Chapter Twenty-Seven: Other Fish
DANIEL drove up into the hills east of Half Moon Bay, intending to drop by and visit with Dane and Shelly at the Summer Cottage. Dane was fond of hosting ‘Midnight Margaritas’ and ‘Saturday BBQ’ and a variety of other spontaneous social events. He and Shelly liked guests, even seeming pleased to have visitors drop by unannounced. For Daniel, Saturday afternoons at The Summer Cottage had become a regular thing -- he’d been visiting so consistently over the last year and a half, they’d probably worry if he didn’t.
Besides, he thought, they’re probably expecting me to drop by with an explanation about last night’s craziness.
He figured he owed them that. He felt guilty over the dramatic way the evening had ended, his flip-out having added an especially unpleasant timbre to an already strained and awkward situation.
You guys have no idea just how strange that evening probably was, he thought, remembering Nikki’s startling revelation about the men in ‘masks’ that had been watching her...and maybe even subsequently trying to run her over.
What could that be all about?, he wondered, struggling to make sense of such a bizarre and unpredictable scenario.
Why on earth would someone want to kill her? What isn’t she telling me?
He sighed, putting the thought out of his mind. As his car rose up into the hills, he admired the view, appreciating the sunny summer afternoon.
Secrets, he mused, why do we always feel compelled to keep so many secrets?
He sighed again, his mind drifting back.
The sun was shining
outside as he sat in Rose Cooper's kitchen, waiting for Nicolette. He had come over hoping to speak with Nicolette and apologize, to make things right with her after being such an unrestrained jerk the previous weekend. Nearly a week had passed and she was still angry with him -- screening his calls and ignoring his texts. He understood her anger -- but his memories were strangely illogical and disconnected.
He had been surprised to find Nicolette wasn't home, though Rose had invited him in to wait. He tried not to fidget nervously while she puttered about the kitchen. The silence had long since become uncomfortable as he cast about for something to say, but Nicolette's mother didn't seem particularly bothered by it.
"What are your college plans, Daniel?" she asked, smiling at him over her shoulder, her carefully sculpted eyebrows rising slightly as he considered his reply. She was an attractive woman -- he could see the lines of Nicolette's face in her mother's, though her mother’s hair was dark, almost black; they both shared the elfin chin and clearly defined lines, though he felt Rose's bone structure was more severe.
"I think we're going to apply to USC and UCLA, Mrs. Cooper. All the UC's, at least."
He watched as Rose's eyes brows rose in surprise, unease washing through him as she quickly covered it up, "Has she discussed any of the East Coast schools with you?"
Daniel hesitated, puzzled, "No, ma'am, not yet."
Rose nodded thoughtfully, but didn't add anything further.
To forestall a return of the awkward silence, he hurriedly asked, "How are things with you, Mrs. Cooper?"
She turned, drying her hands on a dish rag, her Brown University tank top accented by a loosely buttoned flower-print silk shell. She was older than his mother, but her clothes were form fitting enough to show off her figure to good effect. He forced himself to keep eye contact as she answered, "Well, a mother is only as well as her children, Daniel. My eldest are doing well, but Stuart -- he's such a sweetheart -- has gotten involved with a girl. She lives just down the street, but I don't think she's a good match."
She sighed, a look of sadness crossing her features as she added, "Some day he'll realize that there are other fish in the sea and move on."
She was about to continue, but they heard the front door open, Daniel's heart racing as he heard Nicolette's voice from the entryway, mixed with her father's. A look of irritation briefly crossed Rose's expression, but it was gone so quickly, he was unsure he'd actually seen it. Nicolette walked into the kitchen then froze when she saw Daniel sitting at the kitchen table. He started to smile at her, but her gaze slid away from him, landing on her mother. There was a long, uncomfortable silence as they stared at each other, Nicolette's mother smiling warmly. Something about Nikki's posture, the set of her mouth perhaps, made him suspect that she was alarmed, then gradually angry.
He wondered if perhaps Rose had invited him in against Nicolette's wishes.
