Deeper

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” He shook his head.

“No. It’s just the truth.”

“Did you want to forget me?” he asked her after a moment.

Bess sighed, but answered. “After a while. Yes. After a while I just put that summer behind me.”

Nick shook his head, turning. He sank onto the bed, his arms crossed low over his stomach as if it hurt. He rocked a little and groaned, then looked up, face bleak. His cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore the same faint sun-kissed blush of pink, and the rest of his skin was as tawny as it had always been, but dark circles had lodged beneath his eyes. Lines that had nothing to do with age bracketed his mouth.

“I wanted to come to you,” he whispered in a soul-sick voice. “I remember, now. I said I’d find you. I wanted to. But instead—”

She shook her head and went to him. Their knees touched when she sat next to him. She took his hands from their grip on his stomach and put them around her, and she pulled him close. His face nestled with perfect precision into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, and hers found the same place on him. She closed her eyes. She breathed him in. She touched him. Once upon a time the sun hadn’t risen without her thinking about Nick’s smile, and the wind hadn’t blown without it whispering his name.

“You’re here now,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”

Chapter

08

Then

“What’s going on with you and Nick?” Missy wasn’t subtle enough to pretend she didn’t care.

Bess, on the other hand, was clever enough to pretend she didn’t know what Missy was talking about. “Nick?”

“You know who I mean.” Missy jerked a thumb toward the living room, which bounced with the usual party.

Bess let her gaze follow. Nick leaned against the wall near the hall, tipping a beer to his mouth and talking to Ryan. It was a near mirror of the pose in which Bess had first seen him. It affected her even more this time, but she kept her expression bland when she looked back at Missy.

“What about him?”

Missy scowled. “What’s going on with you two, that’s what.”

Bess shrugged and tipped the glass blender container—God knew where it had come from, or even if it was clean—toward her cup. Brian had made frozen margaritas. She sipped and her eyes watered instantly at the burn of tequila. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right,” Missy said, her own eyes narrowed.

Bess sipped a bit more to hide her smile. “This is strong, that’s all.”

“Especially for a Miss Goody Two-shoes who doesn’t drink.” Missy crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter. The position shoved her cleavage out of her tank top. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Nick?” Bess looked again. This time, he was looking back. And smiling. It was the smile that got Missy, Bess was sure of it, and she smiled, too. “Nothing’s going on with him.”

“I saw you,” Missy hissed. She was on her way to being drunk, but not quite there.

Bess flinched as a fine spray of margarita-scented spittle flew from Missy’s lips. “Saw me what?”

“When you went to the bathroom,” she said. “You walked past him!”

Bess laughed and inched away to get out of the soak zone. “Oh, c’mon. So does everyone who has to go to the bathroom, Missy. He’s standing right there.”

Missy shook her head. “No. No, you—” she stabbed her finger toward Bess “—you…sidled.”

Bess burst into laughter that turned a few heads, even over the sound of the Violent Femmes pounding from the speakers. “Look who got herself a Word of the Day calendar.”

Missy didn’t appear insulted, but she did look crafty. She gulped the final dregs of her margarita without even a grimace. “I saw you touch him when you went past.”

She hadn’t, actually. Over the past week, as he’d managed to stop in almost every day to see her, Bess had thought about touching Nick. She always thought about it, but never did it. “You’re drunk. You didn’t see anything.”

“I saw you,” Missy insisted. “I saw you thinking about it, Bessie.”

“How the hell do you see anyone thinking about anything?”

Missy made a face. “Just because you’re pissed I told you he’s gay…”

“I think he’s the one who’s pissed about that. Not me.” Bess couldn’t help looking for him again. Touching him with her eyes. Now he was deep in conversation with Brian, whose hands were waving, but while Bess missed the sizzle that came from Nick’s gaze meeting hers, she also liked watching him when he wasn’t looking. She could drink him in that way.

“I’m talking to you!” Missy snapped her fingers in front of Bess’s face.

She heaved a sigh and gave Missy her attention. “Nick and I are just friends.”

Missy spluttered into laughter. “Oh, right. Nick? You and Nick the Prick? He’s not friends with any girl unless he’s fucking her.”

“Whatever, Missy.” Bess tried to pretend hearing that didn’t bother her, but her friend wasn’t too drunk to know when she’d struck a direct hit.

