Three Years Later

by Casey McMillin

  He laughed. It was that nice, easy laugh that made him so likable. "I hate to put it like this Seth, but I'm sure you would. You might have to get in line."

  They were both smiling; knowing every swimmer in their right mind would jump at that same chance. Everyone here wanted his face associated with Perrin goggles.

  "I know, I know, but I do hope you'll consider it, at least." Seth said, hands half raised.

  "Of course I will, I'd have to be dumb not to. America loves you." Joel looked at him like he was deciding whether or not to say something. "We have a few guys in mind already, and you're one of them, I'll tell you that."

  Seth was delighted about his newfound status of finalist for face of Perrin. The four of us shared a few more minutes of casual conversation while having a drink, or cocktail, I should say. I had been prepared to order a Shirley Temple for fear that I'd get carded, but Joel ordered the drink for me, and no one questioned it. I had a successful career in a cutthroat business and I was sitting in a bar, nervous that I'd get halfway through a drink and the police would raid the place looking for my ID. Okay, so maybe my nerves were more about the banquet we were headed to… but either way, I was teetering on the edge.

  It didn't necessarily matter what was causing my nerves, the bottom line was they were just there. I tried to be as calm and normal on the outside as possible. All I could do was pray that I looked better than I felt. Gretchen (via girl face and hand signals) assured me that I was keeping it together okay.

  Chapter 10

  Collin

  "I swear it's him. I met him at the Open, not two months ago." Ethan was trying to convince me he'd seen Joel Perrin through the window of a bar we passed on the way to the ballroom.

  "Okay, your loss. But you better believe if I thought I had a chance at Perrin, I'd waltz right in there and interrupt their drink."

  "You don't know for sure that's who you saw."

  "I know what I saw, Collin, but that's okay, because I thought I saw Seth talking to him anyway." Ethan said.

  "Shut-up, you did not," Beth said. She was just in a hurry to make a grand entrance at the banquet.

  I didn't know how grand our entrance would be, considering we were right on time. I thought you had to be fashionably late to have any real impact.

  She did look hot, though. Her dress was long and red and covered in whatever girls cover their dresses in to make them sparkle. It looked good on her, but at that point, I wasn't concerned with our timing (or our entrance for that matter). I just wanted to shake a few hands, and Joel Perrin's hand was at the top of my list.

  Beth and I had been together for a year, but it was the first time I'd brought her to one of these things. I'd only been to one of them since we started dating, and she was out of town visiting some friends.

  "Oh just look Collin, they're bubbles. It's so beautiful. They must be balloons, don't you think? But they're perfectly round. I've never seen anything like it. You think we're supposed to feel like we're under water? They almost look like glass, don't they? Oh, I'm so having these things at my next birthday party."

  They did have the place fixed up pretty nice. The grand ballroom was split up into two parts. There were fifty or so tables concentrated on one side of the ballroom and a big open space for dancing and mingling on the other. There were balconies on the walls to the left and right where you could view the action down below.

  We definitely weren't the first ones there. My guess was there were at least a hundred people there already. On the far end of the dance floor, there was a big band playing jazz. The guys were all dressed in tuxedos and they sounded really good. The atmosphere was amazing, and I had a general feeling of rightness about how things were going to go tonight. We ended up sort of making an entrance after all.

  Several of the guys from the National Team recognized Josh from our college team and were happy to see him again since it had been a while. Since Ethan and I were both on the National Team, we knew all of the swimmers who had already arrived. There were fifty of us on the Team, but only around thirty of us were coming tonight, or so I'd heard.

  The majority of the crowd would be people who paid five hundred a piece for their dinner. Joel Perrin would be one of them. People like Joel didn't even blink at spending that kind of money. Five hundred was just a drop in the bucket for him.

  Those of us on the team were the only ones who got our tickets comped. I guess that's because we were considered the entertainment.

  We were standing in the open area, catching up with some of the guys who came over when we arrived when Beth started pulling on my arm.

  "Come on, I want to go up there." She pointed up towards the balcony.

  They weren't crowded yet, and I'd been wanting to check out the view since we walked in. I turned to the guys who were all huddled around and said, "We're headed upstairs for a few minutes."

  "I heard there were little sitting rooms up there that lock from the inside." Bryce Young, one of the guys we'd been talking to, was wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. I gave him a disbelieving grin.

  "And how would you have a piece of information like that?" I asked.

  "Oh, we've been here for thirty minutes already. Two of the little cocktail waitresses have told me about those rooms. One of them told me a few things she'd like to do to me in one."

  "I can pretend to be a cocktail waitress," Beth said, looking at me with a mischievous grin. Several of the guys heard her little comment and made sounds of approval, grunts and whistles and whatnot.

  I enjoyed being able to watch the action from the balcony. The furniture up there was so grand and the cocktail waitresses had been right… there were, in fact, little private rooms that locked from the inside. Beth had tested the lock and everything. She and I had been upstairs for fifteen minutes or so when Ethan and Josh came up to join us.

  "I'll bet we need to find our table soon," Josh said. "I think they're serving dinner in a few minutes."

