Part 44 (2/2)
Color was spreading across her cheeks, and her lips got tighter and tighter with each word he spoke. He'd offended her with his language, there was no doubt about that. But d.a.m.n it, she'd offended him, too.
”Well, I guess we now know what you think of me,” she said. ”You know, this kind of insecurity and... and... cowardice is pretty unappealing in a grown man. But wait, I forgot. You're only twenty-five.”
He felt his own face flush at her particularly low blow. ”I thought women liked honesty. Because, hey, I'm just being honest herea”call it whatever you want. And you know what? Right now I'd just rather skip it all. Maybe if we can both manage to be honest, we can cut out that entire month of me pitifully hoping you will call back. We can just skip ahead to the part where the light bulb comes on anda”G.o.d, I'm a foola”I realize too little too late that you were just another lousy mistake in a long string of lousy, G.o.d-awful, G.o.dd.a.m.ned mistakes.”
Joan didn't slam the door on her way out. She closed it gently behind her, with a tiny but entirely too final sounding click.
Mary Lou was in such a fog, she almost didn't recognize Bob Schwegel, Insurance Sales, when she saw him.
”Hey,” he said, his blond hah- and white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. ”Wow, that's good timing. I was just coming in to see you. Are you on break?”
He was standing there in the parking lot of McDonald's, and he followed her back to the Dumpster, to her car.
”I just took my break,” she told him. Which was a relief. She would have hated spending her entire fifteen minutes with Insurance Bob breathing down her neck. She was already too rattled by yesterday's conversations with both Sam and...
Ihbraham.
Whom she hadn't been able to stop thinking about. Not for one minute in the past eighteen hours.
She'd actually gathered up her nerve and called him, just a few minutes ago, from the pay phone back by the bathrooms.
She'd pretended that everything was normal. That nothing had happened. That he hadn't kissed her, that she hadn't kissed him back.
”I'm going to a meeting tonight,” she'd said, leaving a message on his machine. ”Give me a call if you want to go, too.”
It was a friendly enough message, without a hint of s.e.xual invitation. Because what she really wanted was to go back to that place where they'd been friends and only friends.
Anything else was too frightening to think about.
Even though she'd been able to think about nothing else.
”I guess my timing's bad then.” Bob watched as she unlocked the front door of her car and put her book bag onto the seat.
”Sorry,” she said, not sorry at all as she relocked her car and slipped her keys into her pants pocket.
He blocked her way back to the restaurant. She hadn't realized he was quite so tall and broad. Or maybe he'd just never stood that close to her before. ”You can make it up to me. Have dinner with me tonight.”
”I'm sorry, I'm busy tonight.”
”Tomorrow night, then.”
”Why?” she asked.
Her frank question caught him off guard, and he blinked at her.
”What could you possibly see in me?” she persisted.
A few more blinks and then he laughed. But then he got serious. Really serious.
”I see someone who's been neglected for too long,” he said quietly. ”Someone who's as lonely as I am.” He backed off. ”I'm sorry if I came on too strong. I didn't mean to scare you or upset you or... I just... I haven't met a woman I've liked as much as you in a long time.”
”I'm married,” she said. And completely unable to stop thinking about someone else.
”I don't care,” he told her, still with that same disarmingly quiet sincerity. ”Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I think if you meet someone you're meant to be with, you should do whatever it takes to wind up together.”
”You think you're meant to be with ...” Me. Mary Lou looked at him again, focusing this time on his face, his shoulders, his legs in the suit he was wearing. He was even more beautiful than Sam, and he thought...
”I think I'd like to get to know you better,” he said. ”So what do you say? Just dinner. No pressure. We can take it slow, see where it goes.”
Mary Lou shook her head. ”I don't thinka””
”Don't think,” he said. ”Just say yes. Do something crazy for a change, Mary Lou.”
She laughed. ”Bob, Ia””
”Okay, do think about it,” he said. ”Think hard, sleep on it, and I'll call you tomorrow.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her.
She watched as he got into his cara”it was parked right next to hersa”and pulled out onto the main road that went through the base.
It was only then that she wondered.
What was he doing here?
Vince had been oddly quiet all day. Even Joanie had commented on it, during their tour of the Navy base this morning.
”Is everything all right with Gramps?” she'd pulled Charlie aside to ask. ”His health's okay, isn't it?”
Charlie sure hoped so. He was turning eighty this year. That was something to celebrate, considering many men in America didn't live to see that particular milestone of life.
She watched him now from the bedroom window. He was in the garden, just sitting and watching the wind move through the trees.
After sixty years of marriage, she'd learned that sometimes he sat and watched the leaves move in the wind because he had something on his mind. But sometimes he just liked to sit and watch the wind and the sky.
His silence, however, was a little bit harder to explain away.
But she'd learned as well that he'd talk to her when he was good and ready.
And if he couldn't bring himself to speak, he'd eventually write to her.
For a man who swore he was a walking disaster when it came to writing letters, Vince had written her quite a few doozies down through the years.
And he'd started with one heck of a letter back just weeks after they'd first met. He wrote to her the day he boarded the train for Fort Pierce, Florida. He left it for her to find, on the pillow of her bed.
Dear Charlotte, I love you. I've never said those words to anyone before, let alone written them down on paper, but it's true.
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