"Greg dropped by -- I just thought..." Rose hesitated as Nicolette's eyes narrowed, then an embarrassed look crossed her expression, "I said 'Greg' didn't I?" She looked at Daniel apologetically, "Daniel -- I'm so sorry!"
She grinned conspiratorially at Daniel, her smile bringing an answering smile in return, "I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached!"
A brief silence ensued, a silence which Daniel found unbearable, "Hey Nikki!" he sad weakly.
"Would you like some lemonade, sweetie?" Rose asked.
Daniel started to agree but Nicolette interrupted him, "We were just going to go for a walk, Mother. Is that alright?"
Again, he thought he saw that flash of irritation before she smiled, "Of course. Don't be long, 'Colette -- you have homework still to do."
Nicolette nodded, "Yes Mother."
She glanced at Daniel, gesturing with her head as she turned, heading back to the front door.
Ten minutes later they were walking side by side down the quiet suburb they both lived in. Silence had settled between them, broken only by the occasional passing car. Though the afternoon was warm and sunny, even the cheerful birdsong around them couldn't ease the arctic silence. They both waved desultorily to Mr. Duitz as he washed his Mercedes, whistling to himself as he worked, the sun reflecting off his bald patch.
Daniel took a deep breath, then took the plunge, "Nikki," he started.
He was startled when she turned to face him, her eyes brimming with unshed tears, her voice tight with anger, "Daniel, don't come to our house any more, okay?"
He stopped, taken aback, "What...?"
"Or at least make sure I'm home before stopping by..." she abruptly noticed that he wasn't walking with her any more, had stopped several paces ago. He suddenly felt as though he couldn't breathe, his heart beating so hard he felt it in his fingertips, "Are you breaking up with me?"
She stared at him in shock, "Breaking up with you?" she repeated, clearly baffled at the non-sequitur. Something loosened in his chest at her confusion. Understanding flooded her features as she replayed their conversation. She shook her head, some of the anger draining out of her; he realized it hadn't been directed at him -- not all of it, at least. He resumed walking, quickening his pace until they were once again side by side.
"Okay," he said uncertainly. "Does it have something to do with your mom? I mean, she wasn't talking about you, just your little brother, a little bit."
Nicolette glanced sideways at him, then shrugged uncomfortably, "Just promise, okay? Call or text first."
He hesitated, puzzled what this was all about before finally nodding reluctantly, "I promise -- I won't show up unannounced again."
They walked in silence for moment, lost in their respective thoughts as a warm summer breeze laden with the smell of jasmine teased Nicolette's hair.
"Does this have something do to with Greg?" he asked, the question popping out before he even had a chance to consider it.
She glanced at him, brows lowering, "...Greg? No."
They walked in silence for moment, Daniel mentally kicking himself the whole way.
Nicolette broke into his thoughts, "How long were you alone with Mother?"
He frowned, puzzled at the apparent jump in the conversation. He shrugged uncomfortably, "Five minutes, maybe ten."
Nicolette nodded absently, but didn't add anything. He decided to let the matter drop.
"Nikki, listen..." he hesitated, his eyes focused on the street ahead of them, "I'm sorry. With my father's... My mom's
not taking it very well."
Nicolette frowned sadly as she lightly touched his elbow, "No, why would she?"
Daniel nodded absently, hesitating briefly as he regathered his courage, "I've sort of been, well, not myself."
He hesitated again, the set of his shoulders radiating hurt and shame, "Up in the hills...I'm sorry, Nikki. I wasn't..."
She frowned at him as he searched for words; she wanted to interrupt, to make this easier for him, but something held her back. She sensed she'd be doing him a disservice if she did. She clenched her jaw, struggling to maintain her silence.
"I'm in the Wilderness," he said finally "and it's...hard finding my way back."
"The Wilderness?" she asked, the question surprised out of her.
A faint smile touched his lips, but it conveyed such a wealth of sadness and hurt that she finally gave in. He looked down at her in surprise when she linked arms with him. Though his eyes were watery with unshed tears, his voice was even when he spoke, "Yeah. I think it was something Mom and Dad got from their Peace Corps days. Mom explained it as being lost or alone and feeling far from help, or...civilization, I guess. Out in the darkness."