“Yeah, yeah. You say whatever.” She pointed across the room. “Ask Heather about him. She’ll tell you.”

Bess wouldn’t ask Heather for a glass of water if she were on fire. She looked up, though, to see Heather standing with her hip cocked, talking to Nick. Heather flung her fall of long blond hair over her shoulder and twirled a piece of it around one finger. If she pushed her boobs any closer to him she’d be holding his beer in her cleavage, Bess thought, and turned away.

Missy looked triumphant, then put on a mask of sincerity that might have fooled someone as drunk as she was, but didn’t convince Bess. “I was only looking out for you, Bessie. Nick’s bad news. And you have a boyfriend, remember?”

As if Bess could forget. She hadn’t told Missy about the sort of. “We’re just friends.” She tried to make the words taste better by swallowing them with a swig of margarita. It didn’t work, and made her cough. Missy pounded her on the back.

“I’m just saying,” Missy said, but nothing else, as if those three words were explanation enough.

Across the room, Bess watched Heather lean in close to Nick, who didn’t pull away. And why should he? The blonde had big tits and a small ass and a flat stomach. Heather could suck the chrome off a truck hitch. She didn’t “sort of” have a boyfriend.

“Slow down with that drink,” Missy advised as she poured herself another. “That bitch Brian’s a fiend for the alcohol.”

For maybe the first time in her life, Bess wanted to get drunk. Instead she put down the cup and left the party. At home she declined an offer by her older, married cousins to join in on a game of gin rummy. She stretched the phone cord as long as it could reach, out onto the deck, and though it wasn’t their appointed time she called Andy, anyway. The phone rang for a long time before his brother answered.

“Andy’s not home.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back? It’s Bess.”

Did she imagine Matt’s hesitation? The sympathy in his voice? Would Andy’s brother tell her the truth if she asked him to, about the other girl whose letters Bess had found in Andy’s desk drawer?

“I don’t, Bess. Sorry.”

He sounded sorry, but that didn’t do her any good. Bess thanked him and hung up. She looked out at the black ocean but could see no waves.

She hadn’t meant to look in Andy’s drawer, hadn’t been looking for something she wasn’t meant to see. He’d asked her to grab a package of snapshots he wanted to show his parents, and Bess, who liked Mr. and Mrs. Walsh but wasn’t sure if they really liked her, had been all too happy to escape the dinner table to get them.

She’d been in Andy’s room quite a few times and knew what drawer in his desk he meant. The pictures weren’t there, but there was a rubber band-bound package of envelopes addressed to Andy in a looping, unfamiliar hand. A girl’s handwriting. Men didn’t dot their i’s with little flowers.

She hadn’t meant to find them, but once she had there was no question of her not reading them. She’d eased the first from the envelope and glanced at the salutation, skimmed the body of the letter and went straight to the signature.

Love, Lisa

Love? What the hell was some girl doing sending Andy, Bess’s Andy, letters signed with such a word? At the sound of footsteps in the hall, Bess had crammed the letters back into the rubber band. If it had been Andy in the doorway she’d have confronted him then, not left it a secret dissolving them like acid.

But it had been Matty, Andy’s younger brother, who’d come to see what was taking her so long. Bess saw on his face he knew what she’d seen, or guessed, but Andy was Matt’s brother and Bess was just some girl who might or might not someday be part of their family. Matt had said nothing, so neither had she. Not to Matt, and not to Andy himself.

She’d left the next day for the shore with Andy’s promises ringing in her ears. He’d write. He’d call. This year, he’d visit. So far he hadn’t kept any part of his promise.

So far, Bess had stopped expecting him to.

Chapter

09

Now

The Surf Pro still sold overpriced bathing suits, but like so much else time had changed, money was no longer quite the issue it had been when she was younger. Bess perused the racks of clothes, knowing she wouldn’t find much of anything Nick really needed—jeans, T-shirts, boxers, socks. Her fingers drifted through racks of baggy surf shorts and wetsuits. It didn’t escape her that she knew just what a twenty-one-year-old guy needed, or what one would like.

