Chapter Sixteen

Gwendolyn

I sat on a towel on the metal bleachers, leaned back against the uppermost bench looking out over the baseball field. The afternoon was vibrantly sunny, and the spring warmth had finally settled in. My skin was eagerly soaking up the sun, and I closed my eyes and tilted my head back to enjoy a soft breeze that had begun to blow. I heard a loud crack and a cheer rose up from the rest of the people on the bleachers. I lifted my head and saw the batter fling his bat behind him as he took off toward first base. He didn't slow down as he approached, but took a turn and continued on towards second. By the time he was sprinting towards third, I could see his face. Jason was beaming beneath his batting helmet, his expression the purest and most carefree joy that I had ever seen on his face.

I clapped and saw him glance over at me.

"He's sure happy that you're here."

I looked beside me and saw Garrett standing there. His arm was still tethered to his chest to protect his collarbone and he was leaning on one leg as if to take pressure off the one that had been the most bruised, but he was smiling.

"You're here," I said. "I didn't know that you had gotten discharged."

"Well, you stopped coming to visit me, so I couldn't have told you."

"I thought that it was better if you rested and focused on healing," I said.

The truth was I had wanted more than anything to be there in the hospital with him. I would have spent every moment sitting beside the bed, just watching him to make sure that he was still alright. But he had never asked me to stay and I knew that I needed to get back to work. Jason had continued to stay with me while his father recovered, and he made sure to give me updates on his condition every time he visited the hospital.

"I feel like I have been in that hospital bed forever," he said. "As soon as the doc said he was going to spring me, I got on the phone with Billy from the station and told him to come get me. I haven't even been home yet. I had him drop me off here so that I could surprise Jason. I haven't been able to watch him play for a long time."

"He certainly seems to love it," I said. "And you're right, he's incredibly talented."

Garrett nodded as he watched Jason lean forward, his hands on his thighs as he bobbed back and forth, ready to run for home as soon as he had the opportunity.

"Thank you," he said.

"For what?" I asked.

"For doing this for him. For making sure that he could play."

I shook my head.

"I didn't do anything. He did it. He talked to me after everything, and he said that he knew what he needed to be doing and that he needed to get his stuff together. He might have used slightly different words than that, but in the situation, I will go against popular opinion and employ some censorship. We agreed that there were some pretty serious extenuating circumstances in place, circumstances that didn't have anything to do with baseball, and that if he was really serious about buckling down and applying himself, I was willing to let him do the retest and write an extra paper to get his grade up. And I must say, he did spectacularly well. He earned every second that he is out on that field."

"How is the burrito doing?"

"Fajita," I corrected. "He's doing fine. He and The Reverend are getting along very well. Maybe you could come over and visit him. We could have dinner."

My heart was pounding in my chest and butterflies were swarming in my belly as I asked him. Garrett smiled and nodded.

"I'd like that," he said.

"Good," I said.

The people in the bleachers around me jumped to their feet and roared again, and I realized that I had missed something. I stood up and strained to look over the people ahead of me to see the field.

"Go, go, go!" Garrett cheered from beside me.

"What happened?" I asked.

"A double", he said. "Jason scored."

I clapped and cheered right along with everyone else around me.

The next night I rushed around my kitchen making dinner, occasionally zipping out to check the living room yet again and make sure that it looked perfect. My nerves spiked when I heard the doorbell and I scolded myself for being so ridiculous. He was just coming over for dinner. This was, by far, the least intimate thing that we had ever done together. It's not like I didn't know him or had never been in the same space with him. Yet I was nervous. I opened the door and Garrett stood there with flowers in his hand. I felt myself blush as I reached for them.

"Thank you," I said.

As I took them I realized that there were two bunches. I looked at him strangely and Garrett looked as though he just remembered something.

"Oh, yes. This one isn't for you," he said.

He took a group of tea roses from my hand and carried them over to the couch where the cats were curled together in a single small dog bed, completely ignoring the fact that there was another one inches away. He propped the flowers next to the bed and scratched The Bishop on his head.

"They're for him," he said.

"For him?"

"He went through a lot, too," he said. "The least I can do is bring him flowers during his recovery. Isn't that what people do?"

I thought of the carnations that I’d had delivered to Garrett's hospital room and smiled. It was such an unexpected gesture and one that instantly made me fall a little harder.

