Feels Like Falling Read online

  I patted his hand and looked from the sky to his face, where a five-o’clock shadow was forming, making him even more gorgeous, if that was possible. “You are so sweet, but you don’t have to pretend this is more than a one-time thing.”

  “I’m not pretending, Gray. I can see this going somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Diana said under her breath. “To court for statutory rape.”

  Marcy laughed a little too long. I got up and walked Andrew to the car as Trey called, “Bye, man.”

  I kissed Andrew softly by the door of his old Land Cruiser and said, “Thank you for last night. It was fun.”

  “It will be fun again,” he said, leaning over and kissing that spot where my neck met my shoulder. “Much, much more fun.” He winked at me.

  “Look,” I said, “you don’t have to do this. I’m a grown-up. You don’t have to pretend. It was a fun night. I’ll see you at tennis when Wagner gets home.”

  “Okay, Gray,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  I didn’t like how he said it, how the flirting was abruptly over. My heart started racing. Had I talked him into not seeing me again? Oh my gosh. Did I want to see him again?

  He opened the door to the Land Cruiser and climbed inside. As he cranked it loudly, I said, “Or, I mean, you know… you could call me. If you want.”

  He smiled, closed the door, and rolled down the window, saying nothing. He waved as he pulled out of the driveway, and I realized that I wanted to see him again. I really, really did. And now I wasn’t sure he would even call me.

  Diana walked over to me on the driveway and said quietly, “Look, Gray, are you positive about this guesthouse thing? Because if you’ve changed your mind…”

  I hadn’t been sure about it at all. In fact, I’d been the opposite of sure. But if I knew Sharon Marcus, Bill’s wife, I knew that she had had this woman thoroughly vetted and background-checked. If my friends trusted Diana, I figured I could too. “I hate being all alone here, Diana,” I said, then was shocked that I had opened up to her like that. I amended, “Then when Wagner gets home, if I need you to babysit him…”

  “Or Andrew?”

  We both laughed.

  “You like him, don’t you?” she asked.

  I shrugged, but the butterflies in my stomach told me I did. I linked my arm with Diana’s, and I could tell she was relieved by the way her muscles relaxed. I thought about the story she had told me about growing up in foster care. I wondered how many nights she hadn’t known where she would lay her head. It nauseated me. And it made me really sure that my drunken, overgenerous offer had been the right one.

  Late that night, Trey had gone to Raleigh for some meetings with clients, Marcy was on a date she had written off as boring before she’d even met him, Diana was in the guesthouse, and Andrew hadn’t called or texted. No Wagner, no Greg, no friends, no distractions. Just me, alone at the end of the day, facing the reality that this was my life now.

  I sat down at my vanity, studying my face. Had those lines on my forehead been there before? Hadn’t my eyes been brighter? My skin suppler? Was this what divorce looked like on me?

  Divorce.

  I thought of my mom, of how her marriage was the biggest point of pride in her life, of how hard I had worked to hide the dissolution of mine during her last days. I felt a tear run down my cheek, but I brushed it away angrily. Whenever I had a quiet moment, I would almost always slide back into thoughts about how horrible the past year had been.

  I opened the jewelry box on my vanity and slipped on my diamond eternity band and my three-stone engagement ring. I stared down at my hand, remembering the moments I had received each ring, how ecstatic I had been, how content. I never would have imagined that it wouldn’t work out forever, that Greg and I weren’t destined for happily ever after.

  I closed the lid to my jewelry box and pulled my sheets back. As I climbed in, the weight of the covers—and the rings—felt comforting and familiar. I closed my eyes and pretended that Greg was softly snoring beside me.

  And I told myself that someday, somehow, I would learn to be happy again—whether a man was beside me in that bed or not.

  diana: gold

  When Gray confirmed that she wanted me living in her guesthouse, I almost couldn’t believe it. My own Pinterest-worthy space on one of the most expensive streets in town, with plush bed linens and those real nice inside shutters on all the windows. It even had its own kitchen.