She’d only stopped into the shop on a whim because Nick had once worked there. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find. A plaque? A shrine to his memory? She doubted there’d even be anyone working there who remembered him. That, more than anything, and hearing him ask why she hadn’t known he was gone, pushed her out of the shop and back onto Garfield Street. She’d driven into town to hit the small grocery store, Shore Foods, because it was what she knew. A lot had changed since the last time Bess had been to Bethany Beach. More shops, for one. She’d have to look for something like a discount store to find everything she really needed, but for now Nick would have to deal with wearing shorts and T-shirts she picked up from the Five and Ten.

Across the street from where she’d parked was Sugarland. Or rather, where Sugarland had once stood. The storefront had changed, nearly swallowed up by a bunch of newly constructed specialty shops and an arcade, but the store inside looked mostly the same. Cleaner and with updated decor, but not much different than it had been when she’d been a slave behind the counter.

On impulse, clutching her plastic bag of gaudy, tie-dyed clothes, Bess crossed the square and went into the shop. The bell jangled on the door the way it always had, and she couldn’t help smiling. The bored teenager behind the counter barely glanced up. She looked about sixteen, with dark, thick hair pulled into a ponytail, and rectangular glasses perched on the end of her pierced nose. She yawned as Bess came up to the counter.

“Help you?”

“I’d like a large tub of the caramel corn.” Bess hadn’t bothered reading the menu, but surely Sugarland still sold the gooey, secret-recipe caramel corn that had been so popular.

The girl waved a languid hand toward a small pyramid of tubs. “We only have small right now.”

Bess couldn’t forget the hours she’d spent bending over the hot vat of sugar, corn syrup and melted butter. Mr. Swarovsky, Sugarland’s owner, had insisted on fresh caramel corn every day. “Is it fresh?”

Bess winced the instant the words slipped from her mouth. She sounded just like every uptight tourist who’d ever made her crazy. The girl didn’t react much, just shrugged.

“Sure, I guess. Hey, Dad!” she called over her shoulder toward the back. “Dad!”

The man who ducked out of the back room took up a lot of vertical space. His broad shoulders and lean hips gave the illusion he was taller even than he was, though Bess estimated him at over six feet. Dark thick hair spiked off his forehead, and glasses nearly identical to the ones the counter girl wore would have hinted at the family relationship even if she hadn’t called him Dad. The man’s smile stretched across his face and revealed straight, gleaming teeth. It transformed him instantly from geeky to gorgeous, and Bess wondered what she’d done to deserve such a look.

“Bess? Bess McNamara?” The man came around the counter, oblivious to his daughter’s goggling stare, and reached for Bess’s hand.

She gave it, and he pumped it up and down. “Yes? I mean, yes. I’m Bess.”

“Bess.” The man held her hand tight in both of his for a few minutes longer than necessary before letting go. “It’s me. Eddie Denver.”

It was rude to gape in disbelief, but Bess did anyway, scanning him up and down while he laughed. “Eddie? Oh my God, Eddie…wow!”

He laughed and ducked his head, and that gesture cemented it for her. “Yeah. Times change, huh?”

Bess wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t introduced himself. Gone were the acne, the braces, the scrawny, perpetually hunched shoulders. Eddie Denver had grown up. “How did you know it was me?”

Eddie’s smile brought a twinkle to his eyes evident even from behind his Elvis Costello-style glasses. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Bess laughed, feeling self-conscious. Her turn to blush. “Oh, sure.”

Eddie shook his head. “No, I mean it.”

She touched her hair, left loose around her face today. She wasn’t going to point out the silver threads there, or pat the extra curves in her thighs and ass. She looked around Sugarland. Eddie’s daughter was still goggling.

“What are you doing here, Eddie? Don’t tell me you’re still working for Mr. Swarovsky!”

Eddie tipped his head back to laugh, and Bess marveled at his easy self-confidence. “No. I bought the place from him about five years ago. Oh, this is my daughter, Kara.”

Kara wiggled a few fingers and went back to looking bored. Eddie laughed. “She’s thrilled to be here, can’t you tell?”

Kara rolled her eyes. Bess gave a commiserating smile. “Your dad and I used to work here together.”

The teen nodded. “Yeah. He told me all about it, oh, about a million times.”

Bess and Eddie laughed together at that.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself,” Eddie said. “I haven’t seen you since that last summer you worked here.”

Bess started to speak, stopped, laughed. “Oh, you know. The usual. Married, kids. Nothing exciting.”

Eddie glanced around the empty shop, then back at her. “Hey, let me buy you a cup of coffee and we’ll catch up. Can you? Do you have time?”