"The Wilderness," she repeated softly, rolling the concept and its encapsulating word around in her mind, trying it on.
"I'm not saying it excuses anything I did -- I'll do better and make it up to you, I promise -- but I wanted to try and explain."
She nodded thoughtfully, "Okay. I'm not angry at you, Dan -- and I meant what I said up in the hills."
He heard the change in her voice as she added, "But if you do that to me again, you can pretty much assume we're broken up."
He chuckled, "I know. But I won't -- so there's no need to worry. And I feel the same way about you...about us."
She nodded, hearing the certainty in his voice.
They walked in silence, listening to the birdsong and the distant rush of traffic down the 1.
She glanced thoughtfully over her shoulder, her thoughts turned inward as she mused, "The Wilderness."
He briefly sensed something close to the surface, something dark and misshapen. He felt a return of the nameless foreboding that had been troubling him lately. He debated whether he should confront her about it, whether he should try and drag it out into the open, hoping that maybe exposing it to the light would kill it. He hesitated, wondering if now was the right time, what with their reconciliation so recent, with everything that was already going on.
Nicolette's phone rang -- her mother calling to check up on her.
And just like that, the moment was gone.
How many other opportunities did I miss?, he wondered
He shook his head, forcing himself to focus on the narrow road as it rose up into the forested hills.
He passed through a patch of exceptionally thick forest, full of undergrowth and afternoon shadow, instinctively slowing as he approached the Summer Cottage’s driveway, a beaten up ribbon of dark gray asphalt winding its way through the trees away from the narrow, one-and-a-half lane road. Daniel knew that Dane’s home was situated on a 30 acre plot of land; that was probably why he’d bought it...or at least, why Dane’s father had bought it.
He rounded the bend, arriving at the open gravelly area which served as a car park for the house. He noted that the T was haphazardly parked next to a little white Rabbit coupe. Shelly and Dane were both home, then. More than once, Dane had tried to buy Shelly a newer car, but she had refused, saying that the Rabbit was a gift from her parents and it would hurt their feelings if he replaced it. Daniel suspected that was why Dane had bought the T -- ostensibly for himself, but really to please Shelly, allowing her to drive it whenever she wanted. Daniel shook his head, chuckling at the thought of being able to buy a Ferrari as a toy for a girlfriend; he wished he had that kind of disposable income for...
He chuckled again, letting the thought go as he parked.
He climbed the concrete steps that rounded the side of the hill from the carpark behind the house to the front walkway, pausing briefly to enjoy the view from the front porch. The house was perched on a small ridge rising above the surrounding forest, giving spectacular views of the surrounding hills and the long slope down to the coast. On clear days, the house afforded views all the way to the ocean.
He turned as the door opened behind him, Shelly standing in the doorway, smiling in welcome, wearing a simple but flattering sea blue shift dress, her feet bare.
“I heard your truck! Come in!”
He couldn’t help but to grin in response, seeing Shelly standing in the doorway to what was really a fairly modest ranch style home. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a kid playing house, and that her parents would be home any minute.
The interior of the home was wide open and spacious, designed to feel airy and open, with the bedrooms on a second floor in back. Two story bay windows let in the afternoon light, making the home cheery and welcoming, the wooden floor and paneling lending a sense of warmth and comfort.
“Dane’s on a call for the club -- some wrinkle about zoning or liquor licenses or something. He might be a little while.”
She wrinkled her nose in irritation as she added, “One of the guys he does business with is being a serious pill.”
Daniel nodded, following her to the soft suede couch sitting like an island of comfort in the spacious interior, the stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor behind it.
“Grab you a beer? Dane has some Belgian imports -- the ones with the weird stumpy little bottles.”
“Sure!”
