Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (14 page)

“Oh, Lettie,” Thea said, imagining Lettie as a child. Her white gray hair was probably long and blond, her gentle smile more youthful but promising wisdom to come.

“One day the young woman who owned the bakery—she was so beautiful, I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen—asked to see a test I'd taken in school. For every test I brought to her with top marks, she would give me a treat.”

“An almond biscotto,” Dani said.

“The end pieces that she couldn't sell. But I loved them. The taste still makes me think of her to this day.”

Dani snapped off the top of her bright pink biscotto and talked with her mouth full. “You know what this makes me think of?”

“What?” Thea asked.

“Easter. My mom always made these hideous homemade lollipops of eggs and bunnies. She said it was white chocolate with strawberry, but it was like biting into a brick of pink candle wax. Kinda like this.”

“Blech.”
Claudine frowned and shook her head. “So why do you keep eating the biscotti if it's disgusting?”

Dani shrugged and bit off another piece. “Dunno. I guess'cause it's familiar? Makes me think of being a kid? Don't get me wrong—this is gross. Thea,
please
don't buy them. Because if you do I'll come in and order them all the time and there will be no excuse for it.”

“It's amazing how much food is attached to memory,” Thea said.

“Certain foods bring you right back to the past,” Dani said. She put her biscotto down. “I really need to stop eating.”

“Okay—I won't get the strawberry,” Thea said, pulling the plate of nuclear pink biscotti away from her friend.

“Or the anise,” Lettie said. “You always hated the anise. But it brings back memories, I'm sure. I remember when you and Jonathan and Garret would come bursting through the door of the coffee shop like a motorcycle gang, dropping your coats and book bags on the tables, getting your fingerprints all over the front of your mother's pastry fridge. Of course, that was before you and Garret were joined at the hip . . .”

Claudine perked up a little, her fine eyebrows arched high. “You dated Jonathan's brother?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Garret—the man who came in this afternoon?” Claudine pressed, her voice bright with excitement.

“We weren't together long,” Thea said. “We were just kids.”

Dani put down her coffee. “Less than a year.”

“Right,” Thea said. She stood and began to gather the empty plates. “So, which biscotti did we decide on? Just the almond? Lettie, you think this brand is better than the one we already have?”

“Hold on a sec,” Claudine said. “Garret—the gorgeous guy you dragged outside to be alone with this afternoon?”

“To
talk
,” Thea said. She piled the plates into the crook of her arm, balancing them there. “I had to talk to him privately for a moment.”

“I'm sure you did,” Claudine said.

Thea laughed and carried the plates behind the counter, where she loaded them one by one carefully into the industrial dishwasher. She'd stayed at the Dancing Goat later than usual this evening because she'd wanted to
not
think about Garret or Jonathan or even Irina—just for a few minutes. And yet even the most innocuous moments were filled with emotional land mines.

She'd been planning for days to apologize to him—if only for the sake of her self-respect. She'd prepared for him to be angry with her. To yell and get in her face. Instead, he'd seemed to become
less
angry—as if what had happened to them standing beside the Dumpsters behind the shop was something they'd both been waiting for, a conversation they'd both needed to have. The moment she'd stood in the circle of his arms she felt as if she was cradled by a patch of warm, welcoming sunlight. There were a thousand nights of her life that she'd dreamed of reaching out to him—to know she was forgiven. But now that she was being slowly but surely pushed out of Jonathan's family, his forgiveness had come too late.

On the counter, one last bit of biscotti was left in the wrapper. She picked it up between two fingers. She had no idea what it was, but she popped it into her mouth.
Anise.
The flavor that she hated held so many memories for her. It had been Garret's favorite. She wondered if it still was. She wondered what he would think if he knew just how long it had taken her to forget him and how much she still remembered.

Though technically Garret hadn't been old enough to drink at his cousin's wedding, no one noticed what he slipped into his glass. His parents pranced about and mingled on the parquet dance floor, and he hung around with his brother and Thea at the table that had been marked for the three of them with a place card that looked like a violin. In true Sorensen family fashion, the wedding was lavish. The mansion where they celebrated dripped with goldleaf swags and scrollwork. A series of crystal chandeliers hung from a high ceiling. Pilasters capped in acanthus leaves flanked elegant French doors. Garret didn't mind the overzealous decor—as long as no one noticed that his Coke was spiked with rum.

Jonathan, whose soda remained uncorrupted on the tablecloth, sat beside him watching the dancers laugh and wiggle on the dance floor. “Hey. Have you seen Thea?”

“Bathroom.”

“She should have been back by now.”

