Charlaine Harris owns this whole world.
A/N: This is the fourth story in my series. Please enjoy Thoughts in the Night, Taking, Action, and Eric's Story before starting One Year Later. Thanks and enjoy!
It's been exactly one year since Eric bought me the beach house at Pawley's Island. I remember the date escrow closed as if it were my own birthday. A girl like me doesn't often receive real estate as a gift, so we tend to not forget those things. Eric and I went out to celebrate in Shreveport that night, and that memory is one of my favorites. I replay it often in my mind. I now have a name for that activity. I call it playing my Eric tapes, and yes, I am aware that I wear my Crazy Sookie Stackhouse smile when I play them. People will just have to get over that. I do what I need to do to get by just like anybody else.
Eric took me to a very fancy dinner and I wore one of my beach dresses from Tara's shop. Eric wore a linen suit with a light blue shirt and looked good enough to eat (which I did later, by the way). After dinner, he drove us back to his house and I kept saying that I wanted to go back to Bon Temps. I wanted to stay at home because I had to work the next day, but Eric insisted that we drive to his house. I had stayed with him there a few times by then, but wasn't really what you'd call comfortable there. It was just so huge and there were often human employees there during the day which made me feel weird. I had never had a housekeeper or a gardener even, and felt awkward with people around who worked for Eric. But I have to admit that on that particular night, I was grateful for those people because they had gone out of their way to make the night very special for me.
Eric led me through the front door and the living room to the doors that led out to the gardens and the pool area. He watched my face as my eyes went wide and then began to tear up when I saw that most of the yard had been covered with sand and in the center of it a blanket was spread out with a picnic basket and an ice bucket on it. We kicked off our shoes and went to sit on the blanket. Eric opened the champagne and poured me a glass. Then he reached into the basket and retrieved a wrapped gift and said "Happy housewarming, lover." Inside the beautifully wrapped box was a small jewelry box that was an exact replica of the beach house. I opened the lid (well, the roof, actually), and instead of playing music, the sound of waves came from the small box. I said, "Thank you, Eric. I love it." And I loved the huge smile that came across his beautiful face. We left the jewelry box open and made love to the sounds of the waves and afterwards whispered to each other how much we missed the beach and all that had happened to us there. Then I sipped the champagne (Eric had enjoyed a small taste from his favorite spot on my inner thigh), and I started leisurely examining my little beach house replica. I opened the little drawers that were lined with pale blue velvet, and when I opened the bottom one, the tears started again when I saw the ring. It looked to me like a wedding band with tiny diamonds all around it, but when I looked up at Eric, he quickly said, "It's not a wedding ring or even an engagement ring. I know you're not ready, lover. I don't want to pressure you. I just wanted to commemorate the day with something special. I thought that maybe I could persuade you to wear it on your right hand. I promise I'll leave the left hand ring-free until you're ready." He sure was getting better at handling me. Honestly, how could anyone say no to that? He slipped the ring on my right ring finger and told me he loved me, kissing the ring and then he caught my lips in a perfect kiss. Life was perfect at that moment.
That's a tape I play a lot. I try not to play it in public too much though because it usually makes me cry. Thinking of it now, I kiss the ring myself and watch as the light plays across the diamonds.
Of course now I think of what a fool I was then. I should have said, "Don't be silly, Eric. You can give me a wedding band, an engagement ring, an island full of beach houses. Whatever you want to give me, I'll gladly accept from you." Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, isn't it?
So here I sit one year from that night--the night I got a beach house, and then a tiny replica of one with a diamond ring in it while sipping champagne with my love on a sandy beach in his back yard. Tonight, I am packing my suitcase, getting ready to fly back to Myrtle Beach tomorrow. Very soon I'll be at the house on Pawley's again, going from room to room, making sure I pack up anything personal before I put it on the market to sell. If you told me a year ago that I would be doing this, I would have called you crazy.
Last week when I decided to sell the beach house, I was swinging on my hammock on my front porch, playing a favorite Eric tape in my head (I think it was one of the ones where we made love on the beach in the rain). Eric had been right about the rental income. That's initially what allowed me to quit working for Sam. In those first few months, we had a few lease agreements to let people rent the house that were in place before we bought it. Then Pam went down for a week. I know she took a human with her, but I never asked who she was. I figured that who Pam vacationed with was none of my business. I was just so happy that she enjoyed the house. While she was gone, Victor was in town, and I didn't see Eric. He wanted Victor to know as little as possible about our relationship, which was fine with me. Victor gave me the creeps. I knew never to trust him since the night of the takeover when he lied so easily to all of us.
After Pam's vacation, I told all my friends as well as Jason that they could use the house whenever they wanted, and I was pretty certain that I wasn't interested in renting it out to strangers anymore. But then later, I changed my mind, of course. I realized that I needed to be practical and that I needed the money. Eric taught me to be practical, if nothing else, after all. Then no one ever mentioned vacationing at the house to me again. Honestly, who would have had the nerve? I told the realtor to rent it out as much as he could and just send me the checks. I certainly had no interest in ever going there myself ever again. And then, of course, later it became evident that I wouldn't need the rental income any more, and that's when I decided that I might as well just sell it. The thought of seeing it one last time was painful, but I hoped that maybe it would be cathartic as well. (Cathartic was yesterday's word of the day. How timely.)
Maybe seeing the house, walking the beach will help me say a final goodbye to that silly fairy tale I was hoping for. Has it really only been a year? It seems like a lifetime ago. I called the realtor to make sure that the house wasn't rented, and he said that he actually did have it rented, but that the family had cancelled at the last minute because The Gray Man had been seen on the beach warning of a storm. We laughed at this on the phone, but knew that the locals and the regular renters took those ghost sightings very seriously. They were always reported in the local paper, I assumed tongue in cheek, but people seemed to really believe that the sightings meant a storm was coming. Being a little more practical (thank you, Eric), however, I checked yahoo weather and saw that no storm was predicted, and booked my flight, grateful that the house would be empty and I could go before I chickened out.
I called Bill to let him know that I would be out of town, and he promised to keep an eye on the house while I was away. I told him not to scare Amelia or Octavia, and to try and be subtle. He and I seem to have finally come to some sort of comfortable friendship. I value him as a neighbor and a friend, of course, and I was always grateful to know that he would protect me. Actually, he says he would give his life to protect me, and I believe him. I know that he loves me, and I love him as well. It was only a month or so ago that we tried to rekindle that old flame. I let him kiss me one night, and I won't lie, it was a great kiss. It brought back so many memories of when I was first with Bill and how wonderful he was to me (before all the you-know-what hit the fan). Maybe I was trying to recreate that simpler time, those feelings. And, being the practical one that I am now, I figured that being with a man who really did seem to love me and would lay down his life for me wasn't such a crazy notion. But the next night, when he came over and leaned in for another kiss, I just started crying and said, "I just can't, Bill. I'm so sorry." He rocked me in his arms, and said, "It's okay," over and over. If anyone could understand my Crazy Sookie behavior, I guess it would be Bill. After all, he was there that night, here in this house with me. He knows what I went through the night Eric finally died.