Page 30 of Love Bites

“Good. I’m glad. I enjoy your voice as well. It’s peppered with that charming way you all have of dropping your Rs in some words then adding them to others that don’t have one.”

I thought to argue but opted to just accept the truth. I may, on occasion, say“dear”as“dee yah”, but so did everyone else in Caldwell Crossing.

“If we’re comparing accents…” I sat back into the pillows behind me with a coy little smile.

“Ah, well, mine is quite elegant and European would you not agree?”

I could hear the humor in his tone. My mind’s eye pulled his visage, that handsome face with small lines at the eyes and corners of his beautiful mouth, a rapscallion’s smile on those sexy lips.

“I suppose,” I had to concede. “Phillip, are we doing the right thing?”

“Yes, do not doubt it.”

He was always so damn sure of himself, his course in life, while I floundered around like a…well…like a flounder.

“I’ll try not to,” I promised. To him as well as myself. “Did you schedule your flight?”

“Yes, tomorrow from Logan at some ungodly hour. We have to leave the local airport even earlier. Edgar was not pleased to have to cut his date with Capucine short this evening even though I told him that I was fully capable of flying in my own jet by myself.”

His own jet. Holy shit. What kind of Carrington-Colby world had I fallen into?

“Haider?”

“Sorry, I was daydreaming about 80s primetime soap operas.” Now I knew what to watch tonight. My box set of the complete four seasons ofDynasty.The cats would love it. I’d start at the beginning and recite the dialog word for word as I normally did. Could I help it if Joan Collins was everything and all that in a Nolan Miller wide-brimmed hat?

“If only we could all be as debonair as Blake Carrington.”

Okay, that sealed it. This was the man for me. “So tell me how you know who Blake Carrington is.”

“Whodoesn’tknow who Blake Carrington is?”

Yep. I was a goner.

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS WEREsomething special. Always had been.

Even as a kid the weekends were magical fun times. Saturdays filled with cartoons, bike rides, and adventures with the guys. Sundays started out in church, Mamie and my mother were devout Catholics, and while I had been baptized and confirmed in the church, I was meh about organized religion as a whole. But they had insisted I go so I went. Unwillingly. Once I was free though it was a rush to change into jeans, sneakers, and a Green Day tee to meet up with my friends. When it was warm we would swim or fly kites, when it was colder we’d play video games or sled. We were always busy, always together. Like four peas in a rambunctious pod Mamie would say as she shoved us out of the door. She did not believe in boys sitting inside when they could be outdoors. That was something I now was thankful for because even if there were times I wanted to linger under the covers until noon or play a shooter game on my X-Box Mamiewould not allow it. Fresh air was the cure for all of my woes, she assured me. And while that was charming it was considerably outdated because when my anxiety was clawing at me as it did from time to time, it didn’t matter if I was on the sofa or wading through the creek.

As I sat on the bank with the Stonebridge bridge to my left, I drank in the beauty of this area of the states. New Hampshire was really gorgeous. I was thankful that I may not have to sell the shop after all, but that brought new worries I was going to not focus on. One of the things I used to do when I felt the fangs of anxiety scraping my jugular was to visualize a peaceful place. I was sitting at one of the most peaceful places in the world. Smiling at the sun streaming through the leaves of the mighty tree above me, I slid down the hill leaving my sneakers and socks on the bank, and rolled up my pant legs. I had nothing but an empty cup from a quick stop at the local coffee shop and a yearning to recapture some of my youth.

I waded out into the water. It was so damn cold I gasped. “Oh shit!” I’d forgotten how chilly these mountain-fed streams could be. With the determination to catch at least one darn skipper I began my search for the little bugs that walked on water. They were generally found in the quieter parts of the creek where the native brook trout lingered in small holes.

“Are you trying to get frostbitten toes?” Ryan called down to me. I straightened, waved at him to join me, and then grinned madly when he did. “Oh shit! It’s just as cold as I remembered!”

“Seriously, I think it might be colder.”

“Nah, it’s just that we’re all old men now.”

“As if. I’m still in my prime.”

“Prime middle age,” he clapped back with a snort of amusement.

“Fuck all the way off,” I replied.

He then walked over to me and we began searching for skippers as trout darted this way and that. Back in the day we would have tried to catch them by hand. We never could but we would have tried. Now we stood stock-still to admire the flash of a reddish-orange belly. After about fifteen minutes our feet were too cold to take it any longer so we climbed the rocky bank, sat down under the tree, and let our feet air dry.

“We caught no skippers,” I lamented while staring into my empty cup. Not that I had any great plans for what I would have done with the insects had we captured some. “Remember that time we caught four of them then took them to your house and dumped them into your sister’s iced tea?”

“I remember her chasing us down and making us eat dirt,” he said as he leaned back on straight arms, the wind blowing warm gusts over our cold toes.

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