  Plus, even though I gave Gray a hard time about what a disaster she was, she hardly had any laundry, and she didn’t make that much of a mess. If she didn’t work all the time, I wasn’t sure she’d need me at all.

  This morning I’d been over there and made her that green juice she liked and made her bed and folded the rest of Trey’s wash, so it would be clean when he got back from Raleigh. By eight thirty, Gray had shooed me out the door and told me to get unpacked. “Just let me know if you need anything,” she’d said.

  I couldn’t imagine needing anything besides what she’d already given me.

  Before I left, I happened to glance down at Gray’s left hand. I looked away quickly. She blushed. “Oh, um…”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s your ring. You should wear it if you want to.” Even still, she took it off and put it back in her jewelry box. And I had the feeling that our girl Gray wasn’t as “fine” as she led everyone to believe.

  I didn’t have too much stuff to unload, just the duffel bags I’d filled when I fled Harry’s house. I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling tired even though I’d slept nine hours the night before and woken up to a view of the water.

  I got up and dumped out the first bag of my stuff on the bed. That’s when I saw it. I’d wanted to get rid of it when things went down the way they did, but letting go of that locket was like letting go of the last piece of the life and the man that I thought I’d won for myself. I sat down again and rubbed the golden edges with my thumb. I didn’t want to, but I had to. I opened that locket and stared at a picture of me, young and pretty, hair blowing in the wind, resting my head on Frank’s shoulder. I wished I could see his whole face straight-on, but you couldn’t because he was kissing my head. And, oh, that smile on my face… Well, I can tell you I’ve never felt that happy since. That’s the God’s honest truth.

  Most of the time I was strong and brave, so when Frank popped up in my mind, I pushed him away. But today? Today I had a little bit of time. I could drink a cup of coffee and unpack my things—and my thoughts about Frank. Since it was my day, I didn’t have to think about how it ended between us. I didn’t have to break my own heart remembering what might have been. Instead, I could just focus on how good it was when we were together, how happy we were and how in love.

  “You couldn’t be more beautiful, Diana,” Frank had said. “I swear it with everything I have, you couldn’t be.”

  We were sitting in the sand on an early spring day in 1998, one of those days when it’s warm enough to get outside in the fresh air and sunshine—but tomorrow there might be a blizzard. I was wearing my new jean shorts that my friend Robin swore made my butt look like Cindy Crawford’s, and Frank had just got a brand-new camera. It was a fancy one, with an automatic timer and all that.

  “I have to photograph you, Diana. Please will you let me? I know you hate it, but please?”

  See, I hadn’t realized yet that, through the lens of someone who loves you, you can’t help but look your most radiant. It’s like the camera picks up on the energy of the person, and it starts to see you as beautiful as they do. It’s magic, really.

  “Oh, Frank,” I had said, giggling. “Why on earth would you want to take a picture of me?”

  Frank had wanted to be a photographer back then. He thought he was going to make his living capturing dolphins jumping in the water and waves crashing on the shore and the way a rose looks when it’s about to bloom. Oh my goodness, I had thought he was the smartest, most artistic, most talented man in the whole ent
ire universe. Frank saw the world through a different lens than I did, literally and figuratively. He had grown up in a stable, loving family. He’d never worried about where he would sleep or when he would eat next. He was free-spirited in a way that I knew I never could be, that my past simply couldn’t allow. But I loved living vicariously through him, feeling how he felt even for just a moment.

  He had jumped up, that camera in his hand, and before I could even argue he was snapping away. I smiled and laughed and danced for the camera, but really for Frank, dipping my toes in the water and blowing him kisses. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so carefree, before or since.

  “The light is perfect,” he was saying. “See how the sun is just beginning to set? It casts this gorgeous glow.”

  “No, you are perfect,” I had said to him. To say I meant that with all my heart is an understatement. “Okay. Now let me get some of you.”

