ACT II: Scene 15
Without You
LAGUNA BEACH, OUTSIDE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Wherein our heroine reflects and mourns and wishes and finally comes to her senses.
The walls of the white silk tent billowed around us, and I never would have known I was on the beach if it weren’t for the sound of the waves over the orchestra. A false floor kept sand out of my high heeled sandals, and the tent protected the whole party from the ocean breeze.
Polly’s wedding was gorgeous.
In fact, I would never guess it had been thrown together at the last minute for Valentine’s Day after all her mother’s original meticulous planning that had set for a month later. However, when Geordie had come ashore last week, Polly declared to her mother she wasn’t waiting another second, and so everything shifted to now instead of later. At that point, her mother had relented and let me lend a hand.
I couldn’t blame Polly’s hurry. While Geordie was shipped out, Polly had been a wreck. Let’s just say Wrecked Polly put a sinking hulk of an ocean liner to shame. Nobody wanted that going on for an extra month.
Today, though, she’d resumed all her default sunshine and energy and turned back into a radiant, gushing bride.
Beautiful.
After the ceremony, she came rushing over to me with mincing steps against the mermaid-tight cut of her gown at her ankles.
“You’re the best maid of honor ever!” Polly threw her arms around my neck. “The bridal shower, the matching dresses for all the bridesmaids, the invitations, the flowers and boutonnières, all of it. You did it, Eliza.”
“Well, I had time on my hands.” Plenty of it, since I’d been unemployed and out of school for the past six weeks. There’s not as much to do on a ranch in the wintertime, at least not much my parents would let me help with for now. They supposedly wanted me to rest up. For what, I had no idea. So to channel my nervous energy, I’d helped with Polly’s wedding.
The orchestra struck up a traditional naval tune, and couples took the dance floor, including Admiral and Mrs. Pickering and my parents, who loved Polly, even when they thought of her as a life choice. She was too good to me for them to hold a true grudge.
The bride and I stood behind the punch bowl so I could hide from the best man, who had been shooting toothy smiles at me all afternoon. Polly must have told him my weakness.
“But you’re doing ranch work, too. I was sorry to hear your dissertation committee changed their mind.”
“Their jolly holiday mood must have worn off when they came back from their Christmas break,” and read my scathing email telling them they were shallow jerks. “I’m not too sad, though.”
Polly raised an accusatory eyebrow at me.
“What? I’m not sad. Seriously.”
“Then why are you mopiness incarnate?”
“Mopiness! Please.”
Okay, I knew I was mopey, but it had nothing to do with school.
“I’m in a sparkly dress on a beach on Valentine’s Day for the wedding of my best friend in my whole life. How can I be mopey?”
“I’ll give myself one guess.”
Polly had been just as shocked as I was when she found out that the tabloid articles and reporters hounding her had been right—Henry Lyon of the Hollywood premiere of Frogs in the Sand had been one and the same as a missing Australian hiker lost in the Grand Canyon the week before.
We pieced together that he’d hitchhiked from Arizona to L.A. Brilliantly, I’d googled the word Lori, to discover a lorry was a truck, although it was used in England, not Australia. Either way, Henry had been picked up by a lorry, not a Lori. We’d also deduced that if he was declared missing, he might have thought it was perfectly reasonable to hail a helicopter overhead, since search and rescue really was looking for him.
I was such an idiot.
“You weren’t an idiot.”
Had I said that aloud? I really needed to quit that habit.
“Yes, I was.” For so many reasons—letting him get away without telling him any of my feelings most of all.
“No, Eliza. I was the idiot,” Polly insisted. “I shouldn’t have put him up to it. I should have been like you—kind. And offered to loan him a phone to make his ‘international’ call—which was obviously to Australia. You were nice. I was using him to get revenge on the woman who’d been torturing my best friend for half a year.”
“I could have stopped it at any point, but I’m the one who kept the ruse going.” And going, until the one getting hurt most of all was yours truly. “Worst of all, it didn’t even work.”
“It did expose Monique-Noelle for the woman she really was, though.”
Fat lot of good that did. Except, on an upside, I’d heard from Sylvie’s dad that he’d remarried—that nanny. I’d taken a minute and talked with the new Mrs. Bainbridge when he let me video chat with Sylvie when they came back from the Ukraine. She seemed like she really did love the little girl, and MacDowell Bainbridge. That, at least, turned out well—not that anything Polly and I had done had affected the trajectory of that situation; we’d accelerated it by a few weeks, maybe, but that was all.
“I can’t blame you for being mopey, though. Henry Lyon was the hottest, coolest guy ever.” She sipped punch from a cup and sighed. “Is that possible to be both?”
“Yep.” I sighed, too. “I never really got to finish asking him things.” Now my mopey tone did take over. Polly was right: I was definitely moping. I missed Henry. Sure, I’d only had him in my little sphere of life for a week or so, but he’d made such an impact that I could never really see things the same. It was like I’d tasted chocolate, and now no other flavor would ever matter again.
“Like why he agreed to do it? I wondered that too. Why’d he play along with it—besides for a free meal? He could have told us who he really was at any time.”
“I think he tried.”
“Oh, yeah.” Now Polly seemed a touch mopey. And this was her wedding day. “Well, call him up.”
“Uh…” I faltered. It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered this possibility a few times over the past six weeks since I last saw Henry. Okay, obsessed over it would be more the appropriate term. But when I weighed what I might say, I realized everything was stacked against me. I was a jerk who’d used him to exact revenge on a boss, and it hadn’t worked, and now I was fired and the man I loved was as far away from me as possible and still on the same earth.
