She smiled at me. The thought that she might possibly be right made the sudden weight in my chest lift a little, and I returned her smile without speaking.
“Look, I know there are pros and cons for both places, but…” her voice trailed off, but I knew what she meant.
“Yeah, I think—”
“I want you to stay.”
I heard her but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what she had said.
I met her eyes. “What?”
Her hand was still holding on to mine, and now she gripped it even harder. “Stay, Tyler. You finally have the power to come home. You should be with your dad and brother. And besides all of that, I want you to stay. I like you. A lot.”
As I sat there undone by her words, she leaned forward, bringing her lips to mine. She kissed me, and before I was even aware of it, I found myself responding. I kissed her back, the power of physical attraction and emotional affirmation surging inside of me, creating a force beyond my control. My Amish life seemed in that moment like a dream I had awakened from. I was just an ordinary man in ordinary clothes kissing a beautiful girl in an ordinary house in a sunny Southern California suburb.
My hand went to Lark’s cheek, brushing across the delicate bones of her face, learning them, continuing on to her hair. I ran my fingers through its softness, both hands now gripping her head, pressing my mouth even more fiercely against hers. In that moment, I was the man in my mother’s pond, the one who stared back at me on crisp autumn mornings when I looked into the water of the world beyond Lancaster County. I was an everyday man who drove a car and had a cell phone and texted the girl he liked and went to his brother’s football games and ate sushi and had clothes with buttons and wore a watch on his arm. I was a man who took pictures with a camera. Looked up the weather on the Internet. Made coffee with K-cups.
I was the man I would have been if my father had kept me. If my mother had not died.
I felt Lark’s arms sliding around my back, pulling me closer, and I did the same. As we clung to each other, our mouths melded together, everything about the last seventeen years suddenly began floating away from me. Floating away. Any moment, I realized, it could all disappear.
And then, with sudden and shocking clarity, I realized I didn’t want it to.
I didn’t want to be this man.
I pulled away, breaking off our kiss even as I stifled a gasp.
“What?” Lark’s eyes were half closed. Glistening.
I swallowed hard, took my hands from around her slender shoulders. Shook my head. Tried to speak but could not.
I didn’t want to be this man.
I saw it now, all too clearly. I wanted to be that other man. The Amish one.
The one I truly was.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I have to go.”
I got to my feet, nearly knocking over my chair, and headed for Lark’s front door.
“Tyler!” she called after me.
“I’m sorry, Lark. I really have to go.” I couldn’t look at her. I had to get out of that house and away from any physical remnant of the kiss I would have taken back had it not revealed to me who I was.
“Tyler, please! Wait!”
But I could not wait. I called out to her over my shoulder, saying I would contact her later once I figured things out.
The thing was, I already had figured things out. And I couldn’t wait to tell Rachel what I’d discovered. I felt so close to an answer, a final knowledge of who I was and where I belonged. I finally understood that the world I treasured most, the world I would always consider my home, was the Amish one.
It’s not that I wasn’t drawn to Lark in a powerful way, because I was. Spending time with her had been one of the highlights of my days here. And kissing her had been…well, it had been amazing. Lark’s kiss—and all that it spoke of—was enchanting, nearly intoxicating. Complex.
I had only ever kissed one other person, Rachel, and those kisses had been stolen in courting buggies when no one was looking or at singings when a walk outside under a sky of stars made us think we were on the threshold of heaven. Every kiss I had ever shared with her whispered to me that here was a taste of what it would be like to be married. But the kiss I had shared with Lark shouted to me that here was a taste of what it would be like to be Englisch.
And as much as I’d thought that might be what I wanted, I knew now that it wasn’t. Lark was a lovely girl, but she wasn’t for me—because this life wasn’t for me. Finally, I understood.
The man in the pond was merely a reflection of my options, not an indication of my destiny.
That night Brady’s team lost by a touchdown but not due to any mistakes or missed opportunities on his part. They were just outplayed. By the time the game was over, Liz was clearly in pain and ready to be home. Brady would be riding the team bus back to the school, with a friend giving him a lift from there.