Page 47 of It Started with a Sunset
Her dad seemed to ponder for a few moments, then said, “Remember when you were little and you’d start screaming in the middle of the night that there was a spider on your ceiling? I would come running in and turn on the light, and there would be nothing there. Then you’d realize that it had just been a nightmare and there hadn’t actually been anything to worry about.”
“Except that one time when there was.”
“Yes, except that one time when there was. I’m going to ask you some questions and I want you to really think about your answers. It’ll be like turning on the light, and shining a light on a problem is always the best way to figure out how to deal with it. Because if you do, you’ll either see that there’s something there to be afraid of and how big it is—like that one time when there actually was a spider on your ceiling—or it’ll help you to see that there’s nothing there at all and you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”
Summer nodded. “I like that plan.”
“Okay, first question. And think back to everything you know about Brock. Does he normally give up on things after a little while?”
The sun was getting lower and lower on the horizon as she ran her toes through the water and the sand as she thought of all of the work projects she’d seen him face over the years. Tess would assign the team goals or Brock would set them for himself—ridiculously large goals at times. And he never gave up on any of them, no matter how hard they got.
“He doesn’t. He decided he wanted to be the Assistant Director over Financial Aid when he was a student. There weren’t any openings in the Welcome Center when he graduated, though, so he went to academic advising for three years until he could become an admissions recruiter. And he did that until the position he wanted was open. I asked him where he thought he’d be in five years, and he said doing the same job because he felt so passionately about it.”
Her dad smiled. “He sounds like a pretty dedicated person. Does he ever slack on the job?”
“No. Even if the rest of us do.”
“So, given what you know of him, do you think that sometimes he won’t be there for you?”
Okay, now that he was spelling everything out for her, it seemed ridiculous that she’d ever been afraid that he might not. He was always there for anyone who needed him. She shook her head.
“Does Brock understand how important family is?”
For years, she’d been hearing stories about Brock’s family, and there was always an undercurrent of love beneath everything he said. She realized that knowledge had always let her know that she could trust him, even when they had been disagreeing about so many things while working together for years. She had grown up in a family wherefamilyhadn’t seemed important, and she’d admired how important family had seemed to him long before she’d been attracted to him.
“He does. He has four siblings he helped to raise, and even though they’re very different from him, he loves them a lot.”
Her dad’s smile seemed to have a breath of relief behind it. “Okay, then, one last question, and this one is more about you, I guess. You mentioned worrying about closing off all other possibilities—do you think there might be someone out there who would be a better fit for you than Brock?”
She shook her head as she looked out at the brilliant colors of the sunset and thought of her and Brock watching a similar sunset during the football game back when this all started. “Honestly, until I started dating Brock, I didn’t know there was a guy out there who was as perfect for me as he is. I think maybe down deep I knew that, and it was what scared me the most.”
It hit her how her friends had been saying exactly that all along—that it was her fear that would stop something great happening between her and Brock. She hadn’t realized how right they’d been until now.
And then the full weight of the knowledge of her realizations hit her with an incredible sense of urgency. A need to make things right and to do it now. “So, basically, what you’re saying is I’ve been pushing away the guy who’s perfect for me.”
“It sounds like it.”
“But Dad, what if he doesn’t think that I’m in it fully? That I’m not ready to stick with him forever? Everyone always expects me to move on to other things quickly because that’s what I do with everything outside of the Welcome Center.” She could feel her words coming out in a rush, but she couldn’t slow them down. “I need to find a way to convince him that I’m not going to move on.”
She pulled her feet out of the water to brush the sand off, but then immediately gave up. Her shoes weren’t close by anyway—she’d have to walk barefoot to her car to get a towel from her trunk. She closed up her camp chair, but the need to rush made it difficult for her to get it to slide into its sleeve.
Her dad took it from her hands and slid it in so easily. Then he put a hand on her arm. “Sunshine, this guy sounds like he’s a rock. I don’t think he’s going to go away if you don’t get to him in the next couple of minutes.”
“I know, I just”—She ran her hands through her hair and glanced toward her car—“I don’t want to waste another minute not being with him.”
He nodded and said, “I understand.”
She sprinted up the incline and across the wooden platform with the tables and up the few wooden stairs to the parking lot and pulled a towel from her trunk and raced it back down to where her dad now had both chairs folded in their sleeves and slung over his shoulder and was standing by their shoes.
Once they had their shoes on and everything back in the car and were heading toward Lake Baldwin State, Summer called Deja’s cell phone. When she answered, Summer asked, “Are you still at work?”
“I am.”
“Oh, good! I didn’t think anyone would be this late. Is Brock still there?”
Her “yes” sounded pretty hesitant, so Summer said, “Keep him there, whatever it takes. It’s important.”
“Summer, what is up?”
