“Yes, I think I would enjoy a short walk.” Amy reached for her hand, and Jenna attached herself to Vera’s other arm.
Jenna loved Vera like a grandmother, and each year she was surprised to see how well Vera was holding up, especially after last year’s scare. They walked along the shore with their feet in the cold water. The bay beaches were rockier than the ocean side. The perfect rock-spotting venue for a rock collector like Jenna.
“Remember, we’re looking for—”
“Pitch-black rocks. I remember. Why pitch-black?” Amy bent to retrieve a rock and held it in her palm for Jenna to inspect.
“That’s dark gray, but close.” Jenna splashed water with her toes. “I thought this was going to be the summer I gave up on Pete,” Jenna explained. “I never thought we’d cross from friendship to anything more, no matter how much I wished for it. And with all the stuff going on with my mom, black seemed a fitting way to mark the summer.”
“One day you girls will realize that you have very little control over matters of the heart.” Vera nudged Jenna’s arm and pointed to a dark rock.
Jenna picked up the perfect black rock, thinking about what Vera said. “How can that be, Vera? People scheme all the time to connect with the person they’re attracted to.” Jenna held up the rock. “This is perfect. Thank you.” She tucked it into her bikini top, below her breast, as she’d done so many times before. With no pockets in bathing suits, Jenna had to be creative. She resituated her bikini top, then took Vera’s arm again.
“Oh yes. Women and men alike. They all scheme and plot, but rarely do those plots end the way they think they will. In my experience, forever loves, the ones that are meant to last through thick and thin, happen all on their own.” Vera smiled down at Jenna.
“See, Jenna?” Amy raised her brows. “I don’t have to look for a man. The right one will find me.”
“I guess that could be true, but, Vera, if that’s the way love works, then why is it taking Pete so long to realize I’m his…?”
“A little assumptive, are we? Just a day ago you couldn’t even talk to him.” Amy arched a brow.
“Okay, so maybe I’m not his…”
“His…” Vera repeated. “You’ll search your whole life to figure out what word encompasses all that your true love represents. I still can’t think of one word to describe my late husband. Comforting, yes. Loving, warm, angry sometimes.” She sighed. “Passionate. Frustrating. Safe. Warren was everything to me, and even that seems too simple of a statement. You’re on the cusp of your best years, girls, and every day you’ll grow a little wiser.”
“My twenties were pretty darn good,” Jenna said as she retrieved another rock, inspected it, and tossed it into the water.
They stopped and waded up to their ankles in the water.
Vera patted Jenna’s hand. “You’ll find something wonderful about every decade, but when you’re in your twenties, you’re just learning about yourself, your body, your desires, your pet peeves. Some couples can adapt to the changes that happen while you’re becoming women and men are coming into their own. But most couples these days don’t have the patience to love and grow together. They’re only interested in instant gratification, and when things fall short, they shrug and move on to the next person. My generation wasn’t better at too many things, but we seemed less self-involved. Less interested in proving we were valuable in a relationship. Things were slower. Families were units that did everything together. Oh, girls, we had such fun.” Vera reached for their hands. “We ate meals together without distractions. We could go hours without background noise, and we only knew what our friends were doing when they called or sent handwritten letters. Or, of course, when we loaded up the car and drove to see them.”
“But things change, Vera. People are busier. Everything’s more expensive, so we need to work harder. And there’s Facebook to keep in touch.” Amy looked at Jenna for validation.
“True,” Jenna agreed.
Vera’s eyes warmed even more, then filled with empathy. “It takes very little to make a happy life, girls. That’s the piece that everyone seems to forget. All those things people think they need—bigger houses, better cars, titles behind their names, gold-engraved invitations—they can never replace the warmth of trust and love, or the feeling of hugging a good friend, and I don’t mean a virtual, computerized hug.”
Vera blew out a breath and began walking down the beach again, still holding their hands. “The right relationship will leave you wanting for nothing. It will fill the spaces that others plug up with material things. And for those people, it’s when those material things are no longer enough that people turn outward, when really, they should turn their attention to their relationship and remember why they fell in love in the first place.”
“Vera, you make love sound so easy,” Amy said.
Vera laughed as they turned back the way they’d come. “Relationships are the most difficult thing you’ll ever do in your life. Childbirth? A breeze compared to living with a man. But again, the right partner will help you blossom. The wrong one will watch you wilt.”
Jenna thought about her summers on the Cape and how different they were from the other nine months out of the year, when she was strapped to her cell phone and calendar, and every minute was spent darting from one commitment to the next. There was no comparison to working versus being on vacation, but she let her mind wander, and she imagined what her life might be like if she put away her cell phone and turned off her computer in the evenings the other nine and a half months out of the year. She could read a million more books. She might even have time to paint for fun, rather than only working on projects for her art students. She wondered what Pete did in the evenings. Did he chat online? Hang out at bars during the winter? Was he a reader? She imagined him working on his boat throughout the year, maybe spending time with his dad, having dinners once a week, like she and her mother did, and the thought made her smile. She wanted to find out, and she wanted to do all those things with him.
They gathered their beach supplies and headed back to the car. Vera was so well versed in Cape beaches, having vacationed there her whole life, that she wore socks and solid walking shoes to avoid the hot sand on the path back to the car. She looked hilarious, but Jenna didn’t care. Her socks and shoes were simply part of who she was, like Jenna’s OCD tendencies and Amy’s sweet nature.