Heather has reconciled that evening to herself. She’s made her apologies. Everyone other than Scott has accepted them. She tries to shut her heart to all of it and tries to re-instate the mantra that got her through the last few weeks. She can swim, she can paint. She can find a new way. She has her parents and a healthier relationship with her daughter. So what if she’s all alone? She’s been here before. She can do it again.
‘Heather?’
He’s closer now. She blinks back the tears. Swallows the lump in her throat down. It would be easier if he didn’t look so damn sexy with his shirt unbuttoned and his jeans rolled up so he can walk along the water’s edge towards her. Where did he get that tan?
‘Hi, Scott.’ There isn’t much more to say.
‘Georgia told me you’d be here,’ he says by way of an explanation.
‘That makes sense,’ she replies as she grits her teeth and replays her last conversation with Georgia: ‘Just stay on the beach. I’ll find you.’
Her daughter’s set her up.
‘I need to apologise.’
Heather’s eyes begin to smart as the sea wind buffets her face. She blinks.
‘What for?’ she asks. Because she’s damned if she’s going to give him the easy way out. If he’s going to insist on doing this, and it looks as though he is, then she’s not going to level the path for him. “This has nothing to do with you.” Those had been his last words to her. So fine, spit it out, apologise and be done with it, but be man enough to face the truth full on.
‘Brianna explained,’ he says. ‘And I think maybe you explained as well, in the hospital when I was sleeping?’ He takes two steps closer.
They’re standing at the water’s edge. The waves roll onto the beach as it shelves back into the sea.
‘She said she gave you no choice. About the driving.’
She stands up a little straighter. ‘It was me or Trey, apparently.’
‘Exactly. I should never have kicked off like that.’
‘The thing is, Scott, it made no sense to me. You left Brianna in my care. And besides, you’ve always been so “take the risk and learn from your mistakes” about your parenting. I’d never have dreamt of helping her if I’d realised you’d be so against it. And I tried. I tried to call and there wasn’t any answer. So, what was I supposed to do? Leave her to travel with a US citizen who wasn’t authorised to supervise her driving? That would have been insane. And she was going anyway. With me or without me.’
He swallows and nods slowly. ‘It was just seeing her there. With the car all smashed up. It … it was triggering, I guess. I’m so sorry. Brianna said I needed to explain. She says she’s never seen me happier than I was in those few months with you. Because, guess what? The girls knew. Somehow. And I agree with her. The thing is Heather … You make me ….’
And he’s crying now. ‘You make me complete in a way no one ever has since Lucy. No one’s come even close. And now I want to stop fighting it … this belief that letting people close leads to devastation, because I know it’s not true. I know it’s not true for you, anyway. I was trying to protect myself and Brianna—’
‘Oh, Scott.’ Within seconds, she’s in his arms, and he’s kissing her cheeks, because that fear – she gets it.
They embrace for a while as the gulls sweep around their heads. Heather remembers the first time they ever met. Last September.
‘And you said I’d never make it,’ she says. ‘I seem to remember you saying there was a 85% chance of Georgia not finishing her freshman year, and an 79% chance of me being on anti-depressants by the spring.’
His eyes flit to his feet where a chance wave has carried up the shore and now laps around his ankles.
‘I said that, didn’t I?’
There’s a beat as they both consider the relationship they built over those short months. Scott picks up a thin stone and skims it over the water’s surface before returning to look at her.
‘There’s another statistic, you know, about people at this stage in their lives.’
Her heart hardens as she prepares for another unpalatable truth. Her own reduced life expectancy, perhaps? The chances of a womb prolapse by age fifty-three?
‘Yes. Statistically, we have a ten percent chance of making a second marriage work.’
She takes a step away from him, deflated, struggling to comprehend why he’d choose now to give her yet another damaging statistic, until she pulls her focus to his pronoun.
‘We? What do you mean “we”? As in you and me?’
‘Yes.’
