Turnabout's Fair Play (10 page)

“I know. But that was the other me—that was the me I don’t want to be anymore. That was the marketing-account-exec me. I want to get back to being the real me—the one who wouldn’t have stopped answering your e-mails. So tell me about this gaming.”

Danny looked at his watch. “I’ll have to give you the short version—I’ve got to be at work in half an hour.”

He listened with fascination as Danny described the lengths he and his new group of friends went to entertain themselves—a table containing a three-dimensional topography, several locales, and the miniature characters they created with painstaking detail.

“We don’t get together as often as we used to, since we’re all married now and a couple of guys have kids, but we set aside one Saturday a month to spend the day playing.” Danny stuffed his napkins down into his cup and carried it to the nearby trash can.

Jamie followed him and disposed of his own cup and napkins. “How did you get hooked up with these guys?”

“I went to nursing school with three of them. I met the other two at the hospital when I started working there.” Danny fished his keys from his pocket. “Speaking of work, have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”

Jamie followed him from the café toward the front doors. The coffee shop in the big-box bookstore in the new shopping center in Murfreesboro had been the best place for them to meet, close to the medical center where Danny worked. “Not really. I want to take a few weeks off—maybe go out to Utah and see my mom—before I start looking for something else. I have three months of severance pay and money in savings, so I’m not desperate to find a job immediately.”

Danny pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his head and paused at the main doors. “Are you still volunteering at the senior center with your grandmother?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Danny shrugged. “Well, you gave up a lot of other things to become that marketing-account-exec you.”

He had a point. “I know. And that’s one of the reasons I want to take my time with this next job decision. I want to make sure I’m not doing something because someone else thinks I should.” He crossed his arms and leaned against a display table. “When you left the ad agency where you worked after college to go to nursing school, what was it that made you realize that’s what you wanted to do?”

“I realized I didn’t want to sell people stuff. I wanted to help them. I wanted to make people feel better—literally.” Danny pushed the door open. “I know you don’t want people trying to influence you, but I saw you working with the elderly at the nursing home back in the day. You’re good at it. Maybe it’s something you should consider.”

Jamie’s spine stiffened in rebellion against Danny’s words—but he forced himself to relax. It had merely been a suggestion, not a shove in one particular direction. “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

“See you later.” Danny raised his hand and pushed through the outer door. Moments later, the roar of a motorcycle sounded and retreated.

Jamie turned and scanned the large bookstore. His childhood best friend, who, like Jamie, had majored in marketing in college, interned at a prestigious Nashville advertising agency, and then been offered a job there upon graduation, was now a nurse. A nurse who rode a motorcycle. And who played fantasy-based war games with other male nurses.

One of the last things Dad had said to him before he died was that he wanted Jamie to grow up to be a real man. Dad had been so frustrated with him. He flinched when Dad threw a football at him. The only class he ever failed was PE. The peewee-football coach kicked him off the team because he avoided physical contact with others—and he was supposed to be a tackler. Dad, a former Marine turned cop, had wanted Jamie to be an athlete, a man’s man, someone confident in his own abilities. What he’d gotten was a doughy stammerer who’d been more interested in computer games and fantasy novels.

For his thirteenth birthday, Jamie had gotten a full set of free weights and dumbbells from his father. He’d hated them. He’d asked for a medieval figurine- and castle-model kit. But half an hour later, standing over his father’s body waiting for the paramedics, Jamie had vowed he’d become the kind of man his father would be proud of.

And that was not the kind of man who became a nurse. When Danny told him twelve years ago he’d quit his job and enrolled in MTSU’s School of Nursing, Jamie experienced a moment’s jealousy. Danny’s parents supported him in his decision to enter a somewhat-nontraditional field for a man. But Danny didn’t have the specter of his father looking over his shoulder, constantly reminding him to buck up and be a man. A real man. A man who did manly things, who shouldered manly responsibilities. And who had a manly job. A man who could talk to a beautiful woman without completely embarrassing himself.

“I’m thinking about applying for an editor position up in New York City. Can you imagine me living and working in the Big Apple?” Flannery shaded her eyes and looked off in the distance over her grandfather’s shoulder toward…nothing in particular. She just didn’t want to see his reaction.

“New York? Why? Are you unhappy with your job here? I thought you enjoyed working for Lindsley House.” His voice sounded neutral enough—not shocked or horrified—but with perhaps a slight tone of disappointment.

Disappointment in her or in the idea of her moving so far away? “I’m happy at Lindsley. I love my job and everyone I work with.”

A warm breeze gusted, and the edges of the umbrella shading the table on the deck outside of the Rosepepper Cantina in East Nashville fluttered, shadows dancing across the remnants of their early dinner.

“But?” Big Daddy prompted.

She sighed and returned her attention to him and away from the other patrons there for an early Sunday-evening dinner. “But I figure since I’m losing everything here anyway, why not take the opportunity to see if I could get a job working at one of the big New York publishers.”

Big Daddy pushed his plate aside and leaned forward, hands clasped together atop the table. “What do you mean you’re losing everything?”

She groaned. “I shouldn’t have put it like that. I just mean that with Zarah and Caylor getting married, it’s not going to be long before I’m pretty much on my own—once they start living their own lives with their husbands and spending time with all their new, married friends. Maybe it’s time for me to start over somewhere else where I won’t have to watch it happen.”

