Where to begin? Out with the old, she chanted, pulling blankets and sheets off the upper and lower bunks. Now that Gary and Gigi were going to share the other cottage, she could consider what she wanted to do with the place she’d called home for more than twenty years. She ran a hand over the bunkbed’s twin-sized mattresses.
Lumpy.
She opened the door to the small closet. Floor-to-ceiling shelves wrapped three sides of the rectangular space, every surface crammed with kids’ toys and teenagers’ sports equipment, craft projects and who knew what else. Nothing fell off the shelves, but the emotional weight of accumulated memories falling against her chest made her stumble. She was beginning to think she needed to armor up emotionally every time she reached for a shelf, opened a drawer, or answered her phone.
She would order a small dumpster in the morning. And let her grown children know she was doing a massive purge.
They’d want to know why.
Which was a question she hadn’t fully answered. Why she was so drawn to sorting the contents of her house and to throwing things out? What, or who, did she imagine she was making room for? Did some part of her want to sell the house, move off the island, leave her friends and her business and every little thing she loved about island life?
Like the waves that flowed up and down her beach, every hour of every day, curling into the elbows of bays, around the fingers of jetties and over the backs of barnacle-covered rocks, she’d gotten used to the lay of the land.
And something had come along, something capable of rearranging the landscape, the emotional equivalent of a king tide or storm front. And that something had deep brown eyes and light brown hair and an embrace that made her feel it was safe to explore the body she inhabited at this stage of her life.
She emptied her wine glass and forgot where she left it. Her mind wandered through page after page of scrapbooked memories while she uncovered mattresses stained from grape juice spills, bloody noses, and kids falling asleep in wet bathing suits.
Anna closed the closet door, left the mattresses bare, and backed out of the room. Coffee and a clear head were better choices for strolling down the memory lane peopled by tiny feet.
The living room, clogged from the prior night’s shelf-emptying frenzy, offered no visual respite. She could only laugh at herself. She chafed to get this project rolling, and it was becoming clear things were going to get messier before the clarity she craved took hold.
The knock at her door, followed by a man’s voice, swung the idea of clarity off its feet and cackled at the startled response of her pounding heart. She regretted getting out of bed, and she regretted miring herself more deeply in this nebulous self-improvement project.
“Anna? It’s Liam. May I come in?”
No. Yes. She stumbled around the stacks of books and sat on the couch, knees drawn up, heels on the edge of the seat cushion.
“The door’s open,” she yelled.
Liam entered. Circles under his eyes spoke to a lack of sleep. “Can we talk?”
“If you refill my wineglass.”
“Where is it?”
“Somewhere in there.” The sweep of her arm indicated the oddly shaped piles littering the living room floor. More random piles appeared to have made themselves comfortable on the furniture while she’d created a similar chaos in the other bedroom. This was what it must feel like to be caught in a slow-motion avalanche.
“I’ll get a fresh one.” Liam shrugged out of his jacket, draped it on an empty hook, and stepped to the kitchen. He opened the cupboard where Anna kept her crystal, took two stems in one hand, and filled each halfway. He stepped over a teetering pile of books, one of the Must-Go piles, handed her a glass, and shuffled two piles into one to make room on the couch. “It’s a little early for spring cleaning.”
If he was testing her capacity for humor, he wouldn’t get very far. Anna looked at him over the edge of the glass. He wore her favorite flannel shirt, the one she watched him take off more than once. There was no sign of a T-shirt lurking underneath. Her house was cool. His broad, brown nipples would be hard, round points. If she caressed them, he’d moan.
“I have some frustration to burn off,” she said flatly.
She worked at keeping her thudding heartbeat from bursting through her ribs. His lanky frame took up more than half the couch. One arm rested along the top edge of the cushions. He took a deliberate sip of wine before setting his glass on the only clear spot on the table.
Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees, fingers playing with the clasp of his watch. “I’m sorry for pushing you for information you weren’t ready to share and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hear. I’m not sure why I asked, but I did, and I can’t take it back.”
“Do you want to ask me again?”
He searched her eyes, and her face. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. You were upfront with me before you went to Mexico. I didn’t need any more details then, and I don’t need any more details now.”
Anna pressed her lips together. If he kept playing with his watch, she’d have to reach over and smack his hand away. “We’ve never really created a designation for what we were doing. Which doesn’t mean we weren’t having feelings for each other.”
She swirled the liquid in her glass, sipped again, felt the alcohol relax some of the tension coiled in sections along her spine.
“Are you having feelings for me?” he asked. “Or were you?”
“Yes. I was. And I am.” She paused with the confession and unwrapped her legs. She’d had enough wine. “Can I get you some water?”
“No. Thank you.”
