by K. L. Kreig
“Why did you have a hot dog eating contest if you didn’t like hot dogs?”
The warm smile on his face is enough for me to continue. “Because Esther wanted to.” And what my twin wanted to do; I did. She’d do the same for me.
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
He stuffs three potatoes in his mouth and chews. “I always wished I had a sibling to do those kinds of things with.”
So do I. I swallow past a lump forming in my throat. “You mean get sick on hot dogs?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, you’re an only child?”
“I am, but we’ll talk about me later. Tell me where your hate for mustard comes in. It gave you a win, so I’d think you’d be in the pro-mustard camp.” He opens his mouth to take a gigantic bite of his sandwich, humming with pleasure.
I have to admit while I haven’t given many men a chance to get to know me over the years, much of it is because I haven’t found one who is genuinely interested in me. Who asks me questions about myself instead of trying to the turn the conversation back toward themselves at the first opportunity. It’s refreshing and a little unnerving. I don’t like talking about me.
“I did. But you know what goes up must come down…or in my case, what went down must come up.”
“Ooohhh. Yikes.”
The clench of his teeth sums it up nicely.
“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. I threw up all night long. We told our mother we wanted to watch Disney princess movies in the basement. She hated Disney princess movies. So, she let us have a sleepover down there instead of sleeping in our room.” I think back to that night and how Esther never left my side. She held my hair and rubbed my back and told me she threw up on purpose so I would win. “The next day when our mother discovered the hot dogs missing, of course Esther and I were the most logical cause, but Esther…she was a pro at snowing her. She convinced our mother that she’d forgotten to buy them altogether.”
I push a potato cube around the edges of my plate before stabbing it with my fork.
“Did she buy it?” he asks and takes another bite. It wouldn’t be a hardship to wake up to this man’s face every morning.
“She did. To this day she doesn’t know the truth about those hot dogs or why we spent the night in the basement.” I shove the potato into my mouth, so I can stop talking. Only he waits for me to finish, spooning a new stack of hot and steamy potatoes on my plate when they arrive.
“So, I take it you also never ate a hot dog again, either?”
“Ah…you would be correct on that assumption.”
“Got it. Stay away from hot dogs. And mustard. Good to know. I’ll burn the shirt.” He plucks at the fabric, leaving a pinch mark where his finger was. It settles over his left pec and I have to cross my legs and look away.
“You don’t need to do that on my account. I mean, if you’re a mustard lover, you’re a mustard lover.”
His shirt hasn’t lost its luster, unlike one that’s a go-to and has been washed and dried a hundred times. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s new, if the crease marks are to be believed. That warms me in places that have long gone cold.
“I am pretty attuned to mustard, I must say.”
I wrap my hands around my cup. I can tell by the temperature that the insides have already cooled. I want to order another, but I don’t dare. My heart is already racing, and I’m going to blame it on the caffeine…not the man across from me.
“I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a mustard whisperer.” I egg him on, enjoying this inane conversation immensely.
“It’s a little-known skill. Quite rare, in fact.”
“Is that so?”
He is funny and kind and quick on his game. I like him. Sort of a lot. I think I could see forever in his eyes.
“There are all kinds of whisperers, Laurel.” He leans back in his chair and bunches up his napkin, tossing it to his now-empty plate. “The horse whisperer is the most common, of course, but then there’s the dog whisperer, a baby whisperer, a quarterback whisperer…even a love whisperer.” The last part is said in a dropped voice that zings across my skin like static electricity.
“Wow. And you got the great fortune to be a mustard whisperer. How lucky.” I tip my cappuccino in his direction and take a drink of the chilled liquid, much like he did to me at Rudy’s.
He lets loose a howl that brings every patron’s eyes to our table. But this time, I don’t shrink or wish the floor would swallow me up. I laugh along with him.
“Beautiful, crazy, and clever,” he says, wiping one eye. “Yes, I would say I am the lucky one, indeed.”
I don’t know what to say to that. He’s rendered me speechless and that’s hard to do.
“So, what do you do, Laurel?”
I’m relieved he didn’t ask me more about Esther, but I hesitate in answering him. I’m proud of what I do. Being a teacher is a sixty-hour-a-week, sometimes thankless job, with mediocre benefits and a wage that definitely will not put me on the annual Forbes “Richest” list. But it was in my blood from the time I was born. My meema was a teacher. Her mother was a teacher. Her mother’s mother was a teacher. And surprisingly, even my mother was a teacher, but instead of seeing the honor and reward in this incredibly challenging profession, she wanted “better” for me.
So, will this man think a teacher is enough? I decide I don’t care. If he doesn’t, he’s not for me. “Your partner should support your passions, sunflower. They don’t need to necessarily share them, but they need to support them, at minimum,” my PooPa once said. He was a wise man.
“I’m a second-grade teacher at Harpeth Mills Elementary School.”
His face lights up. “That’s fantastic. My mother is a retired high school principal. Forty-two years on the job.”
“Really?” Every tense muscle I have relaxes, and I settle into my seat for the first time since I arrived. “Where?”
“Brooks High, Sarasota, Florida.”
“That’s where you grew up?”