“She's mingling,” Garret said. “Leave it alone.”

He took a long swig of rum and Coke that burned his throat, and he tried to look unconcerned. But the truth was that he too had noticed that Thea was gone, and he'd been keeping an eye out for her for quite some time. She hadn't been acting like herself today. In her deep red dress and dark eye makeup, Garret had expected her to outshine the bride. Instead, she seemed listless, disinterested. She loved dancing—but she wouldn't get up even for her favorite songs.

“I'm going to get another drink,” Garret said, pushing back his chair. “Want something?”

“I'm fine,” Jonathan said.

“You okay here sitting by yourself?”

“I like people watching,” he said.

Garret made his way among the revelers, on the lookout for flailing elbows and knees as he cut across the dance floor. When he got across the loud room to the bar, he kept on walking. He walked until he got to the lobby, with its sparkling marble floors and light-studded ficus trees. But Thea wasn't there. He stood for a while outside of the ladies' lounge, watching a parade of cousins flutter in and out, but it did no good. He checked the coatroom to see if her coat was there; it was. He pushed open heavy, random doors and walked down echoing, random halls, but she was nowhere to be found.

Fifteen minutes later he was beginning to get nervous. He didn't want to ask his parents or Jonathan if they'd seen her because he didn't want to alarm them. He thought of his cousin Eric, who'd been making passes at her all night, and his stomach did an unexpected little turn. Had she ducked away into some hidden room with him? No. Not her. Thea didn't date. Though he'd always wondered why she'd yet to hook up with anyone, he didn't ever question her. He liked her being unattached.

When he finally found her—at the lowest point of a stairwell, where the underside of the stairs sloped sharply to meet the floor and made a kind of cave—she was alone, a shock of red against the dull planes of the cinder blocks. In this forgotten corner of the house, the finery had been stripped away so only the unadorned bones of the old structure showed. The damp air smelled of dust and Pine-Sol.

Thea jumped when she saw him, turning away.

“Garret!”

“What are you doing here?”

She didn't turn to face him, nor did she explain. Her back was a study in layers, the fall of her dark hair, the rich red sheen of a sheer wrap, the thin straps of her dress across her shoulder blades, and then, finally, the smooth expanse of her skin and muscle beneath.

“Thea . . .”

He didn't know what to do, how to help. He laid his arm along her shoulders, and to his surprise she turned into him, the backs of her hands pressed into his chest where she covered her face. He looped both arms around her; she fit so well against him. He resisted the urge to press his cheek against her hair. “Tell me what's wrong so I can fix it,” he said.

She brushed the tears from her cheeks and brought herself to stand up straighter. Her eyes darted away. “I don't want to say.”

“There's no way I'm leaving until you tell me what's going on.”

She sniffed, drew her shawl closer around her shoulders. “I wasn't going to tell you until I knew for certain. I mean, there's no sense in getting everyone upset until I'm sure.”

“Sure of what, Thea?”

She looked up at him from beneath her dark and clotted mascara. “That I'm leaving.”

“Leaving. Where?”

“My parents are talking about closing the coffee shop and moving back to Turkey.”

It took a moment before the news sank in. “Are they serious?”

“They started looking into it weeks ago,” she said.

He saw that the tears were rising up again, and he handed her the handkerchief in his pocket. He was stunned—completely at a loss for what to say. Thea—
leaving
. In all of his visions of the future—his intention of being a soccer star, of living the good life, of making his family proud—Thea had been there, right beside him. The idea of a future without her challenged the certainty he felt about all of his plans.

She dabbed the inside corners of her eyes. “Seeing everyone here at the wedding. Your cousin. Your aunts and uncles. Your parents . . . you. How can I leave this, Garret?”

“You don't have to,” he said, taken aback by the swell of his own determination. “You're not going anywhere.”

She shook her head. “If my parents go, I've got to go too.”

“Would they make you?” he asked.

“I don't think they'd make me do anything,” she said. “I want to graduate high school with you and the rest of our class next year. I don't want to go. But they're my family. And as much as I'm afraid of leaving, I'm afraid of
not
leaving too.”

Garret sighed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in his borrowed tux and tails. A feeling of possessiveness gripped him. Thea
belonged
with him. He simply couldn't believe that she would just up and leave him, and she would never see him again.

He stepped toward her. He'd touched her a moment ago, and now he wanted to touch her again. She didn't resist when he took her in his arms. She melted against him, her own arms going around him tight. Life without Thea—he simply couldn't imagine it. He felt the press of her from his sternum to his waist; he thought he'd never touched a woman so intimately before—and not just any woman.
Her
.