His Naughty Lessons
Chapter 145: Memories Long Ago

Chapter 145: Memories Long Ago

** Eli **

"... Oh. That must be ... a long time ago indeed." It was a few moments before Harper spoke again. The look she gave him was slightly hesitant, as if unsure of the safest direction to take that conversation. "Um ... Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it."

Eli looped an arm around her and squeezed gently. "Nah, it’s alright. Not that I was intentionally avoiding beaches for any particular reasons. I never even thought about it that way till you mentioned." He paused for a second. "I should be the one saying sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil the mood by bringing that up."

She shifted to meet his eyes again, and her gaze wavered. "Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked tentatively. "You don’t need to, but it wouldn’t be spoiling anything if you do. I’ve always wished ... well, that someday I might get to know as much about you as you know about me."

She did?

Eli pondered that. After so many years of avoiding talking about his parents, the natural denial on that topic had become almost a basic instinct to him, and to suddenly bring it up during a romantic date like this ... felt odd, like he was topping this perfect picnic with a bitter and sour aftertaste. But he hadn’t intended to keep it from Harper forever, either. The illusion of disguising his true self in front of her had long shattered by now, so if she didn’t mind ...

He rubbed his thumb slowly over her arm, contemplating where to start.

"We had an oceanfront house on the west coast," he began, "with a nice view over the bay, and a long stretch of beach shared by a small community. I liked to swim and play with the other kids in the neighborhood, so my parents used to take me to the beach every day after school. I’d jump immediately into the water, and they would sit in their beach chairs under the umbrella, sometimes with a pack of beer and sometimes just to watch over us. Occasionally, when the waves were low, they’d take me on a walk along the sand too, or help me build a castle just so that I could have fun hopping on top of it at the end and watching it crumble."

He smiled a bit sheepishly at the recollection of his unruly boyhood days. But Harper only returned him a smile without judging, so he continued. "The coastline there is different from this one. The mountains aren’t as green, and the water is a different shade of blue. Seagulls are everywhere and like to snatch up whatever you fail to protect on a picnic blanket. The sun feels different too, especially in the summer when it’s hot and dry. I was probably fifty shades tanner back then, from all the time I spent playing beach ball in that weather. It was a popular game in the neighborhood, and my school even held its own tournaments every spring. My father used to be one of the judges—"

The mention of his father caught Eli himself off guard. He paused briefly with a frown, not used to talking about the man in a context that was filled with good memories.

Shaking off the thought, he focused on his other parent instead. "My mom, on the other hand, got sunburns easily. She would pick seashells with me in the winter when the weather was mild, but otherwise for most of the year, she rarely stepped away from the beach umbrella. On the hottest days of the summer, she’d even have to keep moving her chair to stay in the shade as the sun changed angle. I remember my father never bothered to get up and make room for her though ... so their chairs would frequently end up tangled way too close together, to the point that she was practically sitting on top of him."

Once again, the story was involuntarily drifting back to his father ...

Eli scoffed, suddenly finding his childhood memories full of irony. "My middle school self had always thought he was doing it on purpose, just so that my mom would get closer to him," he blurted the next thought that emerged in his mind without warning. "But then I looked back at it years later and realized, it’s such a silly thought, isn’t it? If he cared enough—"

If he cared enough, then how could he bring himself to lie to her and hurt her like that? Were all those happy moments between them fake? Were all those years of their marriage a mere show, a facade he kept up for ... what purpose?

Eli caught himself, realizing belatedly that his monologue was starting to stray into a bitter direction that was certainly not the way he wanted for the perfect evening.

He stopped there, trying to search for something better to say to brighten up the mood of the conversation. But apparently Harper had already heard his unspoken thoughts. She had lifted her head from his shoulder while he spoke, and as the sound of crashing waves and seabird cries filled the silence between them once more, she placed her hand on top of his, a gesture of wordless solace.

"Obviously I can’t speak for your parents ..." she said softly. "But I would like to hope that what you thought back in the days was right. Maybe he did care. People make mistakes ... not always because they wanted to or meant to. Not always because they didn’t care."

Eli blinked.

Harper brushed her fingers over the back of his hand. "You had lots of happy and beautiful memories with your family, Eli. I’m so, so sorry that things didn’t stay the way they should have ... but just because it ended doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real."

She raised her hand then to cup his cheek, and the look in her eyes was so soft that it smoothed away every last tinge of bitterness on his mind.