Page 17 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“Diane’s old boyfriend.”

“He was not,” I protested. “We were just friends, that’s all.”

“Keep telling yourself that. But now that you’ve run into each other, you can give him a second chance. You could never see the poor boy was nuts over you.”

That’s what I’d thought too. But on the night of the senior prom, he’d proved me wrong.

“Just a coincidence,” I said. “We’ll be here together for a few weeks, then he’ll be on his way. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.”

“But what an opportunity,” Kathleen said. She picked up a pickle spear and held it partway into her mouth before snapping off the end with her teeth.

I shuddered at the image that crept into my mind.

“You should go out with him,” Liz urged. She’d obviously missed Kathleen’s obscene action. “It’s been a while since you and Larry divorced.”

“I’m beyond all of that,” I said. “Done with men. Besides we’ve got the next year planned for our adventure.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Liz protested. “I know you and Larry weren’t all that happy. I think the right man is waiting out there for you.”

While I wanted to tell her to mind her own beeswax, I could never be harsh with Liz. She’d always seemed a little fragile.

“I’m sure you two could find something to do,” Kathleen said.

She would not let it go.

“We did talk about doing a few things together,” I said. “I’ll be sure to announce it when we take a walk so you can get there ahead of us to spy.”

“I wasn’t spying last night,” she protested.

“Right.” I pushed my plate away. I didn’t need any more potato salad. Just as well she interrupted me. “We were friends then, and that’s all we’re going to be now.”

“There was a disappointing lack of kissy-face,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.

I looked over at her. How far was she going to push this?

Liz started laughing.

“You guys,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’d forgotten how you two could get.” She looked at me. “Don’t put any rules on your relationship with Joe. We can adapt, no matter what.” Then she turned to Kathleen. “And you. Leave her alone.”

“Spoil sport,” Kathleen said.

“Hush.”

I let a smile return to my own face, but inside I strengthened my resolve. This year was for me and my sisters. No man was going to change our time together.

Chapter Six

Kathleen’s comment about Joe being nuts over me in high school played over in my mind as I drove back to the RV park. It forced me back to a time I’d firmly put in the rearview mirror decades ago.

Joe and I had been seated next to each other in junior high English; the teacher’s effort to maintain some classroom order by putting us boy-girl-boy. He’d been a bit of a cut-up, clearly quick with words and a sense of the depths language could plumb. I hadn’t been quite sure what to make of him.

In pre-algebra, our roles were somewhat reversed. Numbers always came easily for me, and manipulating letters as if they were integers seemed logical. It had been an alien world to Joe. When we realized we were in the same study hall, we petitioned the teacher frequently to study together.

The next year we’d gone our separate ways in classes, only to have our classes intersect again in high school social studies. This turned out to be a shared passion, each of us willing to drill down to see how actions of the past had created the present. Somewhere in our senior year during an honors class on current events, we’d both come to the conclusion that it took a great deal of effort to get humanity out of its circular rut of war, treaties, a short peace, broken promises, and a return to war.

Those were the topics that had kept us talking during our long walks in the three mountain ranges surrounding Butte’s valley.

Had we held hands?

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