A Relationship...Or Something Like It

by Greene, Caroline

  A Relationship…

  Or Something Like It

  By Caroline Greene

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © February 2013 by Caroline Greene. All Rights Reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Author retains 100% of the rights and copyright licenses to the manuscript and all other materials submitted to Sanhedralite Publishing.

  Disclaimer: The publisher has put forth its best efforts in preparing and arranging this eBook. The information provided herein by the author is provided “as is” and you read and use this information at your own risk. The publisher and author disclaim any liabilities for any loss of profit or commercial or personal damages resulting from the use of the information contained in this eBook.

  Published in the United States by Sanhedralite Publishing

  ASIN: B00D0Y38XE

  Cover design by: Sherrie Dolby

  Edited by: Sherrie Dolby

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Summer Job

  Chapter 2: Blind Date

  Chapter 3: Flirtation

  Chapter 4: Just Another Date

  Chapter 5: Shiva House

  Chapter 6: Still Interested

  Chapter 7: Third Date

  Chapter 8: The Last Straw

  Chapter 9: Saying Yes At Last

  Chapter 10: First Date With Kyle

  Chapter 11: Summer’s End

  Chapter 12: Back to School

  Chapter 13: I LIKE YOU And Other Letters

  Chapter 14: Being Honest With Friends and Family

  Chapter 15: Together At Last

  Chapter 16 In Serious Like (Afraid to Say the Other L-Word)

  Chapter 17 Christmas Date

  Chapter 18: Motherly Love and Other Disasters

  Chapter 19: Pining and Getting By

  Chapter 20: Apology And Hope

  Chapter 21: Anticipation

  Chapter 22: Parental Moment

  Chapter 23: To Grandma’s House (Condo) I Go

  Chapter 24: Wrong Time of Month

  Chapter 25: Interview and A Talk With Grandma

  Chapter 26: Finally Kyle

  Chapter 27: Morning After Heartbreak

  Chapter 28: Pain and Awkwardness

  Chapter 29: A Relationship or Something Like It

  Chapter 30: Hiding Heartbreak

  Chapter 31: Going Through the Motions

  Chapter 32: Part 2-Florida

  Chapter 33: New Life, New Friends, Old Heartbreak

  Chapter 34: Opportunities and Trying to Move On

  Chapter 35: Thanksgiving with Grandma

  Chapter 36: Making An Effort

  Chapter 37: Visiting Home

  Chapter 38: An Ice Cream Cry and Friendly Advice

  Chapter 39: The Deciding Moment

  Chapter 40: Fix Ups

  Chapter 41: Reconnecting With an Old Friend

  Chapter 42: Another One With “Potential”

  Chapter 43: Grayson and Doubt

  Chapter 44: In the End Not Right

  Chapter 45: Michigan, 1997

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  One Last Thing...

  Prologue

  My name is Abigail Wiseman Horowitz, and I have never allowed myself to stray too far off course. I have rebelled in the eyes of my parents but not enough, as they have put it, to cause any “permanent damage.” I did not marry someone who would have been their first choice but someone they deemed good enough for them to see their goals for me fulfilled. I have a college education, a decent job, a child who excels at school and socially, and a marriage that is happy enough. But there are times when I feel restless, and I need more. There are times when I wish I had taken things further in my 21st year, which happened to be my most turbulent. I took risks, I dared beyond everyone’s expectations for me, I thought outside the box, but I still wonder if I might have had more if only I had dared for more and took greater risks.

  The summer I was 21, between my junior and senior year of college, would be the first (and only) time I ever felt passion. Until then, I had dated nice, respectable boys and then men. There were men whose expectations I would get tired of. I would toss them aside without a second thought and I would not have any regrets over the break up. In fact, there was never a dramatic break up; most of the time, there would be just a few dates and then just a general fizzling out of the relationship. Often, we would remain friends and have more enjoyment out of the friendship than we ever did out of the romance.

  I had Jason, my one official “boyfriend” at that point. We met at a typical freshman fraternity party. We were both a little drunk, he was heartbroken over the rejection of, Diana, one of my closest friends, and I wanted to be part of a couple. We dated throughout most of the fall semester and he even stayed over break with my family as he was from out of state. As he had briefly dated my friend, he was already part of our crowd and fit in nicely. However, we soon realized that while we genuinely liked each other, something was missing. We agreed to break up very civilly. I was sadder about not having that sense of belonging from being part of a couple than missing him specifically. We eventually became good friends and, as adults, we became Facebook friends, exchanging stories of our present lives.

  I also had one “rebellion” the beginning of my sophomore year of college. Ravi was from India, a Hindu studying in the United States to become an engineer. I was a Jewish girl, living in suburban Detroit with very proper parents who expected me to marry someone Jewish. Yet, I enjoyed the idea of Ravi, and the thrill of going outside my parents’ expectations for me, more than the man himself. Ravi was a nice, intelligent person who genuinely liked me and wanted to get to know me better. I did not want the deeper relationship of which he was hinting and so, like the others, I told him that we would be better off as friends.