Garrett spent the next three hours at my house and by the time we both knew he should be heading home, I felt like we knew each other completely differently. We had laughed our way through dinner and curled into each other to watch a movie. As the credits rolled, I realized that I had no idea what happened in the movie because I had spent the entire time just enjoying having his arm around me and my head on his chest and listening to his heartbeat. I had never been so thankful to hear a heartbeat. I had been terrified every moment that he was in the hospital. Even when the doctors told me that he was doing better, even when he opened his eyes, even when Jason told me that he had gotten out of bed and was walking up and down the hallways. I was so afraid that I was going to lose him.

I walked with him to the front door and he turned and looked into my face. His eyes burned into mine then he reached forward to wrap his arm around my waist. He ducked his head down and pressed his lips to mine. It was just a kiss, but it seared into me, reaching a part of me that none of our other kisses had. Our lips parted, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against mine.

"Goodnight," he murmured.

He walked out of the house, leaving me breathless. Over the next few weeks, we fell into a comfortable pattern together. Evenings were spent having dinner together, watching movies, and taking walks in the mild weather. On weekends we took adventures together, though many of those adventures were such things as shopping for new furniture for his house or driving several towns over to visit a farmer’s market that we didn't know had been shut down until we already got there. It didn't matter what we were doing. We were together. He held my hand or wrapped his arm around my waist. Sometimes he would lean down and brush a kiss against my head or on my lips. Some nights we would steal a few hours together and he would hold me in his arms and show me the breathtaking, indescribable passion that seems to come from deep within him.

As the days passed and spring break drew closer, however, I couldn't help but think about the trip that I had planned with my parents. I didn't want to think about the days that I would spend away from Garrett. I hadn't yet mentioned it to him. The truth was I had a huge decision that I needed to make, an opportunity that had just presented itself to me and that I needed to decide on before I left. I still didn't know what to do. There were many times when I started to tell Garrett, to find out what he thought about it, but each time I started, something inside me stopped. Even with all the time that we were spending together and the closeness that I could feel forming, I still felt like he was closed off from me. I knew that I was still closed off from him too. Whenever we were together we talked about trips we had gone on and the careers that we had thought we would have when we were younger, the things that we wanted to do, the hopes that we had. We even mentioned a few plans that we could pursue together. But he never mentioned his childhood. He never mentioned his parents. He never mentioned his ex-wife. There was a whole part of him that he kept hidden away from me. At the same time, I never talked about Michael or my ex-husband.

That was something that I needed from Garrett before I could change my plans or even begin to consider doing anything different because of him. Finally, one night we were sitting in my living room watching a TV show that I wasn't paying attention to and he looked at me with a wide smile.

"I was thinking," he said. "Jason is spending a few days of spring break with one of his friends. Their family is going to the beach and they invited him to go with them. I thought that that would be the perfect opportunity for us to go on a little trip of our own together."

I drew in a deep breath. I knew that I didn't have any option now.

"Actually," I said. "There's something that I need to tell you. It's about spring break."

"What about it?" he asked.

The Reverend and The Bishop had both crawled into his lap and were making a multicolored fur swirl on his thighs. I was surprised by The Reverend's total change of heart when it came to Garrett. It was like the night that he attacked him, he could sense my upset and was trying to have my back, but now that Garrett and I were on good terms, he was a good lap and a reliable source of petting.

"My parents planned a vacation. I'm actually taking some vacation time from work and will be gone for two weeks."

He nodded.

"Oh." He said. "Well, that's fine. I guess I'll just have to miss you for two weeks. Make sure that you don't have anything planned for a few days after you get home."

He had a mischievous glint in his eyes and I wished that I could just fall into him, but there was more that I needed to tell him.

"It's not just that," I said. "When they were planning the vacation, they found out about a research opportunity and got me in touch with the program director. I'm supposed to meet with her during the vacation and talk about possibly participating in the program. If I was accepted, I would be gone for a year."

I waited for him to react. I waited for him to protest or to tell me that he didn't want me to go. I waited for him to look hesitant or even sad. But none of that happened. He picked up his drink and took a long swig out of it, then looked at me with an almost blank expression.

"That sounds like fun," he said.

I felt my heart break. That was nothing like the reaction that I wanted. I wanted him to prove to me how he felt about me and about the future of our relationship. Even as I thought that, however, I realized that that was exactly what he had just done. He didn't care how long I was away. He knew that he would be able to find as much willing and eager entertainment as he could possibly want. I didn't think that he didn’t care about me or the time that we were spending together, but it was far from what I needed to hear from him. As he sat there beside me I realized that he was exactly what I thought. I couldn't trust him or my feelings for him. I couldn't trust that he had real feelings for me. I knew, now, that it was time that I just moved forward. I couldn't put my life on hold for something abstract, something that might be there but that may never be. That night when he kissed me goodbye, it didn't feel as powerful. I felt like he was already slipping away.

