“You’re pouting,” he laughed.
“Yes, I am.” Mia ‘fessed up to it. “I want a Schooner fix now!”
Laughing, “You are very good for my ego, Woman.”
“Schooner Moore, I’ve seen a picture of what you look like now and I am certain your ego is very well stroked by women.”
Sitting back in his big leather desk chair, long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, Schooner could not keep the smile off of his face. “That’s probably true, but Mia Silver telling me she wants a Schooner fix is in a league all by itself, Baby Girl. So I should book this flight?”
“You haven’t already?”
“I just want to make sure you are ok with it.”
“Schooner, I’m ok with it.”
He closed his eyes and smiled. Mia wanted him there. Whoever in a million years would’ve thought this would happen. He certainly didn’t.
“Ok, I’m booked.”
“Yay! So, Thursday morning, huh?”
“Less than forty-eight hours and I’ll be there.” He picked up his latte and took a sip.
“I don’t want to let myself get excited in case something happens or you get here and it’s weird between us.” He could hear the concern in Mia’s voice.
“I don’t think that is going to happen, Mia. But here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to make a reservation at The Stanhope.”
“Schooner, you can stay here,” she interrupted.
“Just hear me out. I don’t want this to be weird. I don’t want you to feel pressured. If you need your space from me. Or you’re just not feeling it. Send me packing up to The Stanhope and we can just hang out during the day and you can show me New York. Does that sound ok?”
Mia was silent.
“Mia, talk to me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking it’s probably a smart idea. But I hate it. Does that make sense?”
Schooner laughed, “Oddly enough, yes. But it also gives us a chance to get to know one another again without the added pressure.”
“Schooner Moore, you are such a gentleman.”
He could just picture her sitting in her office, smiling. “My momma raised me right.” The Stanhope was the last place he wanted to be sleeping, but Schooner knew that Mia had to want him there, she had to feel comfortable with him in her space. He already knew that he would be devastated if she just wasn’t feeling any more than seeing an old friend when they got together. But that was a distinct possibility. Spending a whole weekend with someone you’d just been back in touch with for seventy-two hours was weird to say the least. He felt so certain that he wanted her in his world, but there was a significant chance that once they were face-to-face the old chemistry wouldn’t be there.
As if sensing his energy, in a soft voice she reassured, “It is going to be amazing to see you, Schooner. I might not want to let you leave.” Good answer, Baby Girl.
“I like hearing you tell me that, Baby Girl.” He closed his eyes and sat back in his chair.
“Well, it’s true. I can’t think of anything but you.”
He was smiling ear-to-ear, “It’s smoochal, Baby Girl. It’s smoochal.”
Yoli entered Schooner’s office and sat down across from him. She didn’t say a word.
Schooner just looked at her and smiled.
“I don’t see any visible wounds.”
Schooner let out a hearty laugh, “No, of course you don’t. We fight like WASPS. Considering, it was pretty civilized. I confronted her, she lied, I packed up and left.”
“You know she’s not going to go down without a fight.” There was disgust on Yoli’s face.
Nodding, “I know. This is going to get very ugly. And she knows I’ve spoken to Mia.”
“She had to have been shocked, Schooner.”
“Shocked that she was caught,” he was smiling. “So, I’m taking a redeye to New York tomorrow night. I’ll be gone through the weekend.”
“I’ve got it covered,” she assured him.
“I knew you would.” He could count on Yoli for anything. She was so capable and knew the business inside out. She would make any absences easy for him.
“You excited?” She really wanted some details on this already.
Schooner sighed. Leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, “I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m scared. I feel naked, Yoli. Vulnerable. I feel very vulnerable. I’m not used to that. I hope I’m not setting myself up for a huge disappointment. But I don’t think I am. You’ve seen her,” he pointed to his PC, “she’s adorable. And when we talk, it’s there — that energy we had. The chemistry. It’s still there. So yeah, I’m scared. I lost her once. I just hope that she feels for me what I still feel for her.”
Yoli looked at Schooner with a furrowed brow. “I’ve never seen you not be confident, Schooner. Come on, you know how to turn on the charm better than anyone.”
Schooner laughed. “You know what she would say about that?”
Yoli shook her head.
“She’d tell me, “You’ll have to do better than that, Pretty Boy.”
Yoli burst out laughing, “She calls you on your shit?”
“Yeah, I think the two of you might be soul sisters.”
“I love her already.” As Yoli got up to leave Schooner’s office, she turned to him. “Schooner.”
He looked up from his laptop screen.
“Take as long as you need in New York. If Mia has been in your heart all these years, go get her. Make sure she knows how deeply you feel about her and that you don’t want to lose her again. Don’t lose her again. You deserve happiness.”
“I won’t lose her again. She’s mine.” And the smile that overtook his face was his real smile.
Chapter Seven
It was almost midnight her time on Tuesday night when he grabbed his cell to call her again. They hadn’t talked in nearly twelve hours and the need to hear her voice and make sure everything was still ok with them permeated his every thought. Consciously holding back all afternoon from dialing her, he feared his intensity might overwhelm her, scare her away. I’m beginning to feel like a Stage 5 Clinger wanting to spend every second talking to her, he self-chastised.
