Chapter 3
“These are the best pancakes I think I have ever eaten.” Levi placed his fork across the platter at the diner where they had wound up. It was perfect, and reminiscent of their time together all those years ago.
“Hey, I made you pancakes…” He gave her an “are you really bringing that up?” look as the memory of her failed attempt at wooing him with her then-horrific cooking skills flooded back to her. “Fair enough,” Cate conceded, blushing at the memory of their first real kiss after her very pathetic attempt at earning his heart through his belly. The way his eyes widened slightly at her blush, Cate knew he, too, was reliving the same moment.
It amazing how easily the conversation flowed after all those years. They talked about the time immediately following his move. How he struggled in a new place with a broken heart. How he wrote her letter upon letter, only to find out years later that she never responded because his parents felt it best they had a clean break and never sent them. In hindsight, Cate knew they were right about their decision. If she had gotten even one of them, she never would’ve given James a chance, and Jamie wouldn’t be the shining light in her life. That said, Cate felt his hurt was still close to the surface at his family’s betrayal, and it made her heart ache as well.
From Guam to college in Hawaii to MIT grad school, Levi had lived the dream he had shared with her throughout their time as high-school sweethearts. Levi had always wanted to be more than his father, whose entire career was directed by someone else from what training he received, to where his family would live. Military life had worked out well for his father, but it wasn’t what Levi wanted. He wanted to be his own boss and work in computers. At the time, it had seemed so farfetched. Heck, the internet hadn’t existed in any real form then, but here he was, all those years later, not only doing what he wanted but succeeding on such a grand scale.
“Breakfast for dinner is one of my favorites.” Oh, yeah. The slight deepening of his voice as he said “breakfast” had Cate squirming in her seat, the memory of that first real kiss surfacing as he gave a wink. Sure, they’d had pecks on the cheek and even the lips before that night, but after their disaster of a dinner, something fell from between them. Their nervousness and apprehension over taking things further, fearing they would mess things up, fled. She remembered her high-school friends talking about their first real kisses and how awkward they were. For Cate and Levi, none of that was true because they waited for that moment, that perfect moment, when they were so at ease with each other that they just let it happen. Burning those oh too salty pancakes was the best thing she could’ve done. At the time, however, it had been mortifying.
“Always was.” She grabbed her water to take a sip, more to block her ever-growing blush than out of thirst. “Remember that dinner off the turnpike?”
“I remember everything.” His hand reached across the table as she placed the water down, pausing a moment as if to ask if it were okay, and soon after, covering her hand with his. It felt as if it belonged there, as if the years had been washed away and they were back to the time when they were inseparable and deeply in love, which was crazy, since they were both such very different people now. Or were they? They might have an entire lifetime between them, but at their core, how much had they changed?
“I do, too.” Cate’s eyes fell to their touching hands. “Is it weird seeing me again after all these years?”
“Weird?” His head snapped up as he spoke, wanting to see anything he might not say with words. “No.” Levi shook his head slightly.
“Not weird like that.” She inhaled deeply, trying to form the words. Her feelings were all over the place from happy to lustful to confused to comfortable. It was so much all at once, and yet somehow not quite enough. “But… it feels like in some ways we’re back to before you moved, which is stupid, I know.” His eyes disagreed with her stupid assessment, and she felt her shoulders relax. “You’ve lived all over, started a business, and for all I know, have a wife and two point three kids waiting for you.”
“You know me better than that.”
She wished she had used a better example. Levi might be a lot of things, but he had always been an honest person, and that kind of thing didn’t change.
“I do. It was a hypothetical.” She rolled her hand over so their palms touched, her fingers naturally entwining with his. “No, you are not a man who would have a wife and be holding some new woman’s hand.”
“You’re not a new woman.” His eyes were focused on their joined hands. How she wished she could see them and discover what was bouncing around his head.
“You know what I mean,” she teased, hoping his eyes would pop up and meet hers. Instead, they stayed focused on their hands, his thumb now caressing the top of hers.
“I do, and just so it is all out there, I have no children, and my wife left me a decade ago for someone else.”
Cate’s hand tried to retract immediately at such a heavy topic, but he held hers tight, his thumb offering comfort as it traveled along the back of her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” she offered. Sure, she wanted him to be the ever-bachelor waiting for her to find her way back to him, but how unfair would that have been? She had moved on, for the short time she had been granted, at least. It was only right that he had the same gift. But it wasn’t the gift she had been granted. He had been left… for another.
“Don’t be.” There was no sorrow, no anger, no regret in his voice. “I could never be what she wanted.”
“Unless you changed more than I see,” she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I highly doubt that.”
“She wanted a woman.” He shrugged as if it were no big deal.
“Oh,” was all she got out as the waitress came back to the table to clear their places and plop down the bill, a bill he immediately paid with a don’t even think about it glance as Cate reached for her purse.
“Really, it isn’t sad,” he began as the waitress finally left. “I’m proud of Amelia. Her family is very conservative in not the best of ways, and for her to feel confident enough in herself to break from their beliefs filled me with more joy than you can know.” His voice beamed and she felt proud of the woman too, which was odd, since they didn’t know each other and since she had cheated on him. Or did he even say cheated? Not that it mattered, because his happiness for her held no dishonesty.
Cate understood a bit about families like his ex’s. She was raised in a conservative town where some kids were simply not allowed to associate with her, not out of her actions, but out of her mother’s unwed status. The judgment she felt based on the circumstances of her birth never made sense to her growing up, and made even less sense to her now that she was the age many of those parents had been at the time. Goodness, over half of them had ended up divorced. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
“You weren’t sad for being left like that.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. He might have loved Amelia, but he didn’t seem to hold any hard feelings for her departure. To the contrary.