“Ah.” He leaned back in his chair again, nodding. “I see. So you’d rather call it quits, assume your friends are going to behave like your sisters, and run away rather than stick it out and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“No, it’s not—” But it was just like that. She crossed her arms, furious with him for calling her on her own cowardice. “I don’t want to be left behind again, left out. Made to feel like there’s something wrong with me because they’re married and I’m not.”

“Flan, can I let you in on a little secret?”

Now she leaned forward on the table, arms still crossed. “What’s that?”

“I always knew you’d be older when you got married. Even when you were a little girl, I knew you’d most likely be in your thirties before you married.”

She frowned, not sure she liked what his secret implied. “You mean you knew that no man would want me?”

“No. I mean that I knew you had things to do with your life. You didn’t dream about being a princess and having your Prince Charming come rescue you the way your sisters did. You didn’t want to constantly play house or with baby dolls. You climbed trees. You made up magical worlds full of fantastical creatures for you to battle—not for a prince to rescue you from. You were the warrior, the one slaying the dragons.”

But once she’d hit her teens and that playacting had gone the way of her sisters’ dolls, she’d turned the fantasy inward—where there had always been handsome heroes fighting beside the strong females she imagined, wooing and winning them in the end.

“And I knew you would grow into a woman who wanted to stand on her own, who wanted to make her own way before marrying. And that it would take a special man to be able to see you not as a princess who needed rescuing and coddling, but as a strong woman who wanted someone to come alongside her and slay dragons with her.”

Flannery wasn’t sure how to respond. “So…you’re saying I’m too strong and that I intimidate men?”

“I’m saying it’s harder for a woman like you to find that special someone because men like that are unique and rare.” He grinned at her. “Like me.”

She had to laugh at that. “Yes, Big Daddy, you are unique and rare. Zarah and Caylor are going to have a hard time finding someone who can compare to you.”

“What do you mean?”

Her expression warped into that of a pouting child. “They strong-armed me into agreeing to let them set me up on dates.”

“And you don’t want to let them do that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to think about it.”

“If we’re going to make it to the concert, we’d better be going, don’t you think?”

Flannery picked up her phone and checked the time. Almost six o’clock already. “Yep, we’d better go.” It would take about fifteen minutes to get to the Scarritt-Bennett Center, but she was less worried about being late and more worried about parking.

She needn’t have worried, though, as she found one last space on Nineteenth Street just in front of the Gothic reproduction Wightman Chapel.

While she loved her church and the contemporary, modern feel to the sanctuary that had been built shortly after she finished college, there was something worshipful about the simple act of entering the ninety-year-old chapel built in the style of the European chapels of the Middle Ages. The stonework, the woodwork, the arched openings and windows, and especially the large pipe organ dominating the nave—all worked together to help her understand what the writers of the Bible meant when they wrote about the
fear
of God. It wasn’t a terror or a horror, but a sense of awe, of God’s ultimate power and greatness and her own smallness.

In Acklen Avenue Fellowship’s modern worship center, she felt close to God, as if He was a personal friend with whom she could share anything. She liked to come here—or occasionally attend special services and concerts at the Episcopal cathedral downtown—just to feel the sense of awe that came from experiencing the greatness, the glory, the untouchableness of God through the majestic quality of the architecture and the reverence with which services were undertaken.

Of course, the fact that they were here for a music service that combined experimental jazz with liturgical worship music created an entirely new sense of experiencing God.

Throughout the forty-five-minute musical worship service, Flannery’s thoughts kept going back to Caylor and Zarah’s offer to set her up. She’d been the one to press Zarah into agreeing to be set up less than a year ago. So why was she so resistant to the idea of Zarah and Caylor doing it for her?

Maybe it was less about the idea of being set up with guys she’d never met and more about the idea that her friends weren’t going to be happy until they saw her paired off, too—that they saw her as incomplete on her own.

No, they wouldn’t think that. Would they?

She turned her gaze to the rays of the sunset angling in through the arched, mullioned windows. No. Caylor and Zarah were much more grounded than Flannery’s sisters had been. Both had found fulfillment in God’s calling on their lives first. Then they’d found the loves of their lives.

Still, she worried that falling in love and getting married would change them. She shook her head and returned her attention to the music. She wouldn’t worry about that now. She’d worry about it later. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.

When she dropped Big Daddy off at Union Station after the service, he was still talking about the sense of wonder evoked by the way the small jazz ensemble interpreted the music and about attending again.

She headed home with a smile, happy she’d been able to share that experience with her grandfather, who—she was pretty sure—wasn’t thrilled with the contemporary bent to the worship style at Acklen Ave. But he did plan to participate in the senior adults’ service project tomorrow and then go to lunch with them before heading back home to Pulaski. So maybe he didn’t mind it too much.

After parking in her designated spot in the underground garage, she rode the elevator up to the eighth floor of the condominium building in downtown Nashville. She entered the quiet condo—though it didn’t stay quiet for long. As soon as she set her keys and purse down on the end of the high breakfast bar on the back of the kitchen island, the begging started.

A furry creature wrapped itself around and around her ankles, crying as if it had been abandoned for weeks, not mere hours.

She bent over and picked up the cat, tucking him under her arm as she went to the refrigerator to get a snack for herself. Almost pure white, save for his gray face, ears, and tail, the animal flopped over her arm like the ragdoll his breed was named for. She didn’t see anything in the fridge that interested her—mostly boxes of leftovers from restaurants or takeout. She grabbed a can of caffeine-free diet soda and closed the fridge.