The One That I Want

by Marilyn Brant

  I remembered those paper notes from high school. I’d even kept a few of them, slipped in between the pages of my journal. If we’d had text messages back then, I never would have had any record of our dating months… Did teenagers even write on paper much anymore? Even keep journals?

  Then again, how much good did physical reminders of those old memories do for me now?

  We returned home to find a Post-It note from Flowers4U stuck to the front glass door.

  “Delivery attempt #1 at 2:07pm,” it read. “Will return between 4:30 - 5:00pm.”

  “Flowers?” Analise read, sounding worried. “Who’s sending you flowers?”

  The last time we had floral deliveries, they came with condolence cards. I didn’t blame my daughter for being apprehensive.

  “I don’t know,” I told her honestly, “but my best guess is that they’re from an old friend of mine from high school.” I flashed my phone at her. “He’s left me a couple of messages, too. He just got back into town and wants to get together to catch up over coffee this coming week. Probably on Wednesday when you’re at your jazz dance class.”

  Analise visibly relaxed, but I could see that crease between her eyebrows and I knew she still had questions.

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  I hesitated. “Yes,” I said finally. “His name is Kristopher Karlsen and we dated for a few months. But it was a long time ago. Years before I met your Daddy. Once I met him, there was no other man for me.”

  She smiled, if a little weakly. She was somewhat reassured, just not quite enough yet.

  “Do you think your old boyfriend is someone you’ll marry now?”

  I swallowed. “I—I barely know him anymore,” I told her, which was the God’s honest truth. I wouldn’t pretend that it was impossible for me to marry Kristopher—I’d very much wanted to at one time—but I was a teenager then. Sure, he was still very handsome and polite, but a lot had happened since the end of eleventh grade, and I still didn’t know why he’d remained single all these years later.

  Maybe he’d never found “The One” he’d been looking for.

  Maybe he was secretly (or not so secretly) gay.

  Maybe someone else had broken his heart and he’d never recovered.

  Who knew?

  When the doorbell rang an hour or so later, my daughter, who was faster and lighter on her feet than me, rushed to open the door for the flower delivery guy.

  “Are you Ms. Julia Meriwether Crane?” the college kid carrying the (enormous!) floral arrangement asked my daughter sweetly.

  Analise shook her head, staring in awe at the dozens of flowers pouring out of the delicate pink glass vase. She pointed at me, and the college guy said, “Somebody really likes your mom.”

  I was a bit speechless, actually. Kristopher had really outdone himself with this one.

  After thanking the nice young man and bringing the arrangement into the kitchen, I pulled out my phone, preparing to text him or maybe even call.

  Analise bounced around the kitchen table admiring the flowers. “Oh, oh! Can I open the card?” she begged, picking up the small white envelope that had been decoratively placed into the center of the arrangement.

  I laughed, pleased by her enthusiasm over such a small thing, and figured, hey, what could be the harm? Kristopher wasn’t one to say anything too suggestive (I hoped!), and if he wrote in cursive, Analise wouldn’t be able to decipher it anyway. Kids these days considered script akin to a foreign language.

  So I told her, “Sure! Tell me what he says.”

  Then I hit Reply on Kristopher’s last text and began to type, “Thanks so much for—” when my daughter started reading.

  “Sorry for jumping to conclusions, Julia Meriwether Crane…” Analise paused and squinted at the writing.

  I was more confused than she was, though. Kristopher knew my full name of course, but what had he been jumping to conclusions about?

  “I didn’t mean to take my bad mood out on you,” Analise continued.

  “What bad mood?” I actually said aloud. Kristopher had been in relatively high spirits last night—or so I’d thought. Had I misjudged him somehow? Been too concerned with my own feelings and completely misread his?

  My daughter shrugged and finished reading he card. “I hope you’ll accept both my sincere apologies and these two tickets to Closing Night and the VIP party that follows.” She paused and pulled two smallish, golden colored tickets out of the envelope and handed them to me. Then my sweet little girl said, “Who’s D.T., Mommy?”

  I put down my cell phone. “No,” I whispered. “It can’t be.”

  “I thought you said your high-school boyfriend was called Kristopher.”

  “He—he…is,” I stammered.

  “So, this is another guy?”

  I nodded. “Not an old boyfriend, though.”

  “Is he somebody you might marry?”

  “What? No! God, no.” I studied the card. It was carefully handwritten in very precise block print. Printing that I recognized immediately from signed movie posters I’d admired on eBay and would have loved to buy a decade or two ago, had they not been so expensive.

  So I knew—Dane had written this note himself.

  My daughter regarded me with all the skepticism her ten-year-old self could project before finally shrugging and skipping away to watch TV.

  I was left to try to puzzle out what on earth could have induced Dane Tyler to send me this message, to say nothing of the gazillion flowers taking up half of our kitchen table. And how had he managed to find me?

  The guy was insane if he thought I’d go to this VIP shindig of his, but I couldn’t help but feel weirdly flattered by the invitation and, yes—I had to admit it—more than a little vindicated by the apology.

