“Yeah, well, I knew it was a long shot,” he said, tucking the box into his jacket pocket.
I rested my palm against his cheek. “Given we’ve only been dating for a couple of weeks, yes, but don’t take it as my final answer. Please.”
He nodded, but searched my face as if he had more to say or ask. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to hang onto the ring and keep asking you until I finally love you so hard you have to say yes.”
That made me smile. “Is this a challenge?”
A grin emerged. “If you like.”
“Can I see the ring again?”
The grin grew. “Absolutely not, not until you’re ready to say yes.”
“Tease.”
“Merely keeping the mystery alive.”
***
The trip back to my place was quiet, with neither of us speaking. It was like walking through cement. The mind wanted to move forward but the body was trapped in all this stuff.
When he parked Christine in front of my building he asked, “Can I stay or would you rather spend the night apart to think?”
My heart hurt from the thought of him leaving me again. In a small voice I said, “I’d like you to stay.”
He blew out a long breath. “Oh, good.”
“Were you worried?”
He turned to me. The anguish on his face tore at me. “Yes. Very.”
I placed a palm on his cheek that he turned into and gave a kiss. “You might think I’m skittish, but I’m actually pretty tenacious about what I want. Never doubt that I want you, that I love you.” I leaned forward and kissed him. “Never.”
There was a certain wistfulness to our lovemaking that night. I didn’t know if Jon was thinking my lack of a “yes” answer was the same as a “no” that was simply missing a brave messenger to deliver it, or if the failure of the scene to play out as he’d expected had thrown him off. For my part, anxiety that he’d soon move on to someone else who would say yes tangoed with my good sense. While in my head I believed Jon when he said “no pressure” and that he’d continue to wait until I was ready, my heart still worried about the impact on his ego. As we lay there side by side, our hearts slowing and the bliss endorphins waning, I took his hand.
“You want to tell me what you’re thinking? Because I know your mind is working overtime and when it does that, I also know there’s more to come.” I gave his hand what I hoped he’d see as a reassuring squeeze.
A soft snort erupted. He lifted my hand and brushed a kiss against the back of my knuckles. “You know me too well.” His good humor dissolved on a long-drawn-out sigh. He drew in a deep breath, released it, then sucked in another. “I’m moving back to DC.”
Moving back to DC? As in the District of Columbia, our Nation’s capital? As in all the way out on the East Coast where people still clung together in huddled masses? Where all the cities melted from one into the other until there was nothing but one giant metropolis with only toll booths to commemorate notable transitions?
I so did not see that coming. He’d gob-smacked me in my own bed where I was supposed to be safe and in blissful isolation from the real world. I had no idea his marriage proposal was an either-or proposition—marry me or I’m moving away. I wanted to scream foul ball and demand a do-over. My eyes watered. One of my greatest fears he blithely shoved in my face without even the slightest preamble. Typical Jon. I’d hate him for it if I didn’t love the man, hideous flaws and all.
I forced out an “oh.” It was the best I could do. I was grateful for the darkness to hide the tears I couldn’t stop from rolling out the corners of my eyes. “When?”
“First of the new year, officially, but I’m moving my stuff there in three weeks.”
“Three weeks? During the holidays?”
“I’ll be back for Christmas.”
“Is that why you went to DC?” His subterfuge cut to the bone. After all we’d been through with his lie about being an FBI undercover agent when I first met him, I trusted him not to do that to me again. But he had. His mother was right. The Bureau would always come first.
“Yes.” His voice was barely above a whisper. At least he was a little upset, but whether his distress was organic or derived from mine, I’d no idea.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
His hand tightened its grip on mine. “I didn’t want ... I didn’t know if my old job would still be available.”
“Did you approach them or did they approach you?” I asked, my nose beginning to sound stuffy from the tears that ran down the sides of my cheeks and into my ears, cold and miserable.
“A little of both. I requested the transfer months ago, before I had even met you. Thalia and I weren’t clicking the way I’d hoped. Since I had recently transferred to Dallas, the Bureau wasn’t all that gung-ho to transfer me back. Even though they accepted the paperwork they told me it would be a while, that I probably wouldn’t hear until the end of November. That seemed so far off in the future back then.” The bed jiggled as he shifted to lay his head on my stomach.
I ran my fingers through his hair. “So, what does this mean? For us? You just proposed and because I didn’t say yes—didn’t say no either—you’re moving away, breaking up with me?” My voice broke and my breath hitched.
He lifted off of me. “What? Is that what you think? Do you think I’m that flighty that I’d move away like that? I told you I’d wait for you, and I meant it.” I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I knew he’d rolled to his side and was watching me.
“Yeah, but I assumed we’d be together while you waited, not in a long distance relationship.”
His hand slid to the side of my face. He must have felt the wetness because his thumb gently rubbed near the corners of my eyes. “Who said anything about long distance relationship?”
“You did, by announcing you were moving away.”
He pressed closer and ran a palm over my belly and up to my breast, gently cradling it. “What do you want, Gayle?”
“You. And a job.”
