Let Me: Let Me Fall Part 17

When Ava left, Tori asked, "You ok?"

"I'm good. No, I'm great, actually. Just not into Robert, even though he's a really nice guy and all. I'm just not ready for that."

"I get it."

"Have you seen him?" I asked cautiously.

"No," she answered, smiling. "But I love it when you break down and finally ask about him. I haven't seen him in a few months. The last time he came into the shop was around April. He told me he was taking on a big project in New Haven...Really long days and six-day work weeks."

"I saw him," I admitted in a barely audible whisper.

Tori's eyes went wide. "You did?"

I shook my head. "Not saw him like I was with him or talking to him or anything." I cringed as I said, "It was more like I watched him. He was walking into that gourmet food shop on Main and I just sat in my car and waited for him to come back out. Just to get a glimpse of him. Like a stalker," I added, laughing at myself.

"Oh, Carolyn, I wish I could tell him that. It would make his day."

"Yeah, but it would be your last day," I threatened. "Anyway, I think that s.h.i.+p has sailed. Not gonna play it off like I don't miss what I had with him, though, 'cause I do."

"I'd never know that, Carolyn," Tori said, sadly. "You hardly bring his name up, like, ever."

I paused a moment to swallow back a tear and then shook my head and smiled to let Tori know I was all right, because I was. "I can't go back there, you know? And I think I've built it up in my mind, making what we had more than it was. Anyway, it was a long time ago and he's moved on."

"You don't know that."

"Last I heard he was living with Vanessa."

Tori rolled her eyes. "She doesn't live there now...Hasn't for a long time."

"Doesn't matter anyway," I said grabbing Tori's hand. "I'm so much better now, I know that, but I'm still a lot for someone to take on, you know?"

"You're the best kind of wonderful to take on, Carolyn. I know that for a fact.

"I don't have time for a girlfriend right now."

"I don't recall saying you needed a girlfriend, I recall saying that you needed to get laid," Frank pestered. He was annoying the c.r.a.p out of me today. "Sadie has a friend. She's really nice and just your type...long brown hair, smoking body."

"How is that my type, a.s.shole?" Was he kidding me? Did he think I was looking to screw a Carolyn look-alike?

Frank ran his hands through his hair in frustration. His tone softened. "Look, I'm just saying that this isn't healthy. It's been a long time."

"Three years. I'm well aware."

"Exactly. I think you should let her go."

"I let her go three years ago."

"Great! So there's no reason for you not to come out with us this Sat.u.r.day. You, me, Sadie and her friend."

"A double date? How adorable."

"Come on, Jeremy. I'm not asking you to marry her. Just have some fun. See how good it feels to have a girl in your life again."

"I'll think about it," I said. "Now will you please get outta here so I can finish up? I promised my dad I'd come by with dinner and I still have a s.h.i.+t-load to do."

Frank's words were ringing in my ears: See how good it feels to have a girl in your life again.

I did want a woman in my life. I wanted to feel again. I wanted to feel lips on mine, wanted to run my hands over soft, creamy curves, wanted to feel the sweet pleasure of sinking into the warmth of her. Problem was, I wanted one girl in particular and I couldn't have her.

Three years ago, the night she turned her back on me, a part of me died. I'll never understand it. I knew she was suffering. I knew that her grief and her misplaced guilt was extreme-I did. But I couldn't understand how she could just cut and run. One day we were falling in love, the next day we were over. I used to tell myself that she'd come around. I listened to everyone who told me to just give her time.

I'd finally given up a year ago.

Sitting in the coffee shop with Tori during her break, I'd broken down and asked if Carolyn ever talked about me. Yeah, I'd resorted to acting like a needy, middle-school aged girl. Tori shook her head, her eyes sad. "She's not seeing anyone, Jeremy," Tori a.s.sured me, but the knowledge that Carolyn was back in school, tutoring, socializing...carrying on without needing to know one iota of information about me? It was a slap in the face.

I buried myself in work. All that time I'd been missing her...waiting for her to come around, I worked. I set a goal for myself and did little else but work towards achieving it.

It paid off eventually. Denny, my first boss, was close to retirement. The day I pa.s.sed my final licensing requirements, he offered me a fifty percent stake in his business. I jumped at the chance to buy into an established outfit. For a year now I was officially a full partner in Tri-State Electrical.

s.h.i.+t, I was so proud the day that our new invoices and business cards were delivered, listing Denny's name on one side and mine on the other, both with the word proprietor underneath. In that moment, though, I'd only wanted to call her. I wanted Carolyn to know that I'd done it-that I was finally my version of a success.

When Tori shot all my hopes to h.e.l.l that day in the coffee shop, I decided to literally wake up and smell the f.u.c.king coffee. I decided to move on.

Problem was that I couldn't.

"That basket is for the golf getaway. The gift certificate for lessons, the weekend stay in Hilton Head, his and her golf gloves, and the golf b.a.l.l.s go in there."