“It was emotional, yes.” How could it not have been? You live your life with someone, and it ends. That is an emotional time. Period. No matter the circumstances. “We were friends, and she was one of the only people I knew that liked me for me, and not my business.”
Cate looked at him, her old friend, the sense of him being just Levi so strong that she all but forgot about his insane success and mass wealth. But it made sense that most people couldn’t look past that side of him. Heck, people were probably drawn to him for that very reason. How hard it must be to navigate relationships of any kind like that.
“But in all honesty, the chemistry was never there.” A small, slightly guilty part of her filled with relief at his confession. She might not be the young, gorgeous thing she once was, but she still wanted to be the one he was attracted to, as insane as that sounded to even herself. “We married because we were both lonely, and that is not the key to a strong marriage. She likes you, you know.”
“Who?” The conversation had taken a left turn, and Cate found herself lost.
“Amelia.” The man was officially talking crazy, and Cate gave him her famous look that told him just that. She watched as he held in the chuckle, letting her know he remembered the over-exaggerated twist of her mouth when she was not-so-subtly telling him he was nuts. They had fallen back into old habits far too easily. It couldn’t be this easy. That wasn’t how life worked.
“You met her tonight,” he added, as if she could have forgotten meeting an ex. “She showed you to the conference room,” he clarified, and she wanted to die a little. She had met his ex while wearing her mom clothes/paint clothes. Hardly the best first impression for a receptionist, much less the woman who once had been a major part of his life.
“Your ex works for you, and she likes me,” she clarified, and he nodded as if it was simply the way of things and, in his world, it probably was. “This is all a bit… odd. Is that the word?” She went from talking to him to talking to herself. How a night of art that never happened turned into this was something she would wrap her mind around later.
“It works for us.” He began to slide out of the booth, never letting her hand go, and she found herself following him, not once concerned by his outward display of affection, one that was seen by all in the restaurant and all they passed on the way back to the car.
“The piece you were looking at on my wall when I came in, do you remember it?”
Her mind wandered back to the recycled junk masterpiece as they meandered out the door and to the sidewalk.
“How could I forget? It was amazing the way it had all those levels of emotion wrapped in such simplicity.”
“That piece was how Amelia found her now-wife.” He began walking toward the car, someplace she’d rather they not be going, because it meant their magical evening was quickly coming to an end. “I bought it at a gallery, and the artist delivered it personally, wanting to see who’d bought her work. It turned out I was her first sale, and she wanted to see who had fallen so in love with her piece that they paid what she felt was an insane amount of money for it. Now she’d never sell one for that price, but back then, it seemed like a fortune to her.”
They turned the corner, only a half a block from their parking spot. Too close. Cate felt him slow down as much as she had, and she wondered who was leading the change of pace. Could it be they both felt the need for this night to continue beyond the short drive back to her car?
“Long story short, she met Amelia while delivering it, and the rest is history. It was one of my best investments.” He squeezed her hand as they reached the car, unlocking it with his remote, but not opening the door.
“You have such a romantic heart.” The words fell from her lips before she could stop herself. It was true, but saying them so openly the first time they’d seen each other in years felt too much, too soon for her.
“When one has experienced true love,” his free hand reached up and cupped her cheek, “they want it for all people. There is nothing as magical as finding that one person who fills in all of the pieces of you that you didn’t even know were missing.”
He was talking about her. He wasn’t being coy or talking around the issue, he was holding her hand tightly while caressing her cheek, standing ever so close, and meeting her eyes. He was laying it all out, just as he always had in the past. His confidence in his feelings was something that had always drawn her to him and now was no different.
“And you have that now?” He didn’t, she knew he didn’t, but her insecurities spilled from her before her rationality took over.
“No, I was lucky, I had that with my first girlfriend.” He leaned in close to her ear, his breath caressing the side of her neck and curling her toes. “I’m hoping to rekindle it.”
“So much has happened since we last knew each other,” Cate said far too quickly and quietly.
“Which means we will always have something to talk about.” His words, while quiet, held such power. Power to make her weak in the knees. Power to make her believe they could really have a do-over. Power to make her dare to dream of the future she’d once planned with him.
“And I have a daughter.” She leaned into him as she gave the excuse that had been uttered so many times over the years as a way to deter the advances of men who, while kind and sometimes handsome, were never ones she would ever give her heart to.
“Who I already know and admire.”
“And I’m not the same girl I was.” She dropped his hand as she wrapped her arms around his body, enjoying the feeling of home it created. His arms followed suit, and they stood there in silence as the feeling washed over them.
“No.” He broke the silence as a car pulled out of a spot too quickly and broke the spell that had entranced them. “You are the amazing woman you are now.”
“But what if …” she began, unable to finish the thought. There were too many what-ifs. What if he still wanted a family and her body was all … “Heck no, you waited too long”? What if he found her career unbefitting his? What if he only liked her for the memories and the real-life her disappointed him? What if their love all those years ago was just infatuation, as both their parents told them repeatedly? Memories were a fickle thing like that.
“What if what?” He pressed his cheek against hers, the stubble from the day rubbing against her gently.
“What if I disappoint you?” That was her fear in a nutshell. Not that he wasn’t going to live up to her memories, but that she wasn’t going to live up to his.
“What if you and I become what we always knew we were meant to be?” The hope in his voice, the warmth of his body, and the friction of his stubble on her cheek worked in tandem as they gave her the strength to push aside her insecurities and live in the moment. She was going to do this. She was going to see if they could finally have their happily ever after, even after all the years and events between them.