For an instant Bess caught a glimpse of the old Eddie, the one who’d never been able to look her in the eye. It was endearing, that hint of times past, and she nodded. “Sure. That sounds great.”

“Watch the shop, Kara. I’ll be back.”

Kara rolled her eyes again and shooed them with her hand. “Whatevs, Dad. Go.”

Eddie gave Bess an apologetic look as he held the door open for them both to leave. “Sorry about Kara. She’s not too thrilled about having to work in the shop.”

“Don’t worry about it.” They paused to let a car go by before crossing the street to the coffee shop. “I’ve got two boys. I know how teenagers can be.”

Eddie opened the door for her at the coffee shop, too. His manners gave Bess both a little thrill and a pang of regret that such courtesy should be somehow notable. He even stepped back to let her choose the table, and asked her what she wanted, then went to the counter to order for both of them. It seemed a little old-fashioned but definitely flattering. Bess couldn’t help studying him as he gave his order to the counter staff with confidence. Not much like the stammering, blushing Eddie she’d known back then.

“Thanks,” Bess said when he brought her café mocha and a plate of chocolate-dipped biscotti. Her stomach rumbled and she bit off the end of a dry, crumbly cookie. “Wow, good.”

Eddie dipped his into his coffee before nibbling. “Yeah. I swear I should buy stock in this place. I’m here every day.”

“Maybe you could set up a trade agreement. So many cups of coffee for so many tubs of corn.”

Eddie gave that infectious laugh again. “Yeah, sure. Except sadly, nobody’s interested in my popcorn since Swarovsky’s opened up down the street.”

Bess hadn’t followed, and her face must have shown her confusion.

“When I bought the place from old Mr. Swarovsky,” Eddie explained, “I wanted the rights to the secret recipe, too. The old man was willing to sell me the store because Ronnie supposedly didn’t want to take over, but when it came time to give up the family recipe, the old man hemmed and hawed. I tried telling him Sugarland wasn’t worth much without the caramel corn. He died while we were in the final negotiations. I got the store for a song…but not the recipe.”

Bess made a face. “Ouch. And then Ronnie opened up his own place?”

“You got it. Just down the street.” Eddie shrugged. “Apparently he had plans to do it for a while, but he and his dad didn’t see eye to eye on it. When his dad died, Ronnie got the recipe and I got the old shop.”

“Eddie, that’s too bad. I’m sorry.” Bess reached automatically to pat his arm. He glanced up at her touch, for another fleeting instant looking the way he used to. She took her hand away.

“It’s okay. I’m doing a nice business with the ice cream, and I do sell a couple different varieties of popcorn, but we can’t really compete with the genuine Swarovsky’s. Even if I wanted to be a jerk and use the recipe…which would be stealing. You know how people are about that stuff, Bess. You remember.”

“Loyal,” she said with a nod. “Yeah, I remember.”

Eddie rapped the table with his knuckles. “Hey, enough of that. Tell me about you. Your life. What grand and exciting things did you go on to do?”

Bess’s laugh wasn’t quite as vibrant as his. “I wish I had a lot of stories to tell you, but I don’t, really. I went to school. Got married. We had two boys, Connor and Robbie. Connor’s eighteen. Robbie’s seventeen. They’re going to be coming down here in about two weeks, as soon as school lets out.”

“If they need jobs, send ’em my way,” Eddie said seriously. “Right now it’s me and Kara, but once the season really gets going I’ll need a couple other kids.”

Bess smiled. “I’ll let them know. Thanks.”

Eddie sipped more coffee and eyed her over his mug. “What about your job?”

Bess turned her mug around in her hands. “Oh, that. Well, I worked for a little while, but when I got pregnant with Connor I quit and just never managed to go back.”

“You were going to be a counselor,” Eddie said. “That’s too bad you had to quit. Not that staying home to raise your kids isn’t an important job,” he added hastily. “God knows someone should stay home and raise the children. I just meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Bess said quietly. “I wanted to do a lot of things I didn’t. Having Connor changed a lot.”

She and Eddie stared at each other over their cooling coffees and biscotti crumbs. He sent her another smile, not so broad or wide, but sweeter for being so tentative.

