Page 24 of A Lifetime in 30 Days
She sighed. “You’re right.” Now she settled her hands on top of the menu, clasping her fingers, which just didn’t want to remain still. “I thought there was something between us that day in the park. But the interaction was so brief. There was so much going on that day. We didn’t even get each other’s names.” Which, later that night, she’d thought was kind of romantic. Again, like something in a movie. They had this encounter and then walked away without knowing how to get in contact with each other, but they were both longing for the other. Such wild nonsense that she almost cringed at the thought now.
“I know. I kept looking for you on campus that week, hoping I’d bump into you again. I was definitely going to get your name and hopefully your number that time.”
His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket. He glanced at the screen momentarily, swiped to dismiss the call, then put it back. All the while she watched him move, her gaze transfixed by the deep-mochahue of his skin, bared by the short-sleeve beige shirt he wore. There was a tattoo on his right bicep—the Greek letters of his frat, she recognized by the bottom half she could see. She wondered if he had more ink on his beautiful skin.
“You had a girlfriend,” she blurted out. “When we all went to the movies together that first time, she was with you.”
“She was a date, not a girlfriend. I was still nursing some feelings of regret for not making a move on the girl with the pretty smile and great taste in jeans,” he said.
Vanna had been thick all her life, and she’d never lacked for attention from guys. She knew how to dress to accentuate all her best features and loved the admiration she received for her efforts. Yet she hadn’t forgotten the way Aden had looked at her that first day, or many times after that.
“You and Yvette eventually became a couple,” she said. “You dated her until y’all graduated. What happened after that?”
“We stopped dating,” he said with a shrug.
“Did you ever get married?”
“No,” was his quick reply. “And I wished you hadn’t either. At least, not to Caleb.”
Oh. That was a turn she hadn’t expected in this conversation she’d never imagined having, and she couldn’t have been more thankful for the server who approached them at that moment. They turned their attention to the menus at that point. He ordered food, and she requested that coffee that he’d offered her because she was going to need something strong to keep her wits together during the rest of this interlude. And not alcoholic strong, because that, coupled with the hum of sexual tension circling them, would surely make a dangerous combination.
“So,” he said after the server left them to put their order in, “tell me what you’ve been doing these last fifteen years.”
She was just about to sayliving through an emotionally exhausting marriage, when he held up a hand. “Tell me about whatyou’vebeendoing, not about who you were married to or what that relationship was like.”
“The two are intricately entwined,” she said, then huffed. “Even after death, it seems.”
“Hey,” he said, and reached a hand across the table to take hers.
She stared down at this connection, his fingers moving along the back of her hand, turning it around until their fingers linked. It was meant to be a casual touch, she knew, but it felt deeper, more intimate. That thought didn’t scare her as much as it probably should’ve.
“Jovani’s a great lawyer. He’s going to get to the bottom of whatever is going on,” he said.
“Why did you pay him for me? Why are you here now?” She frowned as she looked up at him. For as much as she’d always known she could take care of herself, she wasn’t averse to men doing nice things for her. She just hadn’t experienced that interaction frequently.
“This is the weirdest reunion, Aden,” she said honestly. “First, we meet and there’s this buzz of ... I don’t know, something. Then we meet again, and I’m with Caleb and you’re with Yvette. We spend a couple of years around each other more than we were around our family, and then we don’t see each other again until fifteen years later. When Caleb dies.” She released a heavy sigh and felt the prick of tears. “This has been an eventful first two weeks of my birthday month.”
He squeezed her hand. “Then how ’bout we focus on making the next two weeks better?”
Bowling on Saturday was definitely a better excursion than Vanna’s solo club venture last weekend. Jamaica and Ronni had laughed till they had tears in their eyes as she told them about how she’d skedaddled out of that parking lot when Tyson’s baby mama showed up. And she would be forever grateful that even though she’d been ready to follow him to thathotel and ride him like a racehorse, she had yet to give him her phone number, which meant they’d had no further interaction since that night.
Bowling was something Vanna didn’t do often, but she did enjoy it. For a couple of years, Caleb had been part of a league, so she’d spent some time at bowling alleys, trying to support him. And on weekends when he would practice, she would join him. She didn’t want to feel like tonight was paying any homage to him, but from the moment she woke up this morning, he’d been on her mind.
And not just Caleb, but also their college years, their friends, the life they built together. Aden.
Vanna had always treated her experience with guys as an adventure. It was fun flirting and meeting them, nice when she allowed some of those meetings and flirtations to turn intimate, and, more often than not, disastrous when their end came. Caleb hadn’t been her first run of bad luck with a guy. He had just been her longest. Still, each time had seemed to hammer home the fact that she wasn’t meant to be in a lasting and loving relationship. She wasn’t meant to be loved and cherished.
A heavy sigh followed that observation.
One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.
The favored words from one of her cards in the box popped into her head like an alarm reminding her that she could choose to be happy.
Not yet ready to get out of bed, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, returning her thoughts to the man she’d spent two hours talking to at a diner last night. Or rather, earlier this morning, because it had been almost two thirty when he’d dropped her off at her house. Jamaica had texted her not long after she’d left the house to let her know they were leaving, and that, yes, she would follow Granny home to make sure she got there safely. And Vanna had texted their group thread to let Jamaica and Ronni know when she’d arrived home. Jamaica’s reply had come quickly.
Jamaica:We want all the details at first daylight
A slow turn of Vanna’s head showed that the large, bright numbers on the clock on her nightstand read 7:23 a.m. She’d always been a morning person, even though she woke up groggily; she couldn’t sleep late into the morning unless she was sick. The sun was up, she could see the golden rays trying to peek through the closed blinds at her window, but she made no move to pick up her phone and give her friends the details she knew they were both waiting for.
