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She wished she could fully enjoy the day, but her thoughts were a jumbled mess of regret, shame, and worry, leading right where she hated going—to an uncomfortable, unhappy place.
But she was beginning to see that her rationalization was a defense mechanism to justify choices that put her, her pleasure, her positive outlook, and her plans ahead of anything else. She simply didn’t want to do that anymore. She sensed that Shark had a dark past, and to fully embrace who he was, she knew she had to understand who she was. She was going to feel something other than pleasure at his story.
“What’s up?” he asked, studying her for a minute. “Want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours? You don’t seem as diverted as I hoped.”
“I have applied diversions too much in my life and that’s led me to something that horrifies me.” He followed her the rest of the way onto the golden sand.
“What’s that?”
Distracted for a minute by the beauty of the secluded cove, she stared out at the lazy, glistening waves. Taking a hard breath, realizing that self-reflection was difficult, especially after facing a lifetime of duck and dodge, she turned to him. “Dissociation, glossing over important events, important feelings, important people. I have such an appetite for life, for variety. It has motivated me to want to experience all the possibilities in life and avoid any constraints that might force me to experience less. I see that as a fatal flaw. In splitting my attention between so many things, I was experiencing less. I’ve been distracted from what really matters in life. And I want to slow down and experience one thing at a time. Something with substance. Not flitting around like a butterfly, trying all the plants. God, I’ve been so selfish.” She slipped her bag from her shoulder and pulled out the blanket, towels, and sunscreen. She’d already applied a generous amount before they left the house, but it was time to reapply.
“Wow, you’ve been thinking about this for some time?” He took one corner of the blanket and helped her spread it out. “What brought this on?”
She slipped out of her sandals, and stepped onto the blanket, pulling her new dress off over her head. The sun was hot on her body. “To be frank, you.”
He shot her a surprised look and drew in a ragged breath, his gaze sliding to her mouth. “Why me?”
She swallowed and sat back. She was, deep in her core, afraid of telling him about her past love life, and her first thought was to avoid it. She was afraid that this smart, thoughtful, strong man would find her lacking. And she guessed she had been. “You are worth knowing, Bale. I want to be responsible for my feelings and not avoid them, regardless of what happens between us or whatever will happen in the future.” Now was the time to face difficult conversations, to put herself out there for this man, to trust that all these negatives inside her could be seen by him and acknowledged, understood. She couldn’t avoid the bad, which she had always thought was a good thing, by focusing on what felt good. She was starting to realize that true pleasure could only come through being open to pain. That’s where the meaning was. That was authentic.
“As I said, I’ve had seven relationships, but I think six of them were ways for me to avoid the pain of facing my fears when I got involved with Max. Maybe even ways for me to punish myself.” She set her hands in her lap as they started to shake. Suddenly, she had second thoughts as her gut twisted with regret and shame. “If you don’t want to hear any of this, that’s okay. I understand it’s strange to talk about past relationships with someone you’re currently involved with. I won’t blame you.”
He met her gaze directly. “You can tell me anything, Maddy,” he said quietly, an odd huskiness to his voice as anticipation and gratitude flowed over her. “You can only be accountable to me or to yourself if you share things.” He looked away as powerful emotions played over his expression. There was a strained hesitation, then he returned his gaze back to her, his eyes dark and very solemn. “I’m beginning to see that true intimacy can only be attained through the act of showing someone you care about, who you really are.” He took a breath. “I learned that lesson in BUD/S as that program stripped me down to my basic raw material, then showed me how I had all the tools I needed to succeed, but conveniently forgot about it.” He closed his eyes and sat back. “With not just you,” he whispered.
His frankness touched a disturbingly responsive chord in her, and suddenly needing something to keep her hands occupied, Maddy grabbed the bottle of sunscreen and opened the lid. As she spread it over her skin, Shark leaned forward and took the bottle, working the lotion into her neck and back, his big, warm hands caressing with an intimate touch. When he was done, he set the bottle aside and gathered her hands in his. She raised her eyes to meet his, the intensity radiating between them sapping her of strength. Her pulse accelerated as she took a slow breath.