“Hi,” she sounded sleepy.
“I woke you again, huh?” He stretched out on the hotel bed, stacking the pillows behind him.
“I must’ve dozed. I was reading some stuff for work.”
“You still good with me coming?” Damn, I sound insecure, he thought.
“I’d be really upset if you cancelled.”
Hearing her say that, he could feel the tension release from his shoulders.
“I missed talking to you this afternoon,” she continued. Good answer, Baby Girl.
“I missed talking to you, too. I didn’t want to monopolize your entire workday.” Actually, I did.
Mia laughed.
“What’s so funny?” He was smiling at the sound of her laughter.
“I have a secret to tell you, Schooner,” she paused. “Whether you are on the phone with me or not, you monopolize my entire workday. My concentration has been shit since your friend request showed up. I can’t think of anything but you. I am just a total spaced-out waste.”
“Well, that’s a good thing, because it’s smoochal, Baby Girl.”
“So, you really loved me freshman year?”
He could hear her ghosts filtering in like a fog. They both needed so much reassurance with one another. It was clear they were each waiting for — no, expecting — the rug to be pulled out from under them — again. It was like the internal alarms were sounding, “Don’t get too happy, this all just might be a dream.”
“Oh Baby Girl, it breaks my heart that you have spent most of your life thinking I didn’t love you. I didn’t stop loving you. But at some point, I finally had to let it go. You weren’t coming back. And you never got in touch with me. I just had to finally let you go.”
“I tried once,” she whispered, “I tried to get in touch with you.
> “You did? When?” When did she try to get in touch?
“It was a few weeks into sophomore year. I confided in a friend at my new school and he convinced me that I needed to talk to you and hear it all from you. So, I got up the nerve to call you one night and Beau answered. He said you weren’t there. I asked him when you’d be back and he told me that you and CJ had just left and you wouldn’t be back until the next day.”
“What?” The scream was out of him before he could modulate it. Fucking motherfucker. There was no way a few weeks into sophomore year he was spending the night at CJ’s. She lived in an all-girls dorm, so he never spent the night there, and early in the semester, he was still pining over Mia. “Motherfucker!”
Mia was silent in the wake of his volatile reaction.
“Sorry, Baby Girl, but there was no way I was spending the night with CJ. I wasn’t even seeing her then. I was a fucking mess and if I was anywhere, I was off studying or running on the track. I never spent the night with her. Motherfucking liar. Why would he … ” as his thought trailed off, both Schooner and Mia knew the answer.
Schooner steadied his breath, calming himself down from the latest revelation. It just gets better and better, he thought. And then it occurred to him. She tried to find him. She tried to reach out to him. If he had just answered the phone that night. If Beau hadn’t blatantly lied — corroborating CJ’s claims that she and Schooner were a couple. They were so close to it being only four months instead of twenty-four years. So close.
“You called me?” He was stunned.
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh Baby Girl, we did not deserve this. Let me assure you, I loved you freshman year, I loved you long after freshman year. And if I’m being completely honest, I have never loved anyone else but you.” There he said it. It was all out there now. His heart was out there. And it was the truth, finally expressed. He certainly didn’t love CJ and he’d never again experienced what he had shared with Mia.
“I needed to hear that, Schooner. I needed to know we were real. That what I had thought you felt for me, well, that I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t miss something.”
“Mia, you didn’t miss anything. And I didn’t either. We got fucked. Royally. I thought by one person and now I’m thinking by two people. The bottom line is this — you loved me and I loved you — unfortunately, we both spent a really long time thinking that we’d been in love alone and that is why it hurt so bad. But the joke is on them now — because we know the truth.”
“You know what?”
“Tell me.” He needed to hear something good from her. This was like standing alone on the edge of a precipice with a strong wind at his back.
“If I’m completely honest, I never loved anyone else as deeply as I loved you, Schooner.”
Damn, this woman could bring him to his knees. There they were — both standing there, naked. Vulnerable. The truth was finally out. And if he was standing there high on the edge of a cliff, he wasn’t standing there alone anymore. Mia had joined him. She was as bold and fearless as she’d always been. This was the Mia Silver with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love.
“We’re going to be ok, Mia,” he reassured her. He wasn’t going to allow himself to believe anything else. He could picture her shaking her head yes on the other end of the phone as he heard her trying to hide her tears. He pictured gently wiping them away with his thumb.
“You promise, Schooner?”
And as always with Mia, making a promise was so damn easy. “I promise, Baby Girl.”
This time he knew better and God help the person who attempted to get in the way of him keeping his promise to her; he would make their life a living hell.
Chapter Eight
Schooner’s seatmate on the redeye to New York was very pleased to see him. It wasn’t often that the man sitting next to her was pure eye candy.
Putting his Tumi bag in the overhead bin, the smartly dressed businesswoman gladly moved her laptop case off of the aisle seat — Schooner’s seat.
As soon as he sat, she began talking, “I’m venturing a guess that New York is not home for you.”