  Here and there, I would let myself be talked into going on a blind date by my parents, set up by their mutual friends. Very rarely, it would lead to a second date but most of the time I never heard from those men again. I also talked myself into answering a personal ad in the local Jewish newspaper. Again, it was usually the one date and then nothing, but there were a handful of men who wanted more. There was Seth, whose obsession with me was almost stalker-like. He would say things like how he had fallen for me and had already started planning out our future together. My parents were absolutely charmed by him and were bewildered that I wasn’t happier about his attention. Unfortunately, something about Seth seemed creepy to me. After our second date, I told him that I wanted to go slowly with him; however, that still didn’t stop him from calling me and wanting to see me every day.

  The problem was that I had several unrequited crushes where the men would let me know that they weren’t interested in me. In fact, I met Seth in the aftermath of Zachary. Zachary and I sat next to each other in a prerequisite Science class. I was a good note-taker, and he asked to borrow my notes since he had missed class because his sister was in a car accident and in the hospital for several weeks. We got to talking, and I realized that I knew his sister slightly from middle school and high school. After that, Zachary would always make it a poin
t to sit next to me and walk me back to my dorm after class. With several analyses with my friends, they determined that he might like me but not want to rush into anything. With the end of the school year approaching, and his not asking me out, I decided that I needed to be more obvious in letting him know I was interested. I called him up the night before I was to go home for the summer and asked if he wanted to get a cup of coffee. He very politely made conversation about his graduation and new apartment and then mentioned how excited he was to be moving in with his girlfriend and that things were becoming more serious between them.

  I wallowed in self-pity for a couple of weeks over the summer, gained 5 lbs. of ice cream, and decided that I needed to find a man who was single and actively looking. Plus, several of my friends were pairing off, and I was feeling lonely and left out. There was an ad in the newspaper for a 24 SWM, who was looking for his soul mate, and I impulsively answered it. What I got was shy, awkward Seth, who stuttered, especially when he was nervous, and seemed to pursue a deeper relationship no matter how much I tried to keep things casual. I was a reader of romance novels and wanted to feel that spark that I thought I could feel with Zachary, the one that the heroines felt towards their heroes. Seth clearly was not that man. I even reluctantly tried a make-out session with him, a few kisses and some petting, like I had with my freshman-year boyfriend, and all I wanted to do was push him away just like with Jason. Shortly after that, I told Seth that we would be better off as friends. Seth seemed to agree, but he would still call me all the time and when I went back to school for my junior year, he even stopped by and visited my parents. My parents were so concerned with me at that point: turning down and pushing away a nice boy like Seth. My mom even insisted I talk to a counselor up at the school counseling center. The counselor declared nothing wrong with me and assured me that eventually I would feel chemistry, and I just needed to follow my instincts and continue to take things at my own pace.

  Junior year was another disappointing one on the romance front. Over the summer, I developed a crush on Matthew, someone who had been part of my crowd since my senior year of high school. I had always liked hanging out with Matt, and I thought he might like me, too. He was intelligent, Jewish, and he even agreed to be my escort to a family friends’ Bar Mitzvah. Unfortunately, later in the summer, he and Diana, the one who dated and rejected Jason leading up to his rebound with me, to add insult to injury, declared their official couplehood to each other and to our group of mutual friends. Sensitive Diana even came over and asked if I was okay with everything. I, of course, assured her it was fine and that I was very happy for them. It had to be fine as Diana, Leigh, a friend from the dorms, and I had decided to share an apartment together for our senior year. That school year, I threw myself into my studies, volunteered giving tours to elementary school students at the local museum, worked on the school newspaper as my career ambition was to be a reporter, and went on an occasional blind date of the usual variety.

  In short, by that time I was sick and tired of being left out of what my friends were experiencing, of sitting on the sidelines and being in a rut. I needed a change, but I wasn’t sure how to go about getting what I wanted. I wanted passion that was mutual and lasted happily ever after like in the romance novels that I liked to read. I wanted to feel something for someone to at least make me consider going beyond kissing and minor petting. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to lose my virginity, but I wanted to feel more than I did about any of the other men I had dated.

  Chapter 1: Summer Job

  At the end of my junior year of college, I made the decision that if I wanted things to be different I had to actively make some changes. The first thing I decided was that I did not want to work over the summer at the preschool camp I had worked at since my sophomore year of high school. I needed to find a job where I could meet interesting people my own age. I was not going to get what I wanted hiding behind a group of children. I did not even like children that much, with their whining, their constant requests for bathroom help, and their general stubbornness.

