“I know I hurt you. And it was inexcusable,” he began. “And I was probably taking things too fast, so I understand why you thought—”
“Stop.” Her voice was much louder and more forceful than she’d intended. Time stood still as they stared at each other, gauging each other. She didn’t want their relationship to end. “Yes, I was hurt, but you didn’t do it on purpose. You get why I was upset, and I get why you did what you did. That’s it. An ugly set of circumstances.”
He stood straighter, his face relaxing slightly, but he didn’t respond.
“As for taking things too fast, they couldn’t go fast enough for my tastes,” she said, relaxing a bit herself. “They still can’t.” She regretted blurting that out until the look in his eyes completely changed. It was as if they had darkened and deepened. She could drown in those eyes.
He wiped a remaining tear from her cheek with his thumb, then held out his arms and she stepped into them, loving his warmth and the faint smell of mint.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
“Me, too. I’m glad you came by. I didn’t expect to see you again, especially in light of our game of ‘keep away’ going on in the office.” She pulled back enough to look into his face so she could read his reaction.
His smile was bittersweet and dimple-free. “I couldn’t stay away. When I watched you with Beth through the security cameras, I knew I had to try to talk to you, even if you turned me away.”
Turning him away would have been impossible. “How did you and Beth end up together? She doesn’t seem like your type. She’s so…”
He dropped his arms from around her and took a step back. “Self-absorbed?”
She nodded. “You guys were together a long time, though.”
He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He looked away and exhaled.
“How about a drink?” she offered, heading toward the bar to get some distance between them. Being in his arms again had put her body into an adrenaline frenzy.
“Nah. I’m driving, but I’d love a soda or some water.”
He followed her to the kitchen where she pitched him a bottle of water from the fridge. She pulled one out for herself and bumped the door closed with her hip. “You don’t have to talk about Beth if you don’t want to. It’s just a little confusing to me. I’ll be honest. I don’t like the woman.”
He leaned against the counter and twisted the top off the water bottle. “I met Beth at a frat party during my junior year of college. I wanted nothing to do with her.” He slid the cap into his pocket. “She felt differently.”
He took a sip from his bottle, staring at the cabinets over Claire’s shoulder, avoiding eye contact. She knew this was hard for him. “Beth represented everything I grew up with and wanted to get away from: society, the show of money, prestige. It seemed like no matter where I went after that, she was there. It turned out that she had known who I was since our freshman year and I’d never even noticed her.” He smiled, but it was not a happy smile, and it made Claire’s chest ache. “She resented the hell out of that—probably still does.”
Claire cranked open her own bottle and took a sip, waiting while he stared off into space for a moment.
“It became a running gag with my frat brothers that I had a stalker. After a semester of supposedly coincidental meetings, I started actually looking forward to seeing her. She was familiar by that point. So I finally asked her out.”
He took another chug of water and then set the half-empty bottle on the counter behind him. “Turns out we got along really well. Both sets of parents were over the moon about us dating. I mean, hey, an Anderson-Carmichael union would be like uniting two small countries in their eyes. Peace, love, and glitter-shitting unicorns.”
She laughed. He gave her a slight smile and continued. “Beth said she wanted the things I wanted, but it was all an act.”
“What kind of things?”
He shook his head. “Open air, quiet, a family eventually.”
“So you asked her to marry you.”
“No. She asked me.” He ran his hands over his closely cropped hair. “Honestly, when I look back on it, I should have seen the signs. I was projecting what I wanted, rather than seeing what was really there. I just kept looking for rainbows.” He took a slow, deep breath. “Even in Afghanistan, I kept chasing those rainbows.”
Claire knew all about chasing rainbows. Rainbows obscured the reality that crept up on you in the middle of the night when you realized your mommy wasn’t ever coming home. Or when the screams of pain started in the next room because the morphine pump wasn’t enough anymore.
They stared at each other until she felt a little dizzy. She knew what he’d been through and how much he’d been hurt. “I’ve been told that sometimes, there’s a pot of gold at the end of those rainbows. I’d sure like to find it.”
This time when he smiled, his dimples showed. “Me, too.”