by Dan Dillard
Chapter 9
As I said, two significant things happened. Matt’s leaving was the first. We said our goodbyes and made our promises. Most of which we kept. A handful of long-hand letters were exchanged, and we called each other long distance once a week on average to talk about sports and women and even politics and other things that seemed so adult at the time. I studied a lot and stayed in a lot. I had just turned twenty-one, but I was a hermit in my apartment every night and most weekends. I worked retail jobs or waited tables to pay my rent while I went to school.
In Matt’s absence, I searched for new friends. I wasn’t looking for a best friend because that was always Matt’s role, but I felt I needed one or two folks to waste time with, to goof off with, and to keep me from going insane. I found a few. Some of them I keep in touch with to this day, but none ever came close to being a brother—there was too much history, too much hurt and recovery required to become that close.
The other significant thing was a girl.
Her name was Victoria—Vicky to her friends. She had long hair the color of dark chocolate and thoughtful, brown eyes that showed equal parts intelligence, love, and mischief. Vicky had just graduated college and moved back home while she job-hunted. I saw her one weekend while I was visiting mom, dad and Danny. He had just graduated high school and we were all at a neighborhood cookout celebrating the Fourth of July. Danny had his own friends and Matt was busy with work, so I was there all by myself when I saw Vicky. Only it wasn’t the girl I had loved as a child, there was a confident and beautiful woman standing there with a plastic cup of beer in her hand.
“Victoria Rutledge,” I said trying to sound smooth.
I wasn’t smooth. I’d had a crush on her for almost ten years. It was the kind of crush where a boy puts a girl on a pedestal so high, he can never reach her. A pedestal so high, she might fall and then everything would crash around him. Vicky’s pedestal was so high I needed binoculars.
She smiled at me and I think she said my name, but I was already lost in that smile. I still enjoy getting lost there. Then she said something else and had to repeat herself.
“I said, how’s school?”
She’s speaking to you, idiot. Answer her.
“School? School’s good. Junior this year,”
“Computer science?” she asked.
“Yeah—Hey, how’d you know that?”
“Mom told me. We were talking about who might be here for the party and your name came up.”
“Oh,” I said.
“What will you do? I mean as a computer scientist?” she asked.
“I uh…programming. I’m a programmer.”
She nodded, still smiling, and I was still lost.
“What about you?” I finally asked. “How’s the job search going?”
“Slow.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’ll probably teach. Political science or History,” she said.
“Ugh.”
“I know, not exciting to a lot of people, but I find it all fascinating.”
I nodded.
“Do you have any leads?”
“I’ve had a couple interviews. One of them was very positive.”
I grinned like an idiot, unsure of what else to say, and instead of talking, I stared off into the distance. As luck would have it, Vicky was a master of conversation.
“How long are you here?” she asked.
“A few days. Or until I can’t stand being around John any longer.”
“John?”
I pointed and took a sip of my drink, a Coke. She looked across the lawn toward where my father was talking with hers. They appeared to have been discussing the appropriate amount of time that needed to pass before a man needed to flip a hamburger patty on the grill. She shook her head up and down and her mouth formed a silent O.
“He still drinking?” she said.
I didn’t know. I glanced at him again to see if he had a beer in his hand, but he didn’t.
“I don’t know. Danny hasn’t mentioned it.”
“Maybe that’s a good sign. How is Danny?”
I laughed. “He’s good. Graduated high school a month ago and he’s ready to take on the world. Wants to be an attorney.”
“Wow.”
That’s all she said. For a moment I was jealous of my brother. He got a Wow! His ambition was enough to impress a girl like Vicky and I couldn’t even look at her without blushing .
“I guess,” I said.
“Do you think he’ll make it?”
“Oh yeah. He’s smart. Smarter than I am, anyway. He’ll get there.”
She smiled and smacked me lightly on the arm.
“I bet your pretty smart, too,” she said.
The two of us stood there on her back deck, leaning against the handrail for a long time without speaking. The sun was hot, even the breeze was hot, and I felt sweat drip down between my shoulder blades. She looked as fresh as a breath mint. When she caught me staring, she flashed me another brilliant smile and unlike the unfortunate KK, who I often wonder about and wish well, Vicky was sexy. In my estimation, the sexiest woman I’d ever met. I looked away and tried to take another drink from my cup, only there was nothing left but ice. The cube spun around the bottom of the cup as I tipped it, then it let loose and bopped me in the teeth, splattering water all over my face. I don’t think she noticed, but my cheeks reddened and I tried to wipe my face dry with as much dignity as I could summon.
A breeze blew through the party and cooled the water on my face. It was that moment when I noticed something. I was no longer thirteen and she was no longer fifteen. I was twenty-one and she was a college graduate. She didn’t roll her eyes at me anymore and she hadn’t treated me like her brother’s pest of a friend. As I watched the wisps of her hair blowing in that summer breeze like a cheesy commercial, I found some courage. As I opened my mouth to speak, she turned to me and she had her lower lip pinned under her teeth in an expression I have grown to love.
“Hey, do you want to grab dinner with me sometime?” she said. “Or maybe we could catch a movie?”
They were the seventeen greatest words ever spoken. Ten Commandments…The Gettysburg Address…I have a dream. It was all Dr. Seuss compared to what this glorious woman had just said. I was exhilarated and nervous and my face felt hot, but I couldn’t help but grin—that same idiot—and shake my head yes.
“Definitely,” I replied. “Yes, definitely. That would be great.”