“Kara’s mother, Kathy, and I never got married. We, umm…well, I can’t even say we dated,” Eddie admitted. “The year after your last one here, I shot up about four inches, lost the braces. My face cleared up. I wasn’t Quasimodo anymore.”

“Oh, Eddie.”

He shook his head. “I know what I looked like, Bess. Anyway. I guess the sudden transformation sort of went to my head. I got cocky. A little careless. Kathy was the daughter of one of my mom’s friends from church. Both our moms tried to hook us up, but I wasn’t really interested in marrying a preacher’s daughter.”

Bess swept biscotti crumbs into a pile. “But you had a baby with her?”

She hadn’t meant to sound judgmental, and Eddie didn’t seem to take it that way. He gave her a rueful grin and crunched the last of his biscotti.

“She wouldn’t marry me. We both should have been more careful, but Kathy was the one who said she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life married to the wrong person just because she’d made a mistake. We share custody of Kara. Kathy married an accountant from New Jersey.”

Bess wiped her fingers free of chocolate with a paper napkin. “And you?”

“Never got married.” He leaned back in his chair to study her, his head tilted. “Never found the right woman, I guess.”

Heat tickled Bess’s cheeks. “You look good, Eddie. I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. Really. Even if you are still a townie.”

They both laughed.

“With beachfront properties selling in the millions, being a townie isn’t quite a slap in the face, you know. Not that I have a beachfront house,” he amended. “Kara and I have a place in Bethany Commons. The condos. It’s not so bad, even if we do have to share it with you tourists.”

“Hey,” she protested. “I’m officially a townie now!”

Eddie gave her the familiar head tilt and an entirely unfamiliar slow, assessing grin. “Cool.”

“What about everyone else?” she asked, looking away. “Have you kept in touch with any of them?”

“Ah, well, obviously I don’t hang out with Ronnie Swarovsky at the country club.”

“Obviously.” She laughed. “Did he and Tammy get married?”

“They did, actually.” Eddie filled her in on twenty years worth of gossip and news. Bess was surprised at how many of the people they’d known back then still came back for the summer, or lived here year-round.

“Melissa Palance lives over in Dewey.” Eddie crunched biscotti between his white, even teeth.

Bess gave him a questioning look, but figured out who he meant a few seconds later. “Missy?”

“She goes by Melissa now.” He laughed. “She’s got four kids and is married to some real-estate bigwig.”

“Wow. Four kids?” Bess shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

“She stops into the shop sometimes. You wouldn’t even recognize her, Bess. She’s not blond anymore, for one thing.”

Bess twirled a strand of her shoulder-length hair. So far the silver wasn’t overpowering the gold, but in the next few years she figured she’d have to decide whether or not to go gray gracefully or start coloring. “Who is?”

Eddie ran a hand over his dark, shaggy hair, where no signs of white glinted. “My dad’s in his seventies and doesn’t have a gray hair.”

“Wow! Good genes.”

Eddie laughed. “He’s bald.”

Bess eyed Eddie’s thick hair. “You don’t look like you’re in any danger of that.”

“Let’s hope not. How about you? Do you keep in touch with anyone? Brian?” Eddie paused, sounding casual. He sipped coffee and settled back in the booth. “Nick?”

“I…” Bess stopped to drink some coffee. “I lost touch with Brian after college. And Nick…no. I never kept in touch with him.”

“You didn’t?” There was no mistaking the sound of pure pleasure in Eddie’s voice, even if he did try to mask it with surprise. “You guys were pretty hot and heavy. Weren’t you?”

He knew they’d been. “Yes, but…it didn’t work out.”

“So he’s not the guy you married.”

Bess looked up, shocked that Eddie might have thought so. “God, no! Can you imagine?”

She couldn’t, actually. Married to Nick? How her life would have changed.

Eddie shrugged. “I didn’t know. He up and disappeared. Missy said she thought he joined the army. I thought maybe he went with you.”

“No. I married Andy.” She paused. Eddie had only met Andy once. From what she could remember, Andy hadn’t been too nice.

“Ah.” Eddie didn’t ask any more questions. “Sounds like you’ve been doing well. I’m glad for you,” he added, though something in his face told her he hadn’t quite been convinced she was doing as well as she pretended.

Of course, maybe she was just projecting the truth she knew onto him.

“I should get going,” Bess said. “Thanks so much for the coffee. It was great seeing you.”