Isn't It Time

by Graham, Susan J.

  “Okay, that sounds…necessary - but I don’t have any clean clothes here, so we might have to make a stop at my house first.”

  “I think I have one of your shirts around here somewhere,” said Jack. “If I can remember where I put it.”

  I looked down at the shirt I had slept in. It was a wrinkled mess and I began to fear what the rest of me looked like. If he had a clean shirt here, that would be good enough for now. I could deal with changing my underwear later.

  “Well, go look,” I commanded royally. “And then maybe I can get out of this bed and put some pants on.”

  Nate laughed and Jack winked at me, then they left the room. As soon as the door shut behind them, I jumped out of the bed and put on yesterday’s jeans. I had just finished making the bed when I heard another knock at the door. I called for whoever it was to come in and Jack entered, carrying a bright blue polo shirt.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed. “I wondered what happened to that shirt!” Actually, I thought it was on the floor of my closet somewhere, but I had been too lazy to look for it.

  “It’s been here awhile,” he said and handed it over. “I’ve got to run. The coffee’s on and Luke’s waiting for you in the kitchen. I told him not to expect you too soon.”

  I scowled at him. “Ha ha, very funny. But, even though you’re an ass, I have a surprise for you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And you’ll find it at the very bottom of my tote bag in the kitchen.”

  A slow grin spread across his face. “Were you holding out on me?”

  I was holding out on him. When my mom gave me that huge container of Rice Krispie treats, I split it into two smaller ones before bringing them over. Jack had a tendency to eat everything in one sitting and then regret not saving some.

  “It was for your own good,” I told him.

  “Awesome,” he said, pulling me into a divine-smelling hug. “Thanks for saving me from myself.”

  “You’re welcome.” I worried about my own scent and stepped back. “Have a fun day.”

  “You, too. Call me if you need anything.” He was almost out the door when he tossed out “Love you.”

  What the heck? He was pretty free with the “I love you’s” lately. It was unusual, but maybe he was just feeling happy. A happy Jack was an affectionate Jack.

  “Love you more,” I replied and we went our separate ways.

  Thirty minutes later, I was showered and re-dressed, my hair still wet because I couldn’t find a blow dryer. My stomach was now growling fiercely and I needed caffeine.

  When I entered the kitchen, Nate looked up from his laptop. “Hey. That didn’t take as long as I expected.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Jack likes to exaggerate,” I said, getting a mug out of the cupboard and helping myself to a cup of coffee. I set the coffee on the kitchen table and took a seat across from Nate, who was looking at me speculatively.

  “What?” I asked.

  He closed his laptop and moved it to the side of the table before he answered. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “You can ask, but I won’t promise to answer it.” I smiled and got started on the caffeine infusion.

  “Okay, fair enough.” He paused for a second, then asked, “Are you sleeping with Jack?”

  His bluntness caught me off guard and I slowly set my coffee down. “Well, that’s certainly personal. But no, I am not.”

  “Have you ever?” He leaned forward slightly, as if wanting to make sure he didn’t miss my answer to that question.

  The only reason I could come up with for this line of questioning was that he was interested but didn’t want to move in on Jack’s territory. I wasn’t sure why he was asking me these questions, instead of Jack, but I answered with a question of my own. “You’re pretty blunt, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told. Have you?”

  I leaned back in my chair and picked up the coffee again. “No, I have not.”

  He was staring at me intently and I squirmed a little under his scrutiny. “Do you want to?” he asked.

  Well, now that was a horse of a different color, wasn’t it? If he had asked that question last week, my answer would have been an unequivocal “no”. Now, the answer was quite different. I did want to. And I realized I wanted to quite badly. But I promised myself I was never going to pursue that, so I guess that meant the answer was still negative.

  “What the heck, Nate?” I sputtered instead of answering directly. “What’s with the inquisition?”

  He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “I’m thinking you’re not capable of any other kind, so yeah.”

  “I’m very attracted to you. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d like to think you feel the same.” He was still staring at me intently, waiting for a response.

  I broke the eye contact and looked down at the table. I was attracted all right. There was no question about that. Whether I should be or not was an entirely different matter. Just four days ago I had been in a relationship and, added to that, this situation with Jack was running through my head almost non-stop. My emotions were all over the place. Part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and sit down with Jack and discuss the hell out of my changing feelings, telling him the truth about my past and what it meant in relation to his sexual tendencies – and see where that led us. And the other part of me, the rational part, told me to stick with my original decision, not to take the risk, and leave things as they were. I went with the rational part.

  I looked back up at Nate. “You’re not wrong.”

  He smiled broadly and I smiled back. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “I just had to make sure there was nothing between you and Jack. I would never do anything, regardless of how much I wanted it, to screw up our friendship.”

  “Bros before hos?” I asked with a smirk.

  Nate laughed and stood up. “Yeah. Something like that. Now come on and let me buy you breakfast. I can hear your stomach growling all the way over here.”

