Sweet Water(55)

“Bye, Dad.” I walk back to my car and climb inside. As I drive away, I look out at the houses in the village graced with powdered crowns, and I don’t know where I’m driving to, but I need to get the hell out of here. Christmas is coming in less than a week, and what kind of awful person does this to someone right before the holidays?

Me, that’s who.

I’m despicable. Unworthy of Martin. Unworthy of the life he wants to give me and the ginormous rock that looked completely ridiculous on my small finger. Martin needs a trophy wife who can naturally fall into that sort of life, one with old money and manners, the kind of woman with long limbs and appendages to sport fancy accessories like oversize diamonds.

I cry as I drive farther into Sewickley, and I want to get a little lost for a while, so I take the back roads. I’m not sure why I start down Dad’s old drive-by route, past Josh’s house, the place I last suffered a broken heart.

If I’d never met you, Joshua, would I have fallen so hard for Martin?

My heart was shattered back then. Martin’s heart was shattered too after Tush died. And we put each other back together, but that’s not how true love should be. That’s not how my parents met, and it’s not the how-I-met-you story I want to tell my future kids.

I’m flying down the windy, snowy back roads because it’s where I used to go to escape when I was younger, and there’s never been a day I needed to disappear into the woods more than this one. It’s brisk outside, but my internal temperature is on fire, so I roll down my window and start along Dad’s drive-by path.

It’s comforting to see that the large, etched gargoyles are still guarding Gargoyle Manor and that the Castle has added a real, retracting drawbridge. The White House hasn’t lost its opulent shimmer. It’s nearly blinding next to the freshly fallen snow.

I’ve saved the best for last, and even though my body is beginning to cool, I leave my window down because it doesn’t seem right rolling by Stonehenge with it up.

I almost think I’m dreaming when I hear the music. Or is it the wind?

There are definitely some strings. It’s music. I stop and park.

And I listen.

Someone is playing “Scar Tissue” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and my fingers tap to the beat along with my heart. It’s gotta be him. Who else could it be?

My heart leaps out of my chest, his chords soaking into my body like a warm bath on a cold day. Just listening to him soothes me.

And—so not Bryan Adams. It makes me think all my life decisions over the past four years have been wrong, a way to force myself into a life that looked good on paper, joining a family from the Heights with the right kind of background but not one that felt good in my soul, like this music right now.

I leave my car parked right there on the road and run through the yard to the pergola.

Is it him? Is he home?

I run through the snow and the mud until I can see him—Joshua.

My heart stops as I watch him play his guitar. It’s windy outside, and I imagine the torrent sweeping me back in time. He stops playing and looks up, his chin-length hair wet with snow, but he looks just like my Joshua. His eyes lock on to mine through the tree line, and my heart palpitates in my throat along with the rest of my body. My feet move toward him without thinking, drawn to him.

Where did you go, my love? Why did you leave me?

“Sarah.” His face lights up. The pergola is strung with Christmas lights, and it’s so beautiful out there in the middle of the woods, I imagine this is our enchanted kingdom and I just fell through the back of my wardrobe into my own Narnia.

It isn’t real. Nothing can hurt me here.

I walk closer until I can almost touch him. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m having a really bad day,” I say.

He smiles, just like the day he found me in the car. Like it’s nothing that I just rolled up to his house. “Let me make it better. Your day.” He puts his guitar down and wraps his arms around me.

I lean into him and smell his woodsy scent, and there’s never been an embrace that felt so familiarly wonderful. “You give the best hugs,” I tell him. The final tears leak out of my eyes, and his flannel shirt absorbs them until they disappear.

No one knew about Joshua, my little secret. That’s what made him safe. I nuzzle into his chest.

I should be crying over Martin, but I’m not. I’m letting go the tears I never cried for Joshua when he left without saying goodbye. I gulp at the air to breathe, realizing this moment is one I’ve needed all along. His body feels right, comfort, love, what I’ve been missing for the last three years. All my thoughts of uncertainty over Martin are replaced by a knowing embrace, one that feels right. Pure.

I’m tortured that this is who my heart still wants. I want to be in control of it. I want to want Martin this way, to feel this way with him, but I can’t, and I don’t know why.

“I’m sorry you’re having an awful day. You still look beautiful if it’s any consolation. I’ve never seen you in a dress before. Wow.” I look up, and he grabs my face in his rough hands, and they’re so different from Martin’s, and I love it, all the contrasts, because anything that’s not like Martin’s perfect hands or his perfect diamond is perfect to me right now. It seems a hard standard to live up to for a lifetime. I don’t want to be the stressed companion to keep everything in pristine order. I want a more relaxed life, something more like . . . this.