“Tell me everything, Maddy. You can trust me.”
She believed him immediately.
Breathing in the strong scents of coconut, salt and sand, she said, “After I finished my PhD at UCLA, I took a postdoctoral position at MIT where I got my BS degree. Cambridge, Massachusetts was familiar to me, and I liked the idea of being back there to…” She wasn’t going to gloss it over. “To figure out where I wanted to be. Who I wanted to be. It was a confusing time in my life. I was twenty-five and all my adult life had been preparing for a career, and now I was on the cusp of that career. I had doubts, and all that training and all the money that my parents invested was a heavy burden. I didn’t want to feel that way, so I took every opportunity to find pleasure in everything I did.”
“That “bright side” thinking?”
“Yeah,” she said sheepishly. She took a hard breath. “I met Max at an art show. I’m passionate about an abstract artist, Misty Coyne. She’s amazing and some of her work was being sold at this gallery. Max was also showing that evening, and I wasn’t exactly enamored of his work at the outset, but ignorant to who he was, I inadvertently told him to his face.”
Shark barked out a laugh. “Pure Maddy.” She met his amused yet intimate eyes. His hands tightened in hers and every nerve in her body responded to his closeness.
She smiled, now able to recognize that she was usually outrageous. “One thing led to another, and we started dating. Max was different from anyone I’d met before. He was thoughtful, kind, gentle, and funny. As time passed, I should have settled into the relationship, but as it progressed, I just got…angsty and restless.” She bit her lip and blinked a couple of times to push back the tears stinging her eyes. “Max didn’t deserve that kind of feeling, but I couldn’t help it. As the end of the postdoc loomed, I just wanted to escape. But, of course, I wouldn’t acknowledge that to myself. I just projected into the future or deflected my unsettled feelings and went off on tangents, like making pottery, like that would help.”
“So, you started ghosting him?”
She grimaced and nodded. She couldn’t answer.
“Aw, babe,” he whispered, rubbing her back. There was a taut silence. “It’s good to get it all out. Right?” His tone was brisk and decisive.
“Yes, I ghosted him.” Maddy’s voice was so thick she could barely answer. “I started making excuses as I worked on figuring out where to go and what to do. Then I met Enrique. He was new, handsome, and as I found out later, good in bed. It was like an answer to my inability to deal with Max. A perfect hunk of distraction.” She covered her face, and Shark moved closer to her, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her against him. Tears seeped from beneath her hand as she tried to hold back the pressure in her chest.
She eased a breath past the constriction in her throat. “I really don’t deserve your comfort. I hurt Max, obviously, and he left me just like I wanted him to, but did I learn anything? No. I refused to acknowledge it, my pain at his loss, my love for him that I was either too afraid to embrace or found too restricting. I spent the next year going from one relationship to another in desperation. I can see that now.”
“Maybe so, Maddy, but you’re facing it now. It’s never too late to make amends.”
Maddy experienced a sharp, painful swell of gratitude, and worked hard to not shrink from the pain, but to examine it and embrace what her actions had wrought. Guilt, heavy and unsettling, dropped like a stone in her stomach. She owed Max that much for how she had hurt him. From now on, she was going to be upfront about her feelings, and she wasn’t going to shirk her responsibility to herself and others. Not facing uncomfortable emotions made her blind to the value of engaging more deeply with difficult feelings and situations. She didn’t want to miss out on the richness of life because those emotions were challenging and existed only in a superficial life.
She went into his arms, and it was so comforting, so sweet. His tenderness and understanding made it easier to embrace the pain of her youth, her ignorance in knowing her own heart and mind.
“That is my shameful secret,” she whispered. “It feels good to talk about it.” She was hoping he would feel comfortable confiding in her. She hungered for depth and knowledge, hungered to be the person this man came to for solace, trusting her with his deepest feelings. But with her newfound insight, she realized that she couldn’t force him into that partnership. He had to want to freely engage with her.
“You regret your actions. That shows growth and maturity, Maddy. But don’t change who you are. I very much like that woman who’s filled with sunshine.”