Garrett

I felt like it was getting harder and harder to breathe the further that I drove away from Gwendolyn's house that night. I was still trying to process what she told me. In all the time that we had been spending together the last few weeks, she hadn't bothered to mention her spring break vacation to me or the fact that she might just be leaving for a year. I was furious at her for keeping that from me, but I also felt like my heart was being shredded. I told myself that I couldn't understand why she was doing this, we were getting along so well, and I thought we were really enjoying being together, and then she suddenly pushes me away.

Deep inside though, I knew exactly why she was doing it. As much time as we were spending together and as much as we were becoming a part of each other's lives, I hadn't really brought her into mine. She was there, ever present in my mind, but I hadn't yet told her that she had done what no other woman had ever honestly been able to do. She had found a place in my heart. I felt like it wasn't very much to offer her. It was tattered, broken and hardened. But it was what I had and if I was going to have the chance to keep her there, I was going to have to be willing to show it to her. I needed to finally put the past behind me and be courageous enough to look ahead.

Gwendolyn

I spent less time with Garrett over the next few days as I prepared for my trip with my parents. I felt like I was almost easing myself away from him like I was weaning myself from the feeling of having him with me. The day finally came that I was leaving, and I sat in the airport listening to my parents chatter happily about all of the plans that they had for the trip ahead. I knew that they could see the pain that I was going through. They knew that I was unhappy. It seemed that they were doing their best to counteract it with their own enthusiasm. The loneliness inside me had become a deep ache like there was actually a part of me that was empty and hollow. I felt like as soon as I got on that plane I wasn't just leaving my regular life for a couple of weeks, but leaving Garrett and any hope that I had that we would have a future together behind.

Suddenly the air split with the sound of sirens. All around us, everyone in the terminal began to talk, trying to figure out what was happening. I looked over at the airline employees standing at the podium and they all looked just as confused and unsure as all of us felt. The sirens got louder, and we realized that they were coming directly toward the airport. I looked to my parents and at nearly the same moment we grabbed our carry-ons and started toward the door with a flow of other passengers coming along with us. We all shoved our way out of the terminal and into the parking lot, looking around to see if we could see any sign of what had happened. In an instant, I saw the gleaming red fire truck coming toward me. The siren turned off, but the lights were still spinning, and I noticed a figure clinging to the ladder on the back.

As the truck turned into the emergency lane in front of the airport, I saw that it was Garrett. He was wearing his uniform except for his mask, and as he jumped down off the back of the truck he took his hat off.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I'm here to respond to an emergency," he said.

"What emergency?" I asked.

"The fact that you might leave without me having a chance to tell you that I'm falling in love with you."

I heard the gasps rising up out of the crowd around me, but I didn't care who was there. All that mattered to me was that Garrett was standing in front of me. I stepped closer to him.

"You are?" I asked.

He nodded.

"I've been falling in love with you since the first moment I saw you, but I wouldn't let myself believe it. I didn't think that I was capable of love, but you've proven to me that I am. Or at least that I am willing to try with everything that I have, to show you what you mean to me."

"I'm falling in love with you, too," I told him. "I think that I fell a long time ago."

He leaned down and kissed me and the crowd behind me cheered. I turned and looked at my parents. They were both beaming, my mother's hands clasped in front of her chest and tears shimmering in my father's eyes.

"You go on with him," my father said.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

My mother nodded.

"Absolutely," she said. "You go on. You wouldn't have been much fun, anyway. Now we can go rock climbing and explore the caves without you telling us that we are too old."

I laughed and rushed to hug both of them.

"We will talk to the program director," my father assured me. "Will let her know that something came up and see what we can do."

I smiled and nodded.

"Thank you."

I turned back to Garrett, but before I could say anything, my father gestured at the fire truck as if he had never seen one.

"Don't worry, sir," Garrett said, walking toward me. "It was a false alarm."

He swept me up into his arms and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He turned to me and kissed me deeply as we walked back to the truck. He hopped back on, lowering me to my feet beside him, and we both gripped the ladder as the truck gave cheerful beeps of the horn and headed away from the airport.