"Aye, aye, captain," Ava teased as she set about arranging the basket. Having her help was great. She was one of those crafty girls who could stuff a basket and tie a ribbon in a way that made Martha Stewart look like a novice.

I looked around the first floor of my house with a satisfied, contented smile. This was the first year that I was fully back in planning mode for the annual Briarwood Gala. The gala was a huge deal every November, the school's biggest fundraiser, and my mother chaired the event. Along with the ten or so women that my mother recruited, I had Ava, Taylor and Tori helping. They fit right in.

I refreshed all the hors d'oeuvre trays and poured my friends another round of mimosas as they sat around my large kitchen island, where bits of tulle and ribbon were strewn all over. It was nothing crazy, but my mother liked to make these preparation days into somewhat of a social event, to thank the women for donating their time.

"This is the basket I'm bidding on," Taylor said, as she looked over the service menu attached to the gift certificate donated by one of the most exclusive spas in Connecticut. "They fly mud in from the Aegean and slather you in it from head to toe."

"Didn't we do that last month?" Tori joked. "I don't recall my skin glowing after that mud run. I just remember finding bits of dried mud in all my private nooks and crannies for days afterward."

"I wish I was on basket duty with you girls." My back was to the woman's whiny voice. "You look like you're having so much more fun than the crew I'm with." I turned to see her tip her chin over her shoulder to where a group of my mother's friends were making table seating arrangements. I didn't know her name but recognized her face; she had helped out last year.

The group had changed. My mother still had her core crowd but had recruited some new faces for the cause to replace people she no longer was on speaking terms with. Samantha's mother used to be her second in command. Erica's aunt had also been an old friend who worked tirelessly on this benefit. After my mother had gotten wind that my two friends were behind some of the most hateful garbage being hurled at me, though, she confronted them. I mean she actually went to Samantha's house and then Erica's house to give the girls and their parents a dressing down in person. Suffice to say, those women now volunteered for other worthy causes.

This woman looked younger than the others and out of place. She was attractive, with long, silky black hair. Her clothes looked expensive but were, in their own way, cheap. She showed a bit too much skin for a casual Sunday morning among other women, and her wrists, fingers and neck were weighed down with a gaudy amount of gold. "Do you have room for one more here?" she asked as she plopped herself onto a stool and took the mimosa I'd just poured for myself.

All righty then.

"Sure," I said, recovering. "You can be in charge of the Night on Broadway basket. Here are the show tickets, the gift certificate for dinner at Carmine's and the parking voucher."

"Great!" she chirped, dismissing me and turning back to my friends. "So, girls, tell me about yourselves. I'm desperate. I've just spent the last hour listening to those ladies talk about hysterectomies and arthritis."

The girls didn't laugh but smiled uncomfortably. After all, she had just insulted my mother's friends.

"They might be a few years older than you," I said, defensively, "but you were paired up with a federal judge, someone who regularly competes in triathalons and a fairly successful novelist. I doubt they've been boring you with details about their medical history."

"I'm just joking, Carolyn," she said, rubbing my shoulder in an overly familiar manner. I mean, I didn't even know this chick's name. She remedied that. "I'm Beth, by the way."

All the girls introduced themselves. They were polite but on guard with this one. There was just something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. While Beth ingratiated herself with my friends, I went over to grab some more basket fillers. "I see Beth Peterman has abandoned her post," my mother observed dryly.

"What's her story?"

"She's desperate for friends, I think. She married Bryce Peterman a few years ago. Wife number three. She's not from around here and I think she's had a hard time fitting in. She was very helpful last year, though, and I can use all the help I can get."

"What is she, like, thirty years younger than Mr. Peterman?" I asked, disgusted. I used to babysit for the Petermans before his last divorce, when he was still on wife number two.

"Maybe not quite thirty...more like twenty and change," my mother answered, smiling. "Here, take these items for the Napa Getaway basket."

As I approached the table, I heard Beth rambling on about her high school days in Nevada. She was the head cheerleader. Wow. "Hate to interrupt this walk down memory lane," Taylor said, her smirk barely concealed, "but I have to run, Carolyn. I'm due at my mother's by two."

I hugged Taylor tight when I thanked her and walked her to the door. "I'm glad things are going well with your mom."

"Me too," she smiled. "You hit the jackpot with your parents, Carolyn, but my mom...Well, she's trying and I can't ask for more than that, right?"

I squeezed her again and then returned to my friends...and Beth. Ugh, she was giggling like a schoolgirl over something Ava had said. "Did you all go to Westerly High?" Beth asked.

"These two did," Ava said, gesturing to me and Tori. "I went to school in Darien."

"I have a friend around your age," she said to us as she ran her finger around the rim of her gla.s.s slowly. "Jeremy Rivers. He went to Westerly. Do you know him?"

"How do you know Jeremy?" Tori asked in a tone that was none too friendly.

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled innocently. "He did some work on my house. We became...friends."

It was clear what she was implying, but this chick wasn't completely stupid-she was too reliant on her sugar daddy's millions to spell it out completely.

