Page 104 of Better Than Revenge

“You are very thoughtful.”

“Sometimes.” For some reason Theo’s smile flashed through my mind, igniting a new spark of sadness. “You broke up with Andrew when he made a big mistake. But you said you got back together. How did you forgive him?Whydid you forgive him?”

“Well, for one, nobody is perfect. For two, his mistake injured my ego more than it injured me.”

“Oh…” I thought about that. I wondered if that was why I felt mostly anger when I thought about Jensen and mainly sadness when I thought about Theo. Because Jensen had injured me, taken something important from me, and Theo had injured my ego. Still wrong, but perhaps my pride was also involved in the equation, was part of the reason I couldn’t get past it.

“Thirdly, there was the grand gesture,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He did something big to prove that he cared about me. Something that meant he saw me.”

“What?” I asked.

“It was a couple weeks after he lent my board to Cheryl. Iwas walking the beach, like I did most mornings. But instead of watching the surfers, my eyes were on the ground so I could throw stranded sand dollars back into the water before the sun dried them up. I heard shouting up ahead and looked up to see a group of lifeguards surrounding someone by one of their towers. Everyone was speaking in loud, angry voices.”

“Why?” I asked.

“At first, I couldn’t tell. But as I drew closer, I saw the person in the middle of the group was Andrew. He held a paintbrush, his arms streaked multicolored.”

“What was he painting?”

“The tower,” she said with a smile.

“The tower?”

“The lifeguard tower where we first met.”

My mouth fell open. The lifeguard tower. Was that the one I had seen in the rock thrower’s backyard? “What was on it?”

“Surfing scenes, waves, a sun, and when I walked around the back, there was us. Well, not detailed versions of us, but our silhouettes, representing the first time we met. The lifeguards were angry that he had defaced their property.”

“What did they do?”

“The police came, drove their truck right across the sand. Andrew had seen me at that point, and he was saying things likeI’m sorry I was so stupidandI shouldn’t have lent her the board. You mean everything to me. I miss you.By this time, the cops were pulling him toward their truck and he was yelling,I love you, Charlotte! Please forgive me.”

“And what were you doing?”

“I was running after him, saying,I forgive you! The tower is beautiful!”

“Did they really arrest him?”

“They took him down to the station and gave him a serious talking-to. And in order to get the charges dropped, he had to repaint the tower back to its normal, boring blue.”

My heart sank. “He repainted it?”

“He did.”

That meant the lifeguard tower we’d found probably wasn’t the real one. Had someone made a replica? “And then you guys got back together?” I asked.

“I showed up on the beach with a paintbrush early the next day because my dad told me that was the day he was scheduled to repaint it. And there he was, blue paint and a mopey expression on. He’d already painted over the front half, like he was saving the back, saving us, for last.Need help?I asked him. He turned and looked at me in surprise, scooping me up and twirling me around. Then he carried me up the stairs and inside, where my surfboard was leaning up against the back wall. I was so happy to see it, so happy to be with him that I pulled him into a kiss.”

“Of course you did,” I said. “You missed kissing the best kisser.”

She chuckled.

“Wait,” I said. “You got your surfboard back?”