The Guardian(25)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

The Guardian

“Putt Putt?” she asked as they pulled into the lot the following evening. She was dressed in jeans, as was he; earlier in the day, he’d told her not to bother dressing up, and now she understood the reason. “This is what you want to do tonight?”

“Not just that. There’s lots of stuff to do. They’ve got video games, too. And batting cages.”

“Oooh,” she said. “I’m thrilled.”

“Ha! That’s just because you don’t think you can beat me,” Mike said with a sniff.

“I can beat you. I’m like Tiger Woods when it comes to stuff like this.”

“Prove it,” he said.

She nodded, a gleam of challenge in her eyes. “You’re on.”

They got out of the truck, and made their way to the booth to get the clubs. “Pink and blue,” he said, pointing out the color of the golf balls. “You and me. Mano a womano.”

“Which one do you want?” she asked, playing innocent.

“Ha!” he snorted. “Keep it up and I’ll show you no sympathy on the course.”

“Ditto.”

A couple of minutes later, they reached the first hole.

“Age before beauty,” she offered, motioning to him.

Mike feigned a look of offense before putting the ball in place. The first hole required the ball to travel through a rotating windmill before it descended to a lower level where the hole was. Mike steadied himself over the ball.

“Watch and learn,” he said.

“Just get on with it.”

He hit the ball straight, and it passed through the opening in the windmill; after leaving the tube, it ended up less than a foot from the hole. “See? It’s easy.”

“Step aside. Let me show you how it’s done.”

She put her ball down and hit it. It bounced off the blades of the windmill and came back to her.

“Mmm . . . so sorry,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Too bad.”

“Just getting warmed up.”

She took a little longer before pulling back and hitting the ball again. This time it made it, and when she looked to see where it would end up, she saw it rolling toward the hole before it vanished from sight.

“Nice shot,” Mike conceded. “Lucky, though.”

She poked him with the club. “That’s all part of the plan.”

The Guardian

In a darkened bedroom of the rented Victorian, Richard was sitting in bed, his back against the headboard. He’d pulled the drapes closed. The room was illuminated only by a small candle on the nightstand, and as he rolled a piece of wax between his fingers, he thought about Julie.

She had been nice enough at the grocery store, but he knew she’d regretted running into him. He shook his head, wondering why she’d tried to hide it. It was pointless, he thought. He knew exactly who she was. In some ways, he knew her better than she knew herself. He knew, for instance, that she was with Mike tonight and that she saw in him the comfort she’d once had and hoped to find again.

She was afraid of anything new, he realized, and he wished she could see that there was so much more for her out there, so much more for the both of them. Didn’t she see that if she stayed here, Mike would drag her down? That her friends would ultimately hurt her? That’s what happened when you let fear govern your decisions.

He had learned that from experience. He’d despised his father, as Julie had despised the men who’d moved in and out of her life. He hated his mother for her weakness, just as Julie hated her own mother’s weakness. But Julie was trying to make peace with her past by trying to relive it. Fear was leading her to the illusion of comfort, yet in the end, it would remain an illusion. She didn’t have to end up the way her mother had; she didn’t have to lead the life her mother had. Her life could be anything she wanted it to be. As his was.

The Guardian

“Lucky shot!” Mike cried again. Halfway through the course, the score was tied, until Julie’s latest shot, which ricocheted off the wall and dropped into the cup. She swaggered over to retrieve her ball.

“How come it’s always luck when I make it and skill when you do it?” she demanded.

Mike was still staring at the path the ball had taken. “Because it is! There’s no way you could have planned that!”

“You sound like you’re getting nervous.”

“I’m not getting nervous.”

Mimicking his action earlier, she ran her fingernails over her chest and sniffed. “You should be. You’d hate to let a girl beat you.”

“You won’t beat me.”

“So what’s the score?”

He stuffed the card and pencil into his back pocket. “It doesn’t matter. It’s the score at the end that’s important.”

Mike stalked toward the next hole, Julie giggling behind him.

The Guardian

Richard slowed his breathing, concentrating on Julie’s image. Even though she was confused right now, he knew she was different from other people. She was special, better, like him.

It was that secret knowledge of his uniqueness that had sustained him in one foster home after the next. Aside from a few articles of clothing, the only items he’d brought with him were the camera he’d stolen from one of his former neighbors and the box of photographs he’d taken.

The first people who took him in seemed nice enough, but for the most part, he ignored them. He came and went as he pleased, wanting nothing more than a place to sleep and food to eat. As in many foster homes, he was not the only child, and he shared a room with two older boys. It was these two boys who stole his camera two months after he’d moved in, selling it at a pawnshop in order to buy cigarettes.

When Richard found them, they were playing in the vacant lot next door. On the ground was a baseball bat, and he reached for it. They laughed at first, since they were both taller and heavier. In the end, however, they were rushed to the hospital in a pair of ambulances, their faces crushed beyond recognition. The foster care caseworker wanted to send Richard to a juvenile detention center. She’d come to the house later that day with the police, after his foster parents had reported him. Richard was handcuffed and driven to the station. There, he’d sat on a hard wooden chair across from a burly officer named Dugan in a small mirrored room.

Dugan, with his pockmarked cheeks and bulbous nose, had a way of rasping as he spoke. Leaning forward, he told Richard how badly he’d injured the boys and that he was going to spend the next several years locked away. But Richard hadn’t been afraid, just as he hadn’t been afraid when the police had come to question him and his mother about his father. He’d known this was coming. He looked down, then began to cry.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said quietly. “But they took my camera, and I told them I would report it to the caseworker. They were going to kill me. I was scared. One of them attacked me-with a knife.”

With that, Richard opened his jacket and Dugan saw the blood.

