Afternoon.
Terry lies on the grass with Candy sitting beside him. Candy watches him basking in the sunlight. When she first saw him this morning, she thought he looked impossibly cute wearing a beige vest and trousers and polka dots bow tie with a golf cap.
Candy herself is wearing a sleeveless satin light blue dress with thin shoulder straps. The last three days’ time here is like a dream. Wearing the many beautiful dresses that Cassandra has lent her, she feels like a princess in a fairy tale, and Terry her handsome escort by her side.
Yesterday Terry drove them out to the beach. After frolicking for a while in the water, they sat looking out at the water. Candy watched the waves for a long time. With each wave, she felt a wave of sensation awakening, then rising and falling in her heart.
Terry feels relaxed. His eyes are closed but he is not asleep. He knows Candy is watching him, and does not mind. A smile comes across his face.
This is just like when we were in St. Paul.
For him, the ten years in between St. Paul and the present have been crossed out of existence. Director’s cut. The part without the leading lady permanently deleted from the script. The time at St. Paul and the present are bridged together and this is the only story. Everything and everyone in between haze out of his mind. Erased and discarded. Not worth another second of his time.
He sits up and playfully takes her into his arms. She topples over him as he falls back onto the grass. Her dress is so thin. He can feel the softness of her body.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Candy cries out, laughing.
He looks at her face. It reminds him of a flower blossoming in the spring.
“I am counting all the freckles on your face.”
In the past she would have gotten angry. Now, she wishes that he will always call her Freckles. Gently she leans down and kisses him softly.
I have so little worries in the world when I’m with you, Candy.
“Back at St. Paul’s, Freckles, you wouldn’t do this,” Terry says with a bright smile.
Candy smiles back at him. “Maybe I want to make up for what I didn’t do back then.”
“Really? Am I this lucky?”
Candy looks at him, her expression a bit forlorn. “When I found out you left St. Paul, I chased after you, desperate to catch up with you before the ship departed. It was not yet dawn. The sky was still dark. The coach was going fast, but not fast enough. I realized then that I....” Candy gives him a shy smile, “and I kept thinking to myself that you had left and I hadn’t even told you… And then the ship left and I never reached the port.”
A strong breeze blows by, swaying the branches of the trees of the woods, creating a rustling sound of leaves, as if the leaves let out a collective sob.
“Candy. Do you ever wonder how things would have been if that accident didn’t happen ten years ago?”
Terry asks, “If it didn’t happen, this is how we would be together, don’t you think?”
“I would like to think that.” Candy smiles at him. “But Terry, your world is so different. In South Haven, at Pony’s Hills, the world is not so dazzling.”
Terry listens intently.
“You…with me. What would people say about that?”
“What people?”
“People who write about you?”
At that, Terry laughs. “You worry about people who write about me? When did you start worrying about what people think?”
“I don’t. But if people say unfavorable or demeaning things about you, maybe it would not be such a good thing for you.”
Terry looks at her, caught by surprise that she cares about him this way.
“Say…why are you talking about this?” Terry asks, sitting up now. “Have you changed your mind? Do we still only have just four days together? Or are you thinking of coming back to me and that’s why you’re concerned about what people will say?”
“No!” Candy replies. “I just…worry…you and I…and me engaged…scandal….” Candy feels tongue-tied, unable to say aloud the situation in which she has found herself.
Terry ignores her remark. “Just four days?” he asks again with his gentle voice.
Candy stares at him. Before coming to Hillcrest, she thought that she would just spend time with Terry for four days back at South Haven. Maybe make up to each other, within reason, a little of what they had been denied. She thought she can even answer to Aaron for her decision, and he might even understand, if he knows how painful their loss was from ten years ago.
But she did not expect to be taken away to this place. In their days here, she has slowly realized that Terry before her is alive and real, not just a memory that she can relive for a few days and then put away again.
She wants more than just four days. But she does not want to break her engagement with Aaron either.
She cannot believe she was so absurd to think that their four days together was ever a good idea.
Candy looks down, frowning. “It is what I promised you and myself.”
“You’re not answering my question. Forget what you promised. Is this still all you want now?” Terry presses on.
Candy does not know what to say.
“Marry me then,” she hears him say. “Don’t marry him. Marry me instead.”
Candy looks at him, shocked.
“I want to marry you. I don’t want you to marry somebody else. Will you marry me?”
His question sends her heart racing to the skies. Sweet sensation fills her entire body.
She cannot say yes and she cannot say no.
“Terry,” finally she says, “if you want, we can pretend that I said yes until we leave Hillcrest.”
Terry cannot believe what he just heard. He lets out a big sigh and lies back onto the grass.
YOU ARE READING
The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else
RomanceA Sequel to the Candy Candy Final Story
