I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to interrupt. Perhaps she was just receiving a delivery or maybe this man was a friend or neighbor or acquaintance of some sort. In reality, I had just stepped into her life. Who she talked to was none of my business and I didn’t want to butt in where I didn’t belong. Ironic since I had already done that in so many levels with Chloe.
I saw the man’s shoulder rise and fall as if he were responding to something someone said on the other side of the door. He must not be that good of a friend or she would have invited him in. I got invited in and I had been a virtual stranger who had killed her nearly dead car. I took a step forward. Maybe the man was asking for money or bothering her in some way.
I strained my ears to hear some of what was being said so that I could gather enough information to know whether or not I should interrupt. “I’m not ready,” I’m pretty sure I heard Chloe say. “You can’t just appear.”
Her words were soft and muddled and I didn’t know whether I was hearing what she actually said or if my brain was filling in the blanks with all of the wrong words.
The man shrugged again and said something back, none of which I could make out. I watched as the door slowly closed, pushing him back from his position against the doorway. Their conversation was coming to an end and I had to decide what I wanted to do.
It looked as if Chloe had things handled. Whoever he was and whatever he wanted, he was going away peacefully. She didn’t need me to interfere this time. I quickly decided to play it cool and simply pretend as if I lived there, was visiting someone else, or just happened to be walking by.
I stuck my hands in my pants pockets and put a laid back look on my face. The man placed his forehead against the closed door and slid the palm of one hand down the frame. He straightened his tattered shirt with the other hand and slowly turned away from the door.
I looked down at my feet, not wanting him to know I had witnessed any of his conversation much less how he was reacting to its being over. I slowly walked down the hall as if I didn’t have a care in the world and he finally turned and began walking towards me.
When we reached each other halfway between the exit to the hall and Chloe’s door near the end, he met my eyes and gave me a slight nod.
“Hey,” I said, taking one hand from my pocket and raising it in a slight wave of acknowledgment.
He kept walking, but the slight glimpse I got of his eyes was enough to put a few things together. First, he wasn’t delivering anything or selling anything. Second, he was no friend or mere acquaintance. Third, he had Ian’s exact eyes starting with the shape and ending with the color.
CHAPTER TWENTY
After coming face to face with the man I believed to be Ian’s father, I didn’t have the heart to face Chloe. Not only did I not want to talk about the situation at that moment, but I also wanted to give her time to mull it over herself. She didn’t need to go from talking to one man to the next in two seconds flat. And I didn’t want to accuse her of anything. After all, she was still married to the man. If that had been the man I thought it might be.
Once I allowed the visitor time enough to exit the building and make it far enough away not to spot me for a second time, I turned and started back down the hallway without knocking on Chloe’s door. I was still excited about the lemonade stand, but the scene I had just witnessed had deflated my exuberance significantly. I needed some time myself to think things through and, more than anything, I needed to get home and rest. My eyes were burning from all of the extra hours I had spent on the computer at the office. I needed to call it a day.
On the drive home, my thoughts flurried through the air hitting on the man I had just seen in the hallway, the lemonade stand, the moment I had shared with Chloe in the diner that morning, Abigail and our impending date the following night, and everything in between.
To say I was mentally exhausted by the time I got home was putting it mildly. Since I had worked a good 14 hours that day, my physical exhaustion was also evident and I made it no farther than the couch in the living room before I passed out cold. I had just sat down to remove my shoes and rest for a minute, but when I woke, it was nearly time for my alarm to go off.
I rubbed my eyes, looked down at the clothes I had worn all day with a sigh, and trudged through the kitchen to the bedroom. I should at least wake up comfortable in my own bed, even if I had a crick in my neck from the strange position I had held on the couch.
I slowed when I got to the kitchen sink and squinted into the window that sat above it. I had stood in that exact position both times Evan had appeared. Would he return today to tell me what I was doing wrong? Would he tell me who to choose?
“You wanted to choose,” I heard a distinct voice say and I spun around so fast my head reeled. The room was empty. I had not seen his reflection in the window as I had before, but I had heard his voice. I expected him to be there. But he wasn’t.
I shook my head, trying to push the cobwebs away enough that I could make it to my bed safely without hearing any more voices or wishing any more imaginary friends to appear. Was that what Evan was? An imaginary friend? I wasn’t sure and I was too tired to wonder any longer at that point.
I fell into a deep sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and I slept blissfully for a full thirty minutes before my alarm went off. It was the type of peaceful sleep that has no dreams involved, no interruptions to the rest, and no subconscious thoughts. It was a surprising type of sleep for me, really, since I had so much on my mind, but I appreciated the quiet I got for the short amount of time I got it.
The second I was awakened by the radio alarm clock, my mind began again at full speed. Today was going to be a long day.
