Loved - A Novel (27 page)

              “I have to tell you something,” he said suddenly, shaking me out of my analysis of his personality.

              “Okay.” He still held me while he leaned against the kitchen counter.

              “I knew who you were when I asked your name. I’ve been watching you all summer. And I never thought in a million years that you would speak to me, let alone be here, now. With me.”

              “Oh!” I looked away while absorbing this new and fascinating information, deciding whether to make a confession of my own.
Go for it
, my heart said, my heart always said.

              “I watched you all summer too. I thought you never noticed me. You never looked at me, you never spoke to me.”

              “I know. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how...”

              We both seemed pleased with the outcome of our situation.

              We kissed some more and then we crashed. Wow, a whole three hours of sleep. But the next day every yawn was followed by a smile. 

              Over the next few months, I learned some interesting things from Blake. Who would have guessed that I liked green peppers on my pizza or that offshore drilling was preventing the US from looking for alternative sources for fuel as eagerly as we should be? He called every day while I was in Pittsburgh visiting Meredith. He called while he was out for a walk, just thinking of me. He called while he was on his way to a protest downtown, save-the-trees-something.

Sometimes he wouldn’t call for a few days and I would think,
Here it is. I knew it.
But then he would call and chat just like normal, ask me to come over or to go climbing or for a bike ride. He always had extra bikes at his house. I hadn’t been on a bike since childhood, but one night I decided that he’d been working so hard and I should throw him a bone. I rode the bike. 

              It was cold so I wore boots and a sweater and some random hat that had been in my trunk on its way to Goodwill. We rode all over Vanderbilt’s campus, then up and down a parking garage ramp. I was more comfortable there with no cars in the parking garage. I rode up and down, up and down, and Blake just watched. I rode closer to him and smiled. I wanted him to know that I could do this. I could be a bicyclist.  Kind of.

              “You look so fucking sexy on that bike with your little hat on,” he said.

              I laughed. I thought that I probably looked pathetic.  They say you don’t forget how to ride a bike, but really you sort of do. 

              One night he called from downtown. He was at a show with some friends and was about to ride his bike up to Dragon Park, where he was usually found when not working and where I’d been with him a couple of times lately. I drove over to meet him, and sat on one of the swings and waited.

              I knew it would take his bike longer than my car to get there but I felt like I’d waited forever on that swing. His bike didn’t come around the bend in the path, his fedora lit in the moonlight. How long had I been sitting there? Forty minutes? Fifty? I went back to the car and checked my phone.  He hadn’t called. I didn’t care enough to call. Those times he would disappear for a few days, he always had an excuse: “My friend was in trouble,” or “I got in a fight with my brother,” or “I lost my phone.” I didn’t want to have to check up on him and I didn’t want to hear any excuses so I drove home, listening to a Pink song that I loved: “You’re the swing set and I’m the kid that falls.”

              He called the next day to tell me he had fallen downtown and broken his leg. He asked if I would pick him up from the hospital in a few hours. He called again when he was about to be discharged and I left work early to go get him. I took him to the pharmacy to get his prescription and I loaned him twenty bucks for it. He had paid his ER co-pay, a couple of hundred dollars, in cash at the hospital. That was all he had for the week. At least he had health insurance. I bought us dinner and then I told him to call me if he needed anything before I headed home. On my drive home and in the car, I wondered to myself what we were. We were dating but it had been months and I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. I knew what I wanted from him, but did I trust him? Did I believe that he could give me what I wanted?

              Without the ability to walk, he couldn’t work so he lost his serving job. He moved all of his stuff, which wasn’t very much, into his mom’s apartment, and his roommates who had been his only friends were no longer his friends for whatever reason. The man had nothing.

              Kellie called and I was telling her what had happened to Blake and why he hadn’t shown up at the swings.

              “Kim, he is so stupid! He does all this stupid stuff and you just go, ‘la la la whatever.’ I dated someone like him for five years. He’s just like Aaron! He’s immature and stupid and you’re wasting your time!” Kellie isn’t one for subtlety.

              “Kel, he’s not like Aaron though. I can see how you think that and yes, he was stupid for climbing a bridge and falling and breaking his leg, but he is different than he was and he wants to continue to improve his life.”

              “Stop defending him!” 

              She made me feel like I had to defend myself.

              “I’m not, I said I know he was stupid, but that isn’t all that’s there. Plus, we’re taking it slow. I’m protecting myself!  What’s wrong with that?”

              We went on like this for a few minutes. She and I had never fought like this before. I couldn’t believe that she had taken such a strong stance against him that in two years of friendship this would be the topic of our first fight.

              “Well, do whatever you want of course, and I love you, but I do not think this is smart,” she said and then we agreed to disagree and we both hung up the phone upset.

              I hate to say this but I wasn’t really sad to see him hit rock bottom. From what I’d witnessed, he had some growing up to do. Sometimes having everything taken from you can force you to make the needed changes in your life. We started talking every day and hanging out much more often. He had nothing else to do and no one else to see, after all.             

He was still on crutches when I was housesitting at the Jamison’s, and he came over and cooked dinner. He made pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and a tossed salad with strawberries. The meal was delicious and the presentation was brilliant.

              We sat at the big round dining table and talked until well after the food was gone. He told me what he remembered from his childhood in New Orleans. He shared some of his favorite memories from L.A. We discovered that he’d worked at a restaurant in Venice Beach where I knew the chef. I told him about my journey to Nashville, what my hometown was like, and about my faith. He asked more about my church and my beliefs, and I invited him to come to church with me sometime. I told him that I had once lost everything I had too, and that I think that can be God’s way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him.