  Chapter Six

  “So, what have you been doing since you returned home to Mirabelle Harbor?” I asked Kristopher over French vanilla lattés at Not The Same Old Grind on Wednesday afternoon.

  The coffee shop in the middle of town was bustling, as usual, but we’d found a table in the back corner that was fairly quiet. It was comforting being here. Safe.

  He blew on his coffee with lips I remembered thinking were so sensual back in high school. I still thought so, and was unable to keep from watching as he glanced around the shop and took a cautious sip. Lingering, in a way that left me convinced that he was stalling because he didn’t want to answer my question.

  “Uh, well…lately I’ve been the number one handyman for my mother,” he joked. “She’s got a to-do list twelve pages long. I don’t think she’s had any repairs done on the house in the three years or so since my dad died.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

  “Thanks,” he said, but he flicked his hand as if brushing away the sentiment.

  I knew Kristopher had always had an uneasy relationship with his dad, but I was sure it was still hard to lose him. My parents had relocated to South Carolina about six years ago for the warmer climate and the superior golf. And though they were both in good health, Mirabelle Harbor wasn’t the same for me without them. Or without Adam.

  “I was sorry to hear about your husband,” Kristopher added. “Your friend Sharlene said it was a car accident.”

  I nodded and noticed he was staring at my wedding band. In the past week I’d suddenly become very self-conscious about it. I found myself reaching for it now, twisting it on my finger, recalling the quiet ceremony that had resulted in it being placed there.

  It had been over seven months since Adam’s passing. When he slipped the gold band on my finger those years ago, the reverend had said it was “until death do you part.”

  Well, I guess I could put a checkmark next to that requirement, huh? I was no longer obligated to wear the ring.

  But until Dane called attention to it on Thursday night—and now Kristopher today—I hadn’t considered separating myself from a symbolic piece of jewelry that had been on my hand 24/7 since my wedding day.
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  How long was a widow supposed to wait before pulling it off?

  Kristopher cleared his throat. “Maybe we should talk about something other than the death of family members, eh?” He fiddled with his stirring stick. “Maybe a cheerier topic like the global recession…third world poverty…or the latest Ebola outbreaks.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d forgotten about his sense of humor. How, when he wanted to, he could charm almost anyone.

  “Yeah, that sounds like a much lighter discussion,” I said. “Although it’s hard to compete with funerals. It’s got the word ‘fun’ right in there.”

  He threw his head back and laughed loudly, as if he’d never heard that joke before. “Right you are. So, you’re doing okay, Jules?”

  “I am. At least as well as can be expected.” I appreciated his asking, but I wasn’t really in the mood to talk about me today. I remembered that about Kristopher, too—his gift for deflection. He always managed to turn a conversation away from himself if the topic was uncomfortable or too personal for his liking.

  “But we were talking about you,” I reminded him. “Aside from playing handyman, what brought you back here? You said you’d been working as a recruiter in Oklahoma. Did you transfer to the Chicagoland area?”

  Kristopher had been in ROTC during high school and had served in the U.S. Navy for a few years. Then he went to college out of state, earning a degree in general business. I wasn’t entirely clear on the timeline, but he’d somehow hooked back in with the military after that, and he’d become one of their recruiters.

  “Yeah, I’ve been in Tulsa for the past eight years. I needed a change.”

  Why would he voluntarily leave a comfortable position in an area he’d lived in for that long only to return to a place where he’d been so anxious to escape at age eighteen? Why would anyone uproot themselves from a well-established lifestyle…unless there had been a big problem of some kind?

  “You were bored with the position?” I asked.

  Kristopher answered—reluctantly, I thought, “Not exactly. It was for personal reasons. Not job related. I just needed to get away.”

  “A broken heart?” I ventured.

  “Something like that.”

  He was quick to move off that topic and return to our easy standby: High school.

  “Sorry again for blowing you off after graduation,” he said, a wry grin playing at the corners of those sexy lips. “I was in a weird head place then.”

  “Who isn’t at that time of life? The transition between the last year of high school and the first year of anything else is always hard.” I paused to take a couple of sips from my own coffee and broke off a piece of my peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie. This shop had the best cookies. “I’d probably have been more understanding of what you were going through that summer if I’d been a senior then, too. The following year was pretty stressful for me, and I wasn’t moving nearly as far from home as you had.”

  He exhaled, long and slow. “Yeah, I needed to get out of here and go away. Start with a fresh slate. The navy was a good choice for that.”

  “Where were you stationed?”

  “Mostly out in California. The San Diego area. For the first time in my life, I had a really deep tan.”

  We both laughed. Kristopher, like me, had very fair skin that burned easily.

  “Bet you went through a lot of sunscreen,” I said.

  He nodded. “By the crateful. But that got old after a while, too, so when I started college, I chose somewhere different. Philadelphia.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this. “That is pretty different. Did you like it?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, but I was itching for a new environment once I’d gotten my degree. Then the Tulsa job turned up, and off I went.”

  I was starting to see a pattern here. He’d move somewhere for a few years, become ensconced in the region, get bored with it for whatever reason (or maybe he’d cause some interpersonal turmoil that he needed to escape?), and then move somewhere new.

