by Maggie Way
“I’m sorry, Carl. I haven’t been a very good friend lately,” she said. “I’ve let myself get too caught up in the craziness. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You didn’t,” Carl said quickly. “I understand. You’ve been busy with John.” He sighed and faced Gretchen, hands slipping into his pockets. She knew that gesture. He wanted to be serious now. This was the reason he’d come over to talk to her. “Look, Gretchen, I get that you and John are dating now. I still don’t think you’re making the right decision here, but at the party…it’s obvious John really cares about you. I’m not going to bug you about it anymore. I think John will end up hurting you, but if you want to risk that, it really isn’t any of my business. I’ll back off.”
Hands coming out of his pockets, they crossed in front of his chest instead. Carl was done talking. He’d said what he needed to say. Now it was Gretchen’s turn.
“Is that why you haven’t been talking to me the last couple weeks?” Gretchen’s indignant tone took Carl by surprise. “You’re backing off? Does that mean just because you don’t agree with what I’m doing you won’t be my friend anymore?”
Carl’s mouth popped open a little. He seemed too caught off guard to respond. After shaking his head, he gathered his thoughts and said, “Gretchen, that’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair to me, Carl. You’re my friend, my best friend,” she said. “What makes you think that just because I’m dating someone I don’t want you around anymore? Can’t I have a boyfriend and a friend?”
“I don’t think you understand what you’re asking of me, Gretchen. It’s not that easy,” Carl said.
Gretchen felt her chin quiver and had to clench her jaw to keep it still. When she was sure it had stopped, she said, “Please don’t just abandon me, Carl. I need you.”
Carl’s face fell. Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t know if I can do this, Gretchen. I don’t know if I can only be your friend. I have never wanted to be your buddy. I’ve always wanted more.” His hand stroked her hair lovingly. “It’s hard to see you with him, knowing how much he loves you, and still be around you. I knew when I first met you that you’d been through something rough, so I was patient. I was happy being your friend because I honestly thought you’d eventually come around and let me take you out. It’s different now.”
But didn’t he think John would break her heart? Gretchen almost asked him, but she held her tongue. He was right. She shouldn’t ask him to still be her friend, not when she knew he harbored hopes of there being more between them. Gretchen loved John very much, but part of her still believed he would one day leave her. She didn’t want to lose Carl as a friend for the same reason she couldn’t date him, he meant too much to her. As a friend, or more than a friend, Gretchen wanted Carl in her life. Was that wrong? Maybe she was asking too much of him. But still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Can you try?”
“Gretchen…” Carl whispered as he held her. There was frustration in his voice, but there was longing too. He said it was too hard for him to be her friend, but Gretchen had a feeling that, just like her, it was even harder not to be. “Of course I can try,” he said.
They stood there, on the boring grass in Gretchen’s front yard for a few seconds longer before Carl admitted he did need to get back to work and Gretchen forced her attention back to the problem of what to do with the yard. Carl walked to his truck, stepping a little lighter than he had before, and Gretchen felt herself smile. Maybe she was one the most selfish people in the world, but she was glad she hadn’t lost him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Innocence
John rode home on the bicycle Gretchen had helped him pick out after his casts came off, glad the Bernstadts hadn’t lived very far away. Gretchen had offered to drive him, but John wanted to go on his own. A mile and a half sounded far, but on the bike he had managed it pretty easily. Feeling good about the menu they planned, John rounded the corner and slowed as he came up to the house. He stopped short and stared.
What on earth is Carl doing hugging Gretchen? he wondered. And why is she letting him do it?
John couldn’t move. He just sat there on his bike watching them hold each other. Waiting under the hanging branches of their neighbor’s willow tree, neither of them noticed him. He waited for what seemed like an hour before they finally pulled apart and Carl headed to his truck. What was he even doing home? He worked on Mondays. He and his mud covered truck should have been out checking pipes, or whatever it was he did all day, not there hitting on John’s girlfriend.
Gripping the bike handles so tightly his knuckles were left white, John tried very hard to understand what was going on. Did Gretchen tell Carl that John would be gone that morning? Was she trying to talk to him without John around for some reason? He supposed it could have just been happenstance Carl was home the one time he was gone and Gretchen was still at the house. The way he held her, the way his hand ran down her hair, John knew what that was.
John knew, because he felt it too. When Gretchen was in his arms, he got weak and wanted nothing else but touch her, smell her, to drink her in. He saw that same look in Carl’s eyes. He wasn’t just a guy who thought Gretchen was hot and enjoyed flirting with her like she thought. He was in love with her.
Clara had been right. Someone was going to try to steal Gretchen away from him. Forcing his hands to relax, John watched Gretchen squat in front of her flower bed. She looked as if she were thinking. It was weird to John how she could act so natural after what he’d just seen. Carl’s truck drove away and John rode up to the house.
Gretchen glanced up with a smile when she heard him, but the scowl on John’s face stopped her from saying whatever it was she’d been about to say.
