____
February 13, 2005
It’s wintertime, and I’m thrilled to be away from my home. Well, not away from my son, but away from everything else and everyone else. I spoke with him on the phone before we got here, and he told me he was going out with Elizabeth, the girl he brought to our family Christmas. She’s pretty and shy, and I liked her instantly. Especially since I saw the way he looked at her. He never brought girls over to our house, much less around our family, so this was a big deal.
Aunt Evelyn’s house was slap full of women. Sisters and cousins from all over. It had been years since we did this, and not only was I happy to be away from my home life, but I was ecstatic to be back in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Aunt Evelyn walks into the kitchen as I’m making a pitcher of sweet tea. I can go without a lot, but never can I go without sweet tea, and this house had none.
“Charlotte, you’ll never believe who I ran into the other day.”
“Who?” I ask, pouring the hot tea into the pitcher.
“Travis Cole,” she says, and I look over at her immediately. “I asked that boy why you two never got married, and you know what he said?”
“What?” I ask, thinking, you, Mama, and everyone else was the reason why we never got married, but of course, I keep this to myself.
“He said, ‘I don’t know. I should have stayed with that girl.”’ A feeling I haven’t felt in so long flows through my veins,
pouring deep inside my heart, like water from the winding rivers that run into the sea. I swallow and pick up the spoon to stir my tea.
“Anyway, he’s a lot older now, but still a good-looking boy.”
“Mama,” Jennie calls out before she walks into the kitchen.
“Yes?” she says, turning her attention to her daughter. “We’re all going shopping. You coming with us?”
“Yes, let me go change my clothes,” Aunt Evelyn says. I keep stirring, and after she leaves, I look over at Jennie.
“You know I heard a voice not too long ago that I haven’t heard in many years,” I say to her.
“You did?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply. “And it’s funny that your mama just came in here and told me she saw this person a few days ago.”
“Who?”
“Travis Cole.”
“You spoke to him?” she asks, wide-eyed.
“No, not really. I was on the phone with your sister a couple of weeks ago, and Travis was over at her house helping his brother, Byron, fix his truck. Apparently, he walked into the house, and Laura told him I was on the phone.” I stop stirring the tea and lean back against the counter. Crossing my arms, I look down at the floor, my thoughts getting away from me.
I take a breath and say, “Jennie, all I heard him say was hey. Just that one word, and my mind shot back to…” I shake my head slightly as memories flood my mind.
“Back to what?” she asks. I look up at her, and my lip lifts a tad.
“Back to a time when love was all we knew. It was as if no time had passed. His voice still sounded the same. I could see his walk, even though I wasn’t there. I could imagine what his hair looked like, that crooked smile on his lips. I wondered what he looked like at forty-nine. My heart started pounding so hard, I had to sit down,” I say with a perplexed smile on my face.
She grins back. “You really loved him, Charlotte.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Yes, I did.” My brow creases, and I run my finger over my lips in thought before I say, “Yes, I do.”
____
I’m putting on my nightclothes when Laura walks into the bedroom Jennie and I are staying in. We’ve had an evening of shopping and gossiping, and it’s been nice to just relax for a bit. I listen and notice she’s on the phone when I hear her say, “Yes, she’s here.” My pulse quickens, and I peek my head out of the bathroom. She looks over at me and smiles. “I’ve got someone who wants to speak to you,” she says as she hands me the phone. My heart starts pounding erratically, and I begin to sweat.
“Hello,” I say with a shaky voice.
“Hey, girl.” His deep tone causes shivers to run up my spine, and I bite the smile that threatens to cover my whole face so Laura won’t see, even though she’s grinning like crazy. I turn away from her and move back into the bathroom.
“Hey,” I say as all of my emotions go crazy. My mind races with questions. Where have you been? What have you been doing all these years? Are you married? Do you have kids? If so, how many? Do you still have that GTO we used to ride in so much?
“How are you?” he asks, breaking me away from the twenty questions going on inside my head.
“I’m good. How are you?”
“Good.”
“So, you’re back living in Ft. Pierce?” I ask because I had heard not too long after I called his parents years ago that he’d moved away.
“Yeah. You still living in Georgia?”
“Yep, been there since Mama moved us back all those years ago.”
He clears his throat, and I look at myself in the mirror. I’m blushing, and I have a stupid grin on my face. I’m so glad he can’t see me. I look down at my body and frown. I’m really glad he can’t see me. I’ve let myself go so much he probably wouldn’t recognize me now. No longer am I a string bean, that’s for sure.
“Are you married?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply and then swallow before I ask, “Are you?”
“No.”
For some reason that gives me a feeling of hope. I don’t know why, because I’m married, but the fact that he isn’t makes me over the moon ecstatic. We grow quiet for a moment, and I walk over to the tub and sit down on the edge. How can this be that I’m talking to the boy I’ve loved for so long after thirty years? This just doesn’t happen in real life.
