Tear Stained Beaches (10 page)

I had just a few more days left on Kettlewood Island as Labor Day was quickly approaching. The last week and a half had gone by way too quickly. One of our last dinners together, Meghan relented and we went to The Pier Shack. It was the lobster tail and crab leg special that hooked us. I was keen on crab legs. I could eat an entire plate in one sitting and probably still want more. It was in between shell cracking and tail pealing that I tried to pry into Meghan’s love life. I started off asking when she was expecting his arrival.

“He said it will definitely be sometime before Labor Day.” She didn’t talk much about what he did, just said he owned a bunch of stores on the east coast and regularly had to travel to them to make sure they were running smoothly.

“You have to meet him. The three of us will go to dinner one night.”

“I thought three was a crowd?” I joked.

“No way! Not at all. I want you to meet him. It would really mean a lot to me. I feel like you and I have been friends for years. Our friendship is important to me.”

“Well, if you put it that way.” I said checking the calendar on my phone. “It looks like I’m pretty wide open the next week, so you’re good.”

“So glad you can squeeze me in.”

Chapter 18

Over the next couple of days Meghan was busy with both of her jobs. She was trying to keep up her shifts at the family restaurant while covering for the kids who left to go back to college, on top of preparing her classroom and welcoming back students for the new school year. As busy as she was, she always made the time to come over on her way home to check up on me and make sure I wasn’t drowning in a bottle of wine or crying my mascara off. I laughed at the thought of it, even though sometimes I actually was. I did my best to take my mind off things—maybe more for her sake than my own. Poor Meghan wanted so badly to show me there was life beyond my pain, and I wanted her to believe she was helping me figure that out.

I couldn’t sleep the Thursday before the Labor Day weekend began, knowing that tomorrow, if Chase was bold enough, he would be getting on a plane and heading this way. Was he packing for his romantic rendezvous? Or was he making the phone call to cancel his plans, telling her he couldn’t see her anymore? Was his wife, and the life they had together, more important to him than his relationship with someone he barely knew? Tomorrow, we would find out. I knew his plane landed at 2pm from the receipt on his computer, but I had no idea where he’d go from there. I wasn’t planning on searching for him, I just sort of hoped fate would lead me in the right direction. I just had to wait, be patient and hope I could finally get some answers.

Knowing that Meghan would probably be knocking on the door at a late hour when her shift was done, I stayed up on the couch flipping through a few magazines that were left by the prior tenant. It was just before eleven when she came running up the deck. I’d wondered what she was so excited about. She flung open the sliding glass door and had a big grin on her face.

“I’m sorry I’m going to have to cut our visit a little short tonight.”

“Everything ok?”

“Couldn’t be better. He’s here.”She bounced about in happiness. Her smile beaming.

“Look at you, like a kid in a candy store.”

It seemed her special someone was finally home from his business travels. He’d surprised her at work, and I’m sure she hadn’t stopped smiling since. I was happy for her. She was overjoyed and quite different from the reserved woman I’d spent all this time with. I shared in her excitement until she had to go.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook. Just because I have company, doesn’t mean you can go back to sulking. ”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. If I’m not here, I’ll probably be getting my tan on. I have a lot of hours left before I catch up to you.”

“I will, however, have to leave you on your own for tomorrow morning’s run. I’m not planning on getting much sleep tonight.”

“Um….way too much information,” I laughed as she pranced down the stairs to the beach.

I watched as she got into her car. I could see a dark figure in the passenger seat as she pulled away. So he was finally here. The man that obviously had a reverse affect on the head-
strong woman I’d gotten to know so well. It was hard to be happy for someone else when you were so miserable, but this was a big step in Meghan’s life as we’d talked about a few nights before.

Chapter 19

The weather was perfect running temperature on that Friday morning. Slightly overcast with a cool breeze. I dug into my suitcase to find some workout clothes, tightened up my laces and headed out the door. I put in my earphones and hummed along to the music as my feet steady paced through the sand.

