Letters Home (26 page)

“No, we can go,” she said quietly.

“It’s not that important. Are you ready to go to dinner?” I let my hand drop and reached out to open the door.

She put her hand on my arm to stop me. “I’d like to go.”

“You would?”

“Yes, I would.” Pulling her into my arms, I kissed the top of her head and smiled. We’d get the chance to make memories of our own.

“Even though it feels wonderful to be wrapped in your arms, I’m starving. Do you think we could go to dinner now?”

Laughing, I pulled back. “Sorry,” I said a little sheepishly, and reached for the door. “Let’s go get you fed.”

I had trouble keeping the smile off of my face throughout dinner. But there was still that lingering doubt that something was wrong between us. That she would never fully give herself over to me. I tried to keep reminding myself that time was all she needed. She just needed to see how much I cared about her.

Everything would be fine.

In time.

Guilt is something that can be overcome, but regret is something you’ll have to live with forever.

The phone rang twice. “Marissa Crane,” the voice at the other end answered.

“I need you to shop with me,” I said without preamble.

“What are we shopping for?”

“I need a dress for the ball.”

“Oh honey, that’s great! Tanner wants to take you with him? When do you want to go?”

“Are you free tomorrow night? We could go shopping and grab a drink afterward.”

“That sounds great. Hey, can we talk later? I have a meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“Sure. I’ll call you later.”

“Perfect.”

After hanging up the phone I continued to stare at it. It had taken me all day to get up the nerve to call Marissa about dress shopping and I’d known that she would be more than thrilled to go with me, but I was worried about going. The first night I’d been to see Tanner, my fear of losing him overruled everything else. Even so, besides the few kisses that we’d shared, that night ended up being the same as other nights we’d spent together. Effortless.

The problem had been the next night, when Tanner had taken me on our first official date. Dinner had been exactly as expected. Tanner was a gentleman through and through. Holding doors, pushing in chairs, he went out of his way to make the date perfect, even walking me to my door. The ease with which the evening progressed had been no great surprise, and given that it wasn’t like us to have dinner and each go our separate ways, we’d continued our conversation from dinner when he’d come inside for coffee. It hadn’t been fair of me to expect Tanner to just come in for coffee, but I had.

When the door shut he’d turned to me, cupping my face in his hands and lowering his mouth to mine. His lips were softer than I remembered from the night before, and it was while this thought was passing through my brain that it hit me. Besides Nate, Tanner was the first man I’d kissed in almost ten years. And with that realization, a little bit of guilt at what I was doing had crept in. Was it fair to Nate to have another man’s hands on me? Even though I knew it was frustrating for Tanner, I just couldn’t bring myself to let things go any farther and so I’d stopped him at that line every night since then.

Time. Time was all I needed to overcome the feelings of betrayal. Tanner’s understanding and patience showed me just how much he cared, and one day I hoped to repay him by giving him my whole heart.

By the time I met Marissa after work, I had managed to calm my nervous energy…somewhat. A thorough cleaning of my apartment the night before had also helped, plus I’d reorganized the files in my office. We started with a couple of the smaller shops in town, knowing that the major department stores would be stocked mainly with prom dresses, which was not what I wanted. Not that I was old, but I did consider myself past the point of wearing something that meant my cleavage and/or butt was out on display.

As we walked down the street toward one of the shops, I asked Marissa about Colin. I’d been dying to know. I’d just needed to get my own stuff settled first so that, when I did ask, I could give her answer my full attention.

“So…you and Colin?” I asked, but it sounded less like a question and more like a statement.

The flush crawled up her face. “Not really.”

I’d never really seen Marissa blush before. “What do you mean, ‘not really’? He was at your apartment when I showed up that night. I seriously doubt that he was there waiting for me.”

“Well, no, but it was only a one-off.” She made sure to keep her gaze straight ahead, avoiding all eye contact.

“You know as well as I do that Colin is not looking for a one-off thing. If he was at your place, it meant it was more than one night to him. Which means, either you’re hiding from something, or
you
are the one who only wanted a quick fling with him.”

“Well…I…uh,” she stuttered.

“Listen to yourself. You can’t even talk about it, which leads me to believe that you’re not sure what you want.” Her silence spoke volumes. “All right, I’m going to leave it alone…for now. But don’t think that this is the last time we are going to talk about this.”

Even with just a temporary reprieve I could see the tension leave her shoulders, and when we entered the first store she was easily distracted by all of the dresses. There were so many to choose from. We’d been through two stores when I finally figured out how to describe what I was looking for.

“I want something elegant, yet functional.”

“Aren’t you asking for a lot,” Marissa scoffed from behind me.

“What?” I twisted around to face her. “I want to be able to move and not feel like I’ve been sealed up, ready to be shipped off to some faraway land.”

The woman behind the counter nodded. “Let me see what we have.”

For the next hour, I must have tried on at
least
fifteen different dresses. Some of them were not what I was looking for in the least. Others were cute, but none of them screamed “I’m the one! Choose me!”

“Thank you,” I said to the sales assistant. Marissa followed me out the door and we continued walking down the sidewalk when we came upon another dress shop. Looking at the sign, I froze. It was the shop Nate had sent me to, the morning of our wedding.

