Page 29 of Where Are You Now
“In that respect, I haven’t changed at all.” She took another drink of wine. The fruity, spicy flavor reminded her of summer. “How did you get to Columbia from Charlotte?”
“My last two years of high school, a teacher took notice of my science ability. She tutored me after class and taught me skills beyond the curriculum. She had a good friend at Columbia, and she told him some of the things I was working on. When he was in Charlotte visiting family, he came into her classroom one afternoon, and the two of us completed aproject together. He ended up convincing me to apply to the university.”
“That’s amazing to have a teacher that invested.”
Lucas took another sip and looked out over the water. “Sometimes, I wonder what turns my life would’ve had if she hadn’t noticed me. Would I have ended up … happier?”
Before Ava could ask him about his comment, he turned to her.
“Are you happy with where you ended up?”
“Well, minus the beating and the broken ribs, I’d say yes.”
He acknowledged her viewpoint, a pensive pout on his lips.
He wasn’t elaborating, so she decided to take the pressure off him and talk about herself to fill the silence. “I worked my way up in the firm, and it took a toll on my marriage, but in the end I realized I loved my job more than him …” She’d never admitted that before. “It sounds awful, but it’s true.”
“At least you can see it.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re happier by yourself?”
“I think so.”
He nodded again.
“When my dad died, with you gone, I had to learn very quickly how to do things on my own. It took me a while to get my bearings.”
“I wish I’d have known you were going through that. I’d have tried harder to keep in touch.”
“We were kids. What did we know?”
“We should’ve kept in touch, though. It might have been nice to have a friendly face when we needed it, someone with a wider perspective of who we are.”
“Yeah, it would’ve been helpful during the tough times. The males in my life don’t seem to stick around.” She gave him a melancholy smile.
“I’m sure the divorce was hard on you.”
She wasn’t talking about her ex. But how she felt looking at Lucas didn’t make sense, so she pretended his observation was correct.
“By the time we agreed on a divorce, we’d completely lost the bonds that had brought us together in the first place. I threw myself into my job, and the divorce just became more paperwork in my afternoons. I spent long hours at the office, and one day, I came home to my apartment, and the last shred of evidence that I’d ever been married was gone.”
“You didn’t miss him?” He topped a cracker with cheese.
“Gosh. Telling you now makes me sound heartless. But after you left and Dad died, I never really found anyone I connected with the same way, and I guess I was forcing myself to do adult things. Everyone I knew graduated college and got married. But while they continued—having kids, some of them staying home to raise them—I just … didn’t. I tried. I thought I found someone I could love, but I failed.”
The fire danced in the breeze as the two of them sat in the quiet that followed. Neither of them needed to speak. In the hush between them, even after all these years, she felt more comfortable with Lucas than she did with most people, and she hoped he wouldn’t rush off.
“What about you?” she asked, breaking the silence. “What’s your story?”
His spirit visibly shrunk in on him, closed off, and moved away.
“There’s nothing to tell, really.”
“Columbia-Presbyterian is prestigious. I saw it in the top ten of the nation’s hospitals when I was doing research for a client. While Vanderbilt’s reputation is nothing to sneeze at, why did you decide to move from one to the other?”
His expression shifted, as if he were scrambling for an answer.
