“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to.” I sighed. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re making sure you don’t bomb within your first ninety days.” Helen set down a cake that read ‘Sixty more days to go!’ on my desk. “Looks like you’ve been crying—again.”
“No, I haven’t...I just have—”
“Allergies?” Sandra rolled her eyes. “Please. Have you called him yet?”
I shook my head and the two of them exchanged glances.
“You know, I’m not a huge fan of the monogamous relationship thing,” Helen said as she sat on the edge of my desk. “That aside, I really think you should call him and tell him everything his mother was doing to you...I honestly think you two were made for each other—age gap and all. I’ve never seen sparks like that fly between people—and that’s saying a lot coming from me. I mean, I could literally feel the electricity whenever you were in the same room together, so you need to rectify this ASAP. Oh and random, who is the guy that sits at the side desk in the downstairs lobby?”
“Ashton?”
“Dark brown hair, green eyes?”
I nodded. “That’s him.”
“Is he single?”
“He’s nineteen...”
“Then he’s perfectly legal.” She eased off my desk and walked towards the door. “I’ll be right back.”
Sandra shook her head. “Why do we put up with her again?” She walked over to my side of the desk and patted my back. “I agree with everything she said about you and Jonathan...I’d never seen you that happy until you started dating him. You need to tell him about his mom.”
“What would be the point? She was wrong for handling it the way she did, but her main message was right. It would never work out. I’m too old for him, and I knew that from the beginning.”
“Okay, you really need to stop—”
“She knew exactly what to say to get to me...She knew throwing my age in my face would break me down. She knew that would make me leave him...”
“And you shouldn’t have let her do that...You should have told him as soon as it started.”
“I just...” I sighed. “He claims that he doesn’t care about his mother, that he sees her as a burden sometimes, but that’s not true...He wants them to have a good relationship. He’s wanted that his whole life. That’s why he always pays for her to go to rehab, that’s why he’s always hoping that this time is the time she’ll get it right, and I think she finally did. I didn’t want to stand in the way of that; that wouldn’t have been fair to him...I keep telling myself that I did the right thing, that I saved myself an even bigger heartbreak down the road but...” Tears fell down my face.
“Did you tell him that you loved him?”
I shook my head. “Why would I? We were close but...I didn’t love him. I liked him a lot and—”
“Claire...” She pursed her lips and gave me her stop-bullshitting-me face.
“I wanted to...I was going to tell him but—” I stopped and shut my eyes. “I knew I was going to break up with him the next day so I didn’t.”
“It’s going to be okay...Stop crying...”
“So! Ashton seems like he might be just the guy to break me out of my disappointing-dick-spell! He is definitely well endowed...” Helen walked back into my office. “He also gave me five packs of mini-Kleenex, so...” She tossed them over to me. “Let’s take you out to lunch, shall we? That’s step one to getting you back to normal.”
I walked down to the edge of Ocean Beach, so far that I could see Jonathan’s beach house in the distance. I thought about running towards it and knocking on the door, but I held back.
I’d been doing this every weekend since we broke up: going to the deserted part of the beach, lying out on the sand, and thinking about all the things we’d done together.
I reached into my purse and pulled out the small box he’d given me the day we broke up. I’d been carrying it around with me every day, but I’d held off on opening it because I didn’t want to be reminded of how foolish I was for breaking things off with him.
Unable to suppress my curiosity any longer, I sank down to the sand and flipped the top open: Inside was a beautiful golden necklace with a single anchor charm. Next to that necklace was another one—a silver one with several shimmering charms: There were white and red flags—melded together with “Claire & Caroline” etched onto the back, a silver yacht, an anchor with the words “Yours, Always” signed into the sides, a bottle of wine with our initials on the label, and then there was an “M” and an “L” that were intertwined. The “L” was bolder than the “M” and it was covered in a bright pattern of crystals.
“ML”? What does that mean?
I couldn’t think of any place we’d been to that had “M” and “L” in the title, and I couldn’t remember any conversations we’d had about those two letters.