  Frank looked at me like maybe I was a little bit crazy, which, back then, I sort of was—especially about him.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m going to set the timer so we can get one together.” When Frank did something, anything at all, he did it with his whole heart. His eagerness to learn everything about this new camera was symbolic of his zest for life. It was one of the things that had made me fall in love with him so hard and so fast.

  I sat down dutifully, right at the base of the sand dune. “You better hurry up,” I told him. “The sun is going to be all the way down in a few minutes.”

  I’d never seen the beach that secluded. It was like our own private island paradise. He ran and plopped down beside me. I laid my head on his shoulder, and he kissed me, and that’s when that photo snapped, out of that joy. I didn’t think that day could get any better, but Frank reached in his pocket and said, “I got something for you, Diana.”

  We were too young, and we didn’t know each other well enough, but if it had been a diamond ring, I can assure you I would’ve said yes. I remember gasping and saying, “Frank, it’s the most beautiful locket I’ve ever seen.”

  “For the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said, fastening the chain around my neck.

  I kissed him, and when I looked up again, the sun had gone down. It was getting dark out there on that deserted beach, the waves crashing on the shore, the wind blowing just right. Me and Frank, we didn’t have to say a word to know what was going to happen next. It was one of those perfect moments where you’re young and in love and you know the person you’re with is the person you’re going to make love to for the rest of your life, not just on an old picnic blanket that night.

  We laughed and carried on, and I can’t even count how many times we said we loved each other. “I can’t wait to marry you, Diana,” I can still hear Frank saying as I unbuttoned the blue Polo oxford he had tucked into his khaki shorts. “I can’t wait to have you all to myself for the rest of my life, to have babies with you and our own little house. I’m going to treat you like gold. I’m going to make you the happiest woman in the world.…”

  I wanted to leave it with that thought, so I started folding up my shirts and putting them in one of Gray’s pretty drawers with the sweet-smelling shelf paper inside. I just wanted to remember him saying he was going to make me the happiest woman in the world. That day, at least, he held up his end of the bargain. That day was probably the happiest day of my life.

  It’s funny how sometimes what seems like a girl’s happiest day can end up being the very worst one she’ll ever have. And for a girl whose momma gave her away and left her out there to fend for herself, that’s really saying something.

  CHAPTER 7

  gray: a promising start

  “Do you think I ruined it?” I was asking Marcy the following Tuesday as I spread my towel out on my lounge chair.

  It was a little windy for the beach, but it was a glorious pool day—and yet there were only five or six people out here. I was feeling distracted and antsy over the Andrew situation, and I had decided to move ClickMarket headquarters poolside, under a giant black-and-white-striped umbrella. Marcy, of course, had to come along because man hunting was always on the menu.

  Diana had been standing in my bedroom folding a mountain of laundry—where did it all come from?—while we were making our plans, and I realized that, if I was going back to the site of last week’s diving trauma, I needed all the reinforcements I could get.

  “Absolutely not,” she had said. “I won’t do it.”

  “The laundry will be there when you get back,” Marcy pointed out.

  “Just come for lunch,” I’d whined.

  She shook her head.

  “Remember your hairbrush?” I asked. “How that pretty hair didn’t take away the bullies, but it made you feel like you could take them on?” She crossed her arms. “You told me that I had to find what made me brave. Well,” I said. I pointed to her and then to Marcy.

  Diana gave me that exasperated look that I was now so familiar with, as if she were the exhausted mother and I were the naughty, needy child. But then I knew I had won. She only gave me that look when she was relenting, which, honestly, was rarely.

  “It’s a low blow to use my own brilliant advice against me,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Then quit being so smart.”

  Now poolside, Marcy lowered her sunglasses. “Regular bikini. I assume this means you are fungus-free?”

  I gave her a thumbs-up.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Lucky Andrew.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I said. “Do you think that’s why he hasn’t called me? Not the ringworm,” I amended. “Because I didn’t sleep with him?”