“That’s a good start. Does the job have to be in Dallas?”
“I’m rather fond of short commutes, or at least ones in the same state.” The words burst out on a half laugh, half sob.
He kissed the side of my head and caught his breath. “You’re coming with me.” It was a statement, not a question, a statement I’d had no say in.
“Jon. I’m dead broke. I can’t afford to move to DC. I barely got myself from Albuquerque to Dallas, and they’re in neighboring states. And even if I could afford the gas to drive there, I couldn’t afford to live anywhere. If I’m going to live in my car, at least I know Dallas a little bit.” I wiped my other eye. The whole conversation was impossible to make any sense of. He wanted to marry me one minute, leave me the next, and then dangle an impossible compromise in front of me.
“No. When I said, you’re coming with me, I meant with me as in you’re as much a part of me as my own heart. I’ll take care of you, forever, if that’s what will make you happy. I already want to do that.”
Oh, he was using the big guns on me, so unfair playing to my financial insecurities, but I couldn’t live on his charity. As romantic as the idea of being a kept woman sounded—that wasn’t me. I rolled to my side and moved against him, my lips against his neck. “Part of me wants nothing more than to curl up into the palm of your hand where it’s safe and warm and where I know I am loved. But another part is warning me that giving too much of myself away to anyone would make me a lesser person, would weaken the whole, change me, and not in a good way. I like being able to depend on myself, to know I can survive on my own if I had to, not that I want to, but if I had to.”
He shifted away. “I didn’t know loving me could ever make you a lesser person, Gayle. That was never my intention.”
I had hurt him. Dammit! Why did he have to misinterpret me, now of all times? I drew in a deep breath and thought before I spoke, not wanting to botch it again. “It’s not the loving you part t
hat would make me less. It’s what I do with the rest of me, because unless we are the same person, there will always be a part of me that has needs that you can’t fulfill. Love is the greatest of all treasures, but I need more than love to survive and I need to love myself as much as I love you. I would want that for you, too.”
Jon sighed and clasped his hands on his belly, staring at the ceiling. “Okay, let me try this another way then. Will you shift your job hunt to DC?” He turned his head toward me. Despite the darkness, I didn’t need to see his eyes to know what they held.
“Yes. I will. Of course I will.” God help me. I knew absolutely nothing about our Nation’s capital, had only visited once in my life. Yet here I was promising to move hundreds of miles away to be with my boyfriend of what? A month? Less than that if you counted from when we first admitted our feelings for each other.
But me in a government job? I shuddered at the idea. I was so not cut out for bureaucracy. That much I knew already.
Jon kissed me, long and hard, before pulling my back to his chest. We slept that way until morning when I woke and discovered he had left for work already.
Chapter 11
On Saturday, Jon took me to Six Flags Over Texas. It was a little chilly but we’d bundled up nicely and it gave me a bulletproof excuse to tuck inside his coat fronts whenever we waited in line. At the end of the evening back at his place, he brought the ring out and proposed again. I said “no” and we carried on with our evening, though he still refused to let me try it on.
On Sunday, we went to a very sexy movie that had us tearing each other’s clothes off as soon as he threw the lock on his apartment door. He proposed again, and again I said “no,” but at least he let me stare at that ring a little longer. Still no go on trying it on, however.
No Jon Monday through Friday because he had a stakeout to man. He managed to call and propose every night nevertheless. I told him if I hadn’t said “yes” with the ring and him on bended knee right in front of me, I sure as hell wasn’t going to accept him over the phone.
He brought me roses on Saturday and took me horseback riding. Proposing in the saddle didn’t work either, though I gave him props for controlling his horse while trying to slip a bridle on me.
Sunday morning he made me breakfast and on the serving tray he included a wrapped package. Inside the package was a beautiful card that said simply, “Marry me?” and the ring tucked securely in its black Kruger’s ring box. He let me study the ring but drew the line at allowing me to try it on, reiterating that only a “yes” answer would unlock the door to that privilege. I supposed I couldn’t blame him.
We repeated a similar pattern for the two weeks that followed, and by then had begun to laugh about the predictability of our dates.
I searched for a job in DC, but not knowing the market and being a long distance applicant didn’t do me any favors in my hunt. I helped Jon pack up and ship his stuff East. The last two days he lived with me since he had no bed or furniture.
I had found a job temping for a computer store. They needed someone to balance their bank accounts that were hopelessly muddled. The work was easy, and I actually liked the people there. I worked full time while the assignment lasted. At the rate I was cleaning everything up, though, I wouldn’t have many more hours to work there.
Jon continued to urge me to move with him, but I hadn’t given notice on my apartment yet and my crummy car was in dire need of maintenance before I would even attempt to drive it across the country.
The last morning he stowed his suitcase inside Christine’s trunk, and kissed me goodbye as I bawled my eyes out at the curb. Christine, bless her heart, wouldn’t start. Her battery was dead, or so we thought. When Jon checked under her hood, he found nothing amiss, and a check of the battery indicated it held full power.
I patted her hood and whispered, “I’ll see you soon, dear girl. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Jon turned the key again and she started right up.
