The One I Trust (2 page)

“Thank you,” I said. “He was great.”

Emily gave me another smile and took her hand off my arm to reach for an onion ring. As I watched her, I realized how much I liked her smile. I reached for an onion ring of my own and studied her carefully as I chewed.

Emily had wavy, shoulder-length blonde hair, tan skin, and brown eyes framed by thick, dark lashes. They might have been artificial, but something told me that was just the way she looked. Nothing about her seemed artificial.

She was pretty. I had to admit that, but my first wife had been pretty, too, and pretty can only take you so far. Given a choice between “pretty” and “sane,” I’ll pick sane every time. I took another bite of onion ring and—as I continued to study her—I thought of what else I knew about Emily.

She was one of Molly’s teachers, so that meant she had dedicated her life to helping children—certainly not a bad thing. Hale said Molly loved her (but Molly loved everybody, so that wasn’t really saying much). Hale liked her too, though, and that was saying more. The people he truly trusted with his heart, with his daughter, were few and far between. He didn’t trust very many people with me, either, and the fact that he was pushing me toward Emily said a lot.

Maybe Hale was right. Maybe it
was
time for me to move on—time to try to actually get my life back on track. And maybe Emily was just the person to help me do that. She had, after all, just spent the past fifteen minutes helping me feel better than I’d managed to feel in an entire year.

“Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?” I suggested, reaching for the horseradish sauce and beginning to like the idea of getting to know her better.

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Well,” I began, “how long have you been teaching?”

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not teaching yet.”

I looked at her, confused. “I thought you were one of Molly’s teachers?”

“No. I’m just doing an internship in Molly’s class.”

“An internship?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I have to do an internship for my Exceptional Children class and then next semester I do my student teaching.”

“You’re . . . you’re in college?”

She nodded.

I looked closely at her and hesitated before I worked up the courage to ask my next question.

“Exactly how old are you?”

“NINETEEN!?” I YELLED at Hale. “She’s NINETEEN years old!?”

“So?”

“So?” I repeated. “She’s a
teenager
!”

“So?”

“She can’t even drink alcohol!”

“Were you planning on getting her drunk?”

“No. I wasn’t planning on getting her drunk,” I said. “You’re missing the point.”

“What’s the point?”

“The point is that I’m practically old enough to be her father!”

“No you’re not. Not unless you were having sex when you were ten.”

I glared at him.

“Were you having sex when you were ten?” He widened his eyes in mock surprise.

“I hate you,” I said. “I can’t believe you set me up with a college student.”

“I didn’t know she was a college student,” he insisted, finally serious. “I thought she was one of Molly’s teachers. She seems a lot older.”

That was true . . .

“I can’t believe this,” I muttered.

“You know, a lot of men wouldn’t view this as a particularly bad thing.”

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

“What’s the big deal? If you think she’s too young then just don’t go out with her again,” he reasoned. “I mean, it’s not like you got her pregnant or anything, right?”

I glared at him again.

He gasped, feigning shock once more. “Did you get her pregnant? Did you get her pregnant and now you have to marry her?”

“That’s
your
specialty,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

“So then what’s the big deal?” he asked again with a grin. “Just don’t go out with her anymore.”

I was silent.

“Is there a problem with that?”

When I still didn’t answer, he pressed on. “I mean, it’s not like you like her or something, is it?”

I couldn’t help myself—I glanced away. In my peripheral vision, I saw his eyes widen again.

“You like her!” he said, pointing a finger in my face.

I slapped his hand away.

“I didn’t say that I like her.”

“You like her!” he said again. “You
like
her!” He was practically singing.

“I
might
like her,” I corrected. “I don’t know. Right now I’m having a very hard time getting my head around the fact that she’s two-thirds my age.”

“Ooooh,” he said dramatically. “How long did it take you to calculate that?”

“I hate you,” I said. “Have I told you lately that I hate you?”

