Page 83 of Soft Flannel Hank

“I didn’t like to drink back then. I never liked to feel out of control. And I was scared to death of all the girls at those parties.”

While women in general didn’t scare him anymore, the one sitting across the table from him certainly did.

“The summer after I graduated, a teammate was having a party and convinced me to go.”

“Did Jamie go with you?”

“Buck and Jamie didn’t like that scene. Neither did I, but it felt like the thing to do after I’d been avoiding it for so long.”

He took a deep breath. “I went and drank keg beer and sat by the bonfire and watched everyone around me. I was just about to leave when she came and plopped down into the lawn chair next to me. Marnie,” he said, feeling his jaw tighten as he said her name.

Marnie had been so beautiful. She still was, Hank knew from the few times he allowed himself to get on social media and look at her profiles. But now, she was a cool, sophisticated beauty. Then, she’d been a wild,coltishgirl with bleached blond hair in two braids and big brown eyes. She’d taken the plastic cup out of his hands and drained the beer before telling him her name.

“She was in town with her family. Her dad was some big-time east coast developer. She’d met some of my teammates at the diner, and they’d told her about the party.”

Hank remembered Marnie sitting in that lawn chair, with the light from the bonfire casting a glow across her pink cheeks and making her blond hair gleam. She’d smiled and talked fast and loud and was so magnetic that he hadn’t stood a chance not being sucked into her orbit.

“She wanted to travel the world as a photographer and have her pictures on billboards and in magazines and coffee table books . LikeNational Geographic. I’d never met anyone like her.”

Esther pursed her lips and looked down at her own hands, her brows knitting together. Hank felt that familiar urge to smooth the line between them with his thumb. He couldn’t help but think that Esther was jealous, a feeling that was as bewildering as it was flattering. Flattering because she would be jealous of someone capturing his attention. Bewildering because he knew now that nobody had ever captured him as completely as Esther MacLaren had. And nobody ever would again.

“We spent a lot of time together while she was in World’s End that week with her family. She was my first…” he trailed off.

“You lost your virginity to a girl on vacation,” she teased gently. She took another bite of apples. “So then what happened?”

“She left.”

“But I thought—”

“At the end of the week. But I was already in love with her. She called me a few times that summer, but then she started college. I was helping my parents and had applied to join the police force. I was living at home, going through police training during the day, helping my mom and dad around their house where I could. And then one day, she was back.”

“With her family again?”

“No. Just her. She’d gotten a degree in Russian literature with a minor in photography and was taking pictures of the Pacific Northwest. She was going to La Push and passed through World’s End. I saw her in the diner.”

Hank scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. There was so much he’d been blinded to. Or maybe it had been right in front of him from the beginning and he hadn’t wanted to see it.

“She didn’t stay long, but she had a cell phone then and gave me her number. We’d talk on the phone a couple nights a week. She came back a few times to take more pictures, and I’d stay with her at the motel.”

Esther looked away again, and Hank wondered if she was thinking of how she’d straddled him in the parking lot of that same motel or how he’d begged her to come home with him. Both times.

He remembered sweating over and under Marnie in that motel, trying desperately to make her say his name. Holding her at night while they slept, smelling her fruity shampoo, and making plans. Letting his heart beat wildly in his chest.

“I don’t know what she thought we were doing. But I thought we were a good thing, and so one day when she was shooting black-and-white pictures at La Push, I went with her and proposed.”

Hank remembered the day vividly. It had stopped raining, and there was a rainbow over the beach. He’d been carrying his grandmother’s ring in his pocket for days waiting for the right time. Marnie had turned to him and lowered her camera with a brilliant smile on her face, and he’d dropped to his knees in the sand right then and there.

“She looked so shocked. I misunderstood, I think. I thought she was a good sort of surprised.”

“But she said yes?” Esther prodded.

“Yeah. We got married that fall. She didn’t want a big wedding so it was small, close friends and family. I bought her a house. We moved in. I was happy.”

“Your house?”

“Yeah. My house.” He sighed again. “She seemed happy too. For a while anyway. But then she started talking about moving. She didn’t want to live in World’s End. She wanted to move back east. New York or Philadelphia. I would have done it for her. I think. But then my dad died.”

“I’m so sorry,” Esther said, and Hank believed her.