She didn’t see the boat and since she could no longer hold her breath, she began to fight him. She wanted to go to the surface and breathe, but Ty was pulling her down. It went through her mind that if he couldn’t have her he was going to make sure that no one else did. He intended it to be a murder-suicide, Faith thought as she tried to push away from him, but he held her tight. She hit his chest with her fists, kicked against him. Her nails clawed at his neck and she felt his skin tear. But Ty wouldn’t let go of her. His arms around her were a steel grip as he kept going down.
When they were nearly at the bottom of the lake and Faith was about to pass out from lack of oxygen, she saw the bottom of the boat go over their heads. It was a big boat and sat deeply in the water. If Ty hadn’t moved them, they’d be dead now.
When he saw that she knew what he was doing, he let her go and at last she went up. When she hit the surface, she took air into her burning lungs. She didn’t know how long they’d been under, but she was sure it was the longest time she’d ever held her breath.
Two seconds later, Ty came up beside her. He gave her one hard look, then he swam to shore, Faith behind him.
He grabbed towels from the trunk of his car and, without looking at her, tossed her one.
“I’m sorry,” she said to his back as he dried himself off. “Ty, look at me. I’m sorry that I fought you. I thought—”
He turned to her, his face showing his rage. “Yeah? Exactly what did you think? That I was trying to kill you?” He put his hand to his neck and it came away bloody from the scratches she’d made.
When she didn’t say anything, he looked at her again. “By all of heaven,” he said softly, “you thought that if I couldn’t have you nobody would, so I was killing the two of us.”
It was exactly what she’d thought and her face turned the color of her hair. “No, of course I didn’t think that,” she whispered.
“Like hell you didn’t,” he said as he tossed his wet towel in the back of the car, then pulled his jeans on over his wet trunks. “So you and Eddie went away to some ritzy college way up North and you come back here to look down on us in the South. Never mind that you and I practically lived in each other’s pockets all our lives. Never mind that you and I used to screw like rabbits. Now you’ve elevated yourself—and, yes, I do know what that word means—and you think you’re better than us hillbillies.”
He paused for a moment, then looked back at her. “You know something, Faith, I was wrong about you. You have changed. You’re selling your entire future. But for what? To live with a guy who you think will please your mother? Do you think that if you marry rich Eddie that you’ll rise up into another class of people?” He didn’t wait for her to answer or explain. “But you know what you’re going to get, Faith? You’re going to marry Eddie’s mother. She rules him. Always has, always will. And you will always see yourself through her eyes. And that means that no matter what you achieve in life you’ll never be good enough.”
He opened the car door, got in and sat there, staring straight ahead, saying nothing. Faith quickly pulled her clothes on over the wet suit, picked the blanket off the ground, and got into the passenger side of the car.
Ty didn’t look at her as he grabbed the blanket and threw it out of the car onto the ground. “I never want to see that thing again. Too many bad memories.” He started the car and they drove home in silence.
Six
“What happened after that?” Amy asked when Faith didn’t say anything more. “You can’t leave us dangling. I know you married Eddie, but what happened to Tyler?”
“I don’t know,” Faith said, finishing her glass of wine and pouring herself another one. “I honestly don’t know what happened.”
For a moment, Amy and Zoë were quiet.
“What did you do after the fight?” Zoë asked.
“Ty let me off at my house and I went inside. My mother was waiting for me with her sharp tongue to bawl me out. She said I was no better than a streetwalker, and that I looked like one with my wet clothes and my hair in a tangle. But for once in my life I didn’t defend myself. I went to my room, changed my clothes, and went to bed. I was so depressed I think I would have stayed there for the rest of my life if Eddie hadn’t come to rescue me the next day. My mother was so glad to see him that she let him into my bedroom.”
“Go away,” Faith said, pulling the covers over her head. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“I’m not anyone,” Eddie said as he gently pulled at the covers.
But Faith kept her face covered. “Leave me alone. I look horrible.”
“Like I’ve never seen you look bad,” he said. “I’ve seen you with mud all over you. And what about the time you and Ty rolled in the poison ivy? You were more than ugly then.”
“Don’t mention his name to me.”
“Ah,” Eddie said as he sat down on a pink-upholstered chair across from her. “Tyler. I thought as much.” His voice lost its humor and became dull, dispirited. “So what happened between you two this time?”
Faith pushed the covers away, sat up in bed, looked at Eddie and almost smiled. He was pleasingly familiar to her and he fit well in her childish room. She had an idea of what he’d look like when he was an old man. He’d be bald, of course, because his father had been, and his mother’s hair was quite thin in places. And he’d have a little paunch and he’d wear glasses.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just imagining you as an old man.”
Eddie didn’t smile like she thought he would. “I want to know what happened between you and Tyler.”
“The same ol’ thing,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She hadn’t taken a shower since she’d been out with Ty the day before and she could smell the lake water on her body. Her hair was frizzy and greasy at the same time.
“Meaning that you two got along perfectly until one of you said something that the other took the wrong way, then you started fighting.”