“Are you happy, Charlotte?” he asks me softly. My eyes peer down at the tile floor, and I cross my ankles as I think over his question. Am I happy? I think back on my life and the struggles I’ve gone through. I come home from work every day to a husband who lives in his recliner, talking to his brother who stays over more than he should. I cook a grilled cheese, say hey to my son if he is home, and then go to my room, eat, shower, and go to bed alone, only to wake up and do it all over again. Am I happy? No, I’m not. I haven’t been happy for quite some time. My job sucks, my personal life is shit, but there is my son. A small smile plays on my lips at the thought of William.
“I have a nineteen-year-old son who makes me happy,” I say.
“Good,” he replies. “That’s good.”
____
“That night we talked longer than I had talked on the phone in years,” I tell my girls as I lie on my side, hugging my pillow.
“When I told him William was what made me happy, it was as if that’s the answer he wanted to hear. I felt like a teenager all over again, and it didn’t stop. God, it didn’t stop. It was as if we were a snowball tumbling full speed downhill. It was one of the most exciting times of my life. He told me that he had been married a few times, but none of it ever felt right. And he’d been in and out of jail for petty stuff, just like when he was a teenager. Mason, one of his older brothers, passed when they were in their twenties, and he had no children. I told him that Mama had passed also, and I told him everything about William.
“After that conversation, we exchanged numbers. Like clockwork, he called me every day at the same time. At lunch and then right when I was leaving my hellhole of a job. A few weeks into it, if I missed his call, he’d leave me a voice message and sing, ‘I just called to say I love you.’ We picked up right where we left off thirty years before.”
“What about your husband?” Maggie asks.
I sigh. “That wasn’t easy for me to do. I loved John, I did. I wasn’t in love with him, but I cared about him deeply. He broke his back some years before and was on disability. He was getting shit money, though, so I basically took care of him.
“I thought about leaving him several times throughout our marriage, but I was
worried about what would happen to him. Plus, in our earlier years, he threatened to take William if I left or do something stupid to himself. He was always threatening to take his own life.”
“He threatened to take his own life?” Cynthia asks.
“Yes, several times. John was messed up. His childhood did a number on him, and he never got over it. My heart hurt for him, but I was also sick of it all. He knew how to hurt me, and that was by saying he’d take William. I felt trapped, but Travis gave me new hope, William was practically grown, and I knew for the first time in my life, I had to think about me and not everyone else. So that’s exactly what I did. I thought about me.”
____
February 2005
I stare at the clock on the wall, waiting for five to hurry up and get here. Only ten more minutes, I think to myself. I look to the door when my boss walks in.
“Charlotte, I don’t understand this,” he says, throwing his hands up. “These numbers don’t add up.” He walks back and forth, wearing out the carpet. This man drives me up the wall, and I wish I could throat punch him. The numbers are right; they are always right. He is just a dumbass.
“Let me see it,” I say to him. He shoves the papers to me. I grab my calculator and do the numbers, like I’ve already done several times. I know this shit is right, but just to satisfy him, I do it again.
He watches me do the math, and I look up when I’m done.
“Oh,” he says. “How did you do that?”
You just watched me do that, I think to myself, but instead of speaking my mind, I explain it to him. He leaves my office with a smile on his face. I roll my eyes as soon as he is out of sight, and then I look back up at the clock on the wall. It’s five! I grab my things and quickly clock out. Walking through the office, I say goodbye to everyone and push the glass door open. My phone rings from inside my purse, and I grab it.
“Hello,” I say with butterflies in my stomach.
“Hey, baby,” Travis says.
“Hey.” I open my car door and get inside.
“How was your day?” he asks.
“My day was shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
And I do. I used to talk to my windshield on the way home, fussing up a storm because I didn’t have anyone else to vent to, but now I have Travis, and he always listens and then simply says, “I’m sorry, baby. That’s rough.” Sometimes all a woman wants to do is tell you about her crappy day, and sometimes the only reply she needs is, “I’m sorry, baby. That’s rough.”
____
“I’d talk to Travis all the way home, and then I’d let him go so I could walk in the house. I’d hurry to my room so I could talk more.”
“You talked to him at your house?” Cynthia asks.
“Yes, if John walked in, I’d lie and say I was on the phone with my sister Sophia, Beverly’s other daughter who grew up in Indiana. This went on for a good week, and then he told me something that I wasn’t ready to hear…or maybe I was…
____
February 2005
“Stupid people don’t know how to drive,” I say as I hit the gas on Black Beauty, my Ford Taurus, to get around a car going fifty when the speed limit is sixty-five.
“You need to slow down,” Travis tells me on the other end of the phone.
“They need to get out of the fast lane,” I reply as I pull down my visor to block the blinding five o’clock sunshine.
He laughs, sending a shiver down my spine. God, I’ve missed this man. How have I gone so long without talking to him?
“Charlotte,” he says after a moment.
“Yes?” I reply as I come to a red light.