Luckily, it was also a very busy day and I had little time to think about everything that was going on around me. I had my show first, of course, and I did a special segment where I had listeners call in and talk about a mentor or someone special that had meant a lot to them in their lives. It was hard for me to hear some of the responses because a lot of people would mention their dads. Those that did not would still say something that led me to think of my own father and the fact that he was no longer with me.
The show was emotionally straining and I was glad to head straight from that into a special promotions meeting I had called the day before regarding the lemonade stand. In that meeting, I described the goal and got all of the other station representatives on board to help me. After explaining the situation and the idea, we looked at the station calendar and chose a date just a week and a half away. It was going to be tough to pull it off that quickly, but given the severity of Ian’s need, we all wanted it to happen sooner rather than later. I assigned a few tasks to those who I knew could pull them off better than me, but I kept a majority of the work on my own plate. Everyone needed to know what was going on and how they could help, but in the end, this was my baby. This was for a little boy who I had only met a handful of times, but I had somehow let capture my heart with just a few simple sentences.
No matter what happened with Chloe, who the man was at her door, or how our relationship turned out in the end, Ian still needed that surgery. And if I had anything to say about it, he was going to get it.
After the successful promotions meeting I was stopped by the promotions director who gave me a sound scolding for the state I had left the promotions box in after the concert and remote over the weekend.
“I spent two hours re-organizing that bin,” she said, “Do you think that’s all I have to do?”
I wanted to tell her that it WAS her job and all, but I just nodded and smiled and told her I’d do my best to keep things in order next time. It was all I could do to keep a straight face since I had gotten the same lecture a dozen times before. As had every other on air personality.
Once my lecture of the day was out of the way, I hid in my office for the remainder of the afternoon, fervently working on the lemonade stand by making calls to all of the contacts in my phone and on my computer.
I was going to make fliers to distribute and I was going to create an email blast but I also wanted to spend time personally inviting everyone I knew to the event. A few of the advertisers I had worked closely with before even offered donations up front. The stand was a small success already and we had not even mixed any lemon into water yet.
The day was a whirlwind and the afternoon flew by once again. It was normal for me to leave the office by 1 or so, but once 4 p.m. rolled around, I still had a few calls I wanted to make. I was lucky I glanced at the clock at 4:45 and stopped myself from going any further on the project. The least I could do for Abigail was be on time for our date. No matter what I ended up saying to her, which I still hadn’t quite figured out.
I shut down my computer, ran a hand through my hair, and headed to the elevator. It had been a long day, but for the first time since my father had passed, I hadn’t been lonely. I had been reminded of him quite a bit that morning due to the conversations I had with listeners on the air and that had been hard, but they had been fond memories. Had I gone straight from that broadcast home, I might have spent the day wallowing in my loneliness, wondering what I was going to do with my life. But this project had given me a new goal and a new purpose. I felt like I was finally really doing something with the platform I had built in the city and it felt good.
I reached the family restaurant just as the clock in my car turned over to 5. I immediately spotted Abigail approaching the front door and I quickly turned off the car and jumped out.
“Abigail!” I called, watching her red hair flash in the afternoon sun as she turned.
She waved and started walking through the parking lot towards me, a bright smile on her face.
“You made it!” she said as she reached out and looped one of her arms through mine, hugging my arm against her cheek.
“Of course,” I said, unsure as to how to react to her sign of affection. As we walked to the door together, she kept a firm grip on my arm and I felt like I was walking a little taller. The meal we were going to have together was bound to be tough, but for that moment, I decided to enjoy having a beautiful, smart woman on my arm.
“Table for two?” the hostess asked as we walked in the door.
I nodded and Abigail released my arm as we followed the hostess through the restaurant with her plastic menus in tow.
“A booth okay?” she asked as she snapped her gum. I wasn’t sure I had made the right choice in restaurant, but Abigail told her it was fine.
We sat down and the hostess placed the sticky menus in front of us. There were a few crayon markings on mine, but from what I could see, the one Abigail had was clean.
“I haven’t been here before,” she said, picking the menu up and glancing through the options.
“They’ve got really good soup,” I offered, feeling the awkwardness creep back into my voice.
The waitress sidled up to the table with a couple of glasses of water and we ordered our drinks. After that, I knew I had to dig in.
“About the other night,” I began, ready to offer up my excuses for what Abigail had seen transpire between me and Chloe, but also ready to attempt to continue with the rest of the story.
“I do want to hear it,” Abigail said, interrupting me before I could begin. “But I also want you to know that I have felt bad since our conversation on the phone. I jumped to conclusions. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. I’m sorry.”
I felt my face redden. Here I was, sort of seeing two women at once and about to make a choice. And she was apologizing to me? “It’s okay,” I shrugged, unsure if I should even accept her apology since she didn’t really have anything for which to be sorry. “I can see why you would have thought what you thought.”
“It’s happened before,” Abigail said. “To me…to others I know…just to women in general, you know? And you’re kind of a star, you know,” she said with a shy smile. “A lot of times people with status think they can get away with things like that.”
