“I had my reporter buddy do a guest appearance. It wasn’t the same, but it was a break from me at least.”
We stuff everything back into the tote bag, shake out the blanket, and retrace our steps to the parking lot. Derek is quiet on the walk, and I can’t tell if he’s feeling talked out, or if there’s something on his mind.
“Hey, I forgot to ask,” he says as we near the edge of the lot. “What about that nasty woman Kim? At one point, didn’t you think she might be behind some of the stuff that had happened?”
“In hindsight I think she felt weirdly competitive with me. The matches she handed me at the restaurant were pure coincidence. She’d thrown a little stink bomb my way as the two of us were talking together, but once we caught up with Guy and her husband, she tried to make it look like she was sweet as pie.”
Derek arches a brow. “What was the stink bomb?” he asks.
I think for a minute, letting my memory snake back to that night.
“It was actually about you,” I say, smiling. “She commented on how nice and cozy we looked at the dinner party. As if there was something between us.”
He doesn’t respond right away, and I realize that I’ve opened a door of sorts. Though, of course, it’s already been opened. We wouldn’t have been lounging on a blanket in the summer sunshine if it hadn’t been.
“I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on the wicked Kim then,” he says. “It seems she had me figured out that night.”
We’ve reached my rental car by now and stop by the driver’s door. I sense something else is coming, that he’s finally going to acknowledge what’s been in the air for weeks. And he does.
“From the moment I sat next to you that night,” he says, “it’s been hard to stop thinking about you.”
I meet his gaze.
“I felt a connection with you, too, Derek. Of course, at the time, I saw it only as a friendship. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to go anywhere else with it.”
And I wouldn’t have. I was fiercely loyal to Guy.
“But how about now?” Derek asks. “I know your life is nuts, that the timing may seem all wrong, but I want to see you again. And not as friends. This can’t be good-bye, Bryn.”
I’ve had Derek on my mind a lot over the past weeks, and I’ve admitted to myself that my interest isn’t purely platonic, but I’ve never gone any further in my thinking, never projected to the idea of us being together. There’s just too much else I need to contend with.
“There’s an attraction on my part, too, Derek—I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But it just doesn’t seem possible.”
“I know you’re only a few weeks out of your marriage. We could take it at any pace you’re comfortable with.” He smiles. “Slow-boat-to-China pace if that’s what you want.”
There’s a crazy part of me that wants to say yes, to plunge in and allow myself moments of pure pleasure right now, but I’ve vowed to be smarter about the choices I make.
“It just feels too soon for me,” I say. “I still have a lot of thinking to do—about decisions I made and so much more. Plus, you’re here and I’m in New York, and I just don’t ever want to do the commuter thing again. It’s not that I have anything against that kind of arrangement, per se, but it probably hindered me from seeing what I needed to see with Guy.”
He smiles again, this time with just one side of his mouth tugged up.
“Would January be too soon?”
“What?”
“I’ve promised myself that, come hell or high water, I’ll be in New York after the fall term ends. Teaching, writing, whatever.”
Nice, I think instinctively. Something to look forward to, something that may be good. I can’t help but laugh.
“That sounds very enticing. Maybe you can take the train to New York at the end of the summer and we can discuss it over a long lunch.”
He hugs me and kisses me tenderly on the cheek. I feel myself flush a little, and I’m grateful for whatever this crazy thing I have with him is.
I tell him that he should leave first because I’m going to make a call from the car. We hug again, and a moment later, as he pulls out of his parking space, we wave good-bye to each other. I don’t really have a call to make. I simply want a few minutes to decompress and gather my thoughts. A lot can happen between now and January, but who knows. The idea of it fills me with hope.
Finally I ease out of the parking lot and pull out onto the rural road that will take me to the Adirondack Northway. The chance of running into Guy on this leg of my journey is slim, but still I regularly check the rearview mirror for a dark blue BMW, and tense each time a car heads in my direction.