He answers wistfully, “It is.”
“How long has she been retired?”
His forehead wrinkles as he thinks. “Three years maybe. She’s sixty-one.”
“She’s young.”
“She acts like she’s thirty-one.” He snickers. “That woman doesn’t stop for one minute of the day. She volunteers at the homeless shelter and is in three book clubs. She delivers Meals on Wheels for the elderly. She bakes for church funerals. She knits caps for babies. She even mentors new teachers. I mean, she is a one-woman wonder.”
She sounds like a saint. One hundred eighty degrees different from mine. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She is an incredible woman, Laurel,” he replies. The love he has for his mother is evident, both in his voice and on his face. Another check in the box for him.
He picks up a glass of water the waitress brought and drinks half the contents in two gulps. I wonder if he doesn’t care for coffee. “How long have you been teaching, Laurel?”
“When do I get to ask the questions?”
He tilts his head and studies me. “You just did. Several in a row, I might point out.”
“Touché.”
We fall quiet and the short distance between us seems to shrink even further as we stare into each other’s eyes. Something I’m not all too familiar with starts low in my belly. It twists and dances and flutters against my insides.
Butterflies, I realize. I have actual butterflies.
I have to fight these weird urges to jump in his lap and kiss him senseless or ask him what he’s doing for the rest of his life.
“You’re not in the witness protection program, dodging the mob because you’re a star witness in a federal money laundering trial, are you?”
His dimples are brilliant. Absolutely, mind-blowingly brilliant.
“I think you’re reading too many crime novels.”
Oddly, he is not wrong.
“Only someone who is
in the witness protection program would dodge the question.”
“No, Laurel,” he answers, drawing out my name. Reaching across the table, he snags the tips of my fingers in his. I audibly suck in a breath.
This touch is different from the other day when my hands were cemented to his pecs. It’s charged. Intentional. A little bit dreamlike.
“I am not in the witness protection program. I am not a criminal or unemployed or a closet serial killer. I am gainfully employed as a marketing director at one of the largest entertainment distributors in the US, and trust me, that sounds far more exciting than it actually is. I’d rather save for a rainy day than live beyond my means. I run five miles almost every day. I am an only child who loves his parents dearly and isn’t ashamed to say so. Florida State Seminoles are my favorite college football team, but I’d forgo watching them on a Saturday in favor of a hike or a day at the lake. I love salmon and brussels sprouts but am allergic to shellfish. I enjoy grilling and the mastery of smoking brisket. I am team Apple all the way. I have an aversion to snakes and pumpkin pie. I drive an old, beat-up Jeep Wrangler that has over one hundred fifty-five thousand miles on her. I sing in my car. And in the shower. My brain is basically like a browser with twenty-nine open tabs all the time. I’d say I can move better than the average white man on the dance floor. I crave simplicity, yet always strive to be better. I’m a planner. I like a routine. My memory is a steel trap. I play a mean round of golf. And I do quite like mustard.”
He finally stops and I am statue still, gaping at all he just told me about himself in ninety seconds. Inhaling, he adds, “All in all, I’d say I’m your average Joe living an average life.”
Average?
He thinks he’s average?
He is anything but ordinary or mediocre. He is extraordinary. Unique. Modest. Genuine. A rare find in a sea of crap.
So, I have no idea why, when I open my mouth, “If you’re so amazing, why are you still single?” comes out.
His pause is only a blink and a breath. And in that briefest span of time, he somehow manages to turn the tables on me. “You think I’m amazing?”
“I—” I chorth, as my PooPa used to call it, which is a combination of a laugh and a snort that ends on me sounding as if I’m choking. It’s unrefined and unbecoming, and sometimes something comes out of my nose. Yet it doesn’t seem to faze Roth Keswick at all. In fact, he interprets this reaction exactly as it was meant.
“I will have to take that as a yes.”
Again, all the words have fallen out of my head. When I don’t deny it, his eyes sparkle. He wags his brows once, and once again, and he says, “So, now let’s talk about you.”
And that is how we spend the next eight hours. It turns out Roth does like coffee. Black with one packet of Splenda. We drink it until the middle of the afternoon, when we switch to beer. I try three before I find one I like. We share a charcuterie board and order two desserts. Roth has the banana pudding and I get the peanut butter bar. We end up swapping.
We talk until my voice hurts and my butt is sore from the wood bench beneath it. And we keep talking some more. Roth has been in Nashville for less than a year. He was at a small marketing firm, but when his current job opened, he couldn’t pass it by, even though it meant leaving his friends and parents back in Sarasota. He met Manny a few months ago in a basketball league at the YMCA and happened to be having drinks with him the night we met. Carmen had forgotten her house key and Manny came by Rudy’s to drop it off. It wasn’t a setup after all, though I still think Carmen knew Manny’s friend would be “tagging along.”
I learn Roth is a surfer and a snorkeler and an accomplished sailor. I sink better than I swim, but I impress him that I can recite every word of The Lion King. He eventually begs me to stop after I prove my point. I never tell him about Esther. I didn’t want to bring us down, but I decide on the next opportunity I want him to know. If there is another opportunity. I hope there is.
