Tomorrow I would tell him about my desire to open Toast in the UK. I knew that might present an insurmountable obstacle if his medical license wouldn’t transfer to the UK or if he didn’t want to move abroad. But we would figure it out. Really I could open a restaurant in any cool city. Maybe I could reimagine Toast in San Francisco or New York. We’d figure it all out together later. Because, at the moment, nothing else mattered except that I loved Rory and he loved me. We were finally together. From here on out nothing would come between us. It was the next right chapter of our own beautiful, imperfectly perfect love story.
I snapped out of the memory of that long-ago night in Oxford and back into the present day, finding myself huddled cold and stiff against the driftwood log on the beach. My cheeks were wet, and when I licked my lips, I tasted salt. I scrambled to my feet, brushing sand from my pants. This had not been the catharsis I was looking for. It was agony to remember, pure and simple.
I headed back toward the parking lot, walking along the beach this time, rocks and shells crunching under my flimsy shoes. Halfway there I passed the abandoned lighthouse, jutting out from the shore on a spit of black rock. When the tide was low, as it was now, you could walk around it on the sand. The lighthouse was empty and shabby, with peeling white paint and an air of neglect. I stopped in front of it, then hesitated. I shouldn’t have come. It still hurt too much, seven years on.
Turning to go, I drew in a quick breath when I spotted it. It was still there. Impossible. Rusty now with salt spray, a heart-shaped padlock was attached low on one of the metal sections of the fence surrounding the lighthouse. I’d thought it was a little cheesy at the time when Rory gave me the padlock and the key. It was August, the summer after our reunion in Oxford nine months before. He was twenty-two, just about to head to medical school at Johns Hopkins. I was entering my senior year at Portland State University. We’d been long-distance dating ever since that night at the Turf. My mother was still alive and well, with the accident and all that happened after it still to come. We thought all the hard times were behind us. Little did we know.
Rory asked me to come down to the beach with him one last time before he left for Baltimore. He had planned a farewell picnic, he said. He promised me triple crème Brie from France. Instead he surprised me by stopping at the lighthouse.
“You’re the one for me, Lolly.” He turned to me, his eyes warm and clear and so sure. “You’ve always had the key to my heart.” I rolled my eyes at the combination of sweetness and theatrics. It was so Rory. Then I realized he was down on one knee in the sand and pebbles.
“What are you doing?” I gasped. He took my hand.
“I love you, Lolly Freya Blanchard. Will you do me the great honor of spending the rest of your life with me?” I looked into that beloved face, the lively light brown eyes, the square planes of his cheekbones, hisfreckles and ruddy auburn hair tousled by the wind. I had never loved anyone so much in all my life. I thought my heart would burst with joy.
After I nodded a tearful yes, he slipped a vintage square-cut emerald engagement ring on my finger, then pressed a kiss into the palm of my hand and folded my fingers around a key.
“Until we can be together, you hold on to this,” he murmured, pulling me against his chest in a warm hug. “Nothing can keep us apart. It’s you and me together forever now.” I buried my face in his old fleece, inhaled his scent, bourbon and sweet tea, and nestled against him. The moment was absolutely perfect.
Together we fastened the padlock that matched the key he’d given me onto the fence. The day was cool and overcast, spitting rain, but it didn’t matter. My fingers were cold as we pressed down on the padlock and heard it click. It was a promise to each other. A promise I had not kept.
I blinked hard, staring at the padlock, now crusted with salt. It pained me still to look at it there on the fence, weathered and forlorn. I closed my eyes and saw Rory kneeling before another woman, a willowy blonde in a strapless A-line dress. Her eyes welled with pretty tears as he gazed up at her in adoration. Emily. The woman he’d married six years ago. There was a lump in my throat that was threatening to choke me. I’d never told anyone about the padlock. I still had the key.
“I’ll love you forever no matter what,” he’d promised me as he held me against his heart. I guess some forevers are longer than others.
And yet, it wasn’t really his fault.
He’d protected me, stood up for me, cared for me. Until I forced him to leave me. And even then he’d fought me, fought for me, for us.
A single tear slid down the side of my nose, hot with regret. Our love story had been pockmarked by missed opportunities, by hesitations and bad timing, and by a cruel twist of fate that we had no control over. Our friendship had been beautiful, easy, sweet. It was our love that was complicated, star-crossed, and finally impossible.
I opened my eyes and looked down, surprised to find I was holding the last lemon drop tight in one clenched fist. I rolled it between my fingers, for one brief second imagining a different ending—me in a tea-length vintage white lace dress holding a bouquet of apple blossoms, their fragrant, fragile beauty signifying “I prefer you before all.” Rory gazing at me with the same expression of love and adoration I’d seen in his wedding day photo with Emily. The beautiful continuation of our love story, a story that was supposed to have played out over a lifetime.
The last time I’d looked Rory up on social media, almost five years ago now, he and Emily had been living in Tampa. Their family photo was taken on a pristine white-sand beach. Emily was radiantly pregnant, glowing and cradling her baby bump, wearing a gauzy white sundress. Rory was kneeling in the sand gazing up at her, one hand cupping the gentle swell of their baby.
I’d sobbed so hard looking at that photo that I’d burst a blood vessel below my eye. I never looked him up again. I couldn’t. It hurt too much. It felt like self-harm, like flaying little strips of flesh from my heart just to see his face, the yearning for him its own torment. So I stopped. Deleted my social media accounts, distanced myself from Nancy, who had been like an aunt to me my entire life. It was self-preservation and the right decision, but in the absence of knowing, I did still wonder. What did he look like now? Was he happy? Did he ever wake in the early light of morning with the taste of me on his lips, yearning for the feel of us melded together like wax gone soft around the edges from the heat and light of a flame? Did he ever think wistfully of our innocent young love? Did he ever long for me like I still longed for him?
I stared hard at the lemon drop in my palm. I bit my lip and tasted salt and tears. I could do it. I could take the lemon drop and see what our life would have been like together. I had the power, but could I survive losing him all over again?
26
“What are yougoing to do with the last lemon drop?” Eve sat across from me in a booth at the Eatery, pale late-morning sun streaming in through the big windows. It was the quiet hour before the lunch rush and we were alone in the dining room. I’d asked her to stop by after she’d finished a delivery to a local boutique. I needed advice.
I hesitated. Three days had gone by since my visit to the beach, and I still hadn’t used my last lemon drop. It wasn’t because I didn’t know which regret was lingering like a thorn in my heart. It was because I was just plain chicken.
As if conjured up by magic, Aunt Gert materialized in front of us, an order pad in her hand. “Ladies.” She gave us a nod.
“Cool hat,” Eve commented, surveying Gert’s ensemble. Today she was wearing a red polyester shift dress and matching pillbox hat. I couldn’t decide if it reminded me more of Jackie Kennedy or a Pan Am airline stewardess.
“Nice hair,” Aunt Gert replied tartly. “They say pink is the new black. Now what can I get you today?” It didn’t quite feel like she wastaking our order, more like she was grilling a witness during a cross-examination.
“Um.” I was embarrassed to be waited on by my octogenarian aunt. “I was just going to have a black cherry soda. But I can get it.”
Aunt Gert frowned. She disapproved of sweetened beverages. “Your teeth are one of your best assets, Lolly.” She clicked her tongue in reprimand. “You really should take care of them.”
Eve snorted but covered it well by turning it into a fake cough.
“I’ll take whatever the pescatarian option is for today,” Eve said.
