Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,45

this new camera was symbolic of his zest for life. It was one of the things that had made me fall in love with him so hard and so fast.

I sat down dutifully, right at the base of the sand dune. “You better hurry up,” I told him. “The sun is going to be all the way down in a few minutes.”

I’d never seen the beach that secluded. It was like our own private island paradise. He ran and plopped down beside me. I laid my head on his shoulder, and he kissed me, and that’s when that photo snapped, out of that joy. I didn’t think that day could get any better, but Frank reached in his pocket and said, “I got something for you, Diana.”

We were too young, and we didn’t know each other well enough, but if it had been a diamond ring, I can assure you I would’ve said yes. I remember gasping and saying, “Frank, it’s the most beautiful locket I’ve ever seen.”

“For the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said, fastening the chain around my neck.

I kissed him, and when I looked up again, the sun had gone down. It was getting dark out there on that deserted beach, the waves crashing on the shore, the wind blowing just right. Me and Frank, we didn’t have to say a word to know what was going to happen next. It was one of those perfect moments where you’re young and in love and you know the person you’re with is the person you’re going to make love to for the rest of your life, not just on an old picnic blanket that night.

We laughed and carried on, and I can’t even count how many times we said we loved each other. “I can’t wait to marry you, Diana,” I can still hear Frank saying as I unbuttoned the blue Polo oxford he had tucked into his khaki shorts. “I can’t wait to have you all to myself for the rest of my life, to have babies with you and our own little house. I’m going to treat you like gold. I’m going to make you the happiest woman in the world.…”

I wanted to leave it with that thought, so I started folding up my shirts and putting them in one of Gray’s pretty drawers with the sweet-smelling shelf paper inside. I just wanted to remember him saying he was going to make me the happiest woman in the world. That day, at least, he held up his end of the bargain. That day was probably the happiest day of my life.

It’s funny how sometimes what seems like a girl’s happiest day can end up being the very worst one she’ll ever have. And for a girl whose momma gave her away and left her out there to fend for herself, that’s really saying something.

CHAPTER 7

gray: a promising start

“Do you think I ruined it?” I was asking Marcy the following Tuesday as I spread my towel out on my lounge chair.

It was a little windy for the beach, but it was a glorious pool day—and yet there were only five or six people out here. I was feeling distracted and antsy over the Andrew situation, and I had decided to move ClickMarket headquarters poolside, under a giant black-and-white-striped umbrella. Marcy, of course, had to come along because man hunting was always on the menu.

Diana had been standing in my bedroom folding a mountain of laundry—where did it all come from?—while we were making our plans, and I realized that, if I was going back to the site of last week’s diving trauma, I needed all the reinforcements I could get.

“Absolutely not,” she had said. “I won’t do it.”

“The laundry will be there when you get back,” Marcy pointed out.

“Just come for lunch,” I’d whined.

She shook her head.

“Remember your hairbrush?” I asked. “How that pretty hair didn’t take away the bullies, but it made you feel like you could take them on?” She crossed her arms. “You told me that I had to find what made me brave. Well,” I said. I pointed to her and then to Marcy.

Diana gave me that exasperated look that I was now so familiar with, as if she were the exhausted mother and I were the naughty, needy child. But then I knew I had won. She only gave me that look when she was relenting, which, honestly, was rarely.

“It’s a low blow to use my own brilliant advice against