By the time he walks me to my car in the parking garage a few blocks away, the sun has long already set in the western sky. It’s chilly.
“I didn’t mean to take up so much of your day,” he says, once again shoving his hands deep in his pockets. He rocks back and forth on his heels.
“You didn’t. I mean…I didn’t have any other plans.” Not cool, Laurel. You should play harder to get.
“Laurel…” He lets my name hang, his gaze dropping to the few inches between us, then back up. When our eyes reconnect, it’s as if he’s found what he was looking for, in more ways than one. “I had a marvelous day. I enjoyed every single second of it, more than I could have imagined.”
I feel all those things too. And more. So much more. “So did I.”
He takes a step toward me. “I want to see you again.”
I want to ask him to come home with me, but I settle for “Me too.”
“Where did you come from?” he asks me as if I’m sort of a mirage come to life.
“From the cornfields of Nebraska,” is all I can think to say. Lame. So lame.
He chuckles for a moment, then sobers as he caresses the side of my cheek. “They grow beautiful woman in Nebraska, I’ll give them that.” He brushes a few strands of hair behind my ear and his fingertips linger. How can a single soft touch hold so much power? “Will you please let me know you’ve made it home safely?”
I nod. Where do I live again?
He slips a finger under my chin and edges it upward. My mind blanks at the heat banked in his eyes.
“Can I kiss you, Laurel?” His attention drops to my lips. Like a bad chick flick, my tongue slips out to wet them, but by the set of his jaw, Roth must like it. Maybe they’ve got it right in the movies after all. “I want to kiss you.”
I could have said anything. A simple yes or a silent nod would have sufficed. But I whisper, “Please,” almost as if it were my first kiss and would be my last. And when Roth Warren Keswick’s lips land on mine a moment later, I can honestly say it feels like both.
Kissing him is akin to landing in an indulgent, pillowy mountain of clouds. He is reverent, unhurried, and chaste. There is no tongue, no moaning, no thrashing of limbs as we try to stroke each other’s bodies through our clothes. It’s the best kiss I’ve had in my life. And as we both slowly open our eyes, I know that I am already falling for this man and I don’t know how to keep him from seeing it.
“Good night, Laurel.”
“Good night, Roth,” I whisper just as hushed.
I don’t move. Neither does he.
Eventually, he reaches around me to open my car door. He helps me in, and with a brief touch of his lips to my forehead, shuts the door. He steps to the side and watches me work my way out of the tight parking spot and out of the garage. I watch him until he’s a blip in my rearview mirror.
Twenty-five minutes later. I enter my apartment and follow through on my promise to let him know I arrived home safely. This time, though, I flay myself open and do so with a safe and sound, and a song link of my own: “Today Was A Fairytale.”
Within seconds, I get a screenshot of a song back, as if he was listening to it at that very moment. And if I didn’t think I was falling in love with this man when he kissed me, I certainly do now.
Like a silly starstruck teenager, I make a playlist that includes both songs Roth has now sent me and the one I sent him. Turning out the light, I listen to “Today Was A Fairytale,” “Nice To Meet Ya” and the newest, “Nothing Like You,” on repeat until I fall fast asleep.
4
She’s Got a Way
Roth
Present
June 16, 3:12 p.m.
* * *
“Fuck me,” my best friend Manny says. My sentiments exactly. “This just doesn’t make any sense.”
No. It doesn’t. It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.
Laurel has no known risk factors that we’re aware of. She doesn’t smoke, has no previous cancer or genetic predisposition. She’s not been exposed to danger
ous chemicals or radiation, she’s not of the right age group, and she’s definitely not male. She was seemingly perfectly healthy, until she wasn’t anymore. But that’s the thing about monsters. They do lurk in the dark, unknown until they want to be seen.
A little over a year ago, Laurel’s monster stepped out of the shadows and made its presence known with a venomous roar.
At first, we thought the sporadic fevers she had were attributed to the repeated respiratory infections she couldn’t shake. She was exhausted to the point she struggled with her demanding job teaching seven-year-olds, but again, we thought that was tied to her constant illnesses. She lost weight, but because she was sick often, she also didn’t eat much, so we didn’t think as much of it as we should have.
In retrospect, the signs were clear. She had unexplained bruising, but she always bruised easily, so we didn’t give that the necessary attention. We certainly didn’t tie it to her other symptoms. Her back and her legs ached, but that was because she spent more time than usual resting, trying to recover from constant illnesses, right?
Wrong.
Add them all together—fevers, weight loss, bruising, exhaustion, infections, bone pain—and you have a completely different picture.
A dire one.
One every doctor we saw missed, until October of last year when my wife was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, aka acute myeloid leukemia, aka acute myeloblastic leukemia, aka acute granulocytic leukemia, aka acute nonlymphocytic leukemia.
Doesn’t matter what you call it; it’s bad news. And in even worse news, she has the rare, tumor-forming subtype known as acute panmyelosis with myelofibrosis.
She was immediately hospitalized, where she started an intense regimen of chemotherapy. She responded well to the first three rounds, though she experienced most of the common side effects: nausea, vomiting, hair loss, fatigue. But she had her good days too.