He smiled at her enthusiasm as she bounced immediately back to her feet; it was hard not to get swept up when she was in an upbeat mood. He heard her clattering in the kitchen, followed by the breathy fwoosh as she opened the bottle then padded back from the kitchen a moment later. She settled on the couch, folding her legs under her, unconsciously pulling a coarse brown knitted afghan over her exposed knees.
He cautiously sipped the beer, finding it hoppy and bitter, but palatable. There was a long silence as Daniel contemplated Shelly, realizing that he barely spoke to her despite his friendship with Dane. Suddenly feeling awkward and shy, he stared down at the beer in his hands, making a show of studying the label as he ventured with forced nonchalance, “So, last night...”
Her smile faded, her expression becoming serious, “That was pretty scary.”
His shoulders tightened involuntarily, feeling self-conscious and defensive before she clarified, “I never even saw the car until it was practically parked over Nikki. How’s she doing? We’ve only exchanged a couple of texts.”
Daniel nodded, relaxing slightly as he realized she wasn’t going to bring up his flashback. Even though he understood the cause of his flashbacks, he still felt an acute sense of embarrassment when they caused scenes like last night. He had spent the better part of the day replaying his memories of the evening, trying to find any hint of corroborating information for Nikki’s story, while simultaneously trying to gauge his friends’ reactions. As he’d replayed those memories, he had realized that Nikki had handled the situation well, barely losing her cool after her near-death experience. Somehow, she found the sense of perspective to not only deal with her own fright and pain, but had managed to find the will to help him level out after he’d lost it. He knew from personal experience that that kind of self-possession under stress was rare...rare and almost always borne of experience.
“She seemed okay last night -- a little banged up, maybe, but she was holding up pretty well. We texted a couple times this morning when she went to work...”
His voice trailed off as he felt a dull ache in his chest, feeling the truth he’d been struggling with over the last day settling around his heart like constricting barbed wire, pulling tight, tearing him with each heart beat. He’d been grappling with it since the club, feeling as though something he’d built up in his mind was finally slipping away from him. It had been easy to build up fantasies for the future based on idealiz
ed and increasingly distant history, but on some level, he was uncomfortably aware that his memories were idealized -- that it was easy to remember the good times while glossing over the bad ones. But increasingly he’d found himself reflecting on some of the other times; the arguments, the moments where it felt as though an inexplicable gulf had opened between them. It was that inexplicability that disturbed him most deeply, made him question the basis on which their love had been based.
It suggests that maybe I had wanted our relationship to be something that it never was. If the basis of our relationship had been rooted in wishful thinking and denial, he wondered, does that have larger implications for my feelings about her? Should it?
But even if their relationship hadn’t been based on, well, falsehoods seemed too strong a word...misperceptions? Even if it had been based on misperceptions, was the girl that had left the same as the girl that had returned to Half Moon Bay? If the girl that had come back was so different, then the love he still felt in his heart for the girl of his memories...that love no longer had an outlet. Was loving someone that only existed in his memory any different from loving someone who had died? He felt his throat closing at the thought, the ache in his chest expanding until it became unbearable.
Shelly quietly watched the emotions play across his face, giving him a little time to sort through his feelings. With surprising gentleness, she cut into his thoughts, “What’s going on in there?”
He nodded, realizing he’d fallen silent and probably had been for the better part of a minute. He felt his heart constrict further as he struggled to find an answer that summed up his thoughts and feelings. When he found the answer, he fought to keep his voice level, embarrassed to be showing so much emotion to someone he barely knew, “She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Shelly cocked her head to the side, a quizzical expression crossing her countenance, “Gone? What do you mean?”
“Nikki. The girl I knew and...” he coughed, struggling to clear the lump in his throat before he could continue, “Wherever she’s been, that girl is gone now. I guess, subliminally, I had sort of hoped...”
He trailed off, unable to continue.
She nodded, a soft sympathetic smile playing about her lips, “Maybe. But is that really necessarily such a bad thing?”
