The Hookup

  “I still wanna take you camping.”

  I melted into him.

  “But I’m not gonna take you camping,” he whispered.

  He wasn’t going to take me camping.

  Why, after two breakfasts, two dinners, one phone conversation, one text exchange and a lot of sex did that sound like someone cancelled Christmas forever?

  I pushed up to him, kissed him, pressing my lips lightly against his, harder, opening my mouth. His opened, I slid my tongue inside. He sucked it deeper for a second then slid mine out as his tongue invaded my mouth.

  We kissed like that, gently, unhurried, for a long time in the chill of an early summer night by a creek with a water wheel splashing behind us.

  After we were done, he led me to bed and he held me close, and I wanted him to make love to me but he was not that man. He would hold me but he wouldn’t take any more from me than he already had.

  I fell asleep before he did.

  But I also woke before he did.

  And as quietly as I could, I got dressed. I found a pad of paper. I wrote him a note. I refused to look at him asleep in bed as I propped it on his nightstand. I got my dogs. We got in my car. And we drove home.

  It wasn’t until Buttercup was on my shoulder, Wesley hopping on my counter chirping, that my phone also on the counter chimed with a text and I glanced at it, seeing the whole text under his name on the screen.

  You too.

  My note to him had said, You’re the best. Thank you for being that.

  I finished up making breakfast and eating it, and I did all that silently, gently, unhurriedly crying.

  After work that evening, walking up to my front porch, I wasn’t resolutely thinking about catching up on all the chores I’d missed being with Johnny as I’d made myself resolutely think about all the way home.

  I was staring with some dread at my wicker rocking chair.

  When I made it to the chair, I stood in my high-heeled shoes staring down at the seat.

  On the gingham pad, propped up against the floral pillow, was a Ball jar filled with water and overflowing at the top with pale pink peonies.

  I’d noted vaguely the night before, in my excitement to get to Johnny, that the fat peony bushes that hugged the back of his mill had gone full bloom.

  And they were all pale pink.

  In front of the jar was a rolled up piece of rust-colored material.

  I took it up, unfurled it and a piece of paper fell out.

  It was the On My Way Home T-shirt I’d slept in the night before at Johnny’s.

  I bent down, picked up the paper and read,

  It’s a good memory.

  I hope.

  For me it will be, Izzy.

  Always.

  ~J

  He didn’t mean to be cruel, I knew it. He meant it to be what I hoped one day it would become.

  Sweet.

  And when I bunched the T-shirt to my face and smelled he’d laundered it, I knew he meant that to be sweet too.

  But I wished he hadn’t washed it.

  I allowed one tear to fall, soaking into the material.

  Then I sniffed, pulled the T-shirt away from my face and moved to my door in order to let out my dogs.

  Margot

  Izzy

  IT WAS EXACTLY two weeks and one day after Johnny and I ended what had never begun.

  I’d gone home from work, let the dogs out, changed from heels to boots, checked the horses but left them in their paddock, put my heels back on, grabbed up my purse and keys but also my journal, selecting a few colored pens to go with it, and I headed out.

  I was going to The Star. A very nice but not fancy (I was told) steak joint about ten miles out of town that Deanna and Charlie had been rhapsodizing about for years.

  Deanna demanded all her birthdays be celebrated at The Star and Charlie hogged her birthdays, letting people celebrate it with her on the weekend (or the next weekend day if her birthday fell on a weekend), so I’d never been there.

  And instead of continuing to mope about coming to terms with the fact that I would not ever be my sister or mother and thus be able to grab on to life and take what I wanted without giving too much in return, simply enjoy myself and what life offered without wanting more, I was going out to have a nice steak.

  In other words, continuing to mope about the fact that Johnny and I had ended something that could never begin.

  Or precisely, moping about the fact that what I wanted with Johnny could never begin.

  The last steak I’d eaten, Johnny had cooked for me.

  I didn’t allow myself to think about that.

  That said, I knew part of me was breaking that seal or I’d get to the point I’d never eat steak again.

  My mother would smile down from heaven at that.

  But as much as I wished I didn’t, I loved steak.

  So I needed to break the seal.

  In the time since it happened, I also hadn’t allowed myself to spend too much time in town.

  I’d been in Matlock for months, but steaming into summer, it was waking up. People were out and about, the big square was setting up to have what Deanna and Charlie had explained were nearly weekly weekend events of bands or festivals or open air plays, or whatever (I’d even been to a concert in the past, and their Memorial Day food festival, which was happening that weekend). And if he happened to be one of those people waking up, out and about, I didn’t want to run into Johnny.

  Instead I’d caught up on my chores and planted my big garden and given up on the idea of a chicken coop, because Johnny was right. I should save up to build a garage. I’d be happy I had one for a variety of reasons and chickens just offered up fresh eggs.

  I was nearly at the restaurant when it came on the radio.

  And it was just my luck it would.

  Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of The Star, my fingers on the steering wheel adjusting to change the channel or completely wind down the volume.

  Something made me not do that.

