“No, I’m sorry. I should have checked up on him. This toddler has run me ragged. Usually I’m on top of things when it comes to your well being.”
I have to smile as I remember how Stella ran exhaustive background checks on every blind date I’ve been on in the last two years.
Luke is waiting for us at the beachfront bar, and has stools reserved for us. They’re so sweet together but so real that it doesn’t hurt my heart to be around them. Watching them gives me hope. Hope that one day I’ll attract someone who’s not a complete mess or a con artist.
While they chatter, I watch the surf, sip my mai tai and adjust my strapless sundress. I gotta get some sunshine on this cleavage if I want to wear a low cut dress at all this summer. As I’m adjusting the girls, I feel someone staring at me.
I glance up and see Hugo, watching me from the shore.
I forget what I’m doing for a second and my hand freezes on my chest.
“What is it, Laney?” Stella asks. Before I can strategize to prevent what’s about to happen, Luke swivels around in his chair, sees Hugo, stands up, walks over and punches him right in the jaw. “That’s for Laney.”
To Hugo’s credit, he doesn't fight back or run away. He takes his lumps. Literally. Stella remains peacefully sipping her drink; clearly she feels the knuckle sandwich was justified.
I walk up and see Hugo lying in the sand, rubbing his jaw.
“That’ll do, Luke,” I say “Go back to your wife.”
It wasn’t necessary for Luke to punch him like that. But something about the way these two men behave in the aftermath of that punch pricks at my heart a little bit. Luke leans over and offers Hugo his hand. Hugo nods and takes the obliging hand and gets to his feet.
“Did I break anything?” Luke asks.
Hugo rasps. “Other than my ego? No.”
This is all so weird.
Luke offers to punch him again if I would like, but I decline.
“Let’s walk and talk, I guess,” I say to Hugo.
When we’re alone, we make our way across the beach to firm sand, walking and talking while the gentle surf tickles our feet.
“I want you to know, I did nothing in that prison for two years but think about you. I sat in my cell and wrote you a letter every single day. I even used my connections to track down your address. But when it came down to it, I didn’t want to hold you back.”
Well, that was quite a conversation starter, I think. “You didn’t hold me back. You held yourself back. You should have forgotten about me.”
Hugo breathes. “You’re wrong. You have no idea what you did to me.”
I reply, “Why don’t you fill me in, then?”
Hugo pauses his walking and reaches into the back pocket of his frayed cotton shorts. My eyes grow big as I see him take out a worn, folded envelope. He unfolds it and pulls out the sheet of notebook paper. Both sides have been covered in neat penmanship, single space, in blue ballpoint pen.
He pushes his hair back away from his eyes and tucks it behind his ear, clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and reads.
“Dear Laney, first I want to confess everything. I want you to know everything that happened to me that day when I first saw you...”
He goes on to describe how he had been planning to leave on his yacht that same day, but then recognized Stella at the hotel bar having brunch and gave in to the urge to commit one last caper. His letter tells how I apparently looked into his soul erased all of his desire to carry out the con.
The letter goes on to say he doesn’t regret getting arrested, because if he’d left when he’d planned to leave, he would never have met me.
He reads the ending: “I hope someday, even if we never see each other again, that you will forgive me, and that you can find a way to look back on our night together fondly. You changed my life for the better. You made me see the good in humanity, and for that I don't have any other choice but to say thank you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t the man you deserve.”
He folds the letter up and places it in his back pocket. “I don’t expect you to respond to that right away.”
I exhale the deep breath I’ve been holding in and say something that I know he doesn't want to hear, but needs to hear. “I don’t want to be responsible for teaching you to be a better person. I’m not your teacher, or your mother, or your conscience. You’re going to have to figure out right and wrong for yourself.”
And then, I run back to my little hut and cry myself to sleep.
It’s not what I wanted to say. But I knew it was the right thing to do. And it hurts even worse than the day I learned that Fabian was not real.
Chapter 14
Laney
I wake up the next morning feeling slightly better, slightly calmer, if still a tiny bit heartsick. Still better than how I’ve felt for two years. I step out onto the beach to take in the ocean breeze, wondering what I might get up to today.
It’s supposed to be a relaxing morning, but instead I see written in the sand in full view of everyone’s hut on this side of the resort, my name in 20-foot letters and a giant heart.
Looking up and down the beach, I see him standing at the bottom point of the heart. He’s looking at me, arms outstretched.
I cannot tell a lie; it does impress me a little. Hugo went to some effort.
People are noticing it now, and walking up and down to read it, and they see him looking at me, and then they see me, and I feel as if I’m being
