She breaks out a “mom sigh,” one of those breaths that she holds in her cheeks for a moment and then blows out all once. “I'm disappointed in you,” she finally says.
I turn sharply and insist, “Mom, nothing happened.”
“Yes, I know, but I think you're getting way too serious about Chase. You just met him.”
“Well, we've spent a lot of time together already and I think I know him pretty well.”
“You think?” She asks. “You only think that because you've spent so much time with him. Your feelings are already far too involved because you've already spent the night with him for heaven's sake!”
I no longer try to control my volume when I shout at my mother, “Mom we did not sleep together, and you said you believe me! I told you we stayed up TALKING. So what??? You could have a little more faith in me; you know, trust that I'm not stupid enough to have sex with a guy I just met!”
My mom employs another one of her famous “mom tools” and brings her voice down to almost a whisper, but her words are still sharp and biting, “Katherine, I believe you, but you are not making very good choices. You just met him and you don't really know him yet. You cannot possibly be in love after a few weeks.”
“I am not in love with him!” I yell and storm off to my room.
As much as I want to slam the door, I resist because I don't want to act the way my mom is treating me – like a child. But as soon as the door is locked, I burst into tears. There's so much emotion behind my outburst – indignation, embarrassment, frustration.
I also have a twinge of of guilt about lying to my mom.
Because I think I am in love.
When I've sufficiently recovered from the debate with my mom, I text Dani: Spent the night with Chase. I can't control my giggling as I sit back and wait for her response.
Exactly 2 minutes and 48 seconds later, my phone buzzes. Dani's voice on the other end screams, “What???”
I'm laughing hysterically. “We fell asleep on his couch, talking!”
“Well, that sounds a little more like you, Kate. Sheesh, I was freaking out for a second there.”
“I noticed.”
“So? Tell me more,” she presses.
I begin with the information that I learned the night before, about Chase's accident. “I didn't mention this before – I wasn't sure if it was important – but he walks with these crutches, Lofstrand crutches is what he called them. They wrap around his upper arm and he rests his hands on grips to help him control them. He moves really fast on them. Oh, and...we kissed last night.”
“YEAH, he moves fast!” She laughs. “You kissed him already? My best friend who waits the whole school year to kiss her first boyfriend? Sounds like the crutches don't hold him back at all.”
She slows down a little bit and then cautiously suggests, “Just be careful, okay?”
“Great.” I'm sure my voice has a twinge of disappointment. “You’re starting to sound like my mom. She thinks I can’t possibly be in love yet.”
“When love is right, it’s right. I trust your judgment more than anyone. But I don’t want you to fall for him before you know if he’s serious about you. If he breaks your heart, I will have to break his legs for good!”
“DANI!”
A knock at my door drags me away from putting the finishing touches on my makeup.
“Come in,” I call.
My dad makes his way over to my bed and sits down. He does that a lot. It's one of my favorite places to talk to my dad – in the comfort of my own room. I always feel safe here, and my dad's demeanor adds to the effect. He always knows what to say and how to say it.
“So, did Mom talk to you?” I venture.
Dad nods.
“You believe me, right?” I question.
“Of course, I believe you, Kate. You're a smart girl and I trust you.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“But Mom has a point, you know,” he continues. If it was my mom talking, I might have rolled my eyes. But somehow, I can receive direction better from my dad. “I really like Chase. You know I do. I trust him, too. But you're spending so much time with him that I don't want your heart to get ahead of your brain. I hope he has good intentions, but I don't want you to get your heart broken. He's been through a lot, and he still has a long road ahead of him with medical school.”
I swallow hard. “I know, Dad.”
“And I do want you to be careful not to get yourself into a situation where you can lose control of your emotions and make the wrong choices.” My face turns bright red. My dad has never talked to me so directly about sex before.
“I know,” I insist.
“You have something special that you don't want to give away to the wrong person. Or before it's the right time, which is when you're married,” he emphasizes.