The sun was getting hot about a mile in, sweat pouring from every part of me. I thought about turning around and cutting my distance in half, but it’s never been in me to give up that easily; so I kept running. Running away the minutes of the morning, the sorrows of yesterday and right into the crumbling of my entire world.

It was thanks to my handy iPhone app, I knew it was exactly two miles from my beach house to Meghan’s. I could see it coming up as I slowly pushed up the slight hill. My eyes were blurry from the sweat and the heat, but through them I could see someone emerge from Meghan’s beach house: someone that was clearly not Meghan. I was too far away to see any clear features, but I could tell it was a man. He was quite tall, wearing no shirt, and his hair was maybe a sandy brown. His face was turned away from me, but I could see his arm rise up as he lifted his hand to his mouth to sip on what I figured was a cup of coffee.

As I ran closer, his silhouette came into focus—I could see the outline of his chin, his broad shoulders, muscular chest, and yes, it was sandy brown hair. It was a little disheveled as he’d obviously just woken up. From what I could see, I had to applaud Meghan on her choice of men. He was tall, athletic and only his bottom half was clothed. He was nice to look at with no shirt on.

Maybe it was the fact that I had been alone for so long, but for some reason I just couldn’t take my eyes of the stranger. I kept my eyes fixated on him as he turned his head towards me. You know those times in movies when that fancy music is playing while a boy and a girl are running towards each other and then it suddenly gets interrupted by one of them falling flat on their face? Well, this was one of those moments. He was looking in my direction and there was no mistaking it. It took a minute for it to sink in. It was the last thing in the world I expected to see, but there it was. Impossible to miss. The vision I’d seen a million times before. Even from this far away it stood out clearly.

I stopped running. Sweat dripped into my open mouth. I couldn’t stop staring. I followed the lines of his body from head to toe, and back up again. Engraving each part into my brain just as if I was studying for a biology test. Making sure not to leave any of it out.  I wanted to be sure, more than sure. And I was.

He hadn’t noticed me yet: he was too distracted by the waves of the ocean and the coffee in his hands to see me coming his way. But I’d know those eyes from anywhere. They’d looked at me countless times in the last several years. Including the day they stared into mine and vowed to love me, honor me and always be faithful until death do us part.

I blinked, several times, but it didn’t matter, nothing was going to change. Like a boulder, barreling down a mountain towards me, there was no time to move, no escape plan, nothing to be done, but close my eyes and brace myself. The worst possible scenario was happening. The man Meghan told me to forget about, the man she told me I was stronger than, and the man she was hopeful was going to take the next step with her in their relationship, they were one in the same. The man that stood on Meghan’s deck at that very moment was Chase. Meghan was in love with my husband.

“How could I not have known?” I said out loud to myself. I’d wondered how I hadn’t picked up on something like this. The entire time we talked: she was talking about my husband; I was talking about her boyfriend, and neither of us figured it out. Thinking back on it, neither of us ever said his name or described his features. And the man Meghan talked about, the business-
man, he didn’t even exist. He was not a real person. The man that woke up in Meghan’s bed this morning was a high-
powered lawyer from a small town outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. He’d been married for five years, and he and his wife bought a traditional southern style house with a wrap-around porch on a cul-de-sac street where they planned to raise their children, get a dog, and be the typical, happy southern family they’d always talked about.

Now, that was all gone—taken from me. I’d known there was someone else for quite some time, and I thought that when Chase admitted it, or I found him walking the streets of Kettlewood Island hand-in-hand with another woman, it would merely confirm what I already knew. I thought I could handle it, that it wouldn’t break me down like it was. And what made it even worse was that the girl I had come to trust, the girl I had poured my heart and soul out to, cried to and leaned on during all of this, was the same woman. She was the girl on the phone in the car when he’d arrive home from work at night. She was the girl who received the video message I’d seen on Chase’s computer, and the text message. Oh God, this is what she was talking about. This was the moment she was counting down the days for. I kicked myself for never exchanging numbers with her. If I had, I would have known right then and there. That number was burned into my head from those phone records; I would’ve recognized it immediately. If only I hadn’t lived right down the beach, then maybe there would have been an actual need for it. The girl who ruined my life, the reason I cried myself to sleep at night for the past few months, was Meghan.

