Undertow (11 page)

CHAPTER 22

It’s overcast as I leave for the bar Wednesday night.

“You’d better take the car,” my grandmother sighs. “It’s supposed to storm. Make sure you don’t leave the top down.”

It’s hard to hide my shock: I’ve never seen either of my grandparents lend their pristine, vintage Mercedes convertible to anyone. My grandfather used to let me ride in his lap when I was little and help hold the wheel, and that’s the closest I ever thought I’d come to driving it.

Heather is on the dance floor when I pull up so she sees me. “Ooooohweeee, we got the Benz tonight!” she shouts.

I laugh and roll my eyes.

“Come on guys, we’re going cruising!” she shouts to the table.

“No
we’re
not,” I correct her. “This is the first time in 22 years she’s trusted me with that car. I’m not about to have half the town tell her I was driving down Main with a bunch of drunks hanging out of the back.”

“Fine,” says Graham, “I’ll drive.”

“Right,” I snort. “Because a drunk at the wheel would make her so much happier.”

I’m so worried about the car, in fact, that I don’t have a single drink. It has good points and bad. I find that my friends aren’t nearly as amusing without a fair amount of beer in my system. I also find that watching Nate talking to girls, giving them that knowing look, that crooked grin, is more sickening than normal. On the upside, I have slightly more control over my desire to go slap him in the face.

I am pondering this as I realize there is suspicious giggling going on around me. I look up and see Graham and Heather heading out of the bar, and realize my keys have disappeared.

“Graham!” I shout. “Give them back.”

He grins mischievously and starts running. I jump up from the table. It’s a joke to them but my grandmother will kill me if she hears they’ve been driving the car. And Graham was drunk when I arrived.

“Graham!” I shout in the parking lot, catching up to them at the car’s door. “Give them back, damn it!”

“What’s it worth to you, Maura Leigh?” he taunts, a little suggestively. He holds the keys high over my head.

He is laughing, and just as I realize I have no recourse if Graham decides to go, someone is behind me, a solid wall of heat and muscle, close enough that my hair brushes against his shirt. “Give them back, Edwards,” says Nate.

“Fuck you,” Graham sneers. He turns to Heather. “Get in.”

Graham turns toward the car but Nate is faster. He snatches the keys and puts them in my hand. Graham glares at him, but Nate is looking at me, as if he’s shocked to discover who he was defending.

“Thank you,” I whisper, still astonished that of all people, Nate is the one being kind.

There’s a flash of something in his face, a flash of the old Nate, the sweet one, who looked at me adoringly, trustingly. And then it’s gone.

As I drive home I feel almost drugged by that look. I think of the last time the time Nate and Graham got into it, when Graham crashed into me on his jet ski. I think about how scared Nate was, how he couldn’t let go of me, how there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep me safe. I remember those things and I
know
, no matter what came afterward, that he loved me once. And it’s ridiculous, but I think about the look on his face tonight, and wonder if he still might.

**

The rumble of thunder wakes me sometime before dawn. I spend exactly two seconds feeling relieved that I put the top up on the car before I remember that I left the windows down.

“Shit,” I hiss, stumbling out of bed. I fly out the back door in nothing but panties and a UNC t-shirt that doesn’t quite cover them, and come to a dead halt, as does Nate, who is just climbing out of his truck. The first drops of rain hurl me back into action, and I’m grateful for it, grateful that there’s no time to contemplate that I’m half-naked in front of him, or the fact that he’s just coming home right now. I run to my grandmother’s car, willing myself to ignore the fact that my t-shirt is flying halfway up my ass with every step I take.

The rain is really coming down by the time I get to the car. I fling open the driver’s side door and slide onto the seat to roll up the window. To my surprise the passenger’s side opens too, and Nate is there, beside me, taking care of it. We both jump out of the car at the same time. “Thank you,” I tell him for the second time in a matter of hours, so flustered by the change in him that I’m almost stunned into inaction. I run to the house, but when I get to the door I turn to find that he is standing exactly where I left him, watching me. And for the first time since I’ve been back he looks young, and kind of lost.

**

On Friday my whole family arrives – my parents, Jordan, Mia and the baby.

