A Different Kind of Valentine

by K. J. Dahlen

  "I really don’t think he meant any harm," T.R. added, his eyes down as he came back around the counter and sat down. "He just wanted someone to--listen."

  "And you?" She reached for a cup and lifted it to her lips. It had layers of steam that floated up with a smell like caramel.

  "Sorry if I embarrassed you," he glanced over and then looked down with a deep breath. "It just came over me."

  "What?"

  "These feelings." He looked over again and smiled. "Started the moment I saw you and only got worse."

  "Is that bad?" She sipped again.

  He leaned back and put his arm around the back of her chair, his heart beginning to pick up speed. "I was being honest that first day on the radio when I said that I really don’t understand love." He looked up. "That’s why this has been almost surreal." His expression was little-boy like. "It started with curiosity. Academic interest. Detached emotions." He smiled. "Sounds nice, right? Nice and safe." He took another long pull from the coffee cup. "Then I see you and my world turns upside down."

  His eyes dropped.

  "In what way?"

  "I’ve been writing about romance for years now. And for some unknown reason women respond… but I never experienced that helplessness--till now."

  He looked at her again, his brown eyes taking in everything. "It only got worse as we started talking." He inhaled a deep breath. "This desire grew--to know and be with you. Here people expect me to understand love but I have no idea."

  She could feel it--all in a glance, a vulnerability that loosened everything inside her. She began to relax.

  "I really don’t understand women," he whispered. "Or love. It’s my own private hell where I pretend on paper and people watch."

  "This is hard for you to say." Her blue eyes looked into his. They both leaned closer to each other. The pause drew them, their eyes open and full of weakness.

  T.R. eased his lips closer to hers. They almost touched when the door to the café opened with a bang. Both heads turned and several college students entered with mop buckets and a big radio.

  "Sorry," one said. "Want us to come back?"

  "No." T.R. got up. "We’re in your way.’ He pulled Sara’s chair back. "Want to sit out on the deck?"

  She got up with a smile. "You mean with the blankets?"

  "No… I mean yes."

  "Sure, but not to sleep out there." She looked over at the students. They were looking back. "I fell asleep talking with him out there the other night."

  "Hey, don’t mind us," one of them answered.

  T.R. pointed at the door. Sara looked through the windows at the river, now dark with the lights of the city rolling over the surface. She got up and followed him through the cafe.

  Sea gulls cried in the distance. A tug approached from down river with a small wake in front as the bow pushed onward.

  T.R. stood off to the side and held the door open as they stepped on to the deck. Wind caught their hair with a soft edge that was both cold and hot.

  "The knife edge of seasons," he whispered.

  She moved closer. "How's that?"

  "Some people call it Indian summer, but I used to see it as the currents of time that could flow one way or the other."

  He walked beside her as they watched the water. It rippled in swells from the tug and barge.

  She smiled. "Grow up here?"

  "Some." He looked down as if self conscious. "My parents wandered a lot."

  She waited with an awareness that was just below the surface.

  Non-verbal change, a voice said within. He's tense, expressions stiff.

  "What difference does it make," she whispered.

  "What's that?" T.R. looked down.

  Sara smiled as if caught. "Talking to myself."

  He put both hands in his pockets and shifted balance to look down at her.

  There again, she told herself. Awkward movements. Sudden stiffening.

  She pulled away. "Forgive me."

  "For what?"

  "The process I can't stop in my head." She breathed deeply and closed her eyes. "A classification system that collates your words and looks for a pattern."

  She eased closer as if to ignore the feedback. "I don't want to be a counselor right now."

  He noticed her eyes. "You can't get away from who you are."

  She met the gaze. "So tell me about your family."

  "They weren't the average types with a career." He looked down at the water. "We came on a sailboat and stopped at the waterfront."

  "So that's where 'bend in the road' came in?"

  "Sure." he stepped closer then stopped, eyes still on the water. "They built this out of a warehouse."

  "Past tense?"

  "That's the difficult part. I grew up on the water. That meant learning to sail early." He stopped and smiled at the thought. "We went all over the hemisphere. But they later..."

  She looked up at his eyes. "Something bad happened?"

  "Sailed out one day and never came back."

  "Any trace?"