I give my dad a stronger “I know.”
He's pushing the conversation out of my comfort zone. But he presses on, telling me quietly, “I think Chase might be the right one.”
I look at him with surprise. He chuckles a little and then finishes by saying, “But I still want you to guard your feelings...and the rest of you. Just be careful, okay?”
I hug my dad and confirm, “Of course, Daddy.”
My trolley shift drags on without Chase on board.
Between tours, I spend some time pondering what Chase had told me about his faith getting him through the past four years. My faith has always seemed important to me, but I don't necessarily act like it has a prominent place in my life. I had some “church friends” but I never really became close to them. Dani was always my best friend, and she wasn't interested in church at all. God is important to me, but I usually convince myself that I'll eventually become more serious about my faith. The idea of knowing God personally isn't foreign to me, but I've never met someone with Chase's conviction or the quiet strength he embodies.
My thoughts turn to my earlier conversation with my dad. He is so firm, so solid. I can rely on him for anything. And, as evidenced by our earlier conversation, I can talk to him about anything.
I can't believe he told me that he thinks Chase might be the one. I trust my dad with all my heart, so this gives me some assurance that I'm not going crazy.
I sometimes think that God must be like an even better version of my dad – loving, tenacious, always there when I need Him. But occasionally, I tend to think God is more like my mom – kind of over-protective and determined to steal my joy. I know she's not an ogre, but she's so...sensible, to the point of not wanting me to take any risks. Ever.
What does God really want for my life? Isn't He proud of me the way that my dad is? Does He care how serious I am about church, as long as I am a good person? Chase is a good man. God wouldn't have any objections to my relationship with Chase, would He?
At the end of the fourth tour, I receive a text from Chase: Dinner at my place tomorrow?
My quick reply? Sure thing!
Saturday morning, another text arrives: Pick U up @4PM. Have to prepare U for the parents. LOL.
Shoot! 4:00 PM. Dinner. What was I thinking? I had Chase on the brain and not my job. I race to Fiona's room and wake her up. “Fi, if I clear it with Sam, can you cover my trolley shifts tonight?”
“Why?” She mumbles, still half asleep.
“I'm going to meet Chase's parents tonight.”
Fiona sits straight up and laughs, “Oooh, you're meeting the parents already. This is getting serious.”
“Shut up!” I laugh. “Please say you can work for me? Please!”
“Yeah, sure.” Fiona flops back down and throws the pillow over her head.
There is a knock on the front door at exactly 4:00. I'm still in my bathroom trying to get my long wispy hair to cooperate. The cold temperatures make it so dry that I can hardly keep it from flying up like I'm touching a static ball. I decide to pull it back into a long straight ponytail. I throw on some lip gloss and accentuate the ensemble with some tiny Christmas tree earri
ngs.
I find Chase has already been greeted by Marcus. Surprisingly, they are having an intelligible discussion about some video game they both happen to like. I can't believe that Marcus has any conversational skills, but he is keeping Chase's interest as he describes how to beat a particularly difficult level in the game. I'm thankful that Chase doesn't seem to be holding a grudge about Marcus' insensitive comment a few nights ago.
As I come close to Chase, he turns to me and his eyes widen. “You look wonderful,” he says.
“I couldn't do anything with my hair,” I frown.
“It's beautiful,” he whispers in my ear and then places a kiss right next to my ear. “You're beautiful...Katie,” he says, testing his new nickname for me.
I crinkle my nose again, but I decide that I'll allow it for the time being. I'm still reeling from the fact that he just said I'm beautiful.
Marcus makes a gagging noise and I realize that the semi-civilized kid I saw a few minutes earlier has disappeared.
“So you want to show me how to behave in front of your parents?” I ask as I'm about to get my coat on.
“No!” He blurts. “That's not it at all!” He laughs as he wraps an arm around me in a hug. “You're perfect. It's just that they still shelter me since the accident.”
