Here is the sneak peak as the series will debut January 2023.
“What are you doing here?” He asks…
It’s a question that she has asked herself over and over again. Like a wave that moves further and further back into the ocean before it comes crashing in. There’s a sputter of silence before the cycle starts back over again.
She turns to see him standing now, with his rugged hands tucked deep in the pockets of a familiar jacket; years of wear like a blanket of memories cover the matted brown material of the fitted jacket she bought him Christmas of their senior year.
“I couldn’t really tell you, if I’m being honest…” There’s an unfamiliar note in her voice, even to her it sounds so foreign. “I just kept driving and I ended up here.”
He takes a step forward, but she can tell he second guesses the choice and his boots move back to where he was standing before. He makes a quick, if subtle glance around and then back to her. “Come on, now Natalie, you can’t just expect me to believe that twenty years away brought you home on a whim.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
There’s a twinkle in his eye. “You wouldn’t know me, then, if you think that.”
“I heard you’re married now.” The brunette, Natalie, says. She tilts her head and lets her hair fall into her face so she doesn’t see the pain on his face as she verbally creates the line in the sand between them.
Even though they’re outside, on the peer near dusk she can feel the walls closing in upon themselves. The walls of the world — their completely distinct worlds closing in and squeezing them together.
Natalie catches her breath. “I don’t know why I just said that.”
“Yes, you do.” He replies, there’s pain in his voice.
“I mean, I don’t know why I brought that up since we both know that the other knows that we each had moved on… I… just don’t know why I am here.” Natalie says, she’s normally a very composed woman. She can hold her own in a board room in New York City, and she can definitely hold her own against the chaotic and stricken world of the privileged upbringing that of her husband, Phillip.
“Why are you here, Natalie.”
Natalie moves from one foot to the other. “I told you—”
He moves closer to her. “Yet, you stand here and you continue to dance around the very question that I am sure has been wandering around your mind since the very second you took the wrong turn back here.”
“My mother is sick…”
“Your father was sick a few years ago.” He lashes. “But you didn’t attend the services, nor his funeral. You know, I spoke with Norah the day of the funeral, and she couldn’t tell me why you hadn’t — at the very least reached out after he died. She thinks you’ve wrote everyone off as dead in that head of yours.”
“I would never write you off, Cal,” Natalie says. Warmth flushes to her face and settles into her cheeks as she thinks about the words that left her lips. “Things were hard for me when he died. After I left I spent so much time trying to figure out the best time to apologize to him for how I left things. I kept coming up with scenarios of how to approach the situation and then the moment I thought to just give him a call my mother called me with the news.”
“And yet, you did come?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It never is with you.” Cal quips.
The warmth is gone now, replaced with the freezing cold breeze from the ocean. “That’s not fair.” Natalie gripes, a moan of a sentence that makes her feel more like a child being scolded than a full grown adult debating circumstances.
“That’s it… I’ve had enough of this back and forth with you. I’m never going to get the truth from you, am I Natalie?” Cal asks. “I was never going to get the truth from you then and I will never get the truth from you now. But that’s okay, because you were never here to see me to begin with, right? If I hadn’t been walking home from the bar then I would’ve never seen you here and I would’ve never known what I will never know.”
There’s a defeated chuckle that escapes his lips that will haunt her forevermore.
For a minute Natalie sinks into herself and away from Cal. But before he can turn away from her and walk away from good she finds the courage within herself to stop him in his tracks. Natalie moves closer to him and manages to lurch a hand out to pull on his arm.
“What?” He demands.
“You asked me what I was doing here and before I saw you leaving the bar I thought I was here to make peace with my mother and sister but now that I have seen you, Cal, I know that I was wrong.”
The words leave her mouth so quickly she feels as if her subconscious is leading her away to the heavens. “The truth is, Cal, that I know that I hurt you all those years ago. That I couldn’t find the courage inside of myself to tell you why I left after graduation. But a few days I got into my car and I passed the exit to my apartment and then I just kept driving until I ended up here. Not because my mother is sick. Although, part of the reason why is because my mother is sick. But the other part is because for a moment while I was living my life all I could think about is what would’ve of happened if I had told you the truth all those years ago.”
“What truth?”
Natalie gulps. “It was always yours… "
“What are you talking about?”
“I just knew that if I had told you the truth about the baby being yours that you would want to keep it. That you wouldn’t let me chase my dreams and leave for New York. That my life would be here… living my mother’s life. So I lied. I told you that it was Robert’s and that that I wanted to get rid of the baby because it wasn’t ours…”
Cal steps away, inches at most, but she feels as if it is yards at a time. Natalie can hear herself pleading with him to stop but that also feels as if there’s so much distance between herself and her own voice. Cal moves further from her, turning away from Natalie and begins the ascension away and down from the pier.
She can do nothing more but stand there.
January 2023
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