I am immediately suspicious. “What’s up with the family reunion?” I ask my mom.

“You’re not the only person who enjoys the beach, Maura,” she chides.

I could counter that she didn’t seem to enjoy it for the 13 years she sent me here alone, but I don’t.

“Don’t make any plans for tomorrow night,” she adds. “We’re having the Mayhews over for dinner.”

I sigh deeply. “Why?”

“You and Ethan are getting serious, honey,” she replies, looking puzzled. “This is just what’s done.”

“No, we’re not ‘getting serious’ Mom. And this is not what’s done when you’re just dating. It’s what’s done when you get engaged.”

“Maura, don’t be ridiculous. He’s practically family.”

“So is Heather but I don’t see you trying to marry me off to her!”

Her good humor, her attempt at mediating, evaporates. She pinches the bridge of her nose as she scowls. “Maura, must you be contrary about everything? If I told you that you
couldn’t
see him anymore, the two of you would be at the justice of the peace by tomorrow morning.”

“You’re probably right, Mom,” I retort. “Because if you told me I couldn’t see him it’d just mean you’d found someone even wealthier to whore me out to.”

“Maura Leigh!” my father yells. I hadn’t even realized he was in the room. “Apologize this instant.”

I look at them both flatly. “Make me,” I say, taking an adult stance with childish words, and I storm out of the house. I go to the shed, realizing that really, I have nowhere to go. If I was younger, I’d pull my bike out and tear off on it as fast as I could. How is it that I’m finally an adult, but feel far more trapped than I ever did when my choices weren’t my own?

The last time I biked like that – barefoot, no helmet, breakneck speed – I was racing Nate.

“What do I get if I win?” he’d smirked.

I shrugged. “What do you want?”

I remember his heated glance, the way it ran the length of me before flickering back over my mouth. “I think you know.”

And just the look he gave me, the low pulse of his voice, set something off inside of me, made my legs feel boneless, my stomach a tight knot of need.

“Fine,” I grinned.

“And what do you want in the unlikely event that you win?” he asked.

There was no helping it. There was no other answer for me now. I gave him the same look he’d just given me. “I think you know.”

He stood stock-still for a moment, his eyes serious and feral. And then he leapt on his bike and took off.

He was waiting for me by the shed as I pulled up. I expected him to crow and gloat and smirk for a while, but he did not. Instead he came over to me, fierce and determined, and lifted me off of my bike. It fell to the ground, and I barely noticed, because his mouth was already on mine and he was pulling me to the far side of the shed, where we couldn’t be seen.

I wonder if he remembers that anymore. I wonder if he remembers how much he wanted me once. He was my best thing, my sweetest thing, and he wasn’t really mine at all.

The sun is going down, the yard is losing its light. And all the things that were good and sweet and pure are withering away, slipping from my grasp.

**

My parents seem to sense that they have pushed too hard, and they say nothing about the fight or my mysterious disappearance when I come back. My mother looks politely away from my tear-stained face. “We saved you some dinner,” she says.

When Ethan comes to pick me up, Jordan walks out with us. “Isn’t Mia coming?” I ask, looking back into the room.

“Nah,” he shrugs. “She’d rather stay with the baby.”

“I can stay with Catherine if she wants to go,” I offer.

He rolls his eyes. “She won’t leave Catherine with anyone. Don’t worry about it.”

Friday at Oak is more of a throw-down than normal because Jordan is here. Jordan is big and loud and we hover around him like satellites, unable to help ourselves. Nate is there with friends, but he stays on the far side of the room. It doesn’t stop me from watching him. He is standing by the pool table with a girl in a tiny miniskirt who seems to find innumerable opportunities to bend over the table. During one of these bending maneuvers, he slides his hand under her skirt, grinning slyly at her. And of course her only response is to press farther into his hand. They leave not long after.

Ethan and I stay late, but Jordan still isn’t ready to go. He’s fairly drunk, incredibly boisterous, and the whole table is treating him like some kind of celebrity.

I sleep poorly, poised on the edge of wakefulness, waiting for the slightest noise to warn me that Nate is coming home. But at 6 a.m., the noise that wakes me isn’t Nate. It’s Jordan, coming home from a bar that closed four hours before.

