by Hale, Mandy
I knew what I had to do.
I wasn’t the same Mandy Mr. E had left behind. I wasn’t the weak, scared, insecure girl that went flying into Steven’s arms the minute Mr. E broke my heart. The last time I saw Mr. E, I was a single woman. Now I was The Single Woman. With my own words of advice echoing in my ears, the support of my beautiful readers and followers began to transform my wishbone into a backbone.
Over the next two weeks, Alli and I planned out my pool party wardrobe meticulously. I wanted to put my best foot forward after all. And even more important than focusing on the outside, I also went to work on the inside, preparing myself for whatever might happen when I came face-to-face with the guy who had shattered my heart even more than he had stolen it. Mr. E had been missing in action for a year and a half. As in, I practically needed to go buy a carton of milk with a gigantic “Have You Seen Me?” emblazoned on the side to remember what he looked like. And this was Mr. E we were talking about. Missing for him meant he might have run off with the circus, joined the witness protection program, or become a folk singer in an Amish community. I knew how I had changed, but how had he changed? Had he grown? Had he matured? Had he thought about me at all over the past year and a half?
Finally, after two weeks of more precision, planning, and prayer than the Yalta Conference, D-day arrived. I was ready.
Alli, our friend Amber, and I got to Brad’s before Mr. E arrived, as planned. I wanted to have time to get settled in and establish a comfort zone at the party before taking a dive right into the deep end of my gigantic whirlpool of emotions. Ironically, Mr. E was coming to the party with Crawford, my ex-roomie and our co-best friend.
The girls and I mingled, ate lunch, and checked out the scene, Amber and Alli stopping to perform routine checks on me every five minutes as though I were a car with an oil leak. “How are you doing?” they would ask, or “Are you nervous?”
I heard him before I saw him. The joyful voice that was once music to my ears, which I hadn’t heard in so long, and the sound of party guests who hadn’t seen him in a while greeting him excitedly.
“Hey, man! How are you doing?”
“Dude! Where have you been?”
“Mr. E!”
I heard Crawford and his goofy laugh. I heard my heart thumping in my ears. And I knew if I didn’t get out of there, the next sound I heard would be the sound of me hitting the floor when I fainted dead away. Without looking in his direction, I motioned for the girls to follow me, and I darted downstairs to the dance floor area, my face flushed, my breath coming in short spurts, wondering if it was possible to develop asthma at age thirty-one.
“Mandy! Are you okay?” Alli asked as she and Amber hoofed it down the stairs after me.
“I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready,” I replied. “I don’t think I can do this.”
I raced outside, past the pool, past the crowd—ignoring the splashing and laughter and music and other jovial sounds—to the steps at the side of the house. I just needed some distance, some clarity, some space. I leaned up against the fence for support and tried to catch my breath. Why was I letting him affect me like this? After everything I’d been through, overcome, and faced down, I was going to run scared at the sight of my past? No! I couldn’t do that. There was no reason to be afraid of the past; it didn’t last! I did!
I was just turning to go back into the house, feeling silly for being so overly dramatic, when I heard a voice behind me.
“Mandy?”
It was Mr. E.
He looked . . . different. Happier. More peaceful and content. He had always been one of those people with a glow about him, only now it seemed to come not from his handsome exterior but from somewhere deeper within.
I smiled, my nerves suddenly gone. “Hi.”
He smiled back, then crossed the distance between us in a few short steps and swept me into a giant bear hug. We stood there for a long moment, the time, distance, and space between us suddenly melting in the power of unspoken forgiveness, and I knew that everything was going to be okay. Even if Mr. E never became anything else to me, he was a dear friend whom I cared deeply about, and it warmed my heart to see him looking so happy and well. I pulled back suddenly to look at him and realized that like mine, his eyes were brimming with tears. We both laughed, the tears spilling over, and then he pulled me back into a hug, kissing the top of my head affectionately.
Then the silence was broken, and we were both talking a mile a minute, eager to catch each other up on everything the last year and a half had contained. We found a large shade tree to relax under and talk away from the craziness of the party. Mr. E told me he had been living at home in Boone, near his family, and had never been happier. He had recently gone through a bad breakup, like me; but also like me, he knew it was for the best and was moving on with his life. He had found a church that he loved and said he was closer to God than ever before in his life.
“I can see it in your eyes,” I told him. “I knew something was different.”
He had also discovered a new career path—politics!—and was working as the campaign manager for a candidate in whom he believed very strongly, a family friend who had decided to run for an open state representative slot. Mr. E said he really felt like he had found his calling.
“Mandy, I’m so good at it!” he exclaimed. “It’s bizarre. I have no background or qualifications in politics, yet I feel like it’s what I was born to do.”
Most of all, Mr. E said, he wanted me to know how sorry he was for everything that had happened a couple of years ago with Shayla Sanders and for hurting me like he did.
