Yet, my heart still flutters in my chest, my breath catching somewhere in my windpipe, unable to escape.
He stops about four feet from where I stand, stooping almost. We stare at each other for several moments, neither one of us wanting to break the charged air around us. The electricity is still as thick, if not more so, than it was even the day we stood in the woods and he lowered his lips to mine.
Finally, Jason speaks. “Hi, Amy.”
I nod and manage to croak, “Hello, Jason.”
He smiles, his mouth almost crooked, drooping on one side, like a shy boy at the school dance. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too,” I reply, nervously rocking on the balls of my feet. Stop it, Amy, I try to command myself. You look like a mental patient! But I can’t help it. The sight of Jason reduces me to a blubbering puddle of gelatin. My brain doesn’t work, my body doesn’t work, my mind doesn’t work.
“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” Jason remarks casually.
Why he’s here? Oh yeah…why are you here Jason? Are you going to try to sweep me off my feet, tell me our kiss in the woods was the best you ever had and you can’t live without me? Well I can’t go Jason. I have a life here, you know. A husband that I discovered I really love, kids I adore…but you could certainly try, you know.
Jason waves a sheet of paper in the air. “The new owners forgot this at the lawyers.”
Oh.
Jason stares down at my sidewalk with the weeds poking out of the crack and sweeps over them with the tip of his dark brown dress shoe. “The lawyer said she could mail it to them and I haven’t wanted to come back to the house after…my mother died and all. But…” He suddenly lifts his head and catches my eye. He holds my gaze as he says, “I think I need some closure, you know.”
I am uncomfortably aware that my face is moist, a lone tear trickling down my face. Don’t cry about this, Amy! Don’t be a weenie! This isn’t about you! He’s talking about his mother!
But in my heart, I know he’s not only talking about his mother. His eyes are telling me the whole story without his mouth speaking the words. He’s talking about that moment we shared in the woods; that kiss that we can never take back nor would we want to. It wasn’t a kiss of true love, he and I both know that. It was a kiss of desperation; he was desperate to save someone and I was desperate to be saved. Maybe we felt affection for each other, connection on a deeper level that was never expressed with words; but ours was never a relationship that would ever or could ever work. We were both searching for something those three days at the cabin, and we found it in the end. For that fleeting moment in the woods, with that single kiss, we found what we needed. And now, we had to go back to our regularly scheduled lives. Forever, that would be all we would have together and it would be enough.
“I know,” is all I can manage to squeak out as I swipe the lone tear from my face.
“I’ll see you around,” Jason replies as he smiles weakly and offers me a consolatory wave, one that lets me know that he probably won’t be seeing me around at all. This is it, he’s leaving and this is our last moment.
My heart starts to sink as he turns back towards his mother’s old house and then, it is suddenly buoyed with the realization that I can say something profound about our situation, because after six months of replaying that kiss in my mind, I finally get it. “Hey, Jason?”
He turns back towards me and I can actually see his eyes shining with would be tears. “Yeah?”
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened,” I tell him. Good old Dr. Seuss; that guy really got it.
Jason is confused for a second and then his face breaks out into a wide grin. “You know what, Amy? I will. Thanks.” He pauses and then says, “And Amy? I still think you’d make a damn good agent.” He winks, causing me to blush. And with that, he turns on his heel and dashes towards the house across the street.
Instead of staring after him like a needy, lovesick teenager, I turn and open the door to my own house. I am immediately greeted with screams and whines.
“Mom! Colt isn’t listening to me! I told him not to slide down the steps with the refrigerator box! He’s going to hit his head on the bottom of the steps and fall out and then he’ll be in a comma!” Lexie was wailing in desperation. She is actually wringing her hands like a little old wash woman.
“It’s coma, you idiot, not comma,” Allie retorts as she chases after Evan to get the TV remote out of his mouth.
“Don’t call me an idiot, you moron!” Lexie retorts back.
Normally, I would throw my hands up in the air and shriek at the top of my lungs until nobody is even listening to me anymore. But not today. Today, Jason’s smile has rejuvenated me. Today, I am going to live by the words of wise old Dr. Seuss.
“Don’t call each other names,” I say evenly. “And Colt, get the couch cushions and put them at the bottom of the steps before you slide down. That way you won’t end up in a coma.”
I wink at my kids, three out of four who are staring at me with their mouths wide open.
I turn my back on them to close the front door, a sly smile playing on the corner of my lips. You know what, Amy Maxwell? I thought. You just might be a good mom after all.
Other novels by Heather Balog:
All She Ever Wanted
Letters to My Sister’s Shrink
Note to Self: Change the Locks
Falling When the Bough Breaks
Connecting with Heather Balog:
Heather blogs at:
www.thebadmommydiaries.com
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The 8 Mistakes of Amy Maxwell Page 26