Warm Winter Love (14 page)

She sighed. Should she tell Irene? Should she allow him to visit? There were so many questions now that she knew that she was totally in love with Sam. But first, she had to think about Jason. She owed him so much. And she owed him the courtesy of telling him about Sam. Even if she and Sam never lived happily ever after as in fairy tales, she knew that she couldn’t go through with the marriage to Jason. That was finished. In fact, it was finished when Sam kissed her on the farmhouse steps.

She reached for her cell phone; she should tell Jason immediately. She started to dial and then replaced the receiver. No, that would be cowardly and mean and she owed Jason more than that. She had to face him and explain what was happening.

Once more she picked up the phone and once more she put it down. If she called Jason and asked him to meet her, he would think something was wrong with her, and he would probably rush over to her apartment. And she didn’t want that. She wanted to tell him about her and Sam in a public place, though not in school, where there would be too many interruptions by students and faculty members. And certainly not in the school cafeteria.

She would wait until they went to The Country Cottage tomorrow night. Then she would tell him. They would have privacy, but it was open enough so that she wouldn’t cry when she told him.

It was sad. She never liked to hurt anyone and here she was hurting someone who had once figured to be a big part of her life. Endings, even of sad movies, always made her cry. It was silly, but that was the way she was in spite of her strong ideas of how people should behave. Crying was necessary sometimes.

Okay, tomorrow she would talk with Jason and tell him that she was breaking off their engagement because someone else had come into her life. She put her head down. It was terrible. It was so cruel. But she remembered Irene’s words.
“You sometimes have to be cruel. There’s no other way. Are you going to marry him just because you feel sorry for him?”
Irene was right. Better to get it over with quickly, once and for all, and then plan the next step no matter what it was.

And the next step? What was that to be? It was still a huge hurdle because she just wouldn’t be comfortable with Sam away so often. It wouldn’t be enough for her. She needed companionship and love and a sense of being needed. With Sam, she wouldn’t be sure that he needed her. He was so self-sufficient.

She read the letter for a third time and then replaced it in its envelope. First she had to meet Jason, because no matter what happened between her and Sam, she knew that she could never marry Jason. She admitted it. She didn’t love him. She really never had. Sam was right—she had settled for something other than love, and it was fine as long as she hadn’t experienced the feeling of genuine happiness. But now that Sam had come into her life, she’d begun to cherish the experience of being loved and loving.

She would talk with Jason tomorrow and then figure out what to do about Sam.

Chapter Seventeen

While the waitress took their orders, Katie wondered how she could tell Jason that she wanted to break their engagement. How would he take it? Would he be hurt? Would he understand? Would he say anything? She watched as he read the menu.
Make me think that I’m wrong, that I really do love you and we really should marry.
But Jason was silent. He had no reason to know what she was thinking and no reason to suspect what was about to be said. In his mind, he and Katie were set for life. Only Katie had the advantage of knowing that that assumption was wrong.

She sighed. No use putting it off. Maybe if she waited until they were back in her apartment when she could speak easier. But she knew it was really only another excuse not to talk to him about the situation.

“Something’s on your mind, Katie.” Jason snapped his fingers in front of her face, the way he always did when she had that faraway look in her eyes and he wanted to bring her back to earth. “What’s troubling you? You’ve been extra quiet all evening. All day, in fact.” He smiled at her. “Actually, you’ve been quiet all week. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Jason,” Katie began, “I don’t know how I can tell you this.” She circled the rim of her water glass with her finger.

“Why don’t you just say it, Katie?”

She took a deep breath. “Because I don’t want to hurt you.” He seemed startled by her words and she realized that he had no idea what she was talking about. “Jason, it’s us.” How could she tell him the rest of it when he looked at her as though she were speaking a language he didn’t understand? But she had to and she took a deep breath. “I can’t marry you, Jason,” she finally blurted out, angry that they weren’t the words she had wanted to use. “I’m not sure of you… of us.” She bunched up her napkin. “No, that’s not true. I’m not sure of me.” She looked at him briefly. “It’s me. I’m the problem.”

“Want to talk about it?” He reached for her hand but she pulled it away, then was immediately sorry she did it. The action—the rejection—had hurt him. She could tell by the way his eyes had clouded for a second. And he seemed confused. “Is it something I’ve done?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Is it something I should have done?” He smiled, and she knew it was his attempt at humor and she hated herself for hurting him.

“No.” She looked down at the table while the waitress served their coffee. “It’s something I’ve done. It’s my problem, not yours.” She wanted him to know that he really didn’t play a part in her decision, that he was truly the innocent party, that whatever had happened was because of her and Sam.

“It’s that man you met at Cedar Crest, isn’t it? The man you skied with at the Crest.” She nodded her head, miserable that she was hurting him and yet surprised that he remembered their conversation and could piece it all together. She’d thought that he hadn’t been listening, or even been concerned when she told him about Sam.

“Yes, it’s Sam. I wish you had really listened to me when I told you about him, when I first met him.”

“I thought I had, because I remembered him. I guess I wasn’t listening to it all, though.” He blinked his eyes in confusion, and her heart went out to him. “I thought it was, at most, just a… a?”

“A flirtation?” she asked gently. “A winter romance?” When he nodded, she bit her lip. “I thought so too, but it wasn’t. It hasn’t turned out that way.”

“I was sure,” he began, and then stopped, waited a few seconds, and began again: “I was sure that it was just something you had to get over, that you needed the… the… what shall I call it? I’ll use your word. A flirtation? I thought you needed the excitement of….’’ He looked at his hands. “Well, never mind.” He sipped his coffee. “You don’t love me now, do you?”