  Instead I parked and sat in my car with goose bumps on my arms, staring unseeing out my windshield toward the rough, unpainted clapboard at the side of The Star, listening to the whole song.

  When it was done, I switched off the car and said to the windshield, “It was two breakfasts, two dinners, one phone conversation, one text exchange and lots of sex. Get over yourself.”

  With that, I grabbed my clutch, my journal and got out of my car.

  I went in.

  I asked for a table.

  I got one.

  I selected a seat with my back to the door so I could focus on my journal and not people watching.

  I perused the menu and ordered a glass of Malbec.

  I put my journal on the table and pulled out a couple of the pens.

  I opened it up to the crazy doodles and wonky writing that slanted this way, then that, or went straight across, or curled around word for word from a circle in the center. Short notes, long meanderings and drawn flowers or balloons or whatever sprang to mind.

  My journal was the only thing I allowed to be truly disordered in my life.

  My mother’s journals had looked like that. Just like that. Except without all the colored pens because the only pens we had were ones she picked up wherever they gave out free pens, and she didn’t have the luxury of bringing color to her innermost thoughts.

  The wine was served, I ordered my filet with no potato but instead steamed broccoli and roasted asparagus and had been bent back to my journal for maybe two minutes before I heard an achingly familiar, “Izzy?”

  My head shot back and I stared into Johnny’s black eyes in his beautiful face staring down at me looking stricken and searching and gentle and gorgeous.

  Those eyes slid to the empty chair opposite me then back to me and he asked, “Are you here alone?”

  Was he?

  Oh God.

  Or was he there with Shandra? She w
as back and they were celebrating their reunion with steak at The Star.

  “I . . . uh . . .” I stammered.

  “Who’s this?”

  My attention zipped to a woman who appeared at Johnny’s side.

  She was in her sixties, maybe seventies. Hair dyed a light, becoming red and set in a lovely, soft style that suited her immensely. She had makeup on even though the battle against wrinkles the rest of her put-together-self told me she’d valiantly fought was the inevitable loss it was meant to be. Regardless, her makeup was subtle and attractive. She was wearing a pretty shirtwaist dress with a full skirt in a green and white pattern with a fabulous rectangular bag with a short strap on her forearm.

  And she was wearing pearls, real ones it seemed to my inexpert eye. A string of them at her throat and one at her wrist with plain but large and magnificent pearl studs in her ears.

  Her eyes were locked on me.

  “Leave it to you to find the prettiest lady in the place.”

  This came from a man who materialized at the woman’s back. He was bald on top, his gray hair cut very short on the sides. He was wearing a shiny blue golf shirt and nice trousers. He was also in his sixties or seventies, very tall and quite good-looking. Sharing that, shave a decade or two off him, he’d been exceptionally handsome.

  And speaking of exceptionally handsome, Johnny was wearing clothes I didn’t even imagine he could own. Black on black—a delectably tailored black shirt over deliciously tailored slim-fit black trousers that made my mouth water more than anything I saw on the menu (way more).

  “Johnathon, darlin’, who is this fetching creature?” the woman asked.

  “Margot, Dave, this is Eliza,” Johnny rumbled.

  “Iz or Izzy, my friends call me,” I whispered, sounding like someone was choking me.

  Johnny’s gentle gaze came back to rest on me.

  First Bonnie Raitt and now this?

  Bonnie was hard enough but Johnny in that shirt (and those trousers) might be the end of me.

  All right.

  I was never leaving my acres again.

  “Izzy. Now isn’t that sweet? Unusual. But sweet,” Margot declared.

  “You know this gal?” Dave asked Johnny.

  “Yeah, we—” Johnny started.

  “We’re friends,” I put in firmly, straightening my spine and finding my inner Daphne, the piece of my mother she left me that could make it through anything. “I’m kind of new to town. We met at On the Way Home a few weeks back and Johnny kept me company helping me break in the local tavern.”

  Both Margot and Dave turned speculative eyes to Johnny.

  Unfortunately, Margot got over her speculation way too quickly and looked back at me.

  And when she did, she declared, “No girl as cute as a button as you are wearing a dress that pretty eats alone. You’re joining us for dinner.”

  Oh God.

  No!

  “I’ve already ordered,” I told her.

  She turned directly to the tall man behind her. “David. Find someone and tell them to hold this pretty girl’s dinner and serve it with ours.” She turned back to me. “If you’re hungry, darlin’, we’ll order you an appetizer.”

  “I—” I started.

  But Margot now had her attention on the hostess who was hovering with them, holding their menus. “You can take us to our booth now.” Her attention came back to me. “We always get a booth. They’re roomy.”

  “You can also ask the chef to hold making this lady’s dinner, if you would,” David said under his breath to the hostess as Margot spoke.

  “Of course,” the hostess muttered.

  Was this happening?

  “Help Eliza out of her seat, Johnathon,” Margot ordered, turned her head, tipped up her nose and flounced after the hostess.

  This was happening.

  I had a feeling Margot got what she wanted, but it was a definite it would be tremendously rude if I didn’t join them even if the very last thing on earth I wanted was to join them for dinner.