  "Coast Guard found wreckage." He let his eyes pass over the river again. "Small chunks of the deck and hull, but no word on them."

  "What did they suspect?"

  "An explosion."

  "As in bomb?"

  "No," he said looking down river. "Tanker or big ship."

  Sara let the wind carry hair off to the side and pulled it out of her eyes. "As in collision at sea?"

  "Big ships don't always notice everything--especially a small sailboat drifting around at night."

  "Wow."

  He looked in her eyes again. "That counselor mind is spinning fast now."

  "When did it happen?"

  "When I was in college."

  "What about girlfriends? Anyone special?"

  "I knew this was coming."

  Sara stopped. Her eyes searched his. "You don't want to talk about this."

  "More like can't."

  "That painful?"

  He pursed his lips. "She died."

  "You were married?"

  "Engaged."

  "What happened?" She lifted a hand. "Don't answer that if you don't want to."

  "No that's okay." He stopped again. "It's been a while."

  He glanced at the railing. "Food poisoning."

  Both were silent now. T.R. looked up at her eyes as if to catch the drift of her thoughts. "So what's the diagnosis?"

  Sara squinted as if pulled from a day dream. "That's a lot to carry all these years."

  T.R. pointed up at the second floor of the cafe. "That's why I started with fiction." He nodded with his head. "Want to see?"

  Sara had question marks in her eyes and nodded slowly as he led to steps up the side of the building. He opened the door and turned on the light. Sara walked in and let her eyes wander.

  One wall was a series of windows from floor to ceiling. They faced the river with a desk pulled back as if to watch. Behind it was a wall made of soft wood paneling. Frames held pictures and old book covers. An old leather couch rested along the wall. The floor was hardwood and clean with thick layers of varnish.

  Sara nodded as she entered. A lap top remained on the desk but no papers. Everything was neat, in order and straight.

  "You stay up here?" she asked.

  "Sometimes."

  She let her fingers drag across the desk. A door opened at the end of the room. She let her eyes pull her there and flipped a switch. It was a bathroom with new fixtures, folded towels off to the side and even the soap and aftershave bottles arranged in neat rows.

  "The psychologist in me wants to catalog these details." She turned and met his gaze. "But I won’t."

  Dark water glimmered off to the side. It came from the wake of a sailboat just below the windows. The sloop was under power in a push up river, bow rising in the dark liquid, skiff in tow behind it. T.R. reached for the wall switch and pulled it down. The room was dark but the water bent shafts of light and sent them into the loft with angles that wig
gled.

  Sara walked closer to the windows.

  "I’m speechless," she said.

  "I spend days up here."

  "I would love that…." She turned and felt his presence, strong, sure, peaceful. "It’s that place inside me I always wanted to go."

  He was close to her, close enough to feel her breathing. "Great, cause I can’t do this anymore."

  Her eyelids pulled half shut. "Do what?"

  "Dream. Work. Live in my head." He pulled her close and felt the arms tighten around his waist. The sailboat now was just below them with rigging and masts that filled their window as they passed.

  Some voices came from below. It was the cleaning crew on their way to the dumpster. T.R. saw them pass below with boxes and large bags of trash.

  Sara heard the shouts and turned, her eyes on the sailboat with moon on the water. They pulled closer in a slow embrace.

  One of the voices shouted over the others below. "Hey, what’s that box in the boss’s truck? I’ll get it."

  T.R. let his eyes drift at the shadow below them and heard the dumpster open as the box hurled over the top and inside.

  Fire shot upward. A flash followed behind as dumpster parts tumbled skyward. The three janitors rolled back on the pavement with shock as the force passed them in a wave. All three then looked back up at the windows as T.R. looked down at them.

  "That’s crazy," one of the janitors snapped. "What did you have in that box?"

  T.R. looked out at the boxes and paper floating across the parking lot and then at the shock in Sara’s eyes.

  "Blake wasn't kidding," he said to her. "It really was a bomb."

  Both smiled as they moved slowly together.

  "I’m crazy ‘bout you," he whispered.

  THE END

  Time Changes

  Nicolette Zamora

  The tiny café was packed with people trying to beat the hustle and grab a quick coffee before getting back to their weekends. Laurie Palson watched as two guys laughed and joked as they waited, both seemingly happier than Laurie had been in a long time.