“I love you, too,” he answered, grabbing me in a headlock and rubbing his knuckles back and forth across the top of my head as fast as he could.

“Let go!” I yelled, punching him in the side. He released me and I straightened, running my fingers through my hair.

“Your hair looks great,” he assured me, patting me on the back. “You have the hair of a twenty-five-year-old. Twenty-six, tops.”

“It’s
not
funny,” I said, smacking him. “What do you think her parents are going to say when they find out she’s dating someone who’s almost thirty?”

“Honestly, I think they’re probably going to be a lot more concerned with your arrest record and everything.”

I narrowed my eyes at him again. “I hate you,” I said. “I really, really hate you.”

“I know.” He winked at me and grinned. “I love you, too.”

In reality I did love him. Hale was the only person I could trust . . . the only person who had been there for me through every horrible thing that had ever happened in my life. I guess I’d been there for most of the bad things that had happened to him, too. Not all of them, but most.

Eleven years earlier, some computer at NC State University randomly paired the two of us up to be college roommates. We got to know each other a bit online after we’d received our notifications, but we didn’t actually meet until freshmen orientation that summer.

“Brafford,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Richard.”

“Actually I go by my last name,” I told him.

This was a complete and total lie. I didn’t “go by my last name,” but I desperately wanted to. I hated my first name.
Brafford
. Hated it with a passion. Always had.

This was a new school . . . a new start. This was my chance.

“People call me Reid,” I said, putting my hand in his. I don’t think he bought it for a second, but he gave me the first of countless suppressed smiles along with a small, formal bow and replied, “Well, then. You may call me Hale.” And so I did.

Hale had been dating his girlfriend Drew for about a year and a half before they’d both decided to go to State, and it seemed like she was in our room all the time. After our freshmen year—when Hale and I got an apartment together off campus—she somehow managed to come over even more, but fortunately, she was really nice and she did a lot of the cooking and
all
of the dishes, so no one ever heard me complain.

Hale and Drew were the ones who were at the apartment when the police came by with the news that my mother had been killed in a car accident. Hale broke it to me when I got back and then drove me home to Mt. Pleasant to help me plan her funeral and go through her things. For ten days straight, he never left my side. I think Drew was there most of the time, too, but I’m not positive. What I haven’t blocked out is pretty much a blur.

Hale and Drew got engaged the summer before our senior year and married the summer right after. I was his best man, and when Drew died two years later, I was a pallbearer. She fought her cancer for almost a year before she died, but I think Hale knew from the beginning that she wasn’t going to make it. Five months after her death, he was still a mess. I told him we were going to the beach.

My wife, Tori, threw a fit when she found out I was leaving her for a few days to spend time with Hale. She was very pregnant with Noah by then and maybe I shouldn’t have left her, but I felt that Hale needed me more than she did. (Plus, by this point in our marriage, I was looking for any excuse I could find to get away from her and her ever-increasing bouts with insanity.)

So I went.

Hale owned an imposing oceanfront house in Emerald Isle and we arrived on a Friday afternoon, dumping our luggage before taking a hike on the beach. We hadn’t spent anywhere near as much time together as we had before we’d both gotten married, and even less so since each of our wives had gotten sick in her own special way. I was sure it would help Hale if we could hang out together—just the two of us. Just like in the old days.

What wound up happening, though, was that we found ourselves at a bar and Hale had more to drink than he probably should have. Anneka was mixing the drinks that night and when the place closed she followed us home like a stray. After we got back to the house, she showed off her bartending skills a while longer until I fell asleep on the couch. In the morning, I woke up to find Anneka in the kitchen—wearing one of Hale’s T-shirts and making coffee.

He saw her again the next night, but the following day the two of us drove back to Raleigh. I thought that was the end of it—the end of her—but a few weeks later Hale went back to Emerald Isle without me and paid another visit to the bar. That was when Anneka told him she was pregnant.