  More aptly, to sit at dinner with a Johnny with gentle eyes wearing that shirt and those trousers.

  Seeing as I had no choice, I closed my journal, dropped my pens in my clutch and slid out of my chair only to run right into Johnny.

  “You don’t have to do this, Izzy,” he whispered, his lips at my ear sending that damnable tingle down my spine.

  And it got worse.

  He was wearing cologne, and it was amazing cologne so he even smelled fantastic.

  I turned my head and caught his gaze.

  “It’s okay, honey.”

  His eyes melted with warmth and regret and compassion and all that looked good on him before he reached out and grabbed my journal off the table.

  He handed it to me, reached again and nabbed my wine, then put his free hand to my elbow and guided me after Margot and David.

  “She seems like she’s a firebrand,” I muttered to Johnny.

  “David and Margot, my dad’s best friends. Dave started working for my granddad when he was about seventeen. That’s how him and Dad met. Dave’s about a decade older than Dad and he took him under his wing back then. And whatever grew between them meant they were inseparable until they had no choice but not to be. Dad was fifteen when he was best man at Dave’s wedding. Dave said the eulogy at Dad’s funeral.”

  How beautiful.

  And how sad.

  “Right,” I said softly.

  “Margot’s a pistol and I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t. She’s the only mom I ever really knew. She was a tough one but the best a kid could have.”

  My head turned, and I stared at his profile in shock at getting this news about Margot and his apparent lack of his own mother as he guided me the rest of the way.

  He stopped me and I turned to see Margot scooting into a booth. She barely got settled before she was sweeping her hand imperiously across the table.

  “Get in. Get in. Johnathan knows better than to seat a lady on the outside of a booth to be brushed by waiters and busboys and patrons as they pass,” she announced.

  So Margot was the reason I got the seat with the view at Johnny’s house.

  I scooted in and tucked my purse and journal against the wall beside me as Johnny followed me in.

  “You journal?” Margot asked in a way that made it more like a demand I offer up this information she already had to know since she’d seen me doing it.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I never did until my mother died. She did, journaling, I mean, and after she died, I took it up. I don’t know why but it makes me feel closer to her.”

  Margot’s piercing regard completely disintegrated and her commanding voice was nothing of the sort when she queried, “You lost your momma?”

  I nodded. “To cancer.”

  “I’m sorry, darlin’,” Margot murmured.

  “Me too,” Dave put in quietly.

  I nodded to him and gave him a little smile.

  Margot’s head jerked up and turned left and she then hit David’s arm lightly but repeatedly with the back of her hand. “Get that boy. We need bread. Izzy needs something to snack on since we’re delaying her meal.”

  David’s eyes searched for “that boy” as Margot looked back at me.

  “We’ll order some of their stuffed mushrooms. They’re divine. Have you been to The Star before?”

  I looked around at the interior that didn’t fit the unfinished clapboard exterior. It was mostly decorated in rich reds and golds, the décor unobtrusive, just classy and warm, and then I looked back to Margot.

  “This is my first time,” I shared.

  Her pretty face split into a smile. “How wonderful we get to share it with you.”

  I felt Johnny’s fingers drift down my thigh, there and gone, sharing he was sorry and he knew it wasn’t so wonderful for me.

  “So, are you a lawyer?”

  This question, which I’d heard before, coming to me from David startled me.

 
“No. I work for a data management and security firm,” I told him.

  “How exciting!” Margot declared as she clapped her hands elegantly in front of her.

  I grinned at her. “I think you and I are probably the only ones who think data is exciting.”

  “You get to wear that dress to work, and those shoes, darlin’, are fabulous. Any job you get to dress like that has to be exciting,” she returned.

  “Gotta say, it’s a knockout of a dress,” Dave muttered.

  Johnny made a noise in his throat that was muted and low, but it was the kind I’d only heard when he was in bed with me.

  This so surprised me, my head floated around to look at him but I was arrested in this endeavor when Margot asked, “Now you said you were new to town. Where did you come to us from?”

  “The city,” I shared.

  “So not far,” she replied.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “I bet you like it out here better than there. All that dirt and noise and graffiti, and all those people,” she stated, like people meant muddy, stinky livestock and she might eat beef, but she had no interest in how it came to be on her plate.

  “I do.” I nodded. “I have some land, and I can have my horses close and my dogs love it and it’s calm and quiet. So yes. I very much like it here.”

  Her eyes slid toward Johnny when I mentioned my horses and dogs but came back to me before I finished.

  “You got kin close?” Dave asked and I looked to him. “Said you lost your momma, child, but hope you got blood around.”

  “I have a sister but she got married and moved south. She’s about a five-hour drive away so not too far but a lot farther than I like it. We’re close but now it’s more, after she had my nephew.”

  “Ooo, a nephew, lovely. How old is he?” Margot queried.

  I looked down to my clutch and pulled out my phone, answering, “He’s seven months now. He’s adorable. His name is Brooklyn.” I came up with my phone. “I call him Brooks.”

  “I’d call him Brooks too,” Margot murmured delicately, sharing while not sharing she disapproved of my nephew’s name.