  He waited while I quickly cleaned up our mess in the kitchen and then took me to breakfast.

  Nate insisted on driving, so I directed him to a small diner a few blocks away where Jack and I often had breakfast. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place but they made great omelets.

  Once we were seated in a booth in front of a window, coffee in front of us and orders already placed, I asked him if he had any pictures of his kids.

  “Of course.” I expected him to show me pictures from his phone, but he shifted a little in the booth and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He opened it up and retrieved a photo. “This is the most recent one I have,” he told me as he handed it to me.

  The picture was a studio shot of both boys – and their mother. My initial thought was that it was more than a little strange for him to be carrying a picture of his ex and my second, and more dismayed, thought was that she was absolutely stunning.

  Her hair was short, dark and attractively tousled - she was totally rocking that short hair. She had large, dark eyes and the rest of her features were delicate, suiting her almost elfin face perfectly. Wearing a casual floral-print skirt and a simple, sleeveless lavender blouse, she was seated, the younger boy on her lap and the older one standing behind her with his arms looped around her neck. She had a hand up and it was resting on his. They were all happily smiling.

  The boys were cute as they could be, but neither of them favored Nate. They both bore a strong resemblance to their mother. Which was what made them so cute, I thought forlornly.

  Looking up from the picture, I said, “Michael has your dimples.”

  “Yeah, that he does,” he said with a laugh. “I’m surprised you remembered his name.”

  “Oh. That was easy. That’s my dad’s name.” I handed the picture back. “They’re both very cute.”

  “Thank you,” he said, replacing the picture in his wallet and sliding it back
into his pocket. “I think so.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” I asked.

  “Sure. Fair is fair, I guess.” He smiled and looked at me expectantly. I was sure he knew what I was going to ask, but he waited for it.

  “Are you sleeping with her?” If he could be blunt, then so could I.

  “No,” he replied instantly. “Our relationship is…unusual…but it’s not sexual.”

  “And how is it unusual?”

  He was saved from having to answer immediately by the arrival of the waitress and our food. She put our omelets in front of us, slapped the bill on the table and then left us alone.

  We got our plates and napkins situated and I had picked up my fork before Nate replied. “Do you want to hear the whole story?”

  “Duh,” I responded maturely.

  He laughed and, while we ate, he told me the whole story.

  “I’ve known Kayla most of my life. We grew up in the same neighborhood, but she’s four years younger than I am so we never hung out together or anything. I knew who she was, but that was about it. Then, about seven years ago, I saw her at a neighborhood party.” He paused while he loaded his fork with potatoes, allowing the significance of that date to work its way into my head.

  “I think you did more than see her,” I said dryly.

  “As it turned out, yes.” He laughed and continued. “She was sitting by herself at a picnic table and I was kind of surprised to see her there. My mom had told me that her mother had cancer and was close to dying. Because Kayla didn’t have any other family besides her mother, she had to drop all but one of her classes at college and was working full-time while trying to take care of her mother and support them both.”

  “That must have been hard on her, being so young.”

  “Yeah, but she’s never been the type to let anything get her down. She does what has to be done and never complains about it. So, I saw her sitting there and I went to talk to her just to tell her I was sorry to hear about her mother. She was very sweet, and a little funny and just so eternally optimistic that I ended up sitting there talking with her the whole night.”

  “You forgot to mention beautiful,” I said, shoveling in another bite of omelet.

  He laughed. “I thought you could see that part for yourself.”

  I smiled and just nodded my agreement, as I had a mouthful of omelet.

  “While we were sitting there talking, I was drinking, a lot, but she wasn’t. She told me she couldn’t drink because she had too many things that needed to be done for her mother when she got home and relieved the visiting nurse. So, anyway, she was sober, but I got shit-faced drunk. One thing led to another and I ended up fucking her against the back of the garage.”

  My eyebrows shot up and my mouth dropped open. “Nate!” I exclaimed. I was as shocked by what he said as I was by what he actually did.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Not my finest hour. I woke up the next morning on the couch at the house where the party had been with only vague memories of the night before. I remembered doing it, but not most of the details. Except for the one that made me most ashamed of myself.”

  “Which was?” I was almost afraid to ask, but was nosy enough to want to know.

  “She was a virgin.” He shook his head in disgust at himself. “She was a virgin and I just took it from her, outside, in the middle of a party, against a goddamn wall!”

  “Against her will?” I squeaked out, horrified. I was also a little louder than I had intended, causing several diners in the vicinity to turn and look at me curiously.

  “No! God, no!” he exclaimed. “I might have been an animal, but I’m not a monster. I could never get so drunk that I would force myself on someone.”

  “Of course not,” I apologized weakly. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said with a small smile. “I probably could have worded that better. Anyway, afterwards, I was ashamed of myself and afraid of how she might be feeling about me – I mean, I don’t even know how she got home that night - so I never even called her. Her mother died two weeks later and I went to the funeral. She was very sweet to me, but didn’t bring up what happened between us. And I certainly wasn’t going to – especially not at her mother’s funeral. I didn’t expect to ever see her again.”