“We need to talk. Inside,” John said. Pushing through the door, he left her standing there, mouth open, confusion showing in her eyes. Good. She was confused. It put them on equal ground.
“John, what’s wrong? Did your meeting not go very well?” she asked.
“What were you doing hugging Carl in the front yard?” he exploded.
Eyes widening, it took Gretchen a moment to respond. “Excuse me?” she asked, her temper growing by the second, if her clenched jaw was any indication.
What did she have to be mad about? John wasn’t the one hugging someone out in the front yard where the whole neighborhood could see.
“What were you doing with him?” John asked.
“I was talking to him, as a matter of fact. He’s my friend and he needed to talk to me about something. I can talk to him if I want, John,” Gretchen said. Narrowed eyes glared at him as she spoke. That only made him even madder. She was actually defending herself?
“Since when does talking involve some other guy with his arms around you, stroking your hair? That wasn't a hug between friends. That was something else,” John said. It was. There was more between Carl and Gretchen than simple friendship. She told him herself that Carl liked her, and he made it obvious every time he looked at her, but what John didn’t get was what Gretchen felt for him. She refused to date him, but she still felt…something.
“So, are you some kind of expert on what is and isn’t acceptable between friends? You have no right to say I can’t hug Carl. He’s been my friend for a long time,” Gretchen said. “You have no idea how much he helped me when I first moved here. He’s a very good friend to me.”
“Carl is not your boyfriend. I am. What more do I need to understand? I get to hold you and touch your hair, not Carl. I don’t need a lifetime of relationships to know that, Gretchen.” Her entire face turned into a flame of anger. Her hands were balled into fists, and John found that his were too. Why was she arguing with him? She had to know he was right.
“I don’t belong to you, John. You don’t own me,” she said.
Throwing up his hands, John turned away for a second. “I’m not trying to say I own you, Gretchen, but
you know that,” he said pointing toward the front yard, “isn’t appropriate. Why are you egging him on?”
“Egging him on? What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“He’s in love with you, Gretchen! Can’t you see that?” John asked.
Gretchen at least had the decency to look shocked. John needed to see that. It impacted him significantly to realize she really didn’t understand the depth of Carl’s feelings for her. How she didn’t see what John saw when Carl looked at her, he didn’t understand, but he felt relief at her innocence.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Gretchen, you’re the one who told me he liked you.”
“Yeah, but…it’s just a crush. He wanted more, but he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He just…he wants me to change my mind.”
“No, it’s not, Gretchen.” Feeling much of his anger falling away, John took her hand. “Maybe you don’t see how he looks at you, because he only does it when you aren’t looking, but he sees you like I do. I recognize it.”
She shook her head, but her expression was thoughtful. “He’s my friend,” she whispered. Maybe she was trying to convince John he was wrong, maybe she was saying it only to herself. John was still angry at the image of Carl embracing his girlfriend, but he was angry at the idea of losing her, no longer angry at Gretchen herself. Carl, however, was another story. Him, John was still angry at.
“Please, can you just stay away from Carl?” John asked.
Gretchen’s shock ran out.
Snapping her hand out of John’s, she stared back at him, defiant. “No.”
“What?” Was she serious?
“He’s my friend, John. I can’t just throw him away.”
“Carl doesn’t want to just be your friend, Gretchen. He wants a lot more than that. It’s not fair to keep letting him hope. It’s not fair to me, either. I don’t like seeing you with him,” John said.
“I won’t stop being his friend,” Gretchen said. “My first couple months here were really hard. I didn’t know anyone and I was still an emotional wreck. Carl was the first person to make me feel at home. He helped me in so many ways. I won’t turn my back on him.”
“Damn it, Gretchen! That’s exactly why I don’t want you to be around him. Don’t you understand that? It’s one thing to go out with Desi, but I don’t like the idea of you hanging out with Carl,” he said. “He’s just waiting for me to leave. He wants us to fail so he can have you for himself. He’ll try to break us up if you let him.”
Gretchen shook her head. “You don’t know Carl. Even if he was in love with me, which he’s not, he wouldn’t do that. Maybe he would hope for it, but he would never try to break us up.”
“How do you know that?” John demanded.
“Because he knows how much that would hurt me, and Carl would never hurt me,” she said with complete conviction.
John didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t believe him. Why wouldn’t Carl be in love with her? John was. Every man who met Gretchen should fall in love with her. She was amazing. Gretchen didn’t see that.
In her eyes, Carl was a devoted friend who wished things might have been different between them. She didn’t see the torture in his eyes when he looked at her, knowing she wasn’t his. The way he touched her was so careful, Gretchen didn’t understand how hard he was trying to control himself.
She didn’t see any of it.
She trusted him.
And John either had to trust Gretchen, or spend his life looking over his shoulder for the man who wanted to steal her. Refusing to give in to John’s demands, Gretchen waited, arms folded tightly across her chest, lips pinched to the point of glowering. Her loyalty was as phenomenal as her blindness. If John didn’t trust her, would she trust him? Would she trust him not to hurt her, like she trusted Carl?
