At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [69]
And, as if her mother were listening, a light breeze stirred the air, making the leaves of the magnolia sway, almost in hushed agreement.
Lexie spent nearly an hour in the cemetery, conjuring up images of Jeremy and what he might be doing. She pictured him sitting in the worn easy chair in his parents’ living room, talking to his father, and it seemed as if she were in the adjoining room, listening in. She caught herself remembering how she felt when she first entered his childhood home, surrounded by those who knew him far longer than she had. She recalled the flirtatious way he’d watched her that evening and the tender way he’d traced her belly with his finger later that night at the Plaza.
Sighing as she glanced at her watch, she realized that there was a lot she should be doing: grocery shopping, paperwork at the library, gift buying for some employees’ upcoming birthdays . . . But as she jingled her keys, she suddenly felt an undeniable urge to go home, one so powerful that she felt little choice in the matter. She turned from her parents’ headstones and walked back to her car, puzzled by the urgency.
She drove slowly, careful to avoid the rabbits and raccoons that typically scampered across this stretch of road, but as she drew nearer to her home, an inexplicable sense of anticipation made her press down more firmly on the accelerator. She turned onto the road that fronted her property, blinking in confusion at the sight of Doris’s car parked along the street—until she caught sight of the figure perched on her front steps, elbows on his knees.
Fighting the urge to jump from the car, she stepped out slowly and began to walk up the driveway as if nothing about the scene struck her as unusual.
Jeremy had risen even before she’d slung her purse over her shoulder. “Hi,” he said.
She forced herself to steady her voice and smile as she approached. “Down here, people say, ‘hey,’ not ‘hi.’”
Jeremy studied his feet, seemingly oblivious to the playfulness in her tone.
“I’m glad to see you, stranger,” she added, her voice gentle. “It’s not often that I come home to see such a handsome man waiting on my porch.”
When Jeremy looked up, she could see the exhaustion in his face.
“I was just beginning to wonder where you were.”
She stood before him, recalling her earlier memory of his touch against her skin. For an instant, she thought about throwing herself into his arms, but there was something so fragile and tentative about his demeanor that she held back.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said again.
Jeremy responded with the ghost of a smile but said nothing.
“Are you still mad at me?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he simply stared at her. When she realized he was debating how to answer, weighing what he wanted to say against what he thought she wanted to hear, she reached for his arm. “Because if you are, you have every right to be.” She spoke in a breathless rush, anxious not to leave out anything she needed to say. “You were right. I should have told you about everything, and I won’t keep things like that from you again. I’m sorry.”
He seemed amused. “Just like that?”
“I’ve had some time to think about it.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he conceded. “I shouldn’t have overreacted the way I did.”
In the silence that followed, Lexie took in the fatigue and sorrow that seemed to hang from his figure. Instinctively, she moved toward him. He hesitated only briefly before opening his arms. She moved into them, kissed him gently on the lips, and then put her head on his chest. With his arms wrapped around her, they held each other for a long time, but she was conscious of the lack of passion in his embrace.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“No, not really,” he answered.
She took his hand and