Loved? Did I just think the word loved?
“Seriously. I’m the one who set up that phone for him. I probably have that phone number in some paperwork somewhere.” She got all bright at this recollection, and then she dropped again. “Oh, yeah. It was only prepaid a month.”
“Oh.” There went that little balloon of possibility. I watched it float off into the atmosphere. “I mean, I’m pretty happy working on the ranch. It’s calving season soon. The calves are so cute. And it’s good to be outside. I like having time with Black Jack again. Dad had me ride out and check on the heifers getting ready to calve later in the spring.”
Polly put her hands on her sequined hips. “Don’t go changing the subject. You’ve got to contact him. Look him up on social media. He’s out there. Quit wasting time. You’re letting him slip away from you.”
This pushed me over the edge.
“You think I don’t know that?” I had to press my voice to keep it at a normal volume, and to keep it from squeaking as I pushed the tears back down into their ducts. “I have looked up and down and everywhere. He’s got no online footprint. Basically, internet-wise, he’s a ghost.” I’d looked up Cherrington Downs Station, and all I got was a photo of a mountaintop, some trees, a bunkhouse and his grandfather’s name.
It must be remote, away from the madding crowd.
It sounded like heaven.
“How can he be a ghost? This is the twenty-first century. People are online.”
Most people, sure, but not everyone. Not my parents.
“He’s a rancher. He’s outside half the year, camping under the stars and working in the high country like my dad. He’s not tweeting. He’s not giving cute status updates or posting cat memes. He’s living his life. He’s chipping golf balls over the roof of his barn and working with the horses.” He’s flying his plane. “He’s got things to do better than worry about a ditzy, drippy girl who lived next door to him for a week while he dated a cheating wife at that girl’s behest.” It sounded so shameful when I said it aloud, dirty, splashing heat through my soul.
“Eliza.” Polly reached out a comforting hand, but it didn’t relieve the burning sorrow.
“He’s not thinking about me. He’s not.” The tears spilled hot down my cheek, and my throat closed up. “He’s not.”
Polly pulled me into a fierce hug.
“The tabloids couldn’t find him either. And they’re experts. Don’t feel inadequate.”
Inadequacy wasn’t my lead emotion here. Despair, loss, grief. Yeah, those.
Polly let me go, but she still pressed a reassuring hand to my arm.
“You’ll find a way. And I guarantee, he’s thinking of you.”
I wished I could believe her.
“May I have this dance, Eliza?” The best man walked up beside us, dressed in his dress-naval whites, a sword at his side. Yeah, despite the fact I wasn’t interested in him at all, the sword was pretty cool. “The maid of honor and the best man should share at least one trip around the dance floor.”
I shot a glance at Polly, and she gave me an apologetic grimace. I swiped at my cheeks, hoping for no telltale mascara skid-marks.
“Yes, thanks.” I followed him into the center of the room, and he held out his hand for me to join him. In all his uniformed splendor and good manners, he wasn’t bad. “You’re Liam, right?”
“Liam Hodges, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy, at your service.”
He spun me, and I dodged the tip of his sword as I went under his arm.
“I have a question for you, Lieutenant Liam.”
“Ready, aim, fire away.” He was kind of cute, and I took a steadying breath, calming myself after my little crying fit.
“If there was some girl who you kissed, like in a port of call, and that you liked in the moment enough to kiss her and hang out for a few days; but, say you left her when it was time to ship out, would you still be thinking about her a few months later?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On how good the kiss was.”
“Say it was mind-blowing. On a windswept cliff, with the ocean crashing below. And there were unanswered questions.”
“Man, I wish I could say that was my life.”
“You’re a romantic at heart, Liam?”
“Totally. Especially if you’ll let me start writing my romance with you, Eliza. I mean, you, in that dress. Do you have any idea how good the sparkling blue dress makes your eyes look?”
His words sent me shooting back into the past to the day Henry had said almost those exact same words to me the night of the premiere.
Uh-oh, the tears were starting again. I had to sniffle them away.
“You all right?” Lieutenant Liam pulled me to the side of the dance floor. “Oh, I get it. You were being serious. Well, I have to say, any sailor who left you after a kiss on a cliff, and with unanswered questions—he won’t just be thinking about you six weeks later. He’ll be thinking about you six months later. Possibly six years.” He pulled an apologetic grimace almost identical to the one Polly had just given me. “I’m guessing it can’t be me in your romance, but good luck, Eliza. He’s a lucky guy. And if he hasn’t called, maybe it’s because he’s assigned submarine duty or there’s no ship-to-shore privileges right now.”
I didn’t want to explain much. Instead, I merely said, “If he was a sailor, I’d make that excuse for him. Instead, he’s just someone I can’t seem to find now.”
“Ghosted you, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Did his phone break?” Liam brightened, like this was a sudden new mystery to solve.
“It did, but he got a new one, and I never had his number.”
“That’s harsh. Do you have a mutual friend who would have it?”
“I don’t really know anyone—”
Wait. Stop the presses.
I totally knew someone who knew Henry.
In a fit of excitement, I threw my arms around Liam, almost dancing as I jumped for relief and joy.
“You are brilliant! Has anyone told you that today? Because you are.” I kissed him hard on the cheek and then wiped off the lipstick stain with my thumb. “You’re the best, Lieutenant Liam.”
“What’d I do?” His eyes were bright with surprise.
“You gave me the answer to my problem.” I kissed his cheek again, hard. “I know you’ll find someone great, someone who will give you your mind-blowing kiss on a windswept cliff someday.”