Page 43 of Peak of Love
“I still think about that call every day,” Dane admitted. “I know it’s stupid. Sometimes I think the call was the reason I lost him. Like, if I never answered, maybe the nightmare wouldn’t have started. If I never answered, my best friend—closer to me than a mere brother, who knew me more than anyone in the world, a person I miss so much it’s like a piece of my soul is gone forever—would still be alive.”
He could barely see past the hot, salty, angry tears flooding his eyes.
“Nothing was harder than walking in there. I knew Asher would have wanted to spare her the most horrific sight imaginable. Keep his memory intact in her mind and heart. Remember him as the love of her life and not… ” He couldn’t continue, so they sat there and mourned the ruined form of a vibrant man broken by death.
After a while, Dane continued. “Asher would have wanted me to protect her from that sight. Although that’s not why I did it. I walked into that nightmare because she asked me to. I’d do that and a million other things if it made her and the boys’ lives even a little bit easier.”
They both looked at him with a renewed understanding and deep, deep sorrow. Their desolation broke down the rest of his walls.
“And that’s before I fell in love with her.”
There’s a sliver of time in April when the winter haze of the Northwest morphs into spring mist. One season ends as the morning fog thins enough to reveal Mt. Rainier in the distance, like a beacon of sunnier days ahead.
Celina looked up at the peak while she focused on breathing. She was pretty proud of herself because she could jog for almost four minutes without stopping. That was her thought, just as the stabbing pain on her side forced her to walk. Realizing that she had unintentionally glared at fit runners passing her on the path, she let her mind wander to less strenuous thoughts.
It was part of her resolution to integrate calm into her exercise. She’d been practicing this way of thinking after talking to college friends she had recently reconnected with. One of them, Layla, enjoyed providing timely nuggets of wisdom while having a dirty martini.
One bit of advice stuck with Celina. Staying active shouldn’t be another obligation on her long to-do list. It should add joy to her busy day. Exercise could be as simple as strolling around the block or gardening in the yard. Whatever time she took to focus on herself should be purposeful and calming.
She had bumped into Layla in the pediatrician’s office during the twins’ annual checkup. Layla shepherded her three-year-old girl while Celina marched in with two lanky preteens. It was a pleasantly surprising reunion of old girlfriends.
Celina had lost touch with college friends except as casual social media buddies. The truth was many friends, including Layla, had rushed to her side after Asher died. Celina now realized that she had pushed them away. At the time, she could only see the pity and not the love, the discomfort and not the care.
Seeing Layla with her daughter flooded Celina with a rush of fondness and longing. She was unexpectedly nostalgic for toddlers and old friends, for Asher when the twins were that age, for what was and for what could have been. Most shockingly, she realized the fondness and longing she felt was for Dane most of all.
“Gah! The boys are so big now!” Layla gushed, interrupting Celina’s musings. “Have you always been with Dr. Colombe?”
“Yeah, since Jonas and Jerome were babies. How about you?”
“We’d been renting downtown for years. When it was time to buy, we found a house four blocks from my parents!”
“Nothing like having babysitters four blocks away,” Celina offered knowingly.
“You’re telling me,” Layla agreed. As she gathered her toddler’s things, Layla ventured, almost shyly, “Hey, can I call you sometime? I’d love to catch up and pick your brain about the preschools in the area. If you’re not busy.”
“I’d love that,” Celina responded, surprised that she actually meant it.
And so emerged, in the last few months, weekly lunch with Layla and their old friends. It was a welcome distraction. Celina’s sisters were always going to be her best friends, but neither Victoria nor Katerina were mothers. It felt good to have a circle of buddies who shared her insecurities about parenting and understood her struggle to juggle work and family.
Still, despite the tenuous balance she’d been managing with some success, she was haunted by the sense that things were off kilter. And not only because Jerome quit soccer and started tuba lessons (you win some, you lose some). And although her friendship circle was expanding and her volunteer baking lessened, there was a sense of yearning she simply couldn’t shake.
Dane. She missed him. Not that he wasabsent,but he wasn’t, well, he wasn’thimself.
He was true to his word about being a larger presence in the boys’ lives. Despite his busy schedule, he managed to free up most weekends to take them to the movies or to throw frisbees at a nearby park. He often waited for the boys in the car on their way to one adventure or another. Or, if he came for dinner, he was gone as soon as the kids went to bed. So although he came around frequently in the last few weeks, he had never been more achingly aloof.
Isn’t this what she asked for? Wasn’t he doing exactly what was necessary to ensure a consistent, if distant, friendship?
For her part, Celina smiled like she always did and said the right things. She would get a glimpse of something on his face—a vulnerability that deepened the intensity of his eyes and made him devastatingly handsome. Yet the rawness was so fleeting, she might have imagined it.
Except in those moments, she longed to comfort him. Not with easy smiles and placating words, but with her palm on his cheek, her lips by his neck.
When she felt the urge to touch him, the effort to hold back prickled her skin, clinging to her like a skittish bug. At night, the skittishness morphed into something heavier. Till suddenly it wasn’t her palm on his cheek or her lips by his neck that she craved. She’d think about his fist around her hair, tilting her head to plunder her mouth before devouring her puckered nipples. The image got more vividevery time she pushed it away.
This would pass, right? It had to.
Unfortunately, as Dane increasingly became part of her sons’ schedules while determinedly out of her own life, Celina found herself craving him more, not less.
Hence the running, which was supposed to convert all that excess sexual energy into burned calories.
