Page 52 of Tulips and Lost Time

“There’s also a saying,” she snaps right back, “about being careful with the hearts you break. Because you may not have time to make it right again.”

“So, go.” I turn on my heels, though I’m the one telling her to leave. Then I dig my hands into my jeans pockets and find the keys to my bike. “Live your life, Bear. Get out of this town and do something amazing. If you come back, I’ll be the first one here waiting for you.”

“And if I don’t?”

I skid to a stop on the gravel path laid between the house and the barn. Shoots of grass try to grow through, and little, incessant weeds pop up like pimples on a teenager’s chin. Then I peer over my shoulder and take one last look. One last study of the most beautiful woman I have ever known. “Then I hope you’re happy. Truly, with all my soul, I hope whoever you give your heart to treats you the way you deserve.”

Forcing myself to turn again, I continue toward my bike and take out my phone to toss together a fast text to Marc. Something about being called in to work. An excuse for my sudden departure from the evening that honors the most important person in his life.

Because despite what I’ve done behind his back, falling in love with his sister and touching, when I should never have touched in the first place, I love my friend, too. He’s as much my brother as Scotch and Ang. And if I can’t have Kari in my life, I’d like to keep, at the very minimum, Marcus.

He can be my connection to her.

Yeah. I’m an asshole.

I hit send on my text and drop my phone into my pocket. Then climbing onto my beat up dirt bike, I kick the old thing to life, revving the engine and pretending like I don’t hear the devastated sniffles of a heart I’ve fractured.

Tulips, I remember. The flowers I hope to someday hand over, to begin mending what I broke.

But until then… time.

Time is what we need.

“You know, nobody ever liked a fuckin’ martyr.” Kane leans back in his chair, kicking one foot over the other and digging his hands into his pockets. He shakes his head, completely and totally disappointed in the things I’ve done in my past. “You were pretending to be some kind of saint, allowing the naïve little damsel to run off and live a life of fucking around. Like that somehow made you… what? Superior?”

“I wasn’t trying to be superior.” I exhale until my lungs ache and press a gentle kiss to Billy’s sweet head. “I was trying to do the right thing.”

“By making her feel like she meant nothing to you?”

“I don’t think you realize the situation we were in, Bish! She’s my wife now. The mother of my children. And Marc’s eye still twitches when he looks at us.”

“So you sabotage your relationship with her, for the friendship you had with him?”

“No! I…” I roll my eyes and swear I thought I was done explaining all this years ago. I thought I’d told this story for the final time when all our friends became aware of what me and Kari were. But I guess Kane wasn’t around back then. He didn’t get the details when they were fresh.

And now that I’m explaining it all to new ears, I realize how utterly close I came to complete devastation.

“You heard the thing about beans and steak, right?”

“Yeah,” he scoffs. “You explained it like seven different ways.”

“And you heard my intentions. How I didn’t want her to settle in this tiny town and not even see what exists on the other side of the train tracks? I wanted her, Kane, and I intended to keep her. But she deserved a chance to see what else was out there.”

“And to achieve that, you told her she meant nothing to you.” He brushes his hands together in an almost silent, mocking clap. “Bravo, dipshit. That would have left a scar.”

“Shut up.” I rock my sweet baby and work to swallow down the stomach acid rolling along my throat. “I don’t know if you realize it, but right now, I’m feeling a little fuckin’ sensitive about my wife and the ways I’ve hurt her in the past. So if you could gentle the f?—”

“Nah.” He sits forward at the table and rests his elbows on top. “Tell me she went off to college and ate all the steak, dickhead. And then tell me you stayed here and cried about it.”

“Well—”

“No tears?”

I roll my eyes and consider, briefly, taking Billy back upstairs and putting her in her crib. That’s what good, responsible parents do, right? They put their infant to bed when it’s—I look to the clock on the microwave and groan—two fifty-five a.m. But I’m not ready to let her go yet. And I’m not ready to sleep now that I’m up.

So I snuggle her in closer and take comfort in knowing she’d rather be right here with me, pressed to my chest, than upstairs alone, flat out on a brand new crib mattress that would no doubt feel like concrete.

“Kari went off to college that next morning. Everyone was out for the goodbye. The street was basically packed, and Marc was losing his mind about it all.”

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