Page 51 of All I Ask
Was he nice to her?
Was he funny?
Did he ask her about me?
Did he smell nice?
The last one was way over the line of appropriate to ask my teenage daughter, so I figured it was probably best to not ask anything and let her lead the conversation.
“Yeah, I hope she’s smarter than me in every possible way. She loves animals and would happily be with them more than people.”
“I can see that. She helped clean out more crap in those stalls than I would’ve at her age and still asked to stay a little longer to play with the animals.”
I smile to myself. “Reminds me of someone else I used to know.”
“Well, I didn’t have a choice. I grew up on a zoo thanks to my dad.”
“But you loved the animals.”
He nods. “I still do.”
It’s crazy how much Chastity is like him in some ways. “I feel like our kids were switched at birth, don’t you?”
Derek lets out a small laugh. “You’d think, considering how close we were and how well I could manage you, that I’d do a better job with her,” he says and then his eyes go back to the painting.
I walk up behind him, allowing myself to look over his shoulder to see which he’s fixated on.
Of course it would be that painting.
I remember that one so distinctly. I painted it on my thirty-first birthday. It had been years since I had allowed myself to remember him in any sort of wistful way. I learned that thinking about him only made me sad.
But that birthday was different.
I was so lonely. We had made a pact that if by our thirtieth birthdays we weren’t married, we would marry each other.
It was stupid and it never really would happen, but there I was, seventeen again and laughing with him after prom.
I sat at the beach for four hours. With each stroke of my brush, a tear would fall, mourning the loss of him over and over. All the feelings of sadness I’d pushed aside washed over me. I was sitting, watching the waves crest and retreat, painting them with the sun from a different angle.
He turns, our eyes lock on each other, and my heart begins to race. He looks at me like he’s seeing straight through my heart.
Derek doesn’t say anything. He watches, searching deeper inside of my soul than I give him permission to. It unnerves me and I feel exposed.
Too many feelings fill me.
Too much of…all of it.
I turn my head, and start to walk away, but he grips my wrist. “I’m sorry.”
My eyes snap back to his. “For?”
“Everything.”
Each breath I take is heavy and my head is spinning. When I paint, I’m raw with emotion. Now, being in this room with him looking at my work, saying these things, has me feeling vulnerable.
“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
His lids fall, and I know that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it’s all I can give. I need to build my walls back up because Derek is the dream that will never come true for me.
