She avoids my eyes as she walks back to the booth, making me feel even more like a shitheel for ruining her night out with Emmy.
I wait until they’re both situated back in the booth and Emmy is coloring before I speak. “I’m sorry,” I tell her quietly.
That draws her stormy eyes back to mine. “For what?”
She’s not playing dumb. She’s asking me what’s been up my ass.
I sigh. “I’ve never been jealous before.”
Her brows draw together. “Jealous? Of what?”
“Of all these men looking at you.”
She glances around. “What men looking at me?”
“You really don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?” She’s genuinely perplexed.
“See the way your hair pours down your back like a waterfall made of ink. See the way your eyes sparkle when you look at Emmy. See the way your laugh makes other people smile. See the way everybody wants you.”
Pink spots bloom on her cheeks and she looks away from me, shy all of a sudden.
“Or the way you blush when someone tells you you’re beautiful.”
“Well, if that’s what’s wrong with you, then maybe you shouldn’t apologize,” she teases with a grin.
“Yes, I should. You don’t deserve my mood. And neither does Emmy.”
Eden glances over at her daughter, who is coloring pretty damn well for someone her age. Eden looks back at me and shrugs. “We’re okay now that you’re okay.”
“I’m trying to be.”
She smiles. “Now you know how I feel when Jordan is so friendly with you.”
I scoff. “Please. There’s not a woman in a ten state radius that holds a candle to you.”
I can tell my comment pleases her. “You’re gonna give me a big head.”
I tilt my head and consider her. “Nah. You’re not the type to get conceited.”
“Oh really? Then what type am I?”
I pause, debating how truthful to be. In the end, I tell her exactly what I’m thinking. “The perfect type.”
Her smile widens and her cheeks turn pinker, and just like that, I feel more relaxed than I have all day.
“You two going to be able to eat around all that flirting and smiling?” Jordan asks when she returns with a tray of our food. “If not, princess and I will eat it, won’t we, little Emmy?” She winks at Emmy and Emmy leans her head against Eden’s arm to hide her face. “That must be a ‘no’.”
“Emmy would share her food with me, wouldn’t you, Emmy?” I ask of the little girl who looks so much like mine. She grins shyly and nods. “Jordan’s out of luck, isn’t she?” She grins bigger and nods more vigorously. I wink at her and am gratified by a tiny giggle. She’s not talking to me yet, but I figure the fact that she’s smiling and not sucking her thumb is progress. And I’ll take every little small bit of progress I can get.
????
I’m studying the picture Emmy drew for me after dinner when Eden quietly reappears in the living room doorway. The level of detail in the sandcastle and in the flowers is probably pretty advanced for a child her age. But that’s not what strikes me most about the picture. What knocks the breath out of me is that she seems to have caught the emptiness I felt there today.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like refrigerator pictures?” asks Eden.
“I like them just fine.” I turn my attention back to the drawing, once again bothered by something that was eating at me earlier. When I was at the beach.
Eden comes to sit beside me on the couch, curling her legs under her and tucking her hands between her knees to warm them. I inhale the clean smell of her shampoo and the lightly sweet perfume or body lotion that she wears. Whatever it is, the scent suits her perfectly.
“Seriously, what’s the matter? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
My smile is more bitter than anything. “That’s the problem. Only reverse.”
“The reverse? What’s that mean?”
I sigh and let the paper drift out of my fingers to settle silently on the wooden coffee table in front of me. Like letting go of a memory and watching it drift off into nothingness. Only I don’t want to do that.
“Everybody in this town thinks I’m crazy,” I begin. “Did you know that?” She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t need to. The answer is right there in her expressive eyes. They tell me more than what she’d be comfortable with sometimes, I think. “I’m not surprised. It’s probably a juicy topic of conversation in a place like this. If gossip had headlines, I’m sure they’d read, ‘Ex Football Pro Talks to Dead Daughter On Beach’.” I pause, gathering my thoughts, choosing my words carefully as I toy with one edge of Emmy’s picture. My fingers are drawn to it over and over. “I’m not crazy, Eden. I wanted to see Charity. I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted it so badly that I could see her. And hear her. But I knew she wasn’t really there. Not even in ghost form. It was just my way of keeping her alive. Of never forgetting even one small detail about her, like the way her voice sounded.”
I take a deep breath and rub my hand over my face, forcing myself to sit back and let go of the paper. “It was always strongest at the beach. Making those sandcastles. Until today.” I close my eyes. My chest feels tight just thinking about this. About losing Charity.
Eden’s voice is whisper quiet. “What do you mean?”
I don’t look at her. I can’t. “I didn’t hear her today. Didn’t see her. I wanted to. I did everything right. Just like I always do. The flowers. The castle. The pocketful of sand. But she wasn’t there. In my mind, she just wasn’t there.”
“Why? What happened?”
I roll my head on the cushion and look at Eden. Her features are as beautiful as ever in the flickering firelight. I’m glad she’s kept it going. I don’t know why, but I am. It seems to be…symbolic somehow.
I study her. As always, her eyes tell the tale. There’s trepidation in them. Dread. “You happened. Emmy happened.”
“Cole, I–”
I interrupt because I need to get this out. Now that the guilt is eating me alive. “I wasn’t looking for anybody, Eden. I wasn’t trying to move on or get over her, to find something more in life. I was content in my misery.” I pause. “I had no intention of pursuing you, even though I felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer when I saw you on the beach that day. But still, I wasn’t going to do anything about it. Only I couldn’t stay away.”
“Cole, I never–”
“I know, I know. I didn’t either. But I did. You did. We did. And now…today, all I could think about was you. How I didn’t want to leave you this morning. How anxious I was to see you again at dinner. To see you with Emmy. To see her smile and maybe hear her voice. Just once. And because I took you with me, there was no room for my daughter.”
I sound bitter. Resentful. I don’t mean to. It just came out that way. I should apologize. But I feel like that would be an even bigger betrayal to Charity.
I’m filled with dread as I wait for Eden to respond. I wouldn’t be surprised if she told me to leave.