Ex on the Beach (38 page)
“Did it ever occur to you that the reason you didn’t know much about my family is because you never asked me? I asked all kinds of questions about yours. I wanted to get to know them. I
did
get to know them. You?” She shrugged, implying he couldn’t have cared less. “You didn’t bother.”
She shook her head slightly, forcing the pain to stay inside for a few more minutes. At least until she got out of there. “I deserved so much more from you, and I especially deserved to have you come to that church and tell me you were too chickenshit to get married.
“What I did
not
deserve,” she continued, getting heated and letting her voice rise, “was having Rob show up and offer me a ‘good time’ since you couldn’t make it. He said one night with him and I wouldn’t cry over you for a second.”
Mark opened his mouth as if to speak, but she didn’t let him.
“So, no …” Her voice was loud now. If Wendy wasn’t passed out asleep next door, she could probably hear every word. “I will
not
toss away my life and head on up to Boston just hoping you’ll grow a pair and marry me someday. I have a family, too. Maybe we haven’t been as close as yours over the years, but they’re mine. And I’m not going to walk away from them when they need me just because you got a whim that you might want me around.”
“Andie—”
“I need more from you, Mark,” she stated. Her voice was calm again. “Or I need nothing.”
She didn’t let the tears fall. She would not give him that.
She slipped the ring from her finger and set it in the middle of the kitchen table, then walked quietly out the back door. It wasn’t that far of a walk to the house, and with any luck, she’d have all her tears out before she got there.
As she stepped off the deck and her feet touched the sand, movement at the next cabin snagged her attention. The door had opened and light from inside spilled out.
In the frame of light stood Rob and Wendy. Kissing.
When they parted, Rob tucked in his shirt and zipped up his pants, then laid another one on Wendy and headed off the back deck and across the sand.
Son. Of. A. Bitch!
There was no way in hell Andie was letting Penny marry that man. Screw the business.
A
ndie sat with her arms folded in her lap, shoulders hunched in, and lowered her head to the granite countertop of the kitchen island. She turned her cheek to the cool hardness and closed her eyes, pretending she was moaning as loud as she was hurting inside. Pain hit her from too many directions.
She’d lost Mark again. For the last time.
She would
never
let herself get caught up in his life again. She couldn’t handle the pain. The ache in her chest was suffocating her.
And she had to cancel the wedding.
A two-second groan slipped free before she could stop herself. There was also the matter of the house…and the lack of bonus.
Reality was, Penny could choose to go ahead with the wedding. But Andie didn’t believe for a minute that would happen. Not after she told her what she’d witnessed last night. Which she would soon have to go upstairs and do.
The other reality was that she wouldn’t lose the house, either. She’d decided overnight to take her mother up on her offer of money. Only, it would be a loan. And
only
until she could sell the bar and pay her back. It had to be done. Because she would not lose Aunt Ginny’s house.
She groaned at the thought. It was
her
house.
Well, she wouldn’t lose that, either.
But it still felt like Aunt Ginny’s house, and Andie suspected it always would.
She peeked her eyes open as daylight slashed through the back windows and landed on her face. The sun had risen outside, and it looked to be a glorious day.
Soon she’d have to go upstairs and start the torture of the day to come.
She wanted to catch Penelope before she had more than the briefest moment to think that this was about to be the best day of her life.
Instead, Andie would help her face reality.
Men were jerks. They either thought only of themselves, or they were cheating bastards — who thought only of themselves.
She let a moan slip free and closed her eyes again. She rolled her head until her forehead rested flush with the countertop.
Everything hurt so much.
A soft swish registered as the side door slid open, but Andie didn’t lift her head to see who it was.
Her heart thumped hard as she wondered if it might be Mark, and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. Frustration choked her as tears leaked from between her lashes. She’d thought she would be dry inside by now.
She held her breath. Waiting. Hoping whoever it was didn’t see her there.
Hoping it was Mark.
He hadn’t even followed her outside last night. Hadn’t tried to stop her.
Not that doing so would have done any good.