Katie’s stomach was a huge knot. No matter what anyone said, breaking up wasn’t easy. She didn’t want to hurt Jason, but she had to. She had to tell him how she felt.

“Jason, it’s not that I don’t love you now. It’s probably that I never really loved you enough. If I’m honest and fair, I have to take the whole blame. You haven’t changed. I have. You’re still you. Only, I’m not the same Katie Jarvis. You represented everything I wanted. You’re a fine and really wonderful man but I don’t love you. I guess I always knew it, but it was easier not to acknowledge it. You were what I would have wanted if I had to make up a list of all the good qualities in a husband. But, Jason, what’s missing is. . . .” How could she explain it more clearly?

He said it for her: “The spark?”

“Yes, the spark.”

He stirred his coffee, swirling it around and around. “I know I’ve never been the most exuberant or the most exciting person in the world. In fact, I guess I’m a pretty dull person.”

She shook her head. “No… no, that’s not it.”

“There’s no denying it, Katie. Like you, I am what I am.”

She closed her eyes. Sam had said something like that too:
“What you see is what you get, Katie.”

“You’re away again, Katie, dreaming of other things, I think.” Jason waited until the waitress had put the check on the table. “The spark. Does he have it?”

She nodded. “Yes.” How she wished she could run away right now, end the conversation, end this terrible meeting.

He looked off at the waitress who was at another table serving a meal. “Are you going to marry him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Right now I don’t think so. It’s very complicated.”

“Does he love you?”

His voice was flat and she knew the extent of his pain. He would never have asked these questions before. No, Jason never probed too deeply for answers. Life had always been easy and good for him. Complications weren’t for him. He had a scientific mind, and if something went wrong, he could always work it out logically. Everything had a cause and effect. That was one of his favorite sayings, and now even she could apply it to this situation. The cause was Sam and the effect was that she couldn’t marry Jason. How simple it all seemed when she worked it out analytically. How simple and how cold.

“Please don’t ask me anything else because I can’t answer.” She touched his arm. “I wish that this had never happened.” She stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. You’re nice and you’re kind and you’re a good teacher and a fine person and…”

“But that’s not enough, is it, Katie?” Again she shook her head and he reached for her hand once more. “Will you sit down for just a few more minutes and hear me out?”

She couldn’t refuse the request. She owed him that much, at least. He had been more than decent and she knew if the situation were reversed, she’d be hurt and furious, angry and mean. But Jason wasn’t like that. He could never be mean to anyone. Oh, why did this happen? Why did she go to Cedar Crest? Why did she meet Sam? Why did she fall in love with him? There were too many questions to be asked and answered. She sat down again.

Jason moved his finger around the table. “You know, Katie, when we first started going out together, I thought you were the finest person in the world and I was really happy that you and I got along so well. And then, when everything kept going along so smoothly, I just naturally thought we should marry.” He wrinkled his brow. “Oh, it wasn’t that I took you for granted. I just assumed, you see, that we would get married. That’s how it’s been in my life. A lot of assumptions.” He smiled at her and if there was any way she could have erased Sam at that moment, she would have. But she couldn’t and she and Jason both knew it.

“You’ve sort of stunned me, Katie, because, you see, I’ve never even considered what we were doing, either. It was like I was on a track and you were on the track next to me and we both sort of merged somewhere along the way.” He held up his hand. “Oh, not that I don’t love you—please don’t think that. I do, but it was something I just took for granted. Katie and Jason, Jason and Katie. Maybe I should have thought, ‘Katie loves Jason, Jason loves Katie.’ Maybe I wasn’t romantic enough. Maybe that’s where I went wrong.”

“No, you didn’t go wrong. I did.” She wanted to make him know that nothing could have changed what had happened.

He took a sip of his water. “Well, that doesn’t seem to matter now, does it?” He smiled. “But you’re right about one thing. I didn’t listen to you carefully. Maybe it was because we just drifted into this arrangement—this relationship. It was as if nothing better came along for either of us, or nothing came along to interfere with us. So maybe we both just figured, ‘Well, why not marry?’ ” He picked up the check and folded it. “But something better has now come along, Katie. For you, not for me. And I don’t want to hold you back. I won’t hold you back. I could never hurt you, Katie, or wish you harm.”

She looked at him and could feel her lower lip tremble. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you’re right. I think that’s all we are—just friends. Very good friends.” He took out his wallet. “Maybe I should have let you pay your half all these months. It might have helped our relationship.”

She knew it was another attempt at humor and she said through the lump in her throat, “Jason, dear, wonderful, kind Jason. I wish… no, I know you’ll find someone who will really love you and appreciate how nice you really are. Someone who will really love you,” she repeated.

He drove her to her apartment and she knew it was for the last time. She felt saddened that their engagement was over. Jason was reliable and kind and decent and she would never forget him—just as she would never forget Sam, even if she never saw him again. This was his legacy to her; she had come to know love and to have it play an important part in her life. She could never settle for anything less.

“You won’t change your mind?” Jason asked her as he turned the ignition key off.

She shook her head and he leaned over and kissed her lightly on her cheek. “Okay, Katie. Never let it be said that I don’t know when to give up.” He reached across and opened her door. “I won’t come in. I have a lot to think about tonight.” He touched her cheek again. “I’ll see you at school.”

Chapter Eighteen

A postcard arrived from Italy the next day. Sam’s handwriting was small and his message was rambling, as though he didn’t know which subjects would interest her. He ended:
Working my way home. Be there in two weeks. Don’t make any plans until then. You must see the snow and the skiing. It makes Devil’s Mist look small. Will talk to you in a few days. All my love, S.