“Well, remember how I started a restaurant in Atlanta and it wasn’t doing so hot?”
I nodded, not wanting to remember, not wanting to be back in that moment where Jack had told me that, wanting to keep myself in the present and out of the past. “Yeah.”
“I opened one in Athens, and it did great. So then I opened one in Chapel Hill. It did even better. And one in Columbia. It was the best of all.”
“Ah,” I said, getting the drift. “So what worked in one college town worked in all the others?”
He nodded, holding a sip of wine in his mouth. “Not all of them, but for the most part. So that one little hot dog joint turned into one hundred and eighty-five hot dog joints.” He shrugged. “And then I sold out.”
“Now that’s the American Dream,” I said. “Starting with something small, working your way up.”
He smiled. “Yeah.” I could tell that he was starting to feel more comfortable with me as well. “Just think. A few hot dogs led to all of this.” He swept his arm majestically around the dilapidated boat, and we both laughed so hard I thought wine would come out of my nose.
This was nice, actually, reconnecting with an old friend. It wasn’t so scary after all. It would be fun to work with him for a few weeks.
“I was really sorry to hear about Carter,” Jack said.
“Thanks.” I took a sip of wine.
“I wanted to reach out but . . .”
He trailed off, and I picked up. “No. That’s all right. I understand. I understood then, too.”
“So work is good with you?”
I looked out over the water, the sun now a bright, fiery red before its final descent. “It really is. I was scared, you know? I hadn’t worked in all those years. But I had nowhere to turn. And I made it.”
Jack smirked, but he didn’t say anything. And he didn’t have to open his mouth for me to know that he was rolling the phrase “nowhere to turn” around in his brain.
“You?” I said. “Wife? Kids?”
“Ex-wife,” he said, turning toward me. By the look in his eyes I could tell that he wasn’t drunk, but he was almost to that point where the wine was going to make those lips a little too loose. I almost said I needed to go. But, really, I had to hear about the ex-wife.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Yeah. She left me when she saw the boat.”
We both laughed and Jack looked me in the eye for the first time that night. “Your laugh is exactly the same.”
I looked down into my wineglass, and he asked, with something like sadness in his voice, “Do you remember the night we met?”
And, there we were. The loose lips. That was my cue to go. I started to stand, but I made the mistake of looking at him again, of remembering the Jack and Ansley we used to be.
He wasn’t handsome then. Not like he is now. He was a scrawny sixteen-year-old kid, a line of sweat around his buzz cut. Nope. Not a thing handsome about that kid. But he had something. Swagger. That’s what they would call it now. Back then, we would have said confidence. But either way, I couldn’t possibly forget. He still had it. It was a quality you could see clearly, as though you could reach out and touch it. It was a quality you couldn’t help but be drawn to.
“Of course,” I said softly.
I didn’t want to remember. But I was a tad tipsy, and it felt so good. I knew already, even then, that it couldn’t keep feeling this good. It wasn’t possible. But for the moment, I was riding the wave. After all of the pain of the past decade and a half or so, losing Carter, my daughters hating me, hiding Carter’s secrets, hiding my own . . . It felt good to drink wine and smile and remember.
That night I met Jack had been the first sandbar party of the year. In between Peachtree Bluff and Pecan Beach, which was right across the bridge and was where my girls built many a sand castle, lies the sandbar, the one where Jack and I had run into each other a few days earlier. If you don’t know the area, it’s treacherous, because your boat is sure to get stuck there, as it’s completely hidden during high tide. But when the tide is low, the sandbar makes its appearance, barely popping up out of the water. It’s as long as a football field and about half as wide. Only the most seasoned boaters know how to weave among the marsh grass without getting stuck. To the right, the coastline was dotted with what we called the mermansions, huge cedar-shake houses with boat docks and breathtaking views. To the left were smaller, simpler houses with views made even lovelier by the fact that the mermansions were in their line of sight. Every summer, at least three or four times, we would all anchor our boats around that little patch of sand.
This first party began as a family picnic. Everyone pitched in, setting up tables and portable grills on the sand, and then we all stood around with plates of cold fried chicken and barbecue or hot dogs and hamburgers, sipping sweet tea and beer, the kids sneaking another one of Mrs. Bennett’s famous brownies. It was almost Memorial Day and just cool enough. The entire summer lay ahead, ripe with promise, teeming with possibility, a flower right on the verge of blooming. You could taste the energy of that night as clearly as the potato salad, as if everyone was leaving behind the stress of the year, sending it out to sea, letting it go to fully enjoy this, one of the most special places on the planet.
It was there, on that sandbar, over a plate of Mrs. Bennett’s brownies, that Jack’s hand brushed mine for the first time as we both reached for the biggest one on the top.
“I remember, too,” Jack said now, interrupting my thoughts. “Those cutoff jean shorts. That yellow-and-white-striped bikini top. Those big hoop earrings. The way you tasted like bubble gum when I kissed you.”
I was close enough that I could swat his leg with my hand. He grabbed it. “Do you still taste like bubble gum?”
“Stop it,” I said. “Stop it now, or I’m going home.” I pulled my hand away and sat up straighter.
Truth be told, I hadn’t been alone with a man since Carter died. Plenty had asked. Occasionally, I had been tempted. I was only forty-two when he died, after all. But I couldn’t imagine trying to start over with anyone else. No one else could possibly understand the life we had lived.
“So tell me about this wife of yours,” I said.
“Ah, yes,” Jack said. “The wife.” He paused. “She was entirely too young for me. Thirty-five.”
I laughed. “Thirty-five. For heaven’s sake, Jack. That’s practically Caroline’s age.”
He looked at me, and I looked back. It wasn’t fair not to face him.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Ans. It is as we always said it would be.”