“Andie.” The voice was soft, sounding shocked to find her bent over in the kitchen. It wasn’t Mark. Thank goodness. “What is it, dear? Are you okay?”
Andie lifted her head — with her swollen eyes — and looked at her mother. Then she cried some more.
“Oh, baby.” Her mother rushed to her side and wrapped both arms around her, holding her tight and resting her head against Andie’s shoulder. Aunt Ginny stepped into the kitchen behind Cassie. Both women were wearing swimsuits and cotton cover-ups.
“I’ll fix you some tea,” Aunt Ginny stated matter-of-factly.
“Please tell me you weren’t skinny-dipping again,” Andie groaned. She did not want another argument with Phillip Jordan loaded onto her plate that morning.
“Oh, pish posh,” Aunt Ginny said. She waved a hand in the air, unconcerned. “That man needs to loosen up and try something like that himself. Maybe if he did, his wife wouldn’t go around wearing such a pinched expression all the time.”
Andie merely stared at her aunt. Oh, geez. They’d done it again.
“And
no
,” Aunt Ginny added as she filled a pot with water and pulled down bags of chamomile tea. “We did
not
go skinny-dipping this morning. Not that it should be a problem where we were yesterday anyway. We were as far away from the house and bungalows as we can get on the property. That man just has a stick up his butt.”
Yes, he did. But Andie could see not wanting to walk up on two sixty-something-year-old women in their birthday suits first thing in the morning, either.
“As soon as this wedding is over, we’re going to get you out there with us,” Ginny told her. She turned then, and studied Andie with a concerned look, her voice losing some of its no-nonsense attitude. “We need to loosen you up, too,” she added softly.
Meaning,
We need to help you forget.
Aunt Ginny didn’t have to ask, she knew that Mark had broken her heart. She gave Andie a gentle I’m-sorry-but-I-still-love-you smile, and Andie was grateful. Aunt Ginny would always be there for her.
Her mother lifted her head off Andie’s shoulder and smoothed Andie’s hair back out of her face. “What happened, sweetheart?” she crooned.
Andie looked at her mother. When had Cassie become this person?
“Did Mark do something?” she asked.
Andie couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed shut. She simply nodded. Aunt Ginny joined them, and they all three spent the next couple of minutes hugging it out. Andie cried even more.
When the tears finally ended, Aunt Ginny handed Andie a wad of tissue, and Cassie found a cloth and wet it with cold water. She then wiped the tears from her daughter’s face and dabbed the cool cloth against Andie’s swollen eyes.
Andie felt as if she’d dropped through a rabbit hole. This was not the same woman who’d shown up barely a week ago.
“What are you doing, Mom?” Andie asked in a tired voice. After no sleep, and along with everything else that had happened the night before, she didn’t have the energy to work on polite.
Her mother pulled her hand back, a stricken look her face. “I’m just trying to help. Am I doing it wrong?”
Andie’s chest filled with pressure. “Oh, God. No, you aren’t doing it wrong. It’s perfect. But I mean…
what are you doing
? Here? You’re changing.” Andie shook her head. “I’m just…confused.”
Her mother and her aunt’s gazes met across the room before Aunt Ginny gave a slight nod to her sister. Ginny pulled the teapot from the stove and poured three cups of steaming water over tea bags, and then the two women sat down on either side of Andie.
Cautiously, Cassie reached out and took one of Andie’s hands. “Your aunt and I have talked a lot this week, Andie.”
Andie wanted to tell her to hurry it up and get on with it. Instead, she just sat there. She was too tired to speak. And didn’t want to come off more impolite than she already had.
“I want to move here,” her mother said in a rush. “Permanently.”
The world tilted under Andie’s seat. She looked at her aunt. “And you’re good with this?”
Ginny nodded. “I’d like it very much.”
Andie could see that she would. Her aunt was typically a happy woman anyway, but she’d been different this week, too. She looked more content. Pleased with the world. It floored Andie to think that her mother had put that look on someone’s face, but she couldn’t begin to understand the power of sisterhood.