  “No,” she said as if the idea was ridiculous. “You’ve been on one date. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have been thrilled, but I can assure you he wasn’t expecting it.”

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Good. I just don’t know how any of this works.”

  She pulled her sunglasses up. “How it works is you do whatever makes you happy and don’t do what doesn’t.”

  “Really?”

  Trey, who had made it back directly after his meeting in Raleigh, was spreading his towel on the other side of me, and Diana was getting an ice water at the bar.

  “It’s clear that you’re an ‘elder millennial,’ ” Trey chimed in. He grinned mischievously at me, and I stuck my tongue out at him. “You do you, girl. Those are the rules now.”

  “Lord,” Diana said as she walked up. “I like you, Trey, but sometimes you lay it on a little thick.”

  I felt butterflies in my stomach again as I absentmindedly checked my phone for the millionth time since Andrew had pulled out of my driveway three days earlier. “That’s what I’m saying. Not lucky Andrew. No Andrew. I finally decide I like him, and he has obviously decided he doesn’t like me.”

  “You can only push a man so far,” Diana said. “If they don’t think you like them, what are they supposed to do? Chase after you like a sad puppy?”

  I smoothed out the wrinkles in my towel as Diana removed the T-shirt she had on over her bathing suit.

  Trey was saying, “You’re the older woman. You have the upper hand. You should call him if you want to see him.”

  That was technically true, I guessed, but somehow I felt like he had the upper hand, like the logical thing would be that since I was older and arguably less desirable, it was up to him to call me. Either way, I had made a big show of avoiding the tennis courts—despite the fact that Andrew spotting was 95 percent of the reason we were here.

  “I think he’s playing this brilliantly, actually,” Marcy said. “Chasing you and then letting you miss him.”

  “Oh, yes!” Trey chimed in. “G, didn’t you read Candace Bushnell’s essay about cubbing? I think it was in Vogue.…”

  “Or maybe Bazaar,” Marcy chimed in.

  I sighed. “Okay. I’m taking the bait. What is cubbing?”

  “It’s reverse cougaring,” Marcy said, and Diana burst out laughing. “You know, like when the
younger man is coming on to you.”

  “Except that that essay was about like twenty-year-old men and fifty-year-old women,” Trey said.

  “Great,” I said under my breath. “That makes me feel so much better.”

  “Hold up,” Diana said. “Trey, you mean to tell me that you read Vogue and Bazaar?”

  He shrugged. “I have to read all the magazines Gray reads because then when she says like, ‘Trey, when we go to New York can you get us a reservation at that French restaurant they were talking about in Vogue?’ then I know she really means the Moroccan restaurant in Chicago that she read about in Elle.”

  I didn’t love how that made me sound, but he wasn’t wrong. He was literally amazing.

  “You aren’t going to skin her and wear her, are you?” Diana asked.

  Trey started to retort but then he stopped rubbing sunscreen on his shoulders, took my hand, and said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  I looked up. Diana was in a faded one-piece that was starting to fray at the edges. But she was hot. I mean, hot. She was tall, probably five-eight, and had this gorgeous hourglass shape. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve been hiding that under those T-shirts? No, ma’am. No more.”

  She held up today’s Root Cafe T-shirt. It looked innocent enough. “But, honey, you don’t understand. Carl was the weirdest one yet. He had this foot fetish.” Diana shuddered. “Let’s just say it’s in everyone’s best interest if we leave it at that.”

  “Foot fetishes are more common than you would think,” Marcy remarked. Then she added, “Diana, your boobs are amazing. Who did them?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I was sleeping in my car last week, but I’ve had my boobs done.”

  “I saw you in that Taylor Plastic Surgery T-shirt last week,” Marcy retorted. “Don’t lie to me.”

  Diana lay back on her chair as Trey whispered in my ear, “Do you think she’s going to sue us for sexual harassment?”