Schooner smiled politely, “No, it isn’t.”
The flight attendant interrupted, “What can I get you to drink, Mr. Moore?”
“What kind of scotch do you have?”
“We’ve got Dewar’s White Label and Glenlivet Single Malt.”
“I’ll take a double Glenlivet on the rocks.” He hit her with his All-American boy smile. Unfortunately, for his seatmate, the flight attendant totally ignored her and did not bother to remove her already empty glass, or ask her if she would like another drink.
Schooner dug out his phone, ready to call Mia while they loaded the rest of the plane, but was immediately interrupted by the woman next to him.
“Are you on business or pleasure?” She was crowding him, even though his first class seat was quite spacious.
Schooner hit her with the full mega-watt smile, “Pure pleasure,” he could hear her breath hitch, and now it was time to shut her flirting down with the killing blow, “The love of my life is a New Yorker and I cannot wait to have her back in my arms,” and with another smile, “excuse me,” and he hit dial on his cell phone.
The woman put on a pair of Bose noise canceling headphones, plugged them into her phone and accessed her iTunes list. Hallelujah, Schooner thought, some quiet and privacy.
“Hey, Baby Girl,” he was finally wearing his real smile.
“Are you on the plane?”
“I am. They’re boarding now, so we have a few minutes,” he paused. “Mia, Mia, Mia.”
Mia laughed, “What?”
“You know what?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“How the hell did this happen?” He laughed.
“Unbelievable, right?”
“I feel like I have a new lease on life,” his voice just slightly more than a whisper. The flight attendant put down his scotch and he nodded and smiled at her.
“I can’t believe that I am going to see you in a few hours.”
“I know,” he smiled, thinking about it.
“I never thought I’d see you again in my life,” Mia was getting choked up just expressing that.
“Oh, Baby Girl, I know that feeling. When you didn’t come back that fall, I knew I had to let my dream go.”
“I wish I’d known you loved me, I would’ve been on the next plane,” she sighed.
“Well, you know now and I’m not waiting for the next plane, I’m on this one.”
They closed the cabin door and dimmed the lights for takeoff. As they lifted off the runway, Schooner reclined his seat and closed his eyes, knowing that sleep was not in the cards. On the other side of this flight, a car would be waiting to take him to Mia.
He couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of rushing all over campus that first day back sophomore year, trying to find her. Her dorm, the dining hall. Everywhere he turned had been a dead end, and those first few weeks, letting it really sink in that the dream he held the entire time he was in Zambia, the dream that she would be back in his arms again, was not going to come true. Not that day. Not the next week. Not the next semester.
The light had gone out in his world. A light he had not previously known existed, and when he was thrust back into darkness, it was actually a safe place for him. Schooner Moore knew how to operate in darkness. He knew how to shut everything down and how to protect himself. In doing so, he maintained absolute control. Control equaled protection. Protection meant he couldn’t be gutted again. Slipping back into the pre-Mia world was easy, he knew the rules — it was a very comfortable playing field. And he knew how to keep himself safe.
Jolted awake when the 767 slammed down onto the runway, Schooner realized he must’ve dozed for a few minutes. His first thought upon the hard, abrupt landing was, “Navy Pilot.” His second thought was, “Finally, our New York dream happens. Finall
y.”
His seatmate had thankfully been asleep the entire flight, saving him from having to put up with twenty questions. She stretched and opened the window shade, letting in the bright morning sunlight.
The flight attendant announced that it was a “balmy 18 degrees” at New York’s Kennedy International Airport. Just hearing that made Schooner smile as he gazed out the window. Eighteen degrees. He really was in New York. The thing that grabbed his attention immediately was the sky. It was so clear right down to the horizon, there was no smoggy brown haze hanging along the edge. And the color, it was mesmerizing. Just a clear, beautiful blue illuminated by bright sunshine on this cloudless day. It was picture perfect — a picture he had held in his mind’s eye for over two decades.
Powering up his cell phone, he dialed Mia, “We’re on the tarmac.”
“Welcome to New York,” she sounded exuberant.
He could not contain his smile. He was so close. So, so close. “I’ll see you in few.”
“Oh my God, Schooner.” Her tone and sentiment exactly matched what he was feeling.
“I know, Baby Girl. I’ll see you soon.” As he hit end on the call, he realized two things; he was smiling ear-to-ear and his right leg was bouncing uncontrollably with nervous energy.
Schooner could feel his heart racing, exhilarated, as the plane continued to slowly taxi along the runway toward the terminal. He could not tear his focus away from the beautiful, sunlit winter sky. It was so blue. So clear. He wanted to get out of the plane and the terminal and feel the eighteen degree air on his cheeks as he basked in the abundant sunshine.
After twenty-four years of being shrouded in darkness, Schooner Moore could not wait one more minute to meet the light again. He was fully ready to embrace the light and shed the comfort he had built in the darkness.
Book Three
Schooner & Mia
Chapter One
Now …
Mia crawled back into bed next to Schooner, spooning up behind him.
“How does your head feel?” He rolled over and pulled her onto his chest.
Moore to Lose Page 25
