The Palms (8 page)

“Sort of.”

“Okay, maybe only I am. But it is good wine.”

Trent stood up. “I guess that settles it. Where are the glasses?”

“No, I’ll get them.”

She waved her hands in front her face to make him sit down, but he ignored her and made his way into the kitchen. He opened a cabinet next to the entryway. “Do you have a wine key?”

“In the drawer, right there.” She pointed at cabinet next to him, and as she did, his thigh brushed against her hand. She gasped as a shiver of excitement passed over her. A moment later, an image of herself naked on her bed with Trent’s body above hers flashed through her head. “So... um... you can...”

“Are you okay, Lauren?” he asked, keeping his face and voice neutral. He fished around in the drawer for the wine key and pulled it out. When he looked up, he found her staring at him, an unreadable expression on her face. “How much wine do you think you want?”

Thank God, he couldn’t read her thoughts.

“Half the bottle,” she whispered.

His loud laughter answered her. “You’re going to need a pretty big glass.”

She shook her head. “Right.”

She turned her rigid body and opened another cabinet. As she rose up on her tiptoes to reach the shelf, Trent’s eyes roamed over the tumbling waves of her long brown hair, her small, sculpted breasts, and finally the way her navy dress accented her round bottom. He brushed past her again, letting their bodies come into contact more. Once he got around her, he reached out and picked up the bottle of wine by its neck. “Merlot. Interesting.”

“You don’t like merlot?” By now, she’d found the glasses, and had one in each hand.

“Well, I mean— isn’t that normally…”

“What? No good?” Lauren smirked. “I’ll have you know, merlot’s making a comeback.”

“No, I don’t mean that. Not at all. It’s just that I’m a white wine drinker.” He stepped closer to her, narrowing the space between them again. “But today, that doesn’t matter.”

“There’s a wine shop down the street. We can go over there and get a bottle if you want. Good selection.”

“No,” Trent replied, moving closer to Lauren until his body stood flush against hers. He could smell her, almost feel her, and if he wanted to, taste her. “This is perfect.”

Lauren’s stomach flipped in response to his nearness, and excitement filled every cell of her body. Having him this close to her made her feel alive, nervous, and exhilarated. It also almost made her forget why she’d even been mad at him in the first place. A little voice inside her head reminded her of all the heartbreak.

“If you think I’m going to let you get away with not telling me what happened back when we were kids, you’re wrong,” she whispered.

“I know.” Trent placed the wine bottle on the counter right next to them, but he didn’t turn his body away or take his eyes off her. “You deserve to know the truth.”

Lauren moved closer to him, so that his nose and hers were less than one inch away from each other. “So why won’t you tell me?”

Trent let a second or two pass, drawing out the moment as long as he could and weighing responses in his mind. “I will,” he finally said. “After we open up the wine. We’re going to need it.”

5:30PM, The Crawford Condo Living room

“It’s good wine,” Trent said from his place on one side of the small, black leather couch. He grabbed a coaster from the coffee table and set his glass on it. They both were on their second glass. “It’s very good.”

“I told you.” Lauren draped her right hand over the arm of the couch and let her half empty wine glass dangle from her fingers. “I know my wines.”

“I can see that.” Trent smiled. “I’ll make a note of that.” He raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you learn about them?”

Lauren grinned at him. “Oh, no. Not this. You’re not getting off track, Trent.” She took another sip of the wine, and by now, she had a slight buzz. “You promised to tell me what happened back in 2002.” She placed one pointed finger in the center of his chest. “You promised.”

Trent shrugged and a lock of his hair fell down in front of his eye, enhancing his features and making him look younger than thirty-one. “Maybe I hoped you’d forget.”

With that answer, a spark of familiar annoyance about their relationship bubbled up inside of Lauren. “Of course I haven’t forgotten. How could I?”

“I know.” He angled his body further toward her. “Just a joke.”

She lay back on the blue and purple decorative pillow wedged between her and the couch’s arm. She held her wine glass by the stem and gave what remained in it a slight swirl. “So tell me the big secret.”

Trent cleared his throat, unsure of how to start what had become the most important conversation he’d had in years. “I wouldn’t call it a big secret—”

“But it’s something no one talks about. At least not by name.” Lauren’s left hand shoved some wayward strands of her brown hair behind her ear. She kept her eyes on him, and the stare did nothing to ease Trent’s unwillingness.

“You’re right. No one talks about it.” The left corner of Trent’s mouth turned down. “My family sure doesn’t. They’d like to pretend it just never happened.”

“I asked Spen about it years ago. I know you told him, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.” She bit one side of her lower lip.

“That’s because Spencer doesn’t know.” Trent rubbed his long index finger over his top lip, under his nose. For months after Trent returned to Amherst, Spencer didn’t speak to him. “Well, he doesn’t know everything.”

Lauren scooted closer to him on the couch. Her eyes locked with his, pleading for the answers she needed. “I want to know everything, Trent. Everything.”

“Fair enough.” He looked down at the light green throw rug that complemented the dark tile floor of the condominium. “Her name was Cynthia Livingston.”

Lauren gulped, as her tongue grew thick and fat in her mouth. “Oh God, I knew it.”

He looked up, wide-eyed. “Knew what?”

“There had to have been another woman. That’s why you must have left me. I mean it was—”

“She wasn’t the other woman,” Trent interrupted. “Not like you think.”

Lauren’s face quickly reddened. She blurted out her thoughts. “Don’t lie to me. Everyone said… Spen said… Shit! I knew you were a player!” She slammed her wine glass on the coffee table.

He raised his right hand, hoping to ease her a little. “Try to calm down.”

“Try to calm down?”

“I don’t want you to jump to conclusions.” He raised his right hand again, desperate to stop her from overreacting. “Please listen to me. Please.”