I waved as he backed out, turned, and drove away. It was the first time he hadn’t proposed. In the parking spot Christine vacated, I found a shiny Washington, DC, quarter. I curled my fist around it and cried in my bed until I fell asleep, crawling out of bed only to eat lunch and dinner and go the bathroom.
Jon called from a hotel in Tennessee where he’d holed up for the night. He sounded tired and planned on making an early start in the morning. I lied when he asked if I was feeling okay because I sounded like I was getting a cold by agreeing that I might be and hoped he didn’t catch anything from me.
The next night he called from DC, from his new apartment, saying it was very nice but small. His building was in the same neighborhood he’d left a little over a year earlier when he’d moved to Dallas. He’d already run into several people he knew at the grocery store where he made a quick trip for a few essentials.
His whole life was continuing on, while mine was stuck in first gear in a city that had never embraced me.
The next day, my caller ID identified the person on the other end of the line as “Cripps, J.” I’d never seen that readout for Jon before and wondered if he’d had his apartment phone hooked up or if he was calling from some work line assigned to him. I answered with a tentative, “Hello?” instead of my usual, “Hi, sexy!”
“Gayle?” A female voice. Who was using his phone? A momentary wave of dread hit me.
“Yes.”
“This is Jenny Cripps.”
I slapped my palm to the side of my head. Of course it was Jenny! Why hadn’t I considered that? Okay, for starters, why would she be calling me? “Jenny! Hi! How are you?” Best not to assume anything but let her talk and explain herself.
“I was wondering if you might want to have dinner with me one night this week. I mean, you’re dating my brother and I’m dating yours, it seems—”
“Of course. I’d love to. I’m free any night this week.” I wandered into my kitchen, my phone pressed to my ear, and took stock of my dwindling food supply. I had been postponing my grocery trip until I got my first paycheck, but as that was only three days away, I figured one night on the credit card wouldn’t kill me. I’d just cut back on the frivolous stuff like Diet Cokes. Or maybe not those, but sweets and snacks.
“Would you mind coming to my house for a home-cooked meal?”
“I’d love that.” Boy howdy, would I ever!
We set up our dinner for the next night, swapping cell phone numbers and directions to her house, even though I’d been once before.
She welcomed me graciously into her home when I rang the bell. It looked virtually unchanged from when Jon and I had holed up there a month earlier.
I handed her the bottle of wine I’d brought as a gift, a bottle my brother had purchased and left behind. How fortuitous that I’d never opened it.
“Oh, I love this kind of wine. Thank you! Come on in!” She swept her hand toward the kitchen. “I thought we’d keep it casual and hang out in the kitchen while I finish up.”
“Sounds great,” I said, heading in the direction she indicated.
Once installed on a bar stool, with a generously poured glass of wine, we made generic chit chat about her job, my home state, the weather, everything except the topics I knew we both really wanted to discuss which were: Jon, Ian, DC and, for my own nosey purposes, the outcome of the Jason-Kat-Tully love triangle.
“So,” she began after an awkward lull in the conversation.
“So,” I repeated, smiling at her.
A mischievous grin stole its way onto Jenny’s face. “Alright, I’ll go first, since you’re my guest. “I’m thinking about moving to Houston.”
“What? Really? Will the airline let you relocate?”
“No. But I don’t care. I’ll find another job when I get there. The biggest problem will be telling my parents. With Jon leaving again, the timing is not greatest, but I want to be with him, you know?”
I nodded and took a big gulp of my wine. She could do what I couldn’t—afford to mo
ve to be with the man she loved ... even if it was my geeky brother. “What about your house?”
She shrugged. “I’ll sell it. It’s not the best housing market, but at least I’m not upside-down mortgage-wise.” She looked around her kitchen. “It’s been a good house, but I need to move on with my life. Despite my mom and dad being here, it no longer feels like home to me. It feels like I’ve been sitting like an obedient dog in this tiny yard surrounded by invisible fencing. A hair beyond the property line is a lush open field made for running. I know if I cross the fence line I’ll get zapped, but that one-time jolt of electric agony will be nothing compared to the dull and constant ache of always wanting what’s within my reach, if I take just one extra step.”
“That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”
Tossing back the last of her wine, she swallowed with a loud gulp and said, “All those years wasted on Scott. God, I’m stupid. I’m not going to waste any more. And even if Ian and I don’t last, at least I tried.”
“What if the dog catcher grabs you before you can get to that field?”
“Then I’ll devise a plan B.” She shifted her shoulders back and sat more erect. “What about you and Jon? He’s in DC now. When are you going to join him?”
“I have to find a job first. I can’t afford to move right now.”
“I’m sure Jon would let you crash with him until you could get on your feet.” She refilled her wine glass and topped off mine.
“He already offered but I turned him down. If I depended on him, I’d lose the hungry edge I need to get a job. I’m afraid I could easily become addicted to leaning on him.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I shook my head and gave her a resigned smile. “You sound like Jon.”
Purely Relative (The P.U.R.E.) Page 8