Girls of Summer(54)
“Oh, Dad, come on, that was high school!”
“Theo is back in town. He helped you in the office today.”
“True,” Beth responded with exaggerated patience. “But that was a one-time thing.” She was distressed and couldn’t figure out her own emotions.
Her father said, “Well, you’re upset about something.”
How could Beth tell her dad that what was really driving her out of her mind was Theo?
She’d felt so close to Theo when he was unpacking the computers. He’d seemed so real, not just a handsome goofball. But what was going on with Lisa and her dad? It would be impossible to date Theo if his mom was dating her dad!
“Thanks,” she said, when her father handed her a warm cup of cocoa with a marshmallow on top. “This is awesome.” She took a breath. “But please. Are you seriously seeing Lisa, like, romantically?”
Mack grinned. “Are you, like, ten years old?”
“I mean, Dad, come on. Isn’t she a lot older than you?”
Mack’s face changed. She could tell her father’s sense of humor had disappeared. “She’s ten years older than I am. We’re both adults. I don’t see the problem.”
“Well…won’t people talk?”
“For God’s sake, Beth. When have we ever cared about people talking? I thought I raised you to be more open-minded than that. So what if people talk?”
Beth flushed. She’d made her father angry, and that was an indication of how he felt about Lisa Hawley. When she was a little girl, she’d wanted, in a vague misty Disney sort of way, to have a new mother who would love her and help her choose the right clothes and make her bedroom lavender instead of the dazzling pink her father had painted it. By the time she was twelve, her feelings had changed. She didn’t want another woman to break into the happy twosome she’d become with her father. Whenever she caught him flirting with another woman at a school ballgame or play, she’d plunge into a dark mood for days. She’d pretty much hated him during high school because he wouldn’t let her go places or have boys spend the night like her other friends’ parents did.
But now she was older, and she could guess at how lonely her father had been all these years. Lisa was nice. She was pretty, even beautiful, she was smart, and she was kind. Beth could understand why her father liked Lisa.
But Lisa was Theo’s mom. Would Beth be as upset about her father dating Lisa if Theo was still out on the West Coast or married to someone else? And why was Beth so adolescent over Theo anyway? He was handsome, but was she shallow to care about that? No. No, even in high school she’d crushed on Theo Hawley. He was kind, never a bully. He was smart, too, though not a super brain like his sister. If anything, now that Beth was searching her memories, she thought Theo had been kind of…lost. He’d been everything—prom king, football quarterback leading the team to victory, head of the Clean Team that walked Nantucket’s beaches and streets, picking up litter. But she remembered an occasional melancholy in his eyes.
It had always been Theo for her, but she’d hidden it, because she didn’t dare let anyone know her feelings. Atticus chose Beth, and all her girlfriends were crazy with envy and curiosity, because Atticus was mysterious, the dark prince, the tortured poet, his black curls hiding half his eyes, those eyes as blue and deep as the sky. He needed her, and that was a powerful pull. Atticus had confessed to her his most secret fears, his depressions, his anxieties, and toward the end, his discovery of OxyContin.
After Atticus died, Beth discovered that for her, grief felt like fear, as if she herself were trapped in the earth, but alive, unable to claw her way to air. For a long time, she lived every hour and minute with the words if only scratching through her mind. If only she had slept with Atticus, would that have kept him from wanting to die? If only she had pressured Theo to help Atticus, maybe together they could have saved him? If only she had told Atticus’s parents that he was using OxyContin, buying it from some older guy who hung around the high school, shooting hoops. If only she hadn’t really wanted to be with Theo, because Atticus had been so sensitive, he probably had guessed her true feelings.
Now here they all were, so many years later, and when she’d been alone with Theo in the Ocean Matters office, she had wanted so much to touch him. To take his hands and talk to him for hours, about everything. To kiss him.
He’d seemed pleased enough to be around her. Sometimes when their eyes met, his look stopped her heart. But Theo stopped every woman’s heart. She was too serious and he was too lighthearted to make a long-term relationship work.
She came out of her reverie to see her father sitting there, waiting for a response.
“You’re right, Dad,” Beth said softly. “It’s cool that you’re happy.” She rose from the couch, took her mug to the sink, dutifully rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher, kissed her father good night, and went up the stairs to her room.
She wouldn’t allow herself to be involved with Theo—big freaking chance. Theo could have any woman he wanted, plus he loved the ocean on the other side of the country and would no doubt return there where the women were all fit and tanned. She needed to knock herself sideways, off her obsession with Theo, and she had to find a way to do it.
In her bedroom, she studied herself in her full-length mirror. She was on the slim side and she was pretty enough. She was not completely unexperienced with men. There had been two, and she had almost loved them. Just not quite. Besides, she planned to live here all her life, though that didn’t mean she had to settle down right now. She could play around, she could experiment, she could be frivolous—maybe she could have an affair with Ryder! He was handsome, and they’d be seeing each other often, and there wasn’t a chance that he’d be serious with her, but she didn’t want serious, she wanted fun. Summer fun, just like everyone else!