“If this is about what I think it’s about—,”

“It isn’t.” Trent’s firm voice sliced through the air. In an effort to help make his point, he scooted down the sofa. “It’s about a mistake. A huge one.”

She snorted. “Aren’t they all?”

By then, Lauren had stopped listening to him. She tightened her face and closed herself off to whatever words he had coming next. Everything about her body showed the tension: her hunched shoulders, her arched position against the decorative pillow, and the small scowl on her lips.

“Lauren, I fucked up once. But I don’t want to fuck up again. Let me explain the rest.”

She didn’t say anything right away, and as he waited, he watched heavy breaths enter and exit her body. The awkward silence enveloped them like a thick blizzard. Finally, when Lauren could stand it no longer, she spoke.

“Keep talking.”

He let the breath trapped inside him leave his body. “I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger.”

She rolled her eyes. “Me too.”

“Everyone screws up when they are in college, and I did a lot. I dated many girls. A lot.”

“I know you did.” She kept her voice even. “That’s all I used to hear about when it came to you — how much of a player you were.”

“And that’s it — that’s the precise problem. ‘Reckless’ should have been my middle name.” Trent twisted his body. Feet planted on the floor, he buried his head in one hand. When he raised his head again to look at her, his eyes had widened, and the color had drained away from his tan face. “When I was at Amherst, I met a couple of girls who lived in the dorm across the quad from the one where I lived.”

Lauren’s mouth flattened into a hard line. He took her expression as a sign of disgust, and her silence as a sign that he should continue.

“I met Cynthia Livingston that spring.” He rubbed his eyes again and forced himself to keep on talking. “The spring before you and I got together for real. Before senior year.” Another deep, guttural exhale left his chest. “She showed up at an off campus party one night and we...”

“You slept with her.”

Trent leaned back in against the sofa. “Yes,” he muttered. “We slept together a few times.”

Lauren picked up her wine glass. She peered down at the filmy wine left inside it, and swallowed what remained in one gulp. His story didn’t shock her at all, and she remained in control of her emotions. Long ago, she’d suspected something akin to what he’d just told her. “So let me guess the next part.”

“Please don’t.”

Her eyes met his, and the way he gazed at her made her grow even more wary of his admonition. “Okay. Finish.”

Trent broke her stare, glanced over at his wine glass and wondered if the Crawfords stocked anything harder in the condominium. At this rate, he could use a few good shots of vodka. “It wasn’t anything memorable. It was—” He broke off again and struggled with the words. “I guess she was a nice girl.”

“Was?”

“Yes. Was.” Now he looked over at the grey and red woven afghan draped over the back of the sofa. “I thought that’s all it was — a one night stand in the middle of finals. And one more time, right before I came down here to Palm Beach for the summer.” He looked down at his hands. “She called me that morning on the beach. The morning I woke up next to you.”

Lauren cupped her chin in her hand and waited. Something told her not to interrupt him, not now. Even so, the deeper he delved into the story, the more she wanted him to stop talking so she could spend the rest of the day counting the threads in the blanket and forgetting all the pain of the past.

“You were still asleep, right there on the beach towel.” Trent smiled a little. “God, you looked so beautiful.” He shook his head. “And she had… she had news.”

Lauren raised her eyebrow, able to guess what came next. “She was pregnant?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not.”

Trent grimaced. “That was about the time my life turned into one of those bad Lifetime movies my mom watched in the ‘90s.”

Lauren stood up. “I think I need more wine,” she said, sensing that Trent had much more to tell her. “Do you want some?”

“We’ve already drank half the bottle. Why not?”

Lauren walked to the kitchen, picked up the remaining bottle and returned to her place on the couch. Trent regarded her with a haggard look. “We should have brought it out here with us,” he said, and chuckled to break the tension.

“Wine always comes in handy.” Lauren poured him some and filled her own glass. “And I think I have more if we need it.”

“Are you mad?” he whispered. “I hate not knowing.”

“I want you to finish your story.”

“Cynthia was pregnant. Of course she was.” He sipped his drink. “And the thing was, I couldn’t remember much about either night she and I slept together.” He sputtered, choking a little on the wine and his emotions. “Jesus. I thought it was a regular call when I got up. And I was standing there on the beach and she sounded like she’d been crying...” He broke off as his voice cracked.

A wave of pity crashed over Lauren. She scooted close to him on the couch, her heart breaking as she watched him crumble under the weight of a story he’d carried around for ten years. Trent looked so broken, so alone. It scared her. Maybe she’d been harsh, too cold. Perhaps she should just forgive him. He didn’t have to tell her the rest of the story. She could forget what he did.

Couldn’t she?

“It happens a lot,” she said under her breath. “People make mistakes.”

Trent rubbed his face again and didn’t acknowledge her. “Not like this one. I didn’t know what to do. She said she wanted to keep the baby. She wouldn’t change her mind. I tried to reason with her, but she—”

“Did she keep it?”

“I went back to Amherst. School was about to start anyway. I went home that morning to my parents’ place and booked the first flight I could get. I thought I would convince her that we couldn’t take care of it...” He stopped his story when his voice broke again. To steel himself, he took another drink from his glass. “Cynthia wanted to keep it. She did. She insisted.”

Lauren moved a little closer to him and put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I wish you’d told me.”

“Things got so bad.”

Lauren tightened her grip on his shoulder. “Not so bad. I don’t think so. Sounds like a normal mistake to me.” She shrugged and patted him a couple of times, to show him she didn’t have any anger toward him. “So you have a baby with a woman you don’t love. Happens a lot.”

“But that’s just it.” Trent stiffened and looked down at the floor again. “I don’t.”

6:00 PM