Stacy
“Sorry I am late Keenan.”
“It’s okay Stacy. I have a few things I need copied, but everything else is taken care of.”
I was a little surprised that he wasn’t mad at me. I wasn’t just a little late, I was really late and I even disrupted the meeting as I got there.
“I am so sorry Keenan.”
“Really, it’s fine. We all have to take care of things from time to time.”
“So did he call you?”
He grinned and told me that he had. “Said he passed out in the bar you worked at last night and you had to get him up to close up. I guess I should apologize for introducing you. Chris has changed a lot in the last year, or maybe it is just the way I look at things now and I used to be just as bad.”
“There is no need to apologize. You aren’t his keeper.”
“I have never seen him act this way with a woman before. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that he was in love.” My heart was beating hard in my ears, roaring so loudly that I couldn’t hear much else.
What did he mean by that?
“Stacy?”
“Huh?”
“So did everything work out okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. I locked up and he got into his car and left.”
“Well thank you for being so helpful. I don’t know what has gotten into him lately.”
“We all go through fazes.” Why was I acting like it was no big deal? It was a huge deal and the more I was around Chris, the harder it was to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal at all.
“You handled it very well and I thank you for that. Chris is a very old and very good friend. He has went off the rails a couple of times before and gotten into trouble, but he has a good heart. He needs to be grounded a little though and the best thing for him was to sleep it off. I hope he has a crick in his neck for a week to remind him to stop being an idiot.”
“How do you guys know each other?” I was still convinced that all of the rich people met together once and a while secretly.
“We met in college. It seems like it was a lifetime ago, over a decade ago.” Keenan smiled and looked down, aware that he had just disclosed his age. I didn’t really care either way, though I wouldn’t have guessed he was that old.
“You said he has gone off the rails before?”
Keenan nodded and I was thankful that he didn’t seem to want to know why I was so interested. I knew that it would be wondered about and I was thankful that he wasn’t giving me a hard time about it. He seemed too into the conversation and his own memories to realize anything else.
“Yeah. He has no base. No family to tell him to cool out. So he goes off and has a few benders, gets in fights. He is in his thirties now and he needs to be more careful. He has a lot of money and someone would love to sue him for as much as they could. I don’t think Chris would care too much, but I know that I hate to see him that way.”
Keenan gave me a lot to think about and a lot of paperwork to bundle and send to several businesses. It was good to have work to do to keep me busy, Keenan paid far better than the bar did, but I wished for something that would take my mind off of what Keenan had told me. I had a family to keep me grounded and I started to wonder what would be different in my life if I hadn’t.
My mind kept going back and forth from Chris now and a Chris then. He told me that he had worked all through college and now it made more sense. Chris was self-made and he most likely understood me more than I had first given him credit for. I had most likely been the one that was way off in my assessment of him. I thought that I knew what he was about, but after talking to Keenan I wasn’t so sure. He talked about Chris a lot and I had a feeling that he was closer to what his friend was then I did.
I went home confused and again thinking about Chris. It was becoming a routine that was hard to shake. He was hard to shake. I asked him this morning if that would be our last meeting, but I really hoped it wasn’t. I wanted to see him again. I really did, even if I knew that it was going to be trouble.
***
I didn’t see Chris again for another week and I feared that he was going to take my word for it and I wouldn’t see him again. He said the bar was a coincidence, but he said the same about coming to the hotel. Was he really going to stay away? And if he was, why was I so upset with the idea of it all? I knew that it was for the best, so why did I feel like I had lost something of great value that I wasn’t going to get back?
That was my dilemma and the problem was that I didn’t even know where Chris was. I certainly couldn’t ask my employer about him. If Keenan didn’t bring him up, neither did I. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want Keenan to know that I had fallen for his friend.
Wait, was that what this was? Had I fallen for the man that I could never have? I just shook my head. It was about my luck if I was honest. I never had good luck with of it and I knew that I had to change my feelings towards him. If I didn’t, I was never going to get my heart back. I wasn’t ready to throw it away, not like that.
But then Chris just popped up like he seemed to always do. This time it was at a store that I went to for shopping right down the road from my house. I had the night off and I was grabbing something to make for dinner.
“Fancy meeting you here Stacy.”
I rolled my eyes. “So what are you doing here Chris? Do you even do your own shopping?” I imagined that he had a person that he paid to do all of that mundane stuff for him.
“Of course I do my own shopping.”
“So where is it?”
He had an empty cart and he looked over at the fruit in front of him and grabbed a bag of lemons up.
“You needed lemons?”
“Yep.”
“For what?”
He paused and didn’t answer. “Well for lemonade.”
He was full of it and I told him so. “What are you making with all of this?”
“Bulgogi.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a Korean dish. It is really good and I never have time to cook with both jobs and everything.”
“You work too hard. How do you do it all and go to school?”
“The same as you I suppose.”
“I don’t like to see you struggle Stacy.”
The only thing I was struggling with was the handful of things in my hands. I put my things in his cart and told him that he could help me stop struggling by pushing the cart and helping me shop. There was a silence between us, but I didn’t take it badly. It was a comfortable one that I was okay with. He was here and everything felt right with the world, even if my insides shook from his presence.
“So are you going to invite me over for dinner Stacy?”
I sighed and asked him if he was going to be good.
“Of course Stacy, I am always good.”
He had a grin on his face and I was afraid he was right about that. I bet he was good at many things.
“Fine, come over for dinner, but you really need to just stop popping up like this Chris.”
“Can I help it that fate seems to be thrusting us back together again? I can’t stop fate Stacy. It is just meant to be, me and you.”
“Meant to be?”
“I know, sounds cheesy, but it is the way it is. If I would have heard someone saying that before, I would have told them they were an idiot. You have made me into an idiot Stacy and the worst part is that I don’t really care.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I did like when he called himself an idiot. “You were an idiot before I met you Chris. I don’t want to take credit for that.”
He growled at me and I made my way to the register. I put his lemons up on the conveyor belt and I told him that he could make me some lemonade for dinner. Chris didn’t look that sure and I was going to most likely find it hilarious when he didn’t even know how to make that. He may have had to grow up and do things on his own when he was younger, but Chris was now a man that was very accustomed to getting everything that he wanted.
We left the store and his driver followed me to my house. He told the man to leave, but I am sure he was a block or two away, awaiting his call to pick him up. I found it weird to have a man driving me around, but for Chris I guess it was normal. It is funny what normal can be sometimes for some people.
There was a moment before I opened my door that I was nervous of what he would think. My mind was on a million things, but I didn’t want him to think less of me. My residence was assuredly far less classy than his. I had a feeling that my whole apartment would fit in one of his rooms. I knew that Chris had a huge mansion, but I just wasn’t sure where. A guy like him most likely had several huge houses to call his own.
But this apartment was mine and we couldn’t all be rich. I tried to push the worry aside. What else could I do? This is where I lived and for some reason Chris seemed into me. I don’t know why, but I was going to enjoy it while it lasted. An evening with Chris was a little nerve racking, but at the same time I was excited to be with him.