“More or less,” Faith said, not wanting to look in his eyes. She couldn’t tell him the circumstances of the fight because that would involve telling Eddie about the underwater kiss.
He got up, went to the window, and looked out. “I thought that it was all over with him,” he said softly. “I thought that the years you and I spent together would have wiped Ty out of your mind. But I can see that it didn’t.”
“Nothing was wiped out of my mind except that I can’t be around Ty for very long at a time.”
Eddie looked back at her, his face in an unpleasant scowl. “I seem to remember when you two spent a lot of time together.”
Faith looked away and tried to keep her face from turning red. After a moment she looked back at him. “All right, so we did, but I didn’t stay here with him, did I? I left with you.”
“Only because your mother filled out your college application and paid someone to write your entrance essay for you.”
“Okay, so maybe I was reluctant to go to a college a thousand miles away from everyone I knew.”
“Away from Ty. He’s the only one here who matters to you. You would have applied to go to school on the moon to get away from your mother.”
Faith ran her hands over her eyes. “You’re not making this any easier for me. It’s true that back then I didn’t want to leave Ty, but I did want to get an education so I wouldn’t be stuck in a house changing diapers for the next twenty years.”
“And for me.”
“What?” she asked. “Oh right. I wanted to go to be near you. Eddie, you have always been my friend as much as Ty has.”
“Yes, I have, but certainly not in the same way as he has.”
At that Faith narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re referring to sex, that was not my fault.” In her third year at school, when she and Eddie were talking about marriage as if they’d already said their vows, one night when her roommate was away, Faith had planned a candlelit dinner for the two of them. Her idea was that he’d spe
nd the night with her.
But it hadn’t happened. Eddie had walked in, taken one look at the scene, and his back had become rigid. Throughout the meal he’d looked like a soldier at attention. He wouldn’t touch the wine Faith served and as soon as he’d eaten he practically ran from the room. Faith had been so hurt that she couldn’t bear to look at him for nearly two weeks.
During those weeks, Eddie had drowned her room in flowers, but she still couldn’t look at him. When it started on the third week, he’d caught her by the arm as she was walking across a remote area of campus, and he’d made her sit and talk with him. That’s when he told her that he wanted them to save themselves for their wedding night, then he’d given her a three-carat diamond ring. Oddly, he hadn’t said the words “Will you marry me?” But Faith assumed that’s what the ring meant. As she started to slip the ring on her left hand, Eddie said he wanted her to wear it on a chain around her neck—he’d even bought her a chain. He didn’t have to say that he feared that if she were seen wearing the ring, someone would tell his mother.
In spite of the secrecy, the beautiful ring had been enough to make Faith forgive him, but there had been several times when she’d mentioned the way he’d turned down her invitation for intimacy. No matter that he’d worked to make it right, it still stung.
“Yes, it’s all my fault,” Eddie said, his eyes blazing. “I’m not like Ty, with his great good looks, his flashy cars, and his ease with women. I’ve never been like him, but I always thought that you knew me well enough to know that. And I thought things were decided between us.”
Faith flung back the covers—she was fully dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt—and went to the dresser to pick up her hairbrush. “By ‘decided,’ do you mean our engagement? Do you mean, have I picked out my dress yet?” Before he could speak, she turned on him. “Look, Eddie, I don’t know what’s going on with me right now. I thought my life was settled, but I’m not sure it is.”
“What are you saying?” There was a note of panic in his voice. “You aren’t calling off the wedding, are you?”
Faith put her hands to her temples. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in a one-act surrealistic play.” She looked at him. “Eddie, I know you gave me a ring and I’ve worn it around my neck for nearly two years, and I know that you and I talk about marriage as if we did the deed years ago. But the truth is that you never officially asked me to marry you and I never accepted.”
When she started to speak, she put up her hand. “No, just listen to me. I need some time before I decide what to do with my life.”
“Damn him!” Eddie said under his breath. His fists were clenched at his sides.
“Wait a minute! I thought Ty was your friend as well as mine.”
“Not when it comes to love,” Eddie said, his blue eyes cold and hard.
When Faith looked at him, she took a step back. Eddie’s eyes were as angry and as hate-filled as his mother’s.
Faith opened the little enameled box on top of her dresser and took out Eddie’s ring on the chain. “I think you should keep this until things between us are more certain,” she said quietly.
“Faith, you can’t let one afternoon with Ty change your entire future.”
“How do you know how much time I spent with him?”
“Do you think you can do anything in this town without everyone knowing?” He stepped toward her. “You and I are engaged, but you went out with another man.”
“We will only be engaged when you tell your mother and we toast with champagne at your house.”
Eddie stayed where he was and said nothing.
Faith gave him a smile, then dropped the ring into his shirt pocket. “Let’s give this some time, shall we? When you’re ready to go public with us, then I’ll be ready to listen. But for now, I think we should…” She wasn’t sure what to say.
“We should what? Just be friends? Is that what you want to tell me but can’t make yourself say? We’ve spent the last four years together, but you blow me off after you spend just a few hours with your ex-lover? Is that what I’m supposed to understand?”