  "I'm sure they'll make an announcement," I said. "Check out the view." I motioned to the floor with a nod my head. When they first walked up there, Ethan and Josh had come up to Beth and me and started talking straightaway. Neither of them had even looked over the balcony onto the floor yet.

  "Yeah. That's really cool. Dude, look at Andrew, he's tearing up the dance floor already."

  Josh had his back to us now. So did Ethan.

  I had to think that most of the people who'd be coming tonight were here already. The place was packed and, as Josh said, dinner would be served soon.

  I hadn't seen Joel Perrin yet, but that's nothing new for me. The employees working his booth told me I missed him by five minutes this afternoon. The same thing had happened to me at the US Open a few months ago. I was beginning to wonder if he was just a made up guy.

  Beth and I were having a conversation about going down stairs to find our seats when Ethan turned toward me and said, "There's your boy Perrin."

  I craned my head around his to look down on to the ballroom floor, but it was so packed I couldn't tell one person from the next.

  "Where?"

  "Next to that big group of balloons right there." He pointed to a huge tower of those bubble balloons near the door. "He's the playa with a lady on each arm," he told me.

  I found the guy… dark hair, tall, and younger than I thought. I had expected him to look more like a scientist or something. Not that I thought he'd be wearing a lab coat or anything, but I certainly hadn't anticipated him walking in like he was some kind of foreign prince. He just wasn't at all what I expected and the sight of him and his grand entrance, a girl on each arm, made me laugh a little. It was nice to finally put a face with the name, though, and I was relieved he was here.

  Ethan must have been right about seeing him at the bar a little while ago, because Seth Sparks was right at their heels like a fourth wheel. I couldn't help but wonder if Seth had already been offered the endorsement. I could've easily been discouraged since he was the face of US Men's Swimming
during the last games, but I wasn't about to let that discourage me from trying to climb my own ladder.

  Joel and his entourage were so far from away that I could only make out their features vaguely, but my heart still sank at the sight of the woman on his right.

  For three years now, I'd felt the same rush of anticipation every time I saw someone with the same gypsy features the girl at Disney had. Hell, Beth even sort of looked like her.

  The woman in black on Joel's arm was closer to what I remembered Rachel looking like, and I felt a stab of jealousy at the sight of her, even from such a distance. I had to remind myself that my Rachel was most likely in her sophomore year at some college in Oregon, a world away from the glamorous life of having Joel Perrin escort her to charity balls.

  I needed to get closer in proximity to the guy if I was ever going to convince him I was the man for the job. Beth was ready for a change of scenery anyway, so we headed down the massive, red-carpeted staircase. I could tell by her expression that she was eating all this up. She was the type who liked things on a grand scale. She always talked about us having a big-deal wedding, which pretty much sounded like a nightmare to me.

  ****

  Dinner was amazing. It was a mostly seafood menu, and maybe I was just hungry, but I could've eaten about three more plates of the stuff. At the portion sizes they were serving, it was basically a hundred dollars a bite.

  Or maybe I just take big bites, I thought as I stared into space. I was looking in the general direction of Joel Perrin's table even though there were at least ten other tables between them and us.

  Dessert had already been served and the band had two songs of the second set under their belt. Only twenty or so folks had made their way on the dance floor but more and more were headed in that direction all the time.

  After a few more people had time to make their way out there, my view of Joel's table wasn't quite as obstructed. That girl. The one who looked like Rachel… God, she was so beautiful. She was still far away, but since more people were leaving their tables all the time, I could now see her entirely too well.

  The girl was close enough to Rachel to make my heart pound. I found myself anxious to go ahead and approach Mr. Perrin, only now it was less about getting an endorsement and more about getting a closer look at the girl sitting next to him.

  She was laughing at something Joel was saying when her gaze swept over my face. Her eyes breezed right over me and then jerked back to meet mine. She looked startled, almost frightened for an instant before the smile reappeared on her face and she turned back toward her company.

  My heart was pounding. I knew that face. It was the right girl. It had to be her. Without so much as a word to the people sitting next to me, I stood up and started to walk toward her. With each step I took I grew more and more confident that this girl was my Rachel.

  Screw the endorsement. Screw Joel Perrin. At that moment, I didn't give a flying flip about anything but the gypsy I'd been longing for over the past three years.

  Thinking I was making my move to meet Joel, Beth ran up behind me and attached herself to my arm. She was saying something about wanting to make a proper introduction, but only half-heard her.

  The gypsy started getting squirmy as I closed the gap between our two tables. She made eye contact with me a few times but each time only for a second before looking away nervously. Raw adrenaline coursed through my veins as it started to sink in… this was Rachel. My Rachel.

  Beth snapped me to attention with a tug on my arm, making me stop before I crossed any personal boundary lines. Thankfully, the crowd was still big enough that no one except gypsy girl even suspected our approach.

  "What are you doing?" Beth's voice was a harsh whisper. "What's wrong with you? You look like you're about to kill somebody."

  I tried to come to my senses, I really did, but it was all I could do not to choke out Goggle Guy so I could run off with that girl over my shoulder. Beth's wake up call was the only thing that reminded me that wouldn't do.