The other thing that struck her was the realization that she wanted her mother there as well.
Suddenly, there was a bright spot to the day. She may have had her heart crushed to tiny pieces, but she was going to get the chance to build a relationship with her mother. She would work on herself, and she would work on her and her mom.
And she just might get up the nerve to go skinny-dipping.
She gave her mother a hug. “I would like that, too,” she whispered.
The look on Cassie’s face was priceless. A smile that seemed more relaxed and genuine than any Andie had ever witnessed appeared, and the lines that only a week ago had made her mother seem old were now adding to her look of joy.
Andie couldn’t yet imagine the three of them under the same roof day in and day out, but it was an adventure she was willing to take on. One she found she
wanted
to take on.
“So tell us what happened with Mark.” Aunt Ginny redirected the conversation back to Andie’s heartache. “What did the idiot do this time, and how hard do your mother and I need to kick his butt?”
Cassie dabbed at Andie’s swollen eyes once more as if uncertain what else to do. “The way you were getting along, I’d thought you two might figure it out this time.”
Andie thought about nodding. She’d thought they might figure it out, too. But deep down, she’d known she shouldn’t get involved with him. She’d just wanted so badly to make it work.
And she had this really hard time saying no to him.
She pictured the ring he’d slid on her finger last night. She still couldn’t believe he’d bought it back then, or that he’d kept it all this time. He must have gotten it when he’d gone back to Boston earlier in the week.
She spread her hand flat on the counter and looked down at the bare ring finger. “He gave me a ring,” she finally told them. “One I wanted four years ago.”
Ten seconds ticked off the second-hand of the round-faced clock hanging beside the door. It seemed overloud in the silent room.
With a
hmph
, Ginny muttered, “The jerk.”
Andie chuckled lightly, knowing her statement made no sense. She watched her aunt pull the teabags from all of their cups.
“
And
,” Andie continued, “he asked me to marry him. How about that? Out of the blue, he gives me the ring I’d once imagined owning, tells me he loves me, and asks me to marry him. But you know what he didn’t do?”
She looked from one woman to the other. They both shook their heads from side to side, and she had the vague notion that the more she saw them together, the more she realized how similar they were.
“He didn’t bother to explain the past,” she told them. “He’d given me a lame excuse when he first showed up here — which granted, I let him get away with — but I’d already made it clear that it wasn’t good enough if we were going to go anywhere this time. There were issues back then. Things that kept me from being ready, and things…”
She didn’t want to tell them about Tiffany. It seemed wrong to share his secrets. But this was her family. If she couldn’t share with her aunt and her mother, who could she share with?
“There were issues with him, too,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and filled them in on Tiffany, ending with the fact that Mark completely blamed himself.
Both sisters remained silent throughout the story, and then Andie opened her eyes and stared at the bowl of fruit on the counter in front of her. The bowl she’d made with her own two hands. She thought about how much she enjoyed teaching the basket weaving class at the senior center. How she enjoyed creating projects herself.
Mark didn’t even know she had that talent.
“He never brought Tiffany up,” she told them. “He never asked what I wanted, or what I could do with my life if I left here and followed him to Boston. Just asked me to marry him and assumed I would smile sweetly and pack a bag. And when I
did
get his past out of him…” Another round of tears slipped freely down her face. Her mother reached out with the cloth to catch them, and Andie smiled her thanks. “When he did talk about it, he refused to admit he had a problem.”
She picked up her cup of tea, glancing at the pile of wet tea bags now on a small plate, and took a calming sip.
“All might not be lost,” Aunt Ginny began, with more hope in her voice than there should have been. “At least you got him to talk about the past. And he loves you. We could have told you that even if he didn’t. I still feel—”
Andie shot her a hard look. “Don’t you dare say anything about fate. The only fate going on here is that I’m
not
supposed to be with him. This whole time.” She shook her head. “Back then…now, he was thinking only of himself. About how to fit me into his life without any upheaval for him. Without
facing
his own issues.
