Page 94 of Suddenly Dating
Mallory dropped Lola home after swinging by a fish market in Black Springs so Lola could pick up some lobsters.
“Harry is a lucky guy!” Mallory said.
Yes, he was a lucky guy, and as usual, Lola was the one on the outside of luck.
She’d put on a skirt and a T-shirt, donned herLast Time I Cooked, Hardly Anyone Got Sickapron, and made a batch of her famous garlic-cheese mashed potatoes. She was boiling the water for lobster when Harry came in from work, looking more disheveled than usual.
“Hey,” he said, smiling fondly as he walked into the kitchen.
“Do you like lobster? They were on sale.”
He smiled hopefully. “Ilovelobster,” he said, leaning over the bar to look at her preparations. “Are you inviting me?”
“I am.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. Thank you. I’ll get cleaned up.”
As he started for his room, his phone rang. Harry dug it out of his pocket and looked at it. He shoved it back in his pocket.
That call was from Melissa, Lola was certain. Perhaps more than anything, Lola hated being envious of the beautiful Melissa.
Harry returned as Lola was finishing up the lobsters. They sat at the kitchen bar with the paper lobster bibs Lola had found in the utility room. They talked amicably about the day. Harry had to crawl up on a truss to inspect some bolts, which explained how disheveled he’d looked. He reported he’d heard through the grapevine that the bid specs for the toll road bridges would be out soon. “I hope so, because I don’t have anything lined up at the moment,” he said. “How is your book coming along?”
“Slow,” Lola admitted. “I haven’t had much time to work on it.”
He looked oddly concerned. “Are you overextended? Because you were so into it.”
“I’m still into it. I love writing.” Lola truly believed it was her calling. But... there was something holding her back. She could feel it growing like a vine in her. At first it had been her disappointment about Harry and Melissa. That had morphed into a bigger thing over the last couple of days. She said she was stuck... but the truth was that she was petrified of continuing on. She ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass. “My problem is that I have this unnatural fear of disappointment,” she said. “And when Birta said she liked it, that it showed promise, I was over the moon. But then...I started to panic.”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to explain. When I was growing up, I was constantly disappointed. It seemed like every time I got my hopes up that things were going to be different or better, or at least bearable, something would happen to crush those hopes and disappoint me. And now, I think I live in fear of it.”
Harry stopped eating. “But you can’t live in fear of it. Disappointment is part of life. If you’re never disappointed, you can’t really understand true happiness.”
“Oh I know,” she said, nodding. “I get that. And still, I can’t help it. I know that I work really hard to avoid chances because I have that fear in me,” she said. “This book makes that fear worse. Generally, it’s people who disappoint me, but my book is all me. It will bemedisappointing me.” She sighed and shook her head. “That must sound completely whacko to you.”
“No,” Harry said. “I totally get it.”
Lola snorted. “You’ve probably been disappointed like three times in your life.”
“Not true. I’ve been disappointed many times. My big fear is failure.”
“It is?” she asked, surprised by his admission.
“Oh yeah,” he said with an adamant nod. “My biggest fear is that I will have given up a really great job to go out on my own, and for whatever reason, I can’t make it work. If that happens, I’ll have to live with myself somehow. But I know me, and I’d be miserable. So the fear of failing drives me. It makes me work that much harder. It makes me take chances.”
Lola smiled. “Are you going to tell me I’m not working hard enough?”
“No, I’m going to point out that you’re working so hard at not being disappointed, you’re already disappointing yourself. I can see it in your eyes, Lola. I just hope you don’t wake up one day wondering if you could have sold that book. Or wondering where all those passed chances might have led you.” He took her hand in his, stroked her knuckle with his thumb, and looked directly into her eyes. “I know it’s not easy to step out on a limb. But I also know if you really want something, you have to do it. You can’t cling to the tree. You can do it—you are braver than anyone I know.”
Lola smiled a little. “I’m not brave. I can hardly ride a bike.”
“Yeah, you are.” He held her hand against his knee. “Look at what you did—you raised your siblings even though you were a kid yourself. You have kept your family together under circumstances so difficult that I can’t even fathom what it must have been like. This book is a cakewalk in comparison. You’ve already lived the hardest part of your life. So don’t worry about disappointing yourself. Because you won’t.”
His silver-green eyes were filled with the warmth and light of the setting sun behind her. How had this perfect man walked into her life? “Wow. You’re handsomeandsmart.”
He grinned. “Nope. I’m just pretty good at knowing the value of things.”