Oh boy, I thought. Was what I was doing? Was that what people expected of me? I had to tell her now.
“That woman you saw,” I said, “it’s kind of a strange story. I actually wrecked her car a while back.”
“Wait,” Abigail paused, thinking back through our conversations. “Was that the accident you were in the day we had coffee?”
“That’s the one,” I said pointing at her. She had a good memory. “Anyways, we continued to talk…because of insurance and all. Working out the details,” I said as I shrugged. I was being too cavalier about this. I was leaving out the part about how I fixed her car completely. “Anyways, I found out her son had never been to a concert before and I had some extra tickets…”
“So you invited them,” Abigail said, filling in the rest of the story. “Oh Jared,” she said as she reached across the table and grabbed my hands, “how nice of you!”
The waitress returned with our drinks and I took that opportunity to extract my hands from beneath hers. I needed to stir sweetener into the iced tea I had ordered, after all, and Abigail took the chance to open her straw.
“You ready to order?” the waitress asked as her gum snapped between her lips.
“I’ll just take the soup of the day,” I said, without looking at my sticky menu again.
“That sounds fine,” Abigail said as she turned to the waitress, “I’ll have the same.” She stacked her menu on top of mine and pushed them both to the side of the table.
The waitress wrote on her pad for a long time, snapped her gum, and disappeared, leaving the menus on the table between us.
“So what did the boy think?” Abigail asked, anxious to get back to my heroic tale. “About the concert?”
“Oh he liked it,” I said.
“I bet,” she said with stars in her eyes. “I can still remember my first concert.”
I interrupted Abigail that time, before she could get into her own first concert story. “There’s more,” I said, rushing into the sentence before I knew how it was going to end. I knew I wasn’t going to tell her about Ian’s surgery, Chloe’s lack of insurance, my lemonade stand idea or any of the other details. It wasn’t really my story to tell and I didn’t want her to think I was just trying to save the boy and nothing more.
“Chloe and I,” I began, “Chloe is the woman you saw at the concert. Well, it started out as completely innocent. I mean,” I stumbled, “what you saw at the concert, it really was nothing, just like I said.” I was still stirring my tea though the sweetener had long since dissolved. “It’s just that, since then…I don’t know…things have become a little more…complicated.”
Complicated had not been the right word. No woman wants to be referred to as a complication, but it was the word that had come out and now I had to deal with it.
“What do you mean?” Abigail said, the stars in her eyes slowly dimming in their brightness. “You mean you have feelings for her now?”
I raised my eyebrows, about to try to explain myself some more.
“You do,” Abigail stated. “I know the rest, you don’t have to say any more. You didn’t mean for it to happen. It just happened. You don’t want to hurt me, but it’s for the best. Yadda yadda yadda.”
How she knew where I wanted to go with the conversation next, I didn’t know, but she had the whole thing pretty much down. “I don’t think you understand,” I said, wanting to calm the fire I was now seeing stir in her eyes.
“Oh I understand perfectly,” she said. “Don’t you worry about a thing Mr. Jones,” she said coldly, referring to me as she had when we had first met before her on air interview. “I understand and I won’t bother you anymore.”
Abigail slid her hand away from her drink and placed it in her lap. “You like the soup so much here,” she continued, her red curls bouncing around her shoulders, “you can have two.”
With that statement, before I could say another word, she stood from behind the booth and walked away.
I hung my head, knowing that g
oing after her would only make it worse. I wished what she had said were true. I wished she really did understand. I feared that she only heard the worst. I wanted someone else. But up until two days ago, that simply hadn’t been the truth. I had wanted Abigail. With all my heart. It was just that Chloe needed me so badly. What was I supposed to do?
There were no answers. No matter what I had done I was going to feel lousy. The soup arrived shortly after and I buried myself in the burning liquid, using the spoon to drown the guilt as I felt the flavorful meal slide down my throat. I left Abigail’s bowl untouched. It grew cold as I ate. A symbol for the end of our short relationship.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After my so-called date with Abigail, I managed to bury myself in work. Not only did I have all of my normal on-air and promotional responsibilities, but I also had to spend every extra minute on the lemonade stand. The day after the disaster at the family restaurant, I needed some reassurance from Chloe that things were on the right track. I also needed to see Ian so I could record some clips from him to play on the air. I wanted listeners to associate the lemonade stand with a real boy who had a real problem. That was what would draw them out to buy the drink.
I talked to Chloe briefly on the phone and arranged to stop by her apartment after her shift was over for the day. She thought it would be better for me to come to them than it would be to bring Ian into the station. He would have loved seeing all of the equipment, pushing all of the buttons, and learning how things worked, but she thought all of the excitement might be more than he could handle and he would need to rest before and after my visit.
I had been in their tiny little apartment and I knew it was small enough that voices within it did not echo against the walls. It should be easy to get good audio with the right equipment.
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