“Are they going to come out and greet me with a shotgun?” I tease.
“Maybe,” he jokes. “My sister and her husband are cool. But my mom seems to have reverted back to treating me like a five-year-old instead of a college senior. I love her and all, but she can be kind of overbearing sometimes. I mean, she keeps trying to help me with everything – school, work.... relationships.” He glances at me warily. “She's not going to judge you or anything, but she just wants to know that you get me. That you know how fragile I am.”
“You!?” I laugh. “Fragile? You're the strongest person I know!”
“Yeah, well, my mom seems to think I need all this protection since the accident, you know? That's one of the reasons I spend a lot of time away from the cabin. We're on this family vacation, but I want to her to accept that I'm capable of living my own life, that I'm an adult.”
“I completely understand about that,” I commiserate with Chase. “Living at home while I'm going to college has the same challenges. My mom thinks I'm still in high school.”
Chase nods in understanding.
Chase and I decide to take a drive instead of heading back to his cabin. It seems like there's more he wants to tell me and I want to listen. He must have wanted to pick me up early so that we could talk before dinner.
We pull up to the beach front and park where we had the night that I met him. Chase hesitates and then a kind of sad look crosses his face. “My dad changed after the accident. He's different somehow, like he can't get over the fact that something so terrible happened to our family. Instead of just taking the time to grieve over it, like the rest of us did, he seemed to push past that and push me harder, like he could force me to recover by sheer will power.”
“I told you that my dad is kind of a sports nut, right?”
“Yeah, he totally looks like a football coach,” I tell him.
“Oh, yeah, you met him at the college, didn't you? Well, we were the classic sports family. Chelsea and I did everything: little league, soccer, football, volleyball, gymnastics.
“Football is my dad's passion. He had me throwing the ball since I was three years old, even earlier than baseball. Some of his fanaticism rubbed off on me, but I eventually quit football in seventh grade.”
He leans back and looks up at the roof of the car. “He was so tough on me in middle school that I ended up quitting the team. I still played baseball and soccer, but he didn't pressure me as much in those sports.”
“He was furious with me for quitting football, and for a long time, I felt like that was how he viewed me, as a quitter. Looking back, I think he was just so proud of my athletic accomplishments and abilities that he wanted to experience some of that vicariously through me.”
“I eventually fell in love with running. I don't know why. I'm built for football, but I finally felt like I had found my own passion. My dad didn't coach track or cross country at all, so maybe it was a little bit of an escape for me. But I genuinely loved the feeling it gave me to just be free to go for miles without having to think about anything else but the road.”
Chase takes a deep breath and asks with a smirk, “Are you starting to feel like my therapist?”
“No, I love hearing about your life – the good and the bad.”
He continues. “My relationship with my dad was never the same after I quit football, but he gradually accepted it. Then we had the accident. He treated my recovery from the accident like any other sports injury. He would sometimes get in my face at therapy and try to push me to my limit. I used to get so ticked off at him. He would push and push and push, just like he was coaching me in football all over again. I hated it. And I started to hate him.” Chase ends with a whisper.
What on earth can I say to that kind of confession? I simply reach over and squeeze Chase's hand.
“Now, he just seems kind of resentful toward me. I don't want to make him out to sound like he's evil or something. He just can't get over it, you know? Like I'm just not trying hard enough.” Chase breathes a deep sigh.
“Well, I'll just try to roll with it, okay? Don't worry about me.” I assure him that I can handle it, and give him a quick kiss.
Chase's mom greets me at the door like I'm some long-lost relative. “Oh, Kate, dear, I'm so glad to finally meet you.” She squishes me as she speaks. She is a petite and somewhat portly auburn-brunette. Her hug does feel kind of like I'm being squeezed by a big mama bear, but she's not quite the over-protective mommy that Chase described. In spite of the expectations he had set up for me earlier, I am at ease with her.
