Secrets

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t sound right to me.” She was silent, and then looked up at him. “You asked me once why I stayed here in Seaclusion.”
“I know now. Your mom.”
“Yes. But more. I love it here. I love the beach. It makes me feel like I’m looking at the world, like I’m looking at more than myself and my ordinary life. Somehow after I go to the beach, I feel like my life isn’t so ordinary and small. I don’t want to leave it. I don’t belong anywhere but here.”
He was quiet to her statement. What was she saying?
“Sarah?” he asked, touching her cheek.
“I feel that way when I’m with you.”
He looked at her profile, now turned down. “Sarah, I—”
She turned away from him, and started walking. He followed her almost jogging to catch up. She suddenly stopped and turned towards him. “You don’t have to spend the rest of your life avoiding women you’ve slept with. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life with Vanessa as your only real, meaningful contact. Your plan is to do just that. I know that. But you don’t have to.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. I’m not Chloe. I’m not Mindy, or baby, or the next mindless fling you could pick up anywhere you decide to hang out.”
“I know you’re not.”
“Then why did you start this with me? You have no intention of going any farther than this.”
“I don’t even know what this is,” he said.
“Yes you do,” she said, her gaze hot on him, intense. Pressure.
“Sarah—”
Then she was in his arms, her face tilted towards his and he easily leaned down and kissed her. What could he tell her? He couldn’t. There were secrets she wouldn’t understand. And he’d started this because he couldn’t stop himself. Because she believed he was better than he was. She saw him as responsible, capable, a caring, upstanding guy who was wasting his potential. He liked it. He liked what she saw in him, and what she wanted for him. Hell, he even liked she expected so much of him.
But she was also all wrong about him.
“Would you do me the favor of when you run into me in the future, don’t you dare act as if you’ve never talked to me. Or give me your, ‘been busy line’, and vacant stare. Promise me you’ll give me that much respect.” She turned and headed back down the beach. He sighed and followed her. Wishing this evening hadn’t gone down this particular road, and sorrier still he couldn’t change his MO for her.