“Mandy, I was an idiot,” he said. “I look back at it now, and it’s like I was up to bat at the most important game of my life, and I swung at the wrong pitch. I want you to know, though, I need you to know, that my feelings for you were genuine. I was really falling for you. I just did what I always do and ran instead of giving us a chance. I’m so sorry for everything I did to hurt you.” He took my hands in his as he said this, and I looked into his eyes and could see he was being genuine. As flighty and flaky and elusive as Mr. E could be, he wasn’t a malicious person, and he never intended or set out to purposely hurt me. I knew that. Now, that didn’t mean he didn’t hurt me anyway, when, like a child, he dropped me like a toy he was tired of playing with and moved on to the next person. But that was almost two years ago. We were both thirty-one now. We had both moved on with our lives, had our hearts kicked around, and had grown up separately from each other. Perhaps sometimes in life, no matter how much you want to, you can’t grow into the person you are meant to be while you’re standing in the shade or the sunlight of someone else. Maybe, as much as it hurts, you have to grow apart to truly grow together.
“But what’s been going on with you?” Mr. E asked. “I want to know everything!”
So I launched into my own tale, telling him all about my relationship with Steven, how I prayed my way out of it, repaired my relationship with God, got back on my feet, and started The Single Woman. Mr. E’s eyes lit up as I filled him in on everything. He asked a million questions, and I could tell he was impressed with the new direction my life had taken.
“I’ve found my calling in life,” I told him with a smile. “And I’ve never felt so peaceful or so sure about anything. I’m blown away by everything God is doing. I can’t take credit for any of it.”
“I want to pray for you!” Mr. E said enthusiastically. “Let’s pray for covering and guidance as you move forward with The Single Woman. What you’re doing is so important, I want to ask God to close the wrong doors and open the right ones.”
And so Mr. E and I clasped hands, bowed our heads, and began to pray together. He said an impassioned prayer for me and for everything I was walking into with my newfound calling with The Single Woman, and then I prayed the same covering for him and his newfound calling in politics. We both asked for forgiveness for things we had done to hurt one another in the past, and we thanked God for finding a way to bring u
s back together. “We give You the glory, God, for this friendship and for whatever it might lead to,” Mr. E prayed. It was the first time we had ever prayed together, and it was a beautiful moment. The prayer went on and on, and by the time it was finished, both of us were crying.
Two hours after we first sat under the shade tree, we rose to our feet to go rejoin the party. I knew Alli and Amber must be dying to know what had happened with Mr. E, and they were probably about ready to send out a search party.
Of course they instantly dragged me into a secluded corner the minute Mr. E and I returned to the house.
“What happened?” they asked, their eyes wide. “You guys were gone for so long!”
“It was really wonderful,” I said with a smile. “We talked and caught up, and we even said a prayer together. He’s so different,” I went on. “It seems like he’s been through a lot, and it has really changed him for the better. Oh! And he finally apologized for the whole Shayla Sanders nightmare. He told me he knew he ‘swung at the wrong pitch.’ And that he was starting to really fall for me before he swung at that wrong pitch.”
“Wow!” Alli exclaimed. “That had to be nice to hear.”
“It really was!” I replied, taking a sip of water. “But you know what the best part was? We didn’t orchestrate this meeting. It just happened naturally. Both of us just happened to show up to the same pool party. Nothing about this has been forced. And nothing between us felt forced. It just feels so different this time. Like we’re friends who are leaving the door open for more, and it’s okay whichever way it goes.”
And it was true. I did feel peaceful. Suddenly all the angst and planning and worry I had put into preparing to see Mr. E felt unnecessary. God had orchestrated this meeting between us. Why did I doubt for a second that He would have my back? Hearing Mr. E’s apology and finally feeling the weight of the hurt I had been carrying around for the past two years lift left me feeling like a new person. I had prayed for a resolution with Mr. E, and I had found one. And whatever happened between us next was entirely up to God.
The girls and I went out to relax by the pool and read some magazines, and the rest of the afternoon went by like a dream. I would see Mr. E in passing, or hang out with him briefly in the pool, but I didn’t spend the day obsessing over him like the old Mandy would have done.
As the day turned into night, we changed into sundresses and went inside to join the dance party that had broken out in Brad’s workout room. The furniture had been pushed back, the music had been cranked up, and at least fifty people were shimmying around the makeshift dance floor. It was wonderful chaos. Mr. E and Crawford soon joined us, and it wasn’t long before Mr. E and I were revisiting our old dance moves from two summers before. “I think we’ve still got it!” I laughed as he spun me wildly around the floor.
Mr. E was returning to Boone the next morning after the pool party, but as we said our good-byes that night, he held on to me extra tight and whispered in my ear, “I’ll call you.” And unlike his promise to call me on the very first night we met, I knew he really would this time. I knew in my heart that no matter what happened between us and where our lives took us, Mr. E would always be someone very special to me. And instead of fighting it, I was at peace about it, perhaps for the first time since I met him all those years before. I went home that night with a big smile on my face, feeling incredibly blessed to be in the moment that I was in, living the life that I led, surrounded by people I adored, and on the cusp of what might just finally be love.