“I wanna see you.” My heart falls into the pit of my stomach. We’ve been talking for over a week now. It’s like no time has passed between us, yet my appearance says otherwise. I look up in the mirror of my sun visor. Wrinkles and fine lines surround my eyes, and my hair isn’t as thick as it used to be. I’ve gained stress weight, and Lord knows there are other things that aren’t the same as they were when I was seventeen. I exhale a slow breath as nerves build up inside my chest, but I know my answer.
“I wanna see you, too.” The light turns green, and I press the gas.
“When can we make this happen?” he asks.
“Well, my sister and I are actually planning a trip to Daytona next month. I can stay a day with her and then leave and meet you somewhere.”
“I don’t want you to mess up time with your sister.”
“Travis, I haven’t seen you in over thirty years. My sister will be okay.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am.”
“I can’t wait,” he says.
“I’ve been waiting for a lifetime,” I reply.
____
“As soon as we agreed to see each other again, my ass went straight to the gym to get a membership. At the time, I worked with my best friend Stella, and she would go with me. We would walk, walk, walk, and I’d tell her about Travis. She was happy for me, and she was the one person I could really confide in during that time.
“Before our trip to Daytona, I had lost thirty pounds in less than a month. I eventually told my sister, of course, and she wasn’t too excited that I was leaving her and going to meet him, but I had my mind made up.”
“Damn, girl,” Maggie says, grabbing her pipe from her bag.
“You can’t smoke in here,” I tell her.
“I know that. I’m stepping outside. My arthritis is acting up.”
Cynthia smirks. “Keep going.”
“I think Maggie will want to hear this next part. Let’s go out onto the balcony.” I get up from the bed, and we make our way over to the sliding glass door. A strip of clouds shades part of the moon, and the ocean breeze spreads over my skin, wrapping around me like a salty warm blanket.
I settle down into the outdoor couch as Cynthia and Maggie take their seats. Maggie strikes her lighter, and the smell of grass takes me back to the car ride with Sophia twelve years ago…
____
March 2005
I giggle as I pass the joint back to my sister. It reeks of grass in here, and the traffic is horrible as we make our way to Daytona.
“Shit,” she says quickly, cracking her window.
“What?” I ask, my mind in a fuzzy daze.
“There’s a cop up there!”
“A cop?” I ask as panic takes over. My heart begins pounding, and my face starts to sweat. “Throw it out!” I say, hitting her on the arm as I look ahead at the cop. “Throw it out!”
“What do you think I’m doing?” she says, laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” I ask her.
“Because you’re making me miss the crack in the window. Stop hitting me.”
“Oh,” I say, kinda laughing, too, but the thought of two older ladies getting arrested for grass makes my stomach hurt. What will we do? Who will we call?
“He’s stopping people!”
“Holy shit, what will my kids think if I get arrested for this?” Sophia says.
“Just act natural,” I say, rolling my window all the way down. It’s hotter than hell outside, but we’ve got to get this smoke out. I turn the air conditioner on full blast, and Sophia rolls all the windows down.
“How do I act natural?” she squeaks, her voice sounding higher than normal.
“I don’t know. Just don’t say anything unless you have to.”
Moments later, we pull up to the officer.
“Where are you ladies headed?” he asks, leaning down.
“Beach, Daytona,” we both say in unison. His eyebrows draw together as his eyes narrow, and I swear I see him sniff. Shit, shit, shit. We’re screwed.
“We’re headed to Daytona Beach,” I say.
He looks up the road before looking back at us a little too long if you ask me. My heart pounds erratically, and I feel like it may give up and crawl up through my throat.
“There’s a detour up ahead. Road work,” he sa
ys. “You two be safe.” His lip curves into a smile as he pats the edge of the window. Sophia presses the gas, and we head straight. Neither of us says anything until we are through the detour and away from him. I look over at her. Both hands are on the wheel, positioned perfectly at ten and two. She sits up straight and stares ahead. But then she slowly looks my way, and as if on cue, we both burst out laughing––eyes watering, can’t breathe, leg-slapping hysteria.
“Good God,” Sophia says.
“We would have had to call Natalie!” I pull the sun visor down and wipe under my eyes.
“I’d rather sit in jail,” she barks. “That would have been something. Two older women on the way to Daytona Beach get arrested for smoking grass.” She motions her hand as if seeing the words displayed on a television screen. My phone rings, and I reach over and grab it out of the cup holder.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hey,” my love replies.
I giggle. “Travis, you will never guess what just happened.” I tell him all about it.
Then I hear Byron in the back. “Good Lord, you act just like a damn teenager, always on that phone.” I smirk, thinking I feel just like a teenager.
I hear the background grow quiet, and I’m assuming Travis walked away from his brother’s prying ears, and then he says, “I can’t wait to hold you. I mean, I can’t wait for you-know-what either.” He laughs, and I bite my lip to keep from grinning like an idiot. “But just to hold you again. It’s been so fucking long.”
I look out the window as my heart swells and sweet butterflies soar inside my chest. “I can’t wait either,” I say softly. “It has been a lifetime for me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Charlotte Harris almost getting busted for weed.” Cynthia giggles. “I wonder what William would have thought?”
If I'd Known Page 17