  "Earth to Laurie," Meg called, waving a hand in Laurie’s face.

  "Sorry," Laurie said. She managed a weak smile. "I just never realized how hard breaking up with someone is. I had always thought that being the dumpee would be easier."

  "Well," Meg drawled, taking a long swig of her cappuccino "let’s review why you dumped Derek in the first place. One, he was an arrogant pig."

  "Not always. He just didn’t always think about others first."

  "What about that time when he left you alone at a wedding so that he could watch football? It’s not as if he couldn’t tape the game. And he was never on time to pick you up, he never called, after dating for a year still hadn’t brought you home to meet the ‘rents, maybe hadn’t even told them about you."

  "We did have some good times together," Laurie protested.

  "I thought we were talking about why you finally decided to dump him."

  "I know. It’s just that you’re making it sound really awful that I was with him as long as I was," Laurie sighed. She had broken up with Derek a week ago, an impulsive act, right after he had flaked on their Valentine’s Day plans for a hockey game with the guys.

  "Laurie, when was the last time you had fun with a guy?" Meg leaned forward, her chocolate hair falling over her shoulder despite her ponytail. Her normally twinkling green eyes were unusually serious.

  Laurie thought for a moment before answering. Then it hit her: Gary. Her high school sweetheart. They had been perfect for each other, she had believed at the time, always having fun and enjoying each other. He listened to her hopes, dreams, and shared his goals too. And therein was the problem: he had gone to a college in Pennsylvania for a physician assistant program whereas Laurie had stayed in Slaterville Springs, a quaint little town in upstate New York. Laurie’s grandmother had been her constant companion, more like an older sister or another motherly figure, and her recent diagnosis of cancer propelled Laurie to choose a school much closer to home. So Laurie and Gary had broken up, not wishing to try a long distance relationship, not when college meant so much to them and Laurie worrying about her grandmother. And when her grandmother had died during Laurie’s sophomore year, she knew that she had made the right decision by staying. She had never regretted the break up as much as she did now.

  "Since high school." Laurie said quietly.

  Meg, her Ithaca college roommate, had heard all about Gary. Knowing the non-possibility that was, Meg said, "You know my motto. It’s better to try out lots of fish before going after the king." Easy enough for Meg to say, she had new boyfriends every month.

  Meg glanced around the café. "How ‘bout that guy? He looks cute."

  Laurie spotted the man right away. He stood next to the napkin holder and watched as a little girl reached up for some. Much too short, she merely looked at the man and her face broke out into an enormous toothless grin as he handed her several.

  Laurie couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

  Suddenly, the man in question looked in the direction of their table, as if he heard them talking about him, and gave Laurie the small, nearly non-existence smile that strangers give each other. He patted the little girl on the head and walked out. Could it be? It looked just like him… Rob Hender? Gary’s twin brother?

  "Now that is a man that thinks of others," Meg said with a sigh. "Perfect for you. Now you just have to haunt this joint until he shows up again and…"

  Laurie wasn’t paying attention. She pulled on her curly blond hair, a nervous habit she had developed when visiting her grandmother in the hospital. Maybe she could hunt down Rob. But her thoughts weren’t on Rob, they were on Gary. If Rob was in the area, maybe Gary wasn’t too far off. I wonder how he’s doing after all these years. Her heart began to race and she barely tasted her cream laced coffee. Rob had a much more football player build. Gary had been skinner, his muscles not as outwardly visible. Both were tall, around six feet, with dark hair and eyes. Laurie still remembered the last time she had stroked Gary’s face, when they had agreed that parting was their best choice.

  Meg stood up, a broad grin on her face. "I’ll leave you to your daydreams," Meg teased. "I’m sure I’ll be seeing you ‘round here a lot more often." With a wink, she dropped her empty cup into the trashcan before leaving.

  ~ * ~

  Eight days later, Laurie finally saw Rob at the coffee shop again. She sat by the entrance and noticed him as soon as he entered the place. She waited until he received his order and was about to leave before waving him over. Laurie opened her mouth but didn’t have the chance to speak because he exclaimed, "Laurie? Is that really you?"