Chapter 16
Walking on Air
Mr. E did call. He called and he e-mailed and he texted and he Facebooked. We were communicating regularly, sharing openly, and building the foundation of something that finally felt real and honest. I gave him PR tips as he got further into his political campaign, and he gave me writing tips as I continued to build The Single Woman. We prayed together regularly about our individual destinies, and as we did, something interesting started to happen. It started to feel as though our two separate paths, which had been diverged for so long, were finally starting to run more parallel with each other. I was determined not to read too much into it and not to rush things, but the closer I drew to God, the closer I felt to Mr. E. That felt really nice. Comforting, even.
As the campaign Mr. E was managing drew to a frenzied finale, he asked me if I might be up for traveling to Boone for election night. “I’d love to have you there with me, whichever way it goes,” he said sincerely. Since election night happened to fall a day or two before the Fourth of July, he invited me to stay on for the weekend and spend the holiday with him and his family. “I’d love for you to meet my mom and dad. I know they’re going to love you.” He told me I could just stay in his parents’ guest room, so I wouldn’t even have to find a hotel. To say that this was a huge development in our relationship is the understatement of the century.
I knew Mr. E was close with his family, and I had heard from Crawford that they were wonderful, kind, God-fearing people. But Mr. E always kept his worlds so compartmentalized that that aspect of his life had always seemed incredibly guarded, even secretive. I had started to view his family more as a mythical, magical entity rather than a reality, sort of like Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. I knew they existed, but only Mr. E could see them. The opportunity to actually meet the people who had hatched Mr. E in all his delightfully eccentric weirdness was intriguing, to say the least.
I pondered the invitation for a day or two. I prayed about it, weighed the pros and cons, and talked to my girlfriends about it before finally deciding that much like everything else that summer, I had to embrace the unexpected and seize the day. I was flattered that Mr. E wanted me there for his big moment on election night, and I couldn’t wait to see the town, the people, and the family that helped mold him. So much of what Mr. E and I had always had was based in the present moment, in the here and now; and while that was good, it also left a lot of gaps that had never been filled in. Where did he come from? What kind of childhood had he had? What was his family like? I felt like seeing a glimpse of Mr. E’s past might help me understand him better in the present.
So a couple of days later I packed up my car and headed east, toward North Carolina. Boone was about six hours from Nashville, and I looked forward to the time alone in the car to pray, think, and prepare to meet Mr. E’s parents for the first time.
Boone was a beautiful little town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I fell in love with the quaint, historic downtown area as I navigated my way to the local high school where Mr. E had directed me to join him later that afternoon. The election party was being held at the school, and I knew things would be extremely busy and chaotic for E as the results from the different voting precincts started to roll in. Both of his parents would be at the party, however, so I would have ample time to spend getting to know them.
I parked my car in front of the school, checking my reflection in the mirror one last time before heading inside. I had purchased a conservative but stylish pink dress with black embellishments for the occasion, pairing it with black wedge sandals. I wanted to look cute and classy without going too over the top.
“Woo, wee—look at you!” I heard a voice exclaim as soon as I walked in the door. It was Mr. E, of course. He pulled me into a hug, then twirled me around to get the full effect. “Am I ever proud to walk into the party with you on my arm!”
I blushed. “Thank you,” I said, dropping into a mock curtsy. “I am here and ready to be your arm candy, you big, important campaign manager, you!”
He escorted me out of the classroom and down to the gym, where he held open the door for me, then turned to offer me his arm.
“Shall we, my lady?”
“Yes, we shall,” I responded, not able to suppress a huge, goofy grin from spreading across my face. He had a way of turning even the most ordinary moments into grand occasions. Life to him was a grand adventure, and it was enchanting to be a part of that adventure.
&nbs
p; As we made our way into the gym, I got swept up in the excitement all around us. Some people were talking animatedly into cell phones. Others were eagerly watching the election coverage that was projected onto a large screen in the middle of the room. Still others were passing out buttons, party hats, and noisemakers for when the results would come in. There was a feeling of optimism and hope and urgency in the room, and the energy was infectious.
I noticed a striking couple making their way toward us, a woman who was petite, attractive, and blonde, and a man who was tall, strapping, and tan. “Those are my parents,” Mr. E said with a smile. My mouth dropped. Wow. I could certainly see where he got his good looks from! And I soon discovered their stunning exteriors, if possible, paled in comparison to the beauty of their hearts.
“Well, hello there!” Mr. E’s dad boomed as they drew closer. “You must be Mandy. We could not be more delighted to meet you!”
Mr. E’s mom swept me into a hug. “Mandy,” she said softly against my cheek. “We have heard the most wonderful things about you. Thank you for traveling all the way here to be here for our son.”
Any nerves I had about “meeting the parents” immediately dissipated in the presence of these warm, caring people. “Thank you so much for inviting me!” I replied, overwhelmed by their sincerity and kindness. “It’s an honor to meet you both. This feels like it’s going to be a very exciting night!”
Just then someone swept Mr. E away to handle a campaign emergency, and when E’s dad decided to join him in putting out whatever fire had flared up, I was left alone to chat with his mom. We settled into chairs at one of the many round tables scattered throughout the gym.
“I know how deeply you must care about our son,” she said. “And I also know how incredibly frustrating he can be. He’s been that way his whole life—never settled, always restless, always running.”
She had hit the nail on the head, on all points. “Yes, ma’am,” I responded. “I do care about him, very much.”