Page 42 of Secrets at Seaside
“I’m sorry.” She pressed a kiss to the center of his chest. “I’m glad you didn’t shut me out forever, and I know you and your father had a rough relationship that summer. I don’t know how you eventually separated seeing me from everything that happened that summer. Not just between us, but between you and your father.”
Tony looked away, clenching his jaw. It was a natural reaction when he thought of his father. “I couldn’t fight the urge to see you any longer. When you graduated from college, it felt like you’d achieved what your father had pushed for, so I guess I thought it was an okay time to risk seeing you again. You were an adult, not relying on his support to make it through school.” He shrugged. “I wanted our friendship, Amy. I needed it and couldn’t deny it any longer. I missed you. But my father…”
“I’m sure he’s on this disk, and I thought that since I wasn’t there to help you say goodbye to him and deal with all those emotions then, that this might be a good time for us to do that together.”
“I’m not sure I want to see him right now.”
“I know. I thought you might say that. I realized today that we’d been so caught up in our relationship that summer that maybe we overlooked the good parts of your dad.”
Tony doubted that there were many good parts to overlook from those few weeks. His father had been a whole different person from the man he’d ever been before, and his mother had become solemn, more of a peacemaker, trying to gloss over what was going on. She never spoke of it, but Tony knew she’d noticed. She had to. How could she not? But he’d never blamed her for not getting involved. Tony was a man by then. At twenty he didn’t need his mother taking care of things for him.
“All I ask is that you try to watch with an open mind. We both have a lot at stake right now. I have a job I have to either give up really soon so I don’t piss off Duke, or…”
“Or?” He gazed down at her, hardly able to believe what she was saying.
“I don’t know. I want us to work, but you were right. We can’t have a relationship where we pretend the past never happened. For us to move forward, I think we need closure on all of it. What happened between us, which we’re already dealing with. Your father. My father.”
“Your father?” Tony nodded, beginning to understand where she was heading with this. He touched his forehead to hers. “You’re going for the clean slate.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I hope so.”
WHOEVER SAID “A picture’s worth a thousand words” was wrong. Their worth was unquantifiable. Amy sat snuggled against Tony as photo after photo projected onto the side of the dune. Pictures of Amy and the girls from the time they were toddlers until they were bikini-wearing teenagers, laughing, making faces, and running away from the camera. Amy wasn’t surprised to see herself smiling, but the look in her eyes was so much less guarded than the eyes that looked back at her in more recent years.
“You were always the most beautiful girl on the beach.” Tony kissed her temple.
“If you liked flat-chested women with almost no shape.”
“I loved a perfectly chested woman with the sexiest shape.” He pulled her closer. “Still do.”
The next picture was of Amy and her father when she was a little girl. They were flying a kite at Wellfleet Harbor.
“I remember that kite. My father bought it for me in Provincetown.”
A picture of Amy and her parents sitting on the fishing pier in Chatham flashed on the dune; behind them were their other friends from Seaside. Tony was sitting off to the side with Jamie, looking out at the boats, and Amy, though only eleven or twelve years old, was staring at Tony.
“See?” she said. “I even loved you then.”
“I think I knew it, but I wrote it off because I had just become a teenager and I wasn’t supposed to like you in that way.”
“Like you were ever a rule follower.” She bumped her shoulder against him with the tease.
The next picture was of Tony and his father. Tony’s father’s hand was on Tony’s shoulder, and they were both laughing, mouths open wide, eyes alit with humor.
“That was before he changed.” Tony’s stomach lurched. He tried to push away the longing and resentment that were vying for his attention.
“No. That was the last summer. I remember that bathing suit you have on. See?” She pointed to the photo on the dune. “That’s what I mean. There were moments that he wasn’t as gruff that summer, and we’ve forgotten them. He was a good man, Tony. It was just a bad summer. Everyone has bad times. Gosh, if anyone knows that, it should be us, right?”
He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. The picture changed to one of Tony standing at the edge of the water with his surfboard, wearing a pair of black board shorts, one hand on his hip, his eyes narrow and serious. Jamie was standing behind him, two boys who had turned into men over the winter and fall. Their shoulders newly broadened, the hair on their legs thicker, their cheeks unshaven and scruffy.
“I wonder what you were thinking in that picture.”
Tony looked down at her. “The summer we got together? I was probably thinking that I’d better get in the water before I saw you in your bikini and sported a woody.”
Amy laughed. A picture of Jenna and Amy appeared next. Their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders and their faces scrunched up in goofy expressions. Even as a teenager Jenna had a figure that could stop a clock and a mischievous light in her eyes that could light up a room.
“When I look at that picture, all I see is the way your eyes glimmered with happiness, your sweet body that I will never get enough of…” He pulled her into his lap and brushed her hair away from her face, leaving his hand on her cheek. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Amy blushed with a sweet smile.
