here was that moment where the past reaches up and behind a person and makes them act in a way they wish they wouldn’t, when what went before weaves itself into the present and messes it up like a bad stitch in a long, beautifully knitted scarf. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.” He stood and left her sitting alone, looking up at him, wondering who he was and where the angry voice originated. “I just meant that we should always tell the truth.”

“I am,” she said, hurt and confused, her heart skipping beats.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe none of us knows the difference between love and infatuation. I think that’s what you were trying to tell me anyway, that you don’t really know what this is for you. That you’re not sure if this isn’t just ‘convenient, ’ that this might not be the kind of life you want.”

“No, that’s not what I said. You’re misunderstanding.”

And like his father before him, Jimmy walked away from anything that would make him dig a little deeper, go a little further. “I think I just need some sleep. I’ll try to catch up with you later,” he said.

“Don’t leave, Jimmy.” She stood now, took his hand. “This is silly. You know I didn’t mean that I don’t know about us . . . ”

He held up his hand. “Let’s not make this worse. We won’t say any words that make it worse. Let’s just leave, okay?”

In silence they walked the long dock back toward the restaurant while Charlotte searched for the single moment where he could have possibly believed she didn’t love him, that she was confused about her feelings. Jack and Kara met them on the front porch of the restaurant.

“Hey, bro,” Jimmy said, “I’ve gotta catch some shut-eye. Wanna drop me off at a hotel?”

Charlotte looked at him. “Hotel? Why are you staying at a hotel?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I’ll call you later.” He kissed her on the cheek with a kiss that didn’t resemble any kind of kiss he’d ever given her—cold and distant, as if he’d never kissed her before.

Jack glanced between Kara and Charlotte. “Okay, let’s go. Kara, baby, I’ll see you in about thirty minutes. I’ll meet you at your cottage.”

She nodded, but turned to her best friend as Jimmy walked off. “What happened?”

Tears overflowed the rims and edges of Charlotte’s eyes, the tide filling the marsh. “I don’t know. One minute we’re talking about the difference between love and infatuation, and then he asked me about Peyton and you at the bar. Then all of a sudden he didn’t believe anything. He thinks I’m not sure I love him or want this life with him.”

Kara exhaled. “Yeah, Jack asked me about Peyton also, but when I told him the story, he understood. I guess it’s just a brother’s protection.” Kara sat on a bench and motioned for Charlotte to join her. “Listen, their history is complicated; I know you know that. But Jimmy has always felt responsible for Jack—as if anything that goes wrong with or for Jack is his fault. They had the most horrible father you could imagine. I know Jimmy doesn’t talk much about it, but it still influences his mind and thoughts. Just give him a little bit to cool down. He’ll see . . . ”

“Maybe, though, he’s right. Maybe I’m not sure if this is love or infatuation. Maybe he saw that in me. He’s just gone so much, and then every time he returns it takes another day or two to get back into some comfortable way . . . and then he’s gone again.”