"I'm good friends with Jeremy," Tori said in a challenging tone. "I'll be sure to tell him I met you."

"Oh, please do," she practically begged. "He's such a great guy."

Oh. Come. On. Someone her age should be saying: he's a great kid.

My mind flashed back to a night years ago, in my bas.e.m.e.nt. Jeremy was telling me about his first. Taylor. Taylor, Willow, Beth...they didn't mean anything. Was she that Beth? Being in Taylor's presence never made me uncomfortable, but this chick? My skin was crawling. I was doing the math in my head. If it were so, then he was in high school at the time and she was...not. "Were you with Jeremy?" I blurted out.

"Carolyn, let it go," Tori said quietly, in warning. Beth's eyes went wide. I guess I'd said that a little loudly.

My mother approached then, sensing something was up. "Beth, I think these girls have the baskets under control. Maryanne and Madeline really need some help with the invitation list. Would you mind?" she asked, gesturing towards two women seated on the far side of the living room.

I shook my head, laughing ruefully as she slinked away. "Seriously? She's repulsive and he's...he's an a.s.s."

"Easy. Don't a.s.sume what you don't know," Tori scolded me. "Jeremy is a good person. He doesn't go around banging married women."

Beth had a woman's body and I'm sure she was very experienced. It made me burn, thinking that Jeremy had been with her. Jeremy and I, when all was said and done, had not done much beyond kissing. I was jealous, pure and simple. "Beth kind of implies otherwise, no?"

Tori set about tying the bow atop her basket in earnest. Her lips were pursed in a thin line. She finally broke her silence after a few moments. "Please know I'm saying this with love in my heart, all right, but I will not listen to you talk s.h.i.+t about him. He was crazy about you and he was devastated after everything that happened, too. You weren't the only one grieving, you know? We all were." Meeting my eyes, she said, "He was in a lot of pain when he lost you. Do you realize that?"

I felt one hot tear slip down my cheek. I knew what Tori was really saying. For the longest time I only thought about my pain, my grief...my shame. I knew I had abandoned him and everyone else. I couldn't see that then but I could see it very clearly now.

Ava was sitting there stock still, taking it all in. She knew bits and pieces of our history but not the whole story. She didn't know, for example, exactly how much Tori had lost when Will died. She didn't really know anything about Jeremy.

I took Tori's hand. "I'm sorry. I know I wasn't really a good friend to you, Tori. And I didn't mean what I said about Jeremy. He...he has every right and it's not my place to judge him."

"I get it," she said. Her eyes still conveyed sadness but one side of her mouth turned up in a teasing grin. "You're jealous. The fire still burns for the J-man."

I laughed her off, although deep inside I wanted to cry. The fire would always burn for him. And while I was better, so much better than I had been, I could not shake the feeling, deep-down, that I was damaged goods. Between what Henley had done to me, what Chase had put me through, and the regular, daily berating I had received online for so long, I felt a deep, embedded sense of shame...of being dirty.

I could sit across from a therapist for the rest of my natural born life-it would never change.

"Well, look who it is," Tori called out as I entered the crowded coffee house. I scanned the seats, as I always did, simultaneously hoping and dreading that she would be here. It was amazing, I thought sometimes, how you could live in the same town as someone and never run into them. "I'm on break in five. Sit tight, Jeremy."

"What are you doing here? I haven't seen you in forever," Tori said as she plopped down into the seat across from me.

"You didn't make yourself a coffee?"

"I'm, like, the only barista on the planet that hates coffee," she commented dryly.

"Barista, huh? Pretty fancy job t.i.tle," I teased.

"That's a.s.sistant managing barista to you, a.s.s wipe."

"Seriously? That's good, right?"

"More money, I guess. More hours, though. But I need it. I just wish I had more time in the day. Between work, cla.s.ses and the boys, I feel like I'm running on a hamster wheel most days."

"Is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she waved me off, shaking her head. "Really, everything is good. The boys are doing great. I love my cla.s.ses. I joined an adult volleyball league in Norwalk and I've been running again. Everything is good."

"Yeah?"

She nodded. "I did one of those mud warrior runs last month. You have to give that a try, it was awesome."

"I saw the picture you posted." I paused before saying, "She looks good."

She nodded knowingly. "Carolyn is good. I think she's finally made it to the other side, you know?" I know Tori sensed the pain her name still caused me, so she's attempted to lighten the mood. "So what's new and exciting with you, Jeremy?"

"Working a ton, that's about it," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Oh," I added with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, which was basically none, "I've got a date tonight."

Tori's smile was crooked, like, hurt almost. What the h.e.l.l? "That's great, Jeremy. Who's the lucky girl?" she asked, trying to seem happy for me when it was clear that she wasn't.

"Uh, I don't even know her name. She's some friend of Frank's girl. I kind of got roped into this. I'm dreading tonight but I'm thinking maybe it's about time, right?" I couldn't ignore the change in her any longer. "Is something wrong, Tori?"