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“We have plans for dinner when he’s home in a few weeks, actually. Just thetwoof us.”
Leigh nudged her with a shoulder as they walked side by side. “Quinn Layborn, sometimes you surprise me. I think that is definitely an avenue worth investigating.”
“Oh, really?” A giggle escaped along with the coy question. That last part, she already knew.
12
ENDING A CHAPTER
The breeze off the ocean fluttered his loosely rolled sleeves and shirttails. While his team shot more B roll, he walked along Rio’s iconic black and white stone promenade. In a little while, they were all going to meet up for dinner at a palm-fringed restaurant down the beach.
They had wrapped the bulk of the shooting early today. It was hot, everyone was still jetlagged, and he had been distracted.
There were sexy bodies all around him—surfing, playing volleyball, sunbathing, eating, drinking, laughing—but his mind fixated on one body in particular, whose owner was far away.
At a stall with a pyramid of green coconuts piled on the counter, he ordered anagua de cocoand chatted with the owner while he opened the top with a machete. He removed the small cap, inserted a straw down to the rich, sweet water pooled inside, and handed it to Jonathan.
Coconut in hand, he was about to walk away when, on second thought, he turned back to grab another straw.
Near a stand of palm trees at the edge of the beach, he found an unoccupied bench, balanced the coconut between two slats, and wrestled his phone out of his pocket.
He wished she were here, her hair blowing in the salty breeze, her delicate fingers trying to corral it behind her ears, her lips closing around the straw to taste the nutty sweetness.
Had she ever been to Rio? Where had she traveled? Where did she dream of going? Almost without words, he had gotten to know her so intimately, and yet there still was much more he needed to learn. She had been different with him in the hospital; they had been different with each other. She opened up to him; she slept against him; she smiled. He wanted more of that; he wanted more of her.
* * *
She felt lighterafter her lunch with Leigh last week. Sad, but lighter. She would always feel sad, and that was okay. Grief was, in some upside-down way, a connection to Harris.
But for the first time, she sensed that the sadness might be able to co-exist with other things. It didn’t mean she was “moving on,” or that she had gained “closure,” as people liked to say.
It meant she would find a way forward, her attachment to Harris forever changed but not severed.
This morning she walked along the boardwalk to the beach, found a spot on the sand, and sat to watch a group of surfers. Seeing them had always reminded her how quickly circumstances could change. One minute, they would be standing, riding a wave, balanced, joyful, laughing in the sun. A split-second later, they could be gone from sight—washed over, thrown under, fighting to find their way to the surface.
Her phone rang from inside her bag. When she pulled it out, Jonathan’s face greeted her, his shirt billowing in the wind, his skin tanned.
He held up a green coconut, two straws jutting out the top. “We wrapped for the day about a half-hour ago, so I bought us a drink. Have you tasted it?”
She squinted and shaded her eyes with her hand so she could see him more clearly. “Only from a juice box. I’m guessing it’s better fresh.”
His laugh was rich, and the skin around his eyes scrunched when he smiled. It was hard to picture him—the man on the phone screen in front of her right now—having an affair, lying to a woman he loved.
We have no reason to lie to each other, he had said to Quinn in the hospital.
She didn’t want to be a fool and let herself fall for someone who had cheated, but she also could believe he had changed. The reasons were vastly different, but hadn’t she changed too?
Besides, in the trust department, he had proven himself beyond a doubt. She could not have asked silently for those things, could not have done those things with anyone else—that truth she could not ignore.
But moving ahead with Jonathan meant ending a chapter, closing a book.
Harris had given her a sign the other day in the garden, at least that’s what she had made of it. He was at peace—she had sensed that so keenly, and he wanted her to be, too. His spirit had given her the gift of a last goodbye, the one they hadn’t gotten to say.
Her chest warmed watching Jonathan, a slow radiating warmth from within that mirrored the sun’s rays heating her skin. There was no denying the friendship and the caring she felt from him and for him—or their white-hot chemistry.
Even so, she wasn’t sure when she would be ready to let someone else fully into her life, into her heart.
“Can I ask you something?” he said between wind gusts.