  For the first time it occurred to me that Kristopher’s return to Mirabelle Harbor might not be a complete move back home but, instead, just another landing spot for a few years until he got cabin fever again. And decided to move to Seattle. Or Juneau. Or somewhere just off the Florida Keys.

  “Being there for eight years was a pretty long time for you then, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  He inclined his head in agreement but didn’t offer up any additional details about his reasons for leaving Oklahoma.

  Instead, he said, “Hey, do you remember that night we drove out to Barrett’s Pier? The moon was almost full and we just sat there and talked for hours, holding hands—kissing a little, too—and listening to that Backstreet Boys CD of yours?”

  I remembered. I could still recite the lyrics to every one of those Backstreet Boys songs. Particularly “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” which held a certain degree of irony, given the company I was keeping. “Yeah.”

  He smiled and reached across the table to lightly grasp my hand. “It’s memories like those that I missed most when I was away from home for all those years.”

  I didn’t move or speak for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to say or do. Couldn’t guess what he expected, or even what I expected of myself. Finally, I smiled, squeezed the hand that held mine, and gently pulled away.

  Looking into his warm brown eyes just then I saw something that reminded me of both Dane’s facial expression from a few nights ago and Ben’s recent reunion email. I realized Kristopher had a similar need to be regarded with the kind of admiration somebody like me had given him during his younger years. To be, once again, the center of someone else’s world.

  His seemingly open reminiscing about high school made it easy to get caught up in a fervor of adolescent love. But I couldn’t escape the feeling that there were many things left unspoken. And that an intimate spring night almost two decades ago between two fairly chaste teens wasn’t really the driving force behind all of this nostalgia. I enjoyed those sweet recollections from high school as much as anyone, but I didn’t actively want to relive those years.

  Kristopher pointed to my cookie. “Hey, I think I’m going to get one of those. Want another?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”

  When he returned, it wasn’t only with a bakery item but, also, with a bright, new tactic for steering our conversation in a different direction.

  “What do you think of dinner?” he asked, motioning between him and me. “Just us. Are you still a fan of cheeseburgers and crispy fries?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Sure, if you’re free,” he said.

  I checked my watch. “My daughter is going to be finished with her class soon, and I’d planned to spend the evening with her.” I thought he’d understood that from the beginning but it seemed he didn’t. “She’s going to camp this coming weekend and will be gone for an entire month—”

  “Ah,” he said, interrupting me. “Say no more. These next few days will be busy and you’ll want to maximize your time with her. I get it.” He nodded in a show of understanding, but I strongly suspected he didn’t really get it. He wasn’t a parent, and there were some things you just couldn’t explain.

  Still, I appreciated his attempt at empathy. “Perhaps later next week, though?”

  He jumped at this suggestion. “Perfect. You name the night, Jules. Coffee and cookies are great, but the truth is that I’ve enjoyed seeing you again so much, and I’d like to graduate to a real date.”

  Who could say no to that?

  We’d just decided on next Thursday night for what appeared to me to be a recreation of our first date from high school—burgers at Sloppy Joe’s and a movie at the Mirabelle Harbor Cineplex (both Kristopher’s idea)—when Analise pranced into the coffee shop, still flushed from dancing. Her jazz class was held across the street, and I’d told her I’d be here to meet her when she was done.

  “Can I have a cookie, Mommy?”
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br />   “May I,” I corrected, “and yes. Which kind would you like?”

  “Sugar with sprinkles.”

  I handed her some money and followed her with my gaze as she went up to the counter. Kristopher glanced between the two of us.

  “She’s lovely,” he said. “She looks like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to study Analise for a longer moment, his inquisitive expression reminding me of someone out birdwatching for the first time. He looked at her like she was an unusual species of egret. With her long legs and fair coloring, I supposed there was more than an average resemblance.

  When my daughter came over to us again, I nodded at Kristopher and said, “Analise, I’d like you to meet my friend from high school, Mr. Karlsen.”

  She frowned slightly, but she shifted her cookie to her left hand so she could stick out her right. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Kristopher said, shaking her hand rather awkwardly. I got the sense that he didn’t often interact with children. “It’s very nice to finally meet you, Analise,” he said, all politeness and formality.

  “You, too,” she replied, taking a step back as soon as she could. Then she squinted up at me. “He’s the high-school boyfriend, isn’t he? The one who didn’t send the flowers, right?”

  Kristopher looked confused. “What flowers? Should I have sent flowers?”

  I stifled a laugh. “No, of course not,” I reassured him, though it seemed clear to me that my daughter felt otherwise. That she didn’t altogether approve of my high-school flame. “We should probably go.” I gathered up my things and handed my keys to Analise. “Why don’t you open up the car, sweetie?” When she was out the door, I turned to Kristopher, “Thank you so much for the coffee. See you next week?”

  He nodded, still appearing more than a little bewildered. And he reached out to give me a quick hug and a peck on the cheek.

  It felt…all right. Strange, but not entirely unwelcome. Maybe I was a little more prepared for dating again than I’d thought.