His dad walks in a few moments later. I turn and say, “Hello, Dr. Nichols. Nice to see you again.” He shakes my hand with an overly firm grip, but says nothing.
Just before we sit down for dinner, Chase's sister Chelsea and her husband Michael arrive home from Christmas shopping. They are really down to earth. Chelsea and I click instantly.
Chelsea is taller than her mom, has the same eyes as Chase, but her hair is a much lighter color than his beautiful brown waves. Her hair is more of an auburn and it gently flows down around her face and shoulders in a way that I can never get my hair to do. She has a rounder face, but she sports the same adorable dimples that Chase has.
Michael is all blonde hair and blue eyes, but it looks as if he's trying to grow a mustache. Maybe he's trying to look older, since he has quite the baby face. I can relate.
“Did you hit the Lamplighter shop?” I ask them. “They have the coolest Christmas stuff in town.”
“Yes, we even bought an ornament for the baby!” Chelsea gushes. “For next year of course.”
I'm glad Chase catches my wide eyes and interjects, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. I'm going to be an uncle.”
“That's awesome! Congratulations!” I say to him and to the happy parents-to-be. “Can I see the ornament?”
Chelsea rushes over to grab the bag and comes back with a Noah's Ark-themed pewter ornament that says “Baby's First Christmas.” There is an opening for a tiny baby picture at the top of the ark.
“It's so sweet,” I confirm.
The conversation at dinner turns toward talk of babies and showers and nurseries. Dr. Nichols even lets a smile cross his face at the mention of having a grandbaby.
I find myself thinking about Chase and how he will be an awesome uncle. I'm sure he will make a great father, too. He is so strong, so grounded. I blush a bit as I realize where my thoughts are leading me. I hope no one notices. But my next thought takes over before I can stop it: Can Chase have kids? I wonder if his spinal injury affected any of that.
It seems as if Mrs. Nichols reads my mind because she looks directly at me and says, “Chase may have to be satisfied with bei
ng an uncle. He may not be able to have children. You know, because of the accident.”
Chelsea almost chokes on her mouthful of mashed potatoes and yells, “Mother!”
Chase just looks at her for a moment and then says, “Thanks, Mom. That's really appropriate.”
Wow. Maybe Chase wasn't exaggerating about his parents – at least his mom – treating him like a child.
“What?!” Mrs. Nichols sounds as if she's the one who should be offended. “I'm just letting Kate know what she's getting herself into. The doctors told us that was a possibility after the accident. And I mean, even if you can conceive, having a baby is a lot of work. How is Chase going to even carry a baby in his arms?”
“MOM!” Chelsea yells louder this time.
“For goodness sake, Carolyn,” Dr. Nichols interjects. “Stop treating him like a child. Kate's just having dinner with us, they're not getting married.”
He turns his attention to Chase, “You still have a lot of work to do, son. You're not going to go to medical school or walk down the aisle on crutches. You gotta keep pushing yourself.”
Chase's face turns to stone.
Then he slowly looks at his father and says in a steely voice, “Dad, I thought we were past this. You don't think I've been working hard? You think that I've been slacking off, so that's why I can't walk?!”
“You're gonna walk again if you keep pushing yourself. I'm telling you, it's all about hard work and perseverance,” his dad says loudly.
“Dad, I can't heal my own spine! It doesn't matter how much I work at it, my spine will always be damaged! Why can't you get that?”
“Because of that attitude, right there, son! You don't have the right attitude. You don't know how much better you will get unless you try!”
My face has been on fire for several uncomfortable moments, and I know there is no way to hide it. I am mortified by the turn the conversation has taken, but I am also becoming indignant. How can Chase's own parents not see how strong and capable their son is?
I avoid looking at Dr. Nichols at all. If I look at him, I'm quite sure I will burst into flames from my fury. I can't believe the words coming out of his mouth.
Strong Page 6