“Eddie, I really don’t like your tone.”
“And I don’t like what you’re doing with my life. We had it all planned. But now you’re throwing it away.” He took a deep breath and calmed his anger. “Faith,” he said in the voice of a man giving advice to a child, “you’re one of the smartest women I’ve ever met and right now you need to think about what you’re doing. You can’t throw me away for someone like Tyler Parks.”
“What does that mean? That you think you’re a higher class than he is?”
“Don’t be absurd. But I am thinking of practical matters. If you marry Tyler, where will you live? In that shack of his out in the woods? Will you get pregnant on your wedding night and spend your pregnancy working at the local Burger King?”
“For your information, Mr. Edward Wellman, while you and I have been at college having a good time, Ty has been here earning money. Not only that, but he’s bought me a house.”
“A house?” Eddie said, his voice low, his eyes wide. “What kind of house?”
“That big old farmhouse just past the Carsons’ place.”
Eddie frowned for a moment as he thought. When he remembered the house, his frown deepened.
His expression made Faith smile. She didn’t want to betray Ty’s confidence and tell about the new highway, but it was nice to see that Eddie knew the house and knew that it wasn’t just a “shack in the woods.”
Eddie recovered himself. “What has Ty been doing to earn money?”
There was a hint of something in his voice that Faith didn’t like. She also didn’t like the way this argument was going. She’d had very few disagreements with Eddie in her life. As kids she and Tyler had been the ones with the ideas. They’d come up with plans for the exciting things they did, such as putting pennies on the railroad tracks.
Eddie had always been a follower, the one who was up to doing anything they wanted to, but when it got too strenuous, Eddie had stayed far enough away from them to watch, but not participate.
She would have said that she knew everything there was to know about Eddie, but now she was seeing a different side of him. She was seeing what she recognized as his mother in him. She’d never thought about it, but it was inevitable that he would have picked up some of his mother’s snobbery. What was making her sick was that Eddie was directing that snobbery at their friend Ty. Considering that Ty had twice saved Eddie’s life when they were kids, he shouldn’t snub him. But then, the first time Eddie’d been saved, he said that if it hadn’t been for Ty he wouldn’t have been there in the first place, so in a way, it was Ty’s duty to save him. Ty had punched Eddie in the nose. The second time Ty saved him, Eddie said, “Thank you.”
Now, as Faith listened to Eddie, she thought that she wanted him to leave her house and never come back. Instead, she said, “I think it would be better for both of us to take the summer to think about what we want to do with our lives.”
“I’ve known what I wanted to do with my life since I was six years old,” Eddie said softly, the anger gone. “I’ve wanted you since you lent me your blue crayon.”
“Because yours was broken,” Faith said, smiling at the memory. “You opened your new box of crayons and the blue was broken. I thought you were going to start crying, so I lent you mine.”
“And you lent Ty all of them, yours and mine, because he didn’t have any crayons,” Eddie said.
Faith smiled more broadly. There really were strong ties between the three of them. Her anger at Eddie left her. “We’ll take this summer to think about things, all right? You work on your mother and try to get her used to the idea that I might be part of your family, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Spend your days with Ty? Your nights with him?” Eddie spat out the words.
Again, she stepped back from him. “He never wants to see me again so you don’t have any worries on that part. I think I’ll…”
/> “You’ll do what?” Eddie asked, but softer this time.
“I think I’ll get a job.” She’d not thought of it before, but she suddenly realized that in the last two years she’d been so absorbed in the idea that she was going to be Eddie’s wife that the idea of getting a job was new to her. But now that she’d thought of it she liked it. She could start making a dent on her student loan debt.
“Doing what?” Eddie asked.
“I don’t know,” Faith said, her good mood recovered. “Maybe I’ll become a marriage counselor.” She put her hand on Eddie’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door. “As much as I’ve enjoyed this jealous fit of yours, I want you to go away now, so I can think about what I’m going to do this summer.”
“And after the summer?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’ll marry Mr. Tucker.”
Eddie gave a bit of a smile. Mr. Tucker was a handyman, had no teeth, and was over eighty. He was also the biggest flirt in town.
“Can I give you away?” Eddie asked, deadpan.
Faith laughed and pushed harder on his shoulder, but Eddie didn’t leave. Instead, he turned around, grabbed Faith in his arms, and gave her the most passionate kiss he’d ever given her.
When he released her, his eyes were bright. “There are some things that I can do as well as Tyler Parks can.”
Faith just gave him a little smile, then opened the door and watched him walk out. Her mother was standing a few feet away and she glanced at Faith’s left hand in speculation. Would she be wearing an engagement ring? When she saw her daughter’s naked hand, she gave a sigh that let Faith know she’d again disappointed her mother.
Faith closed the door behind Eddie and leaned on it for a moment. “No you can’t,” she whispered in reply to Eddie’s statement. He couldn’t kiss as well as Ty could. She’d kissed Ty and had been so taken over by his lips that she’d not realized that they were underwater and that a motorboat was heading toward them. If it hadn’t been for Ty’s awareness, they’d both be dead now.