The next thing I knew, I was a best man again.

Hale and Anneka got married two days before Noah was born and came back from their honeymoon early just to meet him. When Tori and I split up four years later, they helped me move into an apartment. When Tori accused me of molesting my own son and I lost not only custody of him but my job as well, they let me move into their basement. And when Tori killed herself and Noah, Hale and Anneka kept me from following them.

So, yeah. Hale had always been there for me . . . and, honestly, Anneka had been there for a lot of it, too. They only wanted what was best for me. I knew that. And I knew that they thought they were doing something great by fixing me up with Emily . . .

But there were too many reasons not to go out with her again.

First of all, I was broke. I hadn’t had a job in nearly a year and my unemployment was running out soon. Simply put, I couldn’t afford a girlfriend.

Second of all, Emily was way too young. Yes, she was legally an adult, and yes, she seemed very mature for her age, but she was a teenager. A
teenager
, for Pete’s sake.

But the biggest reason I didn’t need to go out with Emily again was the fact that after what I’d gone through with my first wife, it was highly improbable that I was going to be able to trust anyone ever again. That didn’t exactly lay the foundation for a healthy relationship.

No. There were just too many things conspiring against me and Emily. Too many reasons why things were never going to work out between the two of us . . .

And so I decided that there would not be a third date.

Surprisingly, Hale didn’t argue when I let him know that I’d decided not to see Emily again. And when I told him that he and Anneka both needed to respect my decision and drop the whole thing, he agreed.

“You’re not going to pester me about it anymore?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nope.”

“And you’ll keep Anneka out of it?”

He nodded.

I looked at him for a moment, still suspicious, before finally nodding back. “Good.”

I had turned to head downstairs when I heard him say, “There’s just one little thing.”

I closed my eyes, sighed, and turned back around.

“What?”

“She’s coming with us next week.”

WHEN HALE WAS in the ninth grade, his father—a shrink at Duke—had decided that he wanted something other than Hale’s mother. Something about twenty years younger and twenty pounds lighter.

It was, according to Hale, a nasty divorce.

Two years later, his mother walked away with their beach house in Emerald Isle and a lump in her breast that she’d been too busy and too distracted to properly address. She died surprisingly quickly—Hale said she didn’t have any fight left in her after the divorce. He inherited the beach house and the little bit of money that remained after all the lawyers and doctors had been paid.

He hadn’t spoken to his father since.

Hale had, however, spent every single holiday since then at the beach house, and more often than not, I had too.

The next week was Thanksgiving, so—from Wednesday through Sunday—Hale, Anneka, Molly, and I were going to the beach.

No, wait. Correction. Apparently Hale, Anneka, Molly,
Emily
, and I and were going to the beach.

The following Wednesday I threw my bag in the back of Hale’s van and walked to the front passenger-side door, opening it wide.

“Get out,” I ordered Anneka.

She looked at me innocently. “Molly wanted to sit with you . . .”

“Get out.”

“It’s only for two hours,” she protested.

“Out.”

She didn’t argue anymore and climbed into the back. Molly reached for me as I slid into the front seat and I leaned far back and took one of her hands, kissing it. She stroked my cheek.

“Sit with me,” she said.

“Not today, pollywog,” I said, shaking my head and facing forward again.

“Just you wait and see who’s going to be sitting on the other side of you,” Anneka told her excitedly as I fastened my seatbelt.

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Just you wait and see.”

Fifteen minutes later we picked up Emily, who was waiting for us in the parking lot of her apartment complex near the fairgrounds. It was fairly warm for November and Emily was wearing faded jeans and a navy blue hoodie. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail.

Hale got out and helped her with her bags. I didn’t move.

Molly smiled when Emily got in next to her, putting her hands on either side of Emily’s face and drawing her close. They rubbed noses. Emily said hello to Anneka over the top of Molly’s head and then turned to say hello to me. I managed to nod in reply.