I had assumed that Atlanta was going to become my new home, at least temporarily. I had never imagined leaving Georgia. Even Atlanta, where I had spent a lot of time, felt scary and new.
It didn’t occur to me yet that Carter was flirting with me when he said that. “So,” I asked, “you settling down? Making an honest woman of someone? Making your grandmother proud?”
That was when I realized that I was flirting with him, even though I knew it was completely inappropriate.
He laughed. “I date, but I haven’t found the right one. You know?”
I knew very, very well. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I just broke up with my boyfriend before we left for the summer. He’s nice and everything, but I want real love. I want something like what my grandparents have.”
He smiled at me. “I agree. Something that stands the test of time.”
I looked down at my watch. “Oh!” I said, realizing it was almost one in the morning. No one would be waiting up for me, but Grandmother would expect me to be down for breakfast at eight. “I need to get home.” I reached my hand out to Carter. “It was so nice to see you again.”
“I’m not going to let you walk home alone,” he said.
“It’s only a couple of blocks away. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
He got up. “I could use some air. This is my favorite time on the boardwalk anyway.”
We walked out into the crisp darkness. Summer in Peachtree Bluff was heaven. The days were warm and breezy, and the nights were cool and refreshing.
“So this is your favorite time of night? Are you up this late often?”
He laughed. “No, actually. I usually go to bed early so I can get up by five to fish.”
I groaned. “I can’t imagine ever having a hobby that required waking up at five a.m.”
He laughed, putting his hands in his pockets. Our feet tapped on the boardwalk, and I suddenly realized that I wasn’t all that anxious to get home anymore. I scolded myself for being so silly. He was unreasonably too old for me.
“It’s not that much of a hobby since I only get to do it like three times a year.”
“Do you miss the South?” I said. “Will you ever come back home?”
“I don’t think I will,” he said. “I’m pretty firmly entrenched there in my job and everything. My dad’s family is from New York, so it was pretty easy to slide right in.”
“I can’t imagine leaving the South. It would be so different anywhere else. I like the slow pace and the nice manners, the food . . .”
Carter laughed. “It’s not another country, Ansley.”
I stopped and leaned over the boardwalk railing, suddenly not wanting the night to be over so soon. “Isn’t it, though?”
Carter leaned beside me, his grin now close to mine. “I think you’d like it. You never know until you try. It’s different there. The people, the energy. It’s electrifying.”
All of a sudden, I realized that maybe I would like New York because that was where Carter was. I scolded myself again. I was sure he would think I was nothing more than a silly girl for imagining such a thing.
“You should come visit me there sometime,” he said. I felt the blush coming to my cheeks. I was sure he meant as friends.
I was staring out over the water at the moon painting a luminescent trail from Starlite Island right up to what looked like Grandmother’s front door. But the alcohol had made me brave, and I turned to look at him. You could feel this heat between us, something almost palpable in the air.
“Where would you take me?” I asked demurely.
He inched slightly closer. “Everywhere,” he said.
When his lips met mine, I wasn’t quite sure that it was happening. It was strange and exciting and surreal all at the same time.
He pulled away and smiled at me. “How about this?” he said. “I’d like to take you to dinner tomorrow night before I leave.”
My turn to smile. “I think I’d like that.”
It was the first of many wonderful dates. And it wasn’t until much later that I confirmed that he was thirty-seven. No matter how you sliced it, sixteen years was a big age difference.
But being wanted by Carter was something akin to being the prize diamond at a Sotheby’s auction. You were suddenly treasured, admired, sought after. You were important, unique. There were no games. There was never a day in my life with him that I didn’t know exactly where we stood, precisely how much I meant to him. That being said, I remembered what he told me that first night. And I most definitely made him work to win me over.
My parents were less than thrilled. Yes, he was sixteen years older than I was, only six years younger than my own mother. They worried about the big New York City Wall Street man taking advantage of their baby girl, stealing her virtue, which, unbeknownst to them, had been stolen long before.
In fact, one night, sitting around the dining-room table, Mom asked, “Whatever happened to that sweet Jack? I always thought you two might end up together.”
It was like being punched in the gut. I spent so much time consciously not thinking of Jack. In fact, Carter was the first man who really was able to make me forget. But I kept my cool.
“Jack and I want different things, Mom. We’ve been through this.”
I remember her shaking her head at me like I was a silly little girl. But she was the one who was silly. I knew that then, and I know it now.
“He’s a child, Ansley. He’s twenty-one years old. How does he know he doesn’t want children? Surely he’ll change his mind.”
I looked at my daddy when I said, “Mother, men do not change their minds. Women try to change men. Sometimes they get them to act a certain way, think a certain way. But you cannot change a man, and I will not be a woman who tries to trick one into having a life he never wanted.”
I’ll never forget what happened next. Daddy, who was chewing his steak, took a sip of water from the crystal goblet in front of him on the table and said, “That’s a wise decision.” Then he paused and added, “I quite like Carter. You need a man who can take care of you.”
The last of my worry about Carter fell away. I don’t know if I was so sure about us because I was young or because I was that assured of his affections toward me.
Carter made clear what to expect in our life together. He did well, but he was not rich—not by Manhattan standards, anyway. He had a nice family name but few of the assets that came along with that. We could rent a house in the Hamptons; we would likely never buy. Because, as optimistic as he was, the man was a realist. And that was one of the things I loved the very most about him. Because I always, always knew what to expect.