I became irrational, standing on the beach by myself. So many thoughts were flying through my head. I bet she knew this whole entire time. No way, now that I know, could it have been a coincidence. She befriended me on purpose. She wanted to see what kind of a person I was, so she could justify her affair with MY husband.
That two timing little bitch
. I’d had enough of these games. Enough of the lying. That was it: I was done.

My legs finally came to life and I started moving. I walked quickly—closer and closer to Chase. Still oblivious that someone was on the beach below him, I walked right up to the bottom of the stairs. I glared at him, rested my forearm on the railing and set my right foot on the first stair. It took a minute for him to notice me, and maybe even another for him to recognize who I was. He looked at me. I glared back. Nobody moved, and nobody said a word. His lips twitched a couple of times, but still he didn’t speak. He knew. He knew nothing he was going to say was going to get him out of this. Nothing he could say would be the truth, and nothing he was going to say I would believe. He remained silent.

My mind reeled with everything that I had wanted to say to him.
How could you, did you think I wouldn’t find out, I hate you
and so much more, but I was so angry that I couldn’t say any of it. I was so concentrated on him, and the fact that he was standing on my friend’s porch half naked, that I barely heard the sliding glass door open as Meghan walked out.

“Haylie!” She seemed so excited to see me.

I just wanted to spit nails at her, punch her in her pretty little face, and maybe even throw her down these stairs. She was lucky that those stairs separated us because I wasn’t sure what I was capable of. It’s like they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

I wondered why, with so much to say, that I couldn’t scream and yell at Chase. I could glare at him, I could be angry at him, but I couldn’t say a damn thing to him. To Meghan however, there was plenty I had to say, and I said it.

My voice came across like daggers. “How could you? Every single day for the last two weeks I confided in you. I trusted you. You saw how much pain I was in, you saw me cry.” My words were shredded by my anger, almost incoherent. I didn’t realize I had begun to cry. The tears drowned out the words as they hit my lips. I went on and on, screaming every profanity that I could think of to belittle her and put her down. I would have kept going too if she didn’t interrupt me.

“Haylie, what the hell is going on with you?” I looked at her, then at him, and back at her again. She looked at Chase with wondering eyes and then, from the look on his face, she realized what was going on. She turned pale, the life drained right out of her. She fell to the seat below and placed her hand over her mouth. She didn’t know. She really didn’t know. She was just as blindsided by this as I was. I wanted to feel sorry for her, but I couldn’t, at least not right then. Anyone else would want to hug her, console her just as she did me, but I couldn’t. My hatred was too strong.

I understood it now. The guys-only trip Greg and Chase went on some time ago, they’d both agreed upon Kettlewood Island. It was the same distance for the both of them; Greg was driving down from Richmond and they had a strong desire to try fishing somewhere new. It made sense now that he would come back here on Labor Day, but the rest of Meghan’s story, none of that seemed to add up. The traveling salesman. It sounded like a story out of book. I just didn’t understand any of that.

Chase stood there, one hand on the railing still holding his coffee cup, the other hung by his side. His body faced Meghan, and he was staring at the ground. I pushed myself away from the stairs, shook my head and continued to cry.

As I backed away, Chase came down the stairs towards me.

“Haylie please.”  He reached out for me, but I refused to let him get any closer. I screamed at him to stay away. I told him to go to hell. The faster he came down those stairs the faster I moved away.

“Don’t you dare!” My words were loud and forceful. “Don’t you dare try to make this better, because you can’t.”

“Will you just calm down for one second?”

“Calm down? Calm down? No, I will not calm down. I hate you. I hate you so much.” I said it a few more times, even though it was a lie. I wasn’t crying because I hated him. I wasn’t angry because I hated him. I loved him. I loved him with everything that I was, and everything that I had. That’s why I was angry. I couldn’t control myself at that point, so I ran. I ran as fast as I could towards home. I could hear myself gasping for air as the wind brushed my tears across my cheeks.