Richard was taken to the hospital; he’d been slashed across his lower stomach. The only reason the wound wasn’t more serious, Richard claimed, was that he’d managed to twist free from their grasp at the last minute. Dugan found the knife on the warehouse roof, exactly where Richard said he’d seen one of the boys throw it.

The two boys, not Richard, were sent to the juvenile detention facility, despite their pleas that neither of them had ever touched the knife, let alone slashed Richard with it. But the man at the pawnshop said he’d bought the camera from them, and no one believed their protests. They both had records, after all.

Years later, Richard saw one of the boys in the neighborhood, walking on the opposite side of the road. He was a man by then, but when he saw Richard he froze; Richard simply smiled and kept on walking, remembering with disdain the cut he’d so easily inflicted upon himself.

Richard opened his eyes. Yes, he knew from experience that all hurdles could be overcome. Julie simply needed the right person to help her. Together, they would be able to accomplish anything, but Julie had to want him to do this for her. He needed her to accept what he had to offer.

Was that too much to ask?

The Guardian

“What’s the score now?” Julie asked.

They were on the final hole, Mike looking serious now. He knew he was a shot down; his first shot had gone off course and had stopped behind a protruding rock, making the next shot impossible to sink. He wiped his brow, ignoring the grin on Julie’s face.

“I think you might be ahead,” he said. “But don’t choke on the final hole.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Because you might lose if you do.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, you’d hate to throw it away at the end.”

“Okay.”

“So whatever you do, make sure you don’t even make the slightest mistake.”

“Mm . . . you’re right, coach. Thanks for the pep talk.”

She put her ball in place and stood over it, her eyes flickering from the ball to the hole and back again. She hit her next shot, and the ball rolled steadily, coming to rest an inch from the hole. I wish I had a camera, she thought when she glanced at Mike; the expression on his face was priceless.

“Looks like the pressure’s on,” she commented, rubbing it in. “I think you have to sink this one just to tie, and from where you are, you can’t make it.”

Mike was staring at her ball before he finally looked her way and shrugged. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It’s over.”

“Ha!”

He shook his head. “I hate to admit this, but I wasn’t really trying tonight,” he said. “I let you win.”

Julie hesitated only briefly before charging him with her club raised as Mike made a halfhearted attempt to flee. She caught him, spun him around, and pulled him close.

“You lose,” she said. “Admit it.”

“No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “You got it wrong. I might have lost the game, but I think I won the match.”

“How so?”

He smiled, leaning in to kiss her.

The Guardian

Richard rose from the bed and walked to the window. Peering outside, he saw shadows stretching across the property, blanketing the ground in darkness.

In time he would tell Julie everything about himself. He would tell her about his mother and father, he would tell her about the boys at the foster home, and he knew she would understand why he’d had no choice but to do what he’d done. He would tell her about Mrs. Higgins, the school counselor who had taken a special interest in him in high school, once she discovered he’d been orphaned.

He remembered talking to her as she sat in the couch in her office. She may have been pretty at one time, he remembered thinking, but any glamour she’d had had long since vanished. Her hair was a mixture of dirty blond and gray, and when she smiled, the wrinkles made her face look dry and cracked. But he needed an ally. He needed someone to vouch for his character, to say that he wasn’t a troublemaker but a victim; and Mrs. Higgins was perfect. In the office, everything about her demeanor suggested a desire to appear empathetic and kind-the way she leaned forward with sad eyes, nodding steadily as he told one terrible story after another about his childhood.

More than once, Mrs. Higgins had tears in her eyes.

Within months, she came to see him as a surrogate son, and he played the part well. He gave her a card on her birthday; she bought him another camera, a 35-millimeter with a quality lens, one of the cameras he still owned today.

Richard had always been strong in math and science, but she talked to his history and English teachers and they began to go easier on him. His grade-point average took a sudden jump upward. She informed the principal that his IQ tested at the genius level and pressed for Richard to be admitted to the programs for gifted students. She suggested that he build a portfolio of his photographs to showcase his talents and paid all the costs to put one together. She wrote a letter of recommendation to the University of Massachusetts, her alma mater, professing that she’d never seen a young man overcome so much. She paid a visit to the school and met with the admissions committee, begging them to give him a chance while showing his portfolio. She did everything she could, and though she felt a deep sense of satisfaction when she learned that all her hard work had paid off, it wasn’t Richard who told her.

For once he’d been accepted to the university, he never spoke to her again. She had served her purpose, and he had no more use for her.

In the same way, Mike had served his purpose for Julie, but it was over now. Mike had been a good friend, but it was time to send him on his way. Mike was shackling her, holding her back, preventing her from choosing her own future. Their future.

Twenty-two

The Guardian

For Julie, the days began to acquire a new rhythm. From the mornings when Mike left the garage to greet her on the street, to their lunches at out-of-the-way places, to the lazy evenings spent in long conversation, he was becoming an exciting and important part of her life.

They were still inching their way through the relationship as if both believed that a casual wave of the hand could make it vanish like smoke. Mike hadn’t spent the night at Julie’s, Julie hadn’t spent the night at Mike’s, and though there were a couple of nights when the opportunity had presented itself, neither seemed ready.

Walking Singer one day after work, Julie acknowledged that it was just a matter of time. It was Thursday, two weeks after they’d first gone out and, more important, a week and a half after their third date, which was, according to the magazines, the magic number when it came to twisting the night away. They’d passed that marker without acknowledging it, but that didn’t surprise her. In the years since Jim had died, she’d had those moments when she felt rather . . . sensual, she liked to call it; but it had been so long since she’d been to bed with a man, she’d sort of come to accept celibacy as a permanent way of life. She’d even forgotten what it was like to want something like that, but lo and behold, the old hormones had kicked in big time lately and there were moments when she found herself fantasizing about Mike.