  I tried to calm my nerves so I could approach their table with at least a little grace. Joel caught sight of me at that point and got to his feet. The girl in black stood as well.

  "Collin Blake. I know your face, but we're always missing each other." He gave me his hand and I took it, feeling a bit like a robot as I went through the motions.

  "Yes sir, seems like I'm always five minutes late," I said. I didn't even recognize my own voice. I didn't even care that he was a nice guy, or that he knew my name.

  We shared a brief exchange. I think I handled it all right. I was on conversational autopilot for those few seconds, and I'm actually not even sure what I said. But, he had a smile on his face, so I thought I was doing okay. I didn't care.

  After a few back-and-forths, he turned to the girl in black and introduced her as Rachel Coleman. He was saying something about her being the genius behind his latest ad campaign, but I was just happy for the excuse to be able to stare at her without being so obvious.

  She held out her hand for a customary handshake and I almost laughed. I was so mad at her that it was literally all I could do to school my expression.

  I took her hand in mine and probably squeezed it a little too tightly and for a little too long, because I could see out of the corner of my eye that Joel and Beth were both looking at our clasped hands. I didn't care who was looking. I was utterly lost in the almost-black velvet eyes of Rachel, my Rachel, and the rest of the world could just go jump off a cliff.

  Chapter 11

  Rachel

  There were so many people here, way more than I ever expected. The grand ballroom was absolutely huge and had been decorated to perfection in a fanciful underwater theme. The people at the door were star struck by Joel, itching to inform him that nearly everyone on the guest list had arrived and they'd all be anxious to make his acquaintance tonight.

  Seth had come in with us, but had to check in at a different table since the swimmers ate free. We'd already become part of the crowd by the time he caught up to us again.

  Joel was being such a sweetheart when it came to including Gretchen. He paid her as much attention as he paid me which put both of us at ease, (me because I wanted our business relationship to remain that way, and her because otherwise she'd be the third wheel).

  Gretchen and I enjoyed a good ten minutes of attention from people who thought we must be really cool since we knew Joel Perrin before leaving the main hall to use the restroom. They'd be serving dinner after the next song, so we took the opportunity to hit the ladies room.

  "Is he here?" Gretchen was speaking over the music, and I was wound up so tight I could just snap into pieces. I looked around to make nobody was in earshot.

  "No, I mean I don't know. He could be here. He should be here, I think. I haven't seen him though." We'd made it to the ladies room by now, and boy, was it packed. We found a quiet corner of the ladies dressing room where we started touching up our powder and lip-gloss. All the girls around us were doing the exact same thing, none of them paying any attention to us.

  "I showed you the picture of him. You haven't seen him, have you?"

  "No, because all those guys look alike to me, especially the blond ones. They're all just big, gorgeous hotcakes."

  "What am I gonna say to him if he's here, Gretch? I can't handle this."

  "You're doing fine. Joel doesn't even know anything's amiss, and you look stunning."

  "Joel doesn't know anything's amiss because he can't keep his eyes off you."

  "What? No! He's just being a gentleman so I don't feel left out. Completely different league."

  "Oh, whatever. You can't tell me you're not seeing how he's looking at you."

  "I'm not seeing how he's looking at me." Gretchen gave a resigned smile. "Okay, I can see a little bit, but he's just dazzled by the dress and the makeup. You know, like in one of those momentary trances a vampire puts you in. He'll be back to being professionally cordial once I'm out of this dress. I mean, in my wor
k clothes. When I look normal."

  "You're beautiful all the time, I think it just took the dress for him to see it."

  "Aww, you're sweet, and I love you… but we're wasting time when we should be making a plan. Do you know what you're going to say if you see Collin?" I knew she was just changing the subject because she thought she didn't have a chance with Joel. As confident as she could seem at times, Gretchen had a bad habit of underestimating herself.

  "You're great, you know, a terrific actress. Movie star. He'd be lucky to have you."

  "Seriously, you need to practice what you'll say to him if you see him. You don’t wanna lock up."

  "I know. That'd be terrible. What should I say? You think I should just find him and stand in front of him and see if he recognizes me? Not say anything?"

  "You're gonna have to say something sometime… if he's here. And you know what, Ray? If he's not here, I think it's a good idea for you to look him up." She was looking at me like she was deciding what to say. "You're, umm… affected by this guy."

  "Ya think?" That was the understatement of the century. Even though I was petrified at the very thought of seeing him again, I was even more petrified at the thought of never seeing him again.

  I tried to remind myself to breathe as we crossed the crowded room to our table. Every time I made eye contact with a head that was attached to a tuxedo, I felt my stomach do that same nervous flip, thinking it would surely be Collin. No such luck. I did have to laugh at one point, though. Gretchen had been right about them all looking alike. Maybe it was just all the tuxedos.

  Joel was waiting at the table with a huge grin on his face. "I'm the luckiest guy here," he said, pulling a chair out. The place card in that spot had Gretchen's name on it, so she slipped into her seat. The place next to Gretchen had my name on it, so I started toward it, assuming he'd be pulling mine out next. "Not so fast, Miss Coleman. I think we should switch places. Everyone here went ahead and made assumptions already, and we wouldn't want to disappoint them, would we?"