Page 115 of Ten Years and Then…
But if this was a joke the universe was playing on them, it wouldn’t be very funny to Greg, would it? Or to whoever Daniel was with.
That thought should have been enough to make her say goodbye to Daniel and go back to her room where her boyfriend was … probably already asleep.
It wasn’t.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
Daniel, a few minutes later
The comedy show was starting right about now. That’s where Leanne thought he was.
That’s where he should be.
But he wasn’t getting up. He wasn’t saying goodbye to Nora and telling her they had to pretend the last few minutes hadn’t happened, and then avoid each other the rest of the cruise.
That’s what a good boyfriend would do; the kind of boyfriend he thought he was.
But a good boyfriend also wouldn’t still be wearing the necklace his college girlfriend had custom made, right over his heart, and Daniel had been doing that to Leanne for nearly nine months.
His hand was on top of it now; when had that happened?
“You still wear it every day?” Nora already had to know the answer. “Did you forget the way I showed you how to take it off?”
It wasn’t fair for her to smile the way she was now. It wasn’t fair for her to be here at all. But she was, and—as much as he hated himself for it—he was glad she was. No—not glad. That was a horribly inadequate word. Overjoyed, maybe? Heart-burstingly happy?
“I never forgot anything you told me, Nora.” Now her hand was over his, and it felt good. Right. Like it should never have been anywhere but there.
And he knew then, with that one touch of her hand, why even after nine great months he hadn’t been able to tell Leanne he loved her. Why he’d never be able to tell her, and have it be true.
Nora, a few minutes later
Nora finished telling Daniel what had happened four years ago in Kansas City.
“That’s pretty much what I figured, once I saw your cover story,” he said. “And the part you don’t know—there was no way you could—was that my phone got switched with somebody else’s on my team. They were all loaners from work, same model, no way to tell them apart. So when you were leaving messages …”
She laughed; what else could she do? “Somebody else was getting them.”
Daniel shook his head. “That’s the other part you don’t know. He dropped the phone—my phone—in the bathroom sink in his room. Nobody was getting your messages, because the phone was fried.”
They were still sitting in the plush armchairs of the ship’s library, such as it was. His hand was on the arm of his chair, and her hand was on top of it. When had she done that? “Why did he have the phone in the bathroom?”
Now Daniel laughed, too. “I never asked. I didn’t really want to know.”
That was fair. There really wasn’t any good reason to have a cell phone with you in the bathroom. They’d been working a booth at a trade show; it wasn’t like Daniel’s coworker was a surgeon waiting to be called into the operating room or something.
“But you never called me once you saw the story in the magazine. If you knew why I left …”
He wasn’t laughing anymore. “I couldn’t. It would just have been another goodbye, and I—I couldn’t. Any more than you could. You knew where I worked, too.” He said it without any bitterness, which almost made it worse. Especially because he was right.
“I did. And—yeah. I could have called you, but I didn’t want to say goodbye again, either. I still love you, Daniel.”
He didn’t say anything for a while; he just held her eyes. Finally, he said, “Is that why you wore that dress?”
What did he mean by that? She didn’t know he’d be on the ship! What was he saying?
And then it hit her. She was making a statement to herself by bringing the dress from their Valentine’s Day dance dress on the cruise. She was telling herself she wouldn’t ever fully be with Greg, that she couldn’t ever commit to him because in her heart she was still back in college with Daniel.
“I didn’t think that’s what I was doing—but, yes, that’s exactly it.” She laughed gently. “The same reason I’m still using the pen you gave me. And I still sleep with Mr. Fuzzles.”