It might have been the stupidest decision he had made since waking up, but John pulled Gretchen into his arms and forced himself to trust her. That didn’t mean he was going to agree to Gretchen hanging out with Carl, with or without him any time soon, but he couldn’t force her to give up someone who meant so much to her.
However, if John saw Carl any time soon, there was a good chance he was going to punch him in the face.
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Promise, or a Threat?
The Bernstadt’s anniversary party came quickly and was over even more quickly. It astounded John how all his planning and preparing was gone within a few hours, but it ended with everyone happy, which felt good, and with two more job offers, which was also good. It felt great to get out of the house, too.
John had spent so much time alone during the day since getting out of the hospital that getting used to having Gretchen around all day turned out to be more of an adjustment than he thought it would be. She wanted to do something constantly. After being cooped up in a classroom for nine months, she was ready to get out and explore, after she stopped being mad at John, that was.
Neither one of them had seen Carl since fighting about him. Gretchen was too busy bustling John off to go hiking or visiting museums and nearby towns to have had any time to think about him. John avoided him not because he was too busy to think about him—unfortunately he thought about him all too often—but because John worried he was still too angry at Carl to face him. Gretchen he could forgive. She honestly seemed to think Carl could just be her friend. Carl, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing. Gretchen’s whirl of activity was the only thing keeping John from dwelling on him too much.
Unfortunately, Gretchen had been gone all day at a training seminar. That left John with way too much time to stew about the man next door who wanted to make off with his girlfriend. He tried to distract himself by working out in the yard most of the day, but he really only succeeded in frustrating himself. John just didn’t seem to be cut out for gardening. Too worked up to start dinner yet, and still having another hour before Gretchen would get home, he decided to clean up a bit instead. With how little time they were spending at the house, the chores had been neglected. John noticed the trash was close to overflowing and thought he probably ought to take it out.
He walked around the side of the house to where the trash can should have been and found the space empty. Glancing out at the street, John saw it sitting by the curb still. Their house was the only one with the trash can still on the curb. The older gentleman across the street undoubtedly griped about that every time he saw it. He could find fault with pretty much everything. After tossing the bag of trash in the receptacle, John started dragging it back to the curb.
He made it a few steps up the driveway before the growling engine of Carl’s truck rumbled up to his house. The desire to run over and pound out his anger on him was only tempered by the fact that Gretchen would never forgive him…and the fact that Carl was huge. At an average five-ten, Carl’s six-foot-four muscular build pretty much dwarfed John. Not that John wouldn’t do it if he really needed to, but there was really no point in trying to fight him right then.
Going back to pulling the trash can back up to the house, John hoped Carl would do the same. There was no reason for them to speak to each other, but Carl seemed to like irritating John.
“Hey, John,” he called out.
Jaw clenched, John turned and offered him a curt wave. Hopefully that will be the end of it, John thought. But no. Carl couldn’t let it go that easily. He headed over to John. Shoving the bin back into its spot, John turned and waited, his arms folded tightly across his chest to keep them from lashing out at him. Why won’t he just leave me alone?
“Carl,” John muttered.
“John, I’m glad I caught you.”
Yeah I bet. He probably wished I would drop off the face of the planet. John didn’t respond to him so Carl just shrugged and kept going.
“I wanted to talk to you for a minute,” Carl said. “I wanted to apologize.”
“For hugging Gretchen the other day?” John asked.
“What? No. We
ll, maybe.” Carl frowned and shook his head. “I wanted to apologize for not being very friendly to you. I didn’t like the idea of Gretchen taking you in, but I feel like I need to give you a chance. For Gretchen’s sake.”
What was his game? Did he think being nice to John would make him less suspicious? Well, it wasn’t going to work. It was probably going to do the opposite, actually.
“What does that mean ‘for Gretchen’s sake’?” John asked.
“She obviously…loves you.” That word looked as though it tasted a sour on his lips. “And if I’m really her friend, I should support her.”
“Then why don’t you just leave us alone,” John demanded. He felt like there was some trick to his words. Was he trying to play John?
Squaring his shoulders and folding his impressive arms across his chest, Carl’s friendliness was replaced with smugness. “Because Gretchen doesn’t want me to.”
“Oh really? She wants you here sticking your nose into our lives?” John asked.
“Apparently.”
“And how do you know that?”
Carl smirked at him. “Because she told me she did.”
What? John knew she said she wanted to be his friend still, but did she actually encourage him to poke around, driving John insane with his ploys to take her from him?
“Wouldn’t you think she’d be better off if you left her alone and let her focus on her boyfriend? You’re just confusing her, Carl. We both know you want much more than just friendship from her,” John accused.
John expected him to deny it, but once again, Carl surprised him.
“Actually, I agree with you. Maybe not for the same reasons, but I do,” Carl said. “I even offered to back off and leave her alone. But she didn’t want me to. She asked me to keep being her friend, and I will.”