  “But she was pregnant,” I deduced, showing off my exemplary detective skills.

  “Yeah. She showed up at my apartment about a month after the funeral to tell me. She was very straightforward and practical about the whole thing, even though it had to be hard for her, having her plans for her life unexpectedly screwed up like that – especially so soon after losing her mother. She told me she was going to have the baby and she didn’t expect anything from me, but that she thought I should know.”

  “You must have been shocked,” I said, smearing apple butter on my toast. Nate’s plate was still half-full but mine was wiped clean.

  “Shocked and guilty. To be honest, I offered to marry her, but she turned me down. She didn’t think two people who barely knew each other should get married just because they were going to be parents. We talked all that day and she agreed to let me be involved in the baby’s life – she was actually relieved to hear that I wanted to. I finally apologized for what I had done to her and she said I had nothing to apologize for – we both wanted it and we did it. For her, end of story.” He ran a hand through his hair, blew out a breath, and shook his head. “If you knew her, you’d understand that’s just the way she is. She goes out of her way to make sure other people don’t feel bad about anything – even if they should. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but over the years I’ve learned that’s how she honestly felt and I let go of a little of the guilt.”

  “She sounds like an unusually wonderful person,” I remarked, surprising myself by not feeling in the least bit jealous. Or hating her outright.

  “She is.” He smiled fondly and finished off the rest of his coffee. “I remember when she asked me if I would be her coach for Michael’s delivery. She said I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to and she wouldn’t think less of me if I didn’t.” He laughed and leaned back against the booth, with his arm spread out across the top. “As if I was going to turn her down! She told me later that, inside, she was a wreck, because if I said no, she didn’t have anyone else to ask. But she didn’t want to make me feel bad if I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t expect her to offer and I was happy as hell to say yes.”

  “So you got to watch him being born? What was that like?” I was genuinely curious, having never seen a baby born before.

  He got a faraway look in his eyes and gazed out the window, as if he was reliving it. He turned his eyes back to me and said, “Honestly? It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and easily the greatest day of my life. Funny how something that started out as a thing to be ashamed of turned into my proudest moment.”

  “That’s nice, Nate.” I pushed my empty bread plate to the side and concentrated on my coffee. “Is that when the two of you started to have a relationship?”

  “No,” he said, looking at me as if he didn’t understand what I was asking. “I told you. We don’t have a sexual relationship and we never really did.”

  “But you had another baby,” I pointed out.

  And just like that, his face closed off and his whole demeanor changed. “We did,” he said stiffly. “But how that came about is an entirely different story and not one I want to share.”

  I could see he was dead serious about that which, naturally, made me even more curious. He could tell me about drunkenly banging a beautiful virgin against a wall, but couldn’t tell me about the conception of his second child? That story must be a doozy. But I knew when to back off, so I did.

  “Okay, I can respect that,” I said and finished off my coffee as we sat for a minute in an uncomfortable silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Nate said. “I didn’t mean to be abrupt. It’s just not something I want to talk about.”

  “No, it’s f
ine. I don’t expect you to give me all the private details of your life – and I shouldn’t have even asked.”

  “I don’t care that you asked, I can understand that you’re curious about my relationship with Kayla. I just want you to believe me that there is nothing going on there.”

  “I believe you,” I said with a smile, thinking of my own relationship with Jack.

  “So we’re good?”

  “We’re good,” I confirmed and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. To my surprise, he flipped his hand over and grasped mine – and didn’t let it go.

  “Are you going to be able to finish your breakfast one-handed?”

  “I’m done,” he replied with a grin. “And even if I wasn’t, I’d find a way to do it without the use of this hand.” He gave my hand another squeeze.

  I smiled at him for a second and then, after taking a quick look around the restaurant to see who might be watching, I used my free hand to push my empty plate to his side of the table and pull his half-full one in front of me.

  “Are you still hungry?”

  “No, I’m stuffed,” I said with a wink. “I just want the waitress to think that you’re the pig, not me.”

  He burst out laughing and squeezed my hand. He grabbed the bill, stood up without letting go of my hand and pulled me out of the booth. “Come on, goofy, let’s go.”

  Chapter 14

  During the short drive back to Jack’s house, I learned that Nate had originally been an accounting major in college but had switched to Information Technology after taking only one class in that subject. He told me he found it fascinating. I told him I found it as dull as dirt. Even duller than accounting, if one could imagine such a thing.

  I already knew he owned a small consulting firm – small, as in it was just him working from his home – but he told me the reason he broke out on his own was to be more available if Kayla needed help with the boys during the day.

  I wondered if he made all his life decisions based on his sons’ needs, which I would consider normal – or Kayla’s, which I wouldn’t. I wanted more information about that situation, but there was no way I was going to start grilling him so soon after I told him I didn’t require all the details of his private life.