He frowned, feeling his stomach clench in anticipation of another variation of the “other fish in the sea” talk -- one he had weathered endlessly over the years, had long since acknowledged as the truth, even as he struggled to let go and move on. He hated that speech, because it so fundamentally missed the point -- that Nikki had so grown into his life that it felt as if her disappearance had torn away a piece of himself. Other fish in the sea couldn’t restore that missing piece, and he’d struggled for years to fill that void. ‘Other fish’ was a solution for a wholly different problem. Every time he’d heard that speech, he had felt that much more alienated and alone; he had come to see that speech as the clearest indication possible that he wasn’t being listened to or understood. He steeled himself for another variation of that dismissal, feeling too weary and heart sore to try and explain -- and honestly, feeling silly and histrionic that such a distinction would loom so disproportionately large in his internal landscape.
But Shelly surprised him.
“You’re assuming that she’s come back a stranger. What if the opposite is true? What if she’s come back distilled -- more intensely filled with the things that made you love her in the first place?”
“What if she hasn’t?”
“But what if she has?” she countered. Shelly shrugged, adding a brushing-away gesture with her right hand, gently brushing away his argument, “If you’re only focusing on the simple fact that change has happened, you could be missing the changes that represent improvements. Or new things worth loving.”
He felt his throat tighten as he realized that she was offering him something that the long years of absence had made impossible to offer himself -- hope that it might still work, that enough of the girl he remembered might still remain for his feelings to be meaningful. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, the strangely shaped beer bottle dangling from his left hand, momentarily forgotten.
“Damn,” he swore with feeling, momentarily overcome with a confusing, painful mixture of hope and vindication. He had a brief mental image of himself looking down on all the ‘fish in the sea’ people, shaking his fist at them and shouting ‘I told you so!’.
He felt as though he had never wanted to believe in something as much as he wanted to believe in her simple suggestion, while simultaneously dreading the incipient feelings of vulnerability which that breath of hope brought. He glanced at her when she rested her hand lightly on his forearm, her fingertips cool. He stared into her eyes, momentarily losing himself in their depths as she smiled softly. For the first time, he felt acutely jealous of Dane, that he should find someone like Shelly and share such a deep connection with her.
“Are those contacts, or are your eyes really that blue?”
She smirked, the faintest hint of color suffusing her cheeks, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He chuckled, feeling relief at the release, small as it might be...but she didn’t withdraw. He felt her hand tighten as the smile faded a little bit, “She’s seen you when you’re not at your best -- does it look like she’s running away?”
She let that sink in, settling back on the couch and taking a sip of tea from her mug, wrapping her hands around it, briefly resurrecting the childlike impression he’d had when she’d first opened the door.
“I know you’ve got a lot to think about, Dan, but having a mystery to explore isn’t necessarily a bad thing; ‘different from expectations’ isn’t necessarily ‘worse than expectations’.”
He nodded thoughtfully, still reeling with emotion. He still felt the barbed-wire wrapped around his heart, but it felt as though the edges had dulled a little, the constriction loosened.
She smiled as she casually asked, “What are your plans tonight, Dan?”
He shrugged, feeling his stomach flip over with butterflies as he answered, “I’ll probably be meeting Nicolette at her new place after she gets off work at Harry’s, which, on a Saturday, is probably going to be pretty late -- close to 10 or 10:30.”
Shelly smiled, clearly pleased to hear the news.
Abruptly, she bounced to her feet, the afghan covering her lap tumbling to the floor, “Oh! I almost forgot!”
He watched as she almost skipped on the way to the kitchen, feeling a moment of trepidation as he listened to sounds of cutlery and the clink of glass. A moment later, she returned, wearing a triumphal smile as she presented him with an opaque rectangular tupperware box.
“I made some gluten-free, vegan, lemon pound cake this morning. I made an extra one in case you dropped by.”
He smiled, accepting the tupperware, feeling as though she’d handed him a plastic container stuffed with a sleeping raccoon -- unpredictable, possibly dangerous, definitely something with no obvious use. He put the tupperware on the glass and steel coffee table, reluctantly reminding himself not to forget it. Shelly was sometimes a wizard with gluten free and vegan baking, but other times...
He suppressed a violent shudder, hoping this was one of her wizardly endeavors.