              “It’s been so long since I’ve had faith,” Blake said, “I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I found it again.”

              At least he was thinking about it.

              Then we sat in front of the fireplace for a while, sometimes talking and sometimes silent, and he said twice what a nice time he’d had.

              On my last night of house-sitting at the Jamison’s, I was having some friends over for a dinner party. I invited Blake and asked him if he’d help me cook. I knew Kellie was coming and decided it best not to tell her that Blake would be there. She’s generally a polite person so I knew that she’d stay quiet or avoid him and deal with me later.

              I picked up Blake when I got off work and we went to the store for fresh pork tenderloin and chicken. I noticed that his face was getting a bit scruffy, and I said something about it.

“Yeah, I know you like beards,” he said.

              He made a beautiful and amazing meal while I put together the hors d’ouvres, greeted guests and poured the wine. Everyone loved him. He was talkative, asking each guest about what they did and how they knew me. It was evident that he was both a very great man and very smitten with me.

              Once everyone had left, he stayed to watch a movie. I was pleased. During the movie, he kissed me. It had been such an amazing night and it became clear to me, sitting next to him and surrounded by my friends at dinner, that there was really something good between us. He was showing me that he felt the same way.

              I was too nervous to hear the truth from Kellie and Sophie’s mouths about what they thought of Blake, even though I felt like dinner went really well. Sophie called the next day while I was packing up at the house.

              “So,” she said after a few minutes of small talk. “Jerod and I really liked Blake.”

              “Really!?  Oh, I’m so glad. I was scared to ask!”

              “Yeah. We aren’t sure about his maturity level, but he’s intelligent and we were impressed.”

              I was so happy. Blake had really liked all of my friends too. He said he’d much rather have dinner and wine with these kinds of friends than be out in the middle of the night getting plastered with his old friends. This was moving in the right direction.

              Things went on pretty much like that. He came to bonfires with me. We had a picnic on my living room floor, having been rained out from picnicking in the park, where we had been playing Mexican Train Dominos while he took pictures of me on his phone. Once his leg was mostly healed, I bought a silver bike at the Salvation Army, and we rode our bikes through the park in my neighborhood to the coffee shop on Saturday mornings. I got a library card and we borrowed movies from the library and cooked dinner in my kitchen. Well, he would cook and I would eat pear slices and
Parmesano
cheese and watch him cook. One night, I dreamed that Chase and Blake were step-brothers.

              Every now and then, we’d make plans and then I wouldn’t hear from him. Plans for a 9:00 movie night would pass and I would hear from him the following evening. He’d apologize that he was in a fight with his brother and he couldn’t call or he’s wrecked his bike and he didn’t make it home till too late.

              I proceeded cautiously. I liked him and I saw something in him. I felt drawn to him enough not to let it go. I believed he was capable of carrying on a successful relationship but I also knew that he was capable of the opposite.  By now I was a survivor. I knew how to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

              I casually invited him on a trip home to Westville with me. I knew he would want to get out of his mom’s place for a few days, and he wasn’t working again yet so he agreed to come.  I was protecting my heart well, which was a new habit for me, so I didn’t believe that he was really going to come until he got into my car with his backpack.

              Blake drove much of the way and we arrived at Meredith’s house just in time for dinner. Her family loved him right away. Meredith and her mom were telling me how cute he was as soon as they had a private moment to do so. I knew he was and I couldn’t believe that he was there with me, that he felt lucky to be there with me. He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.”

              Cuddled up on an air mattress in the basement, the moon shone through a little window high on the wall. “You look insanely beautiful right now,” he whispered and kissed me.

              We had decided to do no more than kiss; we wanted to take our time, wanted this to really mean something.  We were always intertwined though—awake or asleep. We couldn’t stop touching and I loved it.

              I let him sleep in the morning while I went to a friend’s bridal shower, and when I got back, Blake and Meredith were ready and waiting for me. The three of us went to a wine tasting event at a local winery before heading to the playground on the lake where Meredith and I played growing up.

              It was cold at the playground but we had so much fun climbing and swinging from the monkey bars and jumping on the old rubber tires, warmed a little still from the wine. Meredith snapped a picture of Blake and me up on the bridge, arms around each other and smiling at each other blissfully.

              It had been my favorite trip home since I moved away almost nine years earlier. As we drove back to Nashville, I played my new
Kings of Leon
CD on the stereo and we both sang along.

You know that I could use somebody,

Someone like you.

              I wish that was the end of this story, but then again I never did like fairy tales.

             
April, 2009.

              Blake asked me to be his girlfriend officially on the day before Sophie’s birthday. I had just run a half marathon, and he came over to teach me how to make mojitos for Sophie’s party the next day.

              “So, I met these people at the show today,” he told me, as he muddled mint leaves in a glass. He stopped and put his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. “And they were talking about dating and sex and stuff, and they asked what my situation was, and I said ‘I have a girlfriend and I’m happy about it.’”

              “Oh,” I said, smiling but trying not to be too dramatic. “Okay.”

              We had fun at Sophie’s birthday. I let Blake ride my scooter and we were all happy from mojitos and celebration.  It was one of those nights when things feel as if they’d fallen into place. It was effortless. My friends felt like his friends. My heart felt like it was safely in his hands. Our story felt like it had a happily ever after.