  After the Matt and Diana romance came to light, I decided that I also needed to make serious changes to my physical appearance. Ever since I had hit puberty, I had at least 20-30 lbs. I could stand to lose. I ended up drinking diet shakes for breakfast and lunch and having a small dinner of salad and 4 oz. of lean meat or chicken. I went to school on one of the bigger campuses, and I did more walking to class than I did taking the bus. I also signed up for an aerobics class four nights a week. Between the food deprivation and the exercise, I had lost those 30 lbs. and was a trim size 4. I also declared myself open to the idea of my mother and her friends fixing me up on blind dates and instead of answering a personal ad as I did with Seth’s, I took out my own in the Jewish Kibitzer.

  As for the summer job change, my father told me there was someone he went to Temple with who needed office help. This was 1992, and they had instituted a new computerized filing system and needed help with imputing the data from the large, extensive paper filing cabinet. Plus, my mother hinted, they had a son who was just two years older than me who was also working there to learn the family business. They also hired my brother for the summer who was going into his senior year of high school, so it worked out really well as we could share the car to get to work. Even though my brother was four years younger than me, he was definitely worldlier than me and not as naive, and my parents liked the idea of us looking out for each other.

  The first few weeks of work were very mundane. Aaron, the boss’s son, was very nice, but I could never see anything more there than friendship. Plus, he seemed to enjoy hanging out with Ross, my brother, more than having any interest in getting to know me. Aaron was very pleasant to work with as were the rest of the coworkers who were much older. Ross and I complimented each other’s work style: there were jobs such as writing advertisements for the local paper which I was better at, while he was better at the more precise measuring and angling for making a template. Cate, the General Manager was happy with our work, and it was a pleasant, if slightly boring, place to be.

  It was a very busy office, and Cate decided they needed to hire another salesperson. I mainly kept to myself in the back room of the office, working on the filing system and creating advertisements. One day, I happened to look up as someone was brought in for his interview for the Sales position. Our eyes met, and I felt something that I had never felt before: a connection, electricity that almost scared me. He flashed me a smile and then the door closed as he went into Cate’s office for the interview. With just that smile, I felt change in the air and knew that somehow he would be the one to lift me out of my restlessness.

  I did not think all that much about the new salesperson in the next week. There were a few more people who came in and out of Cate’s office for interviews. I would hear Cate and the owner talking especially about one candidate.

  “I checked his references, and everybody says that he is just excellent.”

  I was curious as to whom they were going to hire, and I remembered the man who smiled at me and wondered if he was the “excellent” one. It wasn’t as if he were particularly handsome in a classical sense. He was short, too skinny, his nose was too big, and I had dated men who were much better looking, but there was just something about him that made me think that there was something there, some sort of invisible pull.

  On Monday morning, Ross and I drove into work, and there he was. Cate smiled and said,

  “Abigail, Ross, this is Kyle Buchman, our new salesperson. Kyle, Abigail and Ross are helping us out for the summer with our new filing system.”

  Kyle smiled at me, and my heart was pounding a mile a minute.

  “Pleased to meet you Abigail,” he said as he shook my hand, and it may sound corny, but I felt that chemistry the counselor was talking about in his touch, and I wanted more.

  That morning, work was very interesting. In between Kyle’s training, he would make it a point to go back into the office area and talk to me. He to
ld me that he was recently divorced and laid off from a teaching job at a middle school in Coral Springs, Florida. He was staying in the guest room of his brother and sister-in-law’s house until he could figure things out.

  “So what about you?” he asked. “Any divorces, boyfriends?”

  I smiled shyly. I knew nothing about flirting, but I had never had the desire to do it before. Yet, he made me feel lightheaded, and words seemed to come naturally.

  “No ex-husbands or boyfriend. Tonight, I do have a date with someone named Darren. I’ll just have to see what happens with that.”

  It was true. Darren had answered my personal ad, and we had arranged to meet for coffee after work. But, truthfully, Darren didn’t have a chance, and I knew it.

  “How old are you?” I asked Kyle.

  “Next week is my 34th birthday,” he answered. “I would love to have someone to celebrate it with, but I guess Darren wouldn’t approve.”

  Thirty-four? I gulped. At 21, I knew that as a legal adult I could date whomever I pleased but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t get a difficult time from my parents especially with Ross working close by. Could I risk it? Could I go beyond the boundaries that had been set down? Kyle made it tempting, very tempting, but what I was already feeling for him with a smile across the room and a flirtation at work was scary as well as exciting, and I was unsure whether I was ready to make this leap.

  Victoria, the aging woman the owner had hired for custodial duties, was watching this all with amusement. She started singing very softly in the background,

  “Just remember this: a kiss is but a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh…..”

  “Casablanca,” Kyle declared. “One of my favorite movies.”

  “Well,” I flirted back. “It is playing downtown next week. Maybe you should find somebody to go with you.”

  Kyle replied, “A nice idea for a birthday dinner. Next Saturday? Why don’t you think about it, Abigail?”

  I was trembling inside, and I wanted to say yes on the spot, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for all of this intensity. Darren from the Jewish Kibitzer was infinitely a safer choice. I just smiled back at Kyle flirtatiously and said,