Marissa followed my gaze and looped her arm through mine. “Come on, there are plenty of places we still need to look at.”

“Besides the department stores, this is the only place we have left.”

“You don’t have to go in there. You tried on a ton of beautiful dresses tonight. You can always choose one of those.”

“You know as well as I do that none of those dresses were right. I can’t avoid places like this forever.”

With heavy feet I walked into the store and, thankfully, the woman who helped us that morning wasn’t there. I didn’t like the thought of having to tell a perfect stranger that he’d died. The pity in their eyes was often unbearable.

It was harder than I thought, being in the store. Even the smell was the same as the morning I’d stopped into pick up my wedding dress, and the familiarity of it ate at my gut. Forcing the thoughts from my mind, I did my best to ignore the tightness in my chest as I looked around the store. That’s when I saw it. A gorgeous emerald green dress.

At first glance it looked as if it was strapless, at least until I noticed that the one side had what looked like a small capped sleeve, a strap running diagonally across the back.

Marissa stepped up next to me, admiring the dress. “It’s beautiful.”

The woman we’d seen when we entered the store came over. “Would you like to try it on?”

“Yes, please,” I said, a slight quiver to my voice. I doubted anyone but me noticed it.

She ushered me toward the dressing room while she went in search of the correct size. A few minutes later I was standing in front of the mirror, staring at the perfect dress for the ball. The woman adjusted the bottom of the skirt and stood. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s exactly what I’m looking for,” I whispered. Marissa reached out and squeezed my hand. The pressure in my chest was getting stronger. I needed to get out of the store. Quicker than I’d put it on, I was out of the dress and at the counter, ready to pay for it. Without a word, I handed over my credit card.

The woman working in the store must have noticed my distress. “Are you sure this is the dress you want?”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I’m positive, it’s just been a long day.” Which wasn’t a complete lie. Trying on all of those dresses had taken its toll on me.

She passed me the receipt and a pen, and set about putting the dress in a garment bag for me to carry home. I wanted to yell and scream that I wanted out of the store now but I couldn’t be that rude so, in an effort to keep myself cool, I bit down on the inside of my cheek. The metallic taste of blood covered my tongue.

“Thank you,” the sales assistant said as she handed me my dress. “I hope you have a wonderful time.”

Afraid to lose what little control I had left, I nodded at her and walked out of the door where Marissa was right there to wrap her arms around me.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s been nine months. Why can’t I just move on?” I started to cry.

“One step at a time, sweetie. You’ve moved out of your brothers, you’re in a relationship with Tanner—all signs that you are ‘moving on.’ You just have to remember that there are times where a memory’s going to come up and smack you square in the side of the head. I’m proud of you for going in there and facing it. On top of all of that, you found a beautiful dress for the ball.”

“Thank you, Marissa.”

“Anytime, babe.”

My ears had heard every word that she said, but that didn’t mean my brain wanted to entertain them. At that moment I was struggling and I needed a good cry. Over the last few months Tanner had found a way to comfort me and make me smile whenever I’d gotten upset. This time, however, I wanted to be alone. “Can I ask a favor? Would you mind if we skipped drinks tonight? I’m really not in the mood to go out.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

“Thanks.” I started to walk away, when I heard her call my name. “Yeah?” I said, turning in the middle of the street.

“Make sure you call Tanner and talk to him about this. He deserves to know what happened.”

I nodded, not sure I wanted to lie out loud because I had no intention of calling Tanner. Part of the reason I was so upset was the fact that buying the dress in that shop made me feel like I was cheating on Nate, or at least Nate’s memory. Everything was just too…close. It was a feeling that was hard to describe. While I cared very deeply for Tanner, I was struggling with how moving on with him was okay, but I knew that this was something I would have to work through on my own. Tanner had dealt with enough of his own guilt where Nate was concerned. He didn’t need to add mine on top of it.

Over the next week or so, I spent less time with Tanner than I had when we weren’t dating. Every new kiss or touch gave me a moment of pause. When I was with him we had a wonderful time. Every moment with him seemed magical, which sounded ridiculous but there was no other way to describe it. But at night the dreams—or should I say nightmares—were too vivid to ignore. Most nights I woke up in a cold sweat after seeing Nate walking away from me again. The part of my heart that I had given to Tanner was more than half in love with him. It just wasn’t enough to tell him yet. It wasn’t fair to him. Not until I could give him my whole heart.

He was more than a little excited about going to the ball. One, he was dying to see the dress I picked—I hadn’t shown him, nor had I told him about the store where I purchased it. I’d simple said that I’d found a dress—and secondly, it was his first time going to the ball too. As excited as he was to see my dress, I was a little nervous to see him in his dress uniform, unsure of what my reaction would be. With his ocean blue eyes and amazing physique, he was one of the sexiest men I’d ever met. It did bother me that we still hadn’t gotten any farther than kissing, but I couldn’t help it that every time he tried to move things along, my heart would scream
yes!
but my head would panic and freeze up. I was hoping that on the night of the ball, things would be different because, for the first time since we’d started dating, I was going to ask Tanner to stay over. To some, the idea may have seemed a little trivial but it was a huge step for me.