**

A catering truck sits in the driveway from early afternoon on.

I play with Catherine in the side yard and try to ignore the upheaval, try to pretend this is all nothing, that every action my family and Ethan’s family take isn’t somehow tying me further into a contract between our families.

“Here you go,” I coo to her, as she grasps my fingers and tries to walk with me. Her shaky, lumbering little steps make me laugh despite my bad mood. I lay on my back and hold her aloft on my raised legs.

“Wheee! Catherine’s an airplane!” I cry, swinging her to and fro while she screams in delight. Poor little Catherine seems to be the only member of her family that is happy today. Mia is even more withdrawn and pale than usual, Jordan is surly and tired and hung-over even though he didn’t wake up until 11.

“Going up!” I shout, flinging her upward. “Going down!” I say as I bring my legs down quick. She screeches and drools on my face and I laughingly try to swipe it off without losing my grip on her, still floating above me, perched high on my outstretched toes.

In the quiet of that moment I realize that we are not alone. I look over, with Catherine still aloft, and see Nate. His brow is furrowed, as if he’s never laid eyes on me before and can’t figure out why me and this baby are laying in the yard. Finally I see the question leave his eyes, replaced by disgust.

“What’s up in number 11?” he asks coldly, glancing over at the catering truck.

“Dinner party,” I reply, lowering Catherine to the ground and swinging myself up so I’m seated. I don’t even know why I’m answering his questions. It’s not as if he answered any of mine a few years back.

“Oh, I must have missed the invite,” he says. “Let me guess: your family and the Mayhews?”

I hate,
hate
that he is correct. I pull Catherine into my lap like she’s a security blanket. “Don’t you have someplace else to be?” I hiss. “Surely there’s some slut in a mini-dress waiting for you with bated breath.”

He looks at me assessingly. “For someone in such a serious relationship, you’re sure keeping a close eye on me.”

I’d tell him to fuck off if Catherine wasn’t with me, but she is, and with my luck it’d be her first word.

“I’m not keeping an eye on you, Nate. You just make such a spectacle of yourself every night it’s hard not to notice.”

“Strong words for someone who practically screws her boyfriend every time she hits the dance floor,” he snarls back.

I stand then, with Catherine in my arms, and begin to walk away. I look over my shoulder. “Now who’s keeping a close eye?” I ask. I go inside. I got the last word, and yet feel completely defeated.

**

It is an engagement dinner, without the engagement. There are flowers and champagne. The parents exchange a constant stream of innuendo and references to the future, toasts are made to our two families, to grandchildren, to how wonderful everything is and will be. My smile is strained, but Ethan’s is broad and relaxed and proud.

Someone toasts Jordan and Mia and the baby too. Mia smiles, but her mouth is pulled tight at the corners, like a marionette’s. It holds not an ounce of actual joy.

The whole experience creates a compelling, contrary desire to separate myself, to stand up and announce that I will never come back here, that I will never be a part of this. But I don’t, because I was raised by these people, I’m one of them. And people like us don’t do things like that.

Everyone is talking about the destruction of the public walkways. Actually, “talking” is the wrong word. “Crowing” is more accurate.

“But aren’t they just going to build them again?” asks Mia.

Ethan’s father laughs. “Yes, and it’ll cost them thousands of dollars, and as soon as they’ve got every single one completed, they’ll be destroyed all over again.”

I smile, because Ethan is watching me. “So the main thrust of your proposition is that the state only owns up to the water line and everything in front of it is private?”

“Exactly,” he says.

“So what happens if the state disagrees?”

“Then we’ll just maintain that the road is private,” he says, entirely confident. “It won’t stop people from walking, but it’s the only road with a shoulder wide enough to park on, so no one will be able to drive here. That’ll get rid of most of them.”

**

I am thrilled when the whole thing finally ends, and Ethan, Jordan and I escape to Oak. There is no sign of Nate, which is a relief until I begin to torture myself. Maybe he’s on a real date this time. Maybe he’s taking her to dinner, or out in the canoe. I thought listening to Maura Lite moan through my windows was as low as it could get, but I discover that the thought of Nate in love with someone is much, much worse.