Dustin and I leave the party in his limousine. I’m a nervous wreck knowing what I have to say to him. I tug his jacket around my shoulders, breathing in the smell of him. It might be the last time I get to. He’s been kind to me, but distant, and that distance feels like a million miles.
“I’m sure Jera told you I moved,” Dustin says as he looks out the window.
“Yes. You changed your phone number, too.”
He turns to me. “You tried to call?”
“I texted. Some teen named Candi said it was the wrong number.” The pain from that day comes back into my chest. That was the day I knew it was all over.
“What did you text?”
I shift in my seat. I’d spent an entire evening crafting a text message to him. I typed it out, then deleted it, then typed it out again, about a hundred times. When I finally hit send, I was a mess. “I don’t remember,” I say, quietly.
He lets his gaze drop. “Did you finally get a new phone?”
I pull the same old phone out of my clutch and hand it to him. “It still works.”
He chuckles. “I bought you a new one, you know.”
I gasp. “Really?”
“Yes. I was going to give it to you after that dinner, but then everything happened and…” His voice trails off.
“What happened to it?”
“I threw it in the garbage disposal.” He cringed. “That was not my best moment. Broke both the phone and the disposal.”
If I had any doubts about how Dustin felt about me after our awful parting, I didn’t now. He hated me.
He slides my phone back to me on the seat between us. I take it and put it back in my clutch purse. It’s now a symbol of our distance. I think I’ll save up for a new one.
“The audition…you did well when we read lines. What was that about?”
“You read it with such emotion, I got choked up. I wasn’t really acting. I was pulled into the moment because of you. I honestly haven’t had one single acting class.”
“Wow.” He doesn’t look at me. “You were good. You have natural talent. I bet you could get some jobs if you wanted.”
“Yeah, the Hollywood life isn’t for me.”
Dustin nods, still avoiding my gaze. The silence returns between us. I hold in my tears. I don’t know what I can do to fix the past. All I can do is try to explain, which I’ve already done.
The car pulls up to Dustin’s house. He turns to me. “Is this okay?”
I didn’t expect him to bring me to his house. It’s much more intimate than I was thinking, but it makes hope spring to my soul. “Yes.”
This home looks more traditional than his last house, with white paint and huge columns extending up to the second floor. A large fountain sits beside the driveway. His driver opens the door for us and we climb out. Dustin unlocks his front door for me.
“This is beautiful,” I say as I enter. His entryway stretches up two floors, with tall, skinny windows at the top. I walk through to his massive living room area. He has another grand staircase that curves up to the second floor. He must like that style. A modern chandelier hangs down, lighting the room. I stop short when I see a watercolor painting hung on his wall. It’s the one I painted of the fish we saw at Catalina Island.
“You bought one of my paintings?” My voice sounds so small in the large room. I take another step in and on the opposite wall hangs my painting of the beach with Squint running along the sand.
“I bought them all.”
My heart lodges itself in my throat. Dustin doesn’t hate me. He can’t hate me if he bought my paintings to look at every day.
I turn to him, fueled by this revelation. “I fell in love with you,” I blurt out. “I mean, that week we were together. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to. But I did.” I shake my head because I’m not getting it quite right. “I mean, I still do. I’m in love with you.”
“I love you, too, Mackenzie.”
My brain is so filled with everything I want to say, I don’t process what he said. “I can’t get you out of my head. I regret what happened between us. I mean, not the good things. I regret not telling you the truth about me, and about everything. As soon as I started having feelings for you, I should have told you. I was so wrong, and I’ve cried myself to sleep every night since then.”
Dustin puts his hands on my shoulders. I’m still wearing his jacket. “It’s okay. I love you, too, Mackenzie,” he repeats.
I stare at him, his words finally sinking in. “You do?”
He nods. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you, either. I moved because I couldn’t stand to see that gate with a lock on it. It broke me every time I looked at it. Even though I thought you took advantage of me, a part of me didn’t fully believe it.”
“Really?” Tears fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks.
“I couldn’t reconcile the person I knew with the things I thought you’d done. I kept telling myself you used me, but I couldn’t understand it. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was so gullible that I couldn’t remember things right. But tonight things finally fell into place. I know you weren’t trying to get anything from me. You, coming here, and going to that party to talk to me…you don’t know what that means to me. You’ve conquered so much, and I’m proud of you for it.”
“I’m so sorry I lied.”
He cups my cheeks. “I forgive you. For all of it.”
My heart sings. He forgives me. Tears spill down my cheeks.
“If you hadn’t switched places with Jera, I never would have met you. I need you in my life. I know that, now. I think I’ve always known it. I just didn’t understand.”
I shrug out of his tux jacket, letting it fall to the floor. I slide my arms around his neck. He leans down and presses his lips against mine.
I cling to him, hardly able to believe we’re finally together. I dreamed of this for so long. And now Dustin is right here, and he loves me.
My soul screams for joy as his lips pass over mine. He is everything I want. All that I need. The world will be right as long as he’s in my life.
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