She nodded enthusiastically, bumping her helmet on the back of mine as she gave me a thumbs up.
I pulled up outside a small café that looked over the lake, then kicked down the stand and cut the engine. The sudden silence seemed to reignite the fire between us. I was sure I wasn’t the only one who was feeling it, but I forced myself to keep it casual.
I pulled off my helmet and grinned at her.
“How was that?”
She struggled out of her own helmet and ran her hands through her long hair tangled by the wind.
“That was … surprisingly okay.”
I laughed, but my eyes dropped to her full lips and I knew she saw in my eyes what I was thinking, because she scrambled off the bike hastily then rubbed her hands together, although whether it was from nerves, I couldn’t tell.
“Are you cold?”
“A little: just my hands.”
Without saying a word, I took her hands in mine and lifted them to my lips, warming them with my breath and rubbing them gently.
After a moment, she pulled free, her cheeks tinged with pink. Although that could have been from the cold.
“That’s fine, thank you.”
I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her that she’d never stopped being important to me. But then she looked away, her expression conflicted.
“This café looks good,” she said quickly.
She strode into the café and found a table by the window.
I followed more slowly, sliding into the chair opposite her. The waiter ambled over and I ordered coffees for both of us.
“Un espresso et un caffé americano, s’il vous plâit.”
“Do you speak French, as well?” she asked curiously.
I shrugged. “I lived in Paris for two years so more than enough to get by. I never studied it.”
“And the Dari? The Arabic? How did that come about?”
“My first tour in Iraq. I was playing soccer with some of the local kids who used to hang around the Base. They taught me a few words and I just started picking up some phrases. My sergeant heard me talking to the kids and sent me on a couple of training courses. When we started pulling out of Iraq, they figured I should learn Pashto and Dari so I could be useful in Afghanistan. I found I could just hear it, all the different cadences.” I laughed coldly. “Finally found something I was good at. Who knew.”
She seemed surprised by my scathing tone.
“You were always good at lots of things, Sebastian.” My Caro—still trying to make me feel good. “And you picked up Italian really quickly,” she said insistently.
“That’s because I had an Italian girlfriend,” I pointed out.
“Really? When was that?”
She was seriously asking me that? I rolled my eyes—I’d learned Italian from her … in between fucking each other’s brains out.
“Oh, right,” she muttered, embarrassed. “And you taught me to surf, don’t forget.”
I couldn’t help grinning. Damn, that brought back some good memories.
“Yeah, that was fun. Did you ever keep it up?”
“I go quite often in the summer,” she said, her face lighting with a bright smile. “I bought a place in Long Beach and...”
Her words ground to a halt as she saw the expression on my face. That had been our dream: together, not…
“Sorry,” I said, as she continued to bite her lip. “It’s just … well, we used to talk about going to Long Beach and checking out the surf spots.”
“I didn’t have any other plan,” she said quietly. “When I left you … when I left San Diego, I drove for eight days until I got to New York. That old Pinto I had, died just as I reached the city. I got an apartment in Little Italy because I didn’t know anywhere else, and you mentioned it once. I lived there for eight years. You were right: I did like it.”
I closed my eyes, letting my head drop to my hands. We’d been so close to having that together. So fucking close.
“God, Caro, when I think about how things could have been … it makes me a little crazy.”
“I know what you mean,” she said softly. “But there’s no point thinking like that.”
The waitress returned with our coffees, breaking the mood, but I could see the shadow of sadness in Caro’s eyes.
“I’m glad you went there,” I said, only half lying. “I’m glad you did the things we said we’d do.”
“Not all of them,” she amended.
“Fuck, if only…”
“Stop, Sebastian,” she said forcefully. “No ‘what ifs’: what if we’d never gone to that Sicilian restaurant that night; what if Brenda hadn’t seen us; what if she hadn’t told your parents … there’s no point thinking like that. Like you said, it’ll just make us crazy.”
“I know you’re right,” I murmured, “it’s just that…”
I couldn’t get the words out, instead running my hand over my head in frustration. That should have been us: together.
“Hey, stop,” she said, grabbing my fingers. “It is what it is. We can’t change anything.”
I held on tightly, letting her anchor me to the here and now.
“Mind you,” she said, “if I ran into Brenda again, I might have to give her a quick slap.”
I couldn’t help smiling: there was a time when I’d felt the same. My ex-girlfriend was the one who’d lit the match that exploded our world.
“Yeah, I’d like to see that,” I admitted. “Although she felt really bad about what happened.”
Caro looked surprised and leaned back in her chair, releasing my hand.
“You spoke to her about it—what she did?”
Her voice told me she was pissed, so I decided to tread carefully. Although now I thought about it, maybe she sounded … jealous? I really liked that idea.
“Well, yeah. She kept bugging Ches until I agreed to see her. By then it was kind of obvious why she’d done it.”
“Obvious how?” Caro huffed out.
“She was pregnant—got knocked up by that bastard Jack Sullivan. You remember that older guy who used to hang out at the beach? Yeah, well, when she found out she was pregnant, she freaked. Got this crazy idea in her head that if she could get back with me, she’d get me to sleep with her and pretend the baby was mine.”
I shook my head, still amazed at the fucked up behavior of a scared 18 year-old girl and the trail of destruction that she’d set in motion.
“She thought if she got you out of the way, we’d get back together,” I explained. “She had no idea what she’d done. Until after—and it was too late.”
“And did you? Sleep with her?”
Jesus, what?
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “I told you. I didn’t even touch another woman for three years.”
She took a deep breath.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, letting my sudden anger drain away, “she had to face her parents eventually. Jack wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and she wouldn’t say who the father was. Everyone assumed it was me anyway.”
That just gave my old man another reason to bitch at me, saying I was refusing to face up to responsibilities or some shit. Yep, he made a personal visit to my training base—he really wanted to put the boot in once he couldn’t beat the shit out of me anymore. The fact that he wet his dick in half the nursing staff at the Base hospital was irrelevant, I guess.
I continued with the story. “But when Kimberley was born, she had all this dark brown hair and dark eyes; it was kind of obvious I wasn’t the father.”
“Kimberley?”
“She’s a great kid. I see them sometimes when I’m on the West Coast. Brenda married a car salesman a couple of years back. He’s a pretty nice guy and good with Kimberley.”
Caro nodded slowly.
“Well, I’m glad it worked out for her—in the end.” She paused. “You didn’t tell me what happened to Donna and Johan. They were always kind to me.”
The walk down memory lane was painful, but I guess after all this time we needed it … needed to say things.
“Shirley stayed in touch with them. I saw them a few times after … Johan retired a couple of years back, and they moved to Phoenix. I heard he was pretty sick—leukemia, I think.”