A Soldier Saved--A Clean Romance

by Cheryl Harper

  Immediately, the image of Angela Simmons’s face popped up.

  Michelle studied him. “As soon as I said it, you pictured someone. Is it a female someone?”

  “Why would you think that?” Jason asked. He tried for innocent, but he’d never been all that good at pulling it off.

  “Your history. Your work. What you want for your future.” She sniffed. “We’ve sort of hit on all the pieces this week. There’s more to do, obviously, but the only thing I didn’t hear was a relationship. You told me you’re single. Next time, I want to find out more about that.” She wrinkled her nose. “But whoever she is, you should tell her. Ask her out. Whatever. Life is short.” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers so that light bounced off the diamond on her finger. “I’m a fan of the happy relationship.”

  Jason stood. “Well, there was someone, but I...”

  Michelle crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes locked on his. “But you...”

  “But I fell. We were dancing and I fell, and instead of laughing it off like a normal, well-adjusted human, I had this...” Was he going to admit this? It was the worst part. “I kept it locked down, but I was angry and frustrated and ashamed, so I escaped. Ran away. No one needs to deal with even one of those emotions, much less all three or however many were in that swamp.” He’d never taken his own problems out on others. This amputation was no reason to start.

  “Emotions are normal things, Jason. How you handle them is the difference. We’ll talk about that. Anger. It’s logical here, isn’t it? Only your response to it matters. You discuss it here, with the group around the pool, with the people who matter, and you raise your odds of making only the right decisions.” Michelle narrowed her eyes. “But it wasn’t Reyna you pictured. She already knows about your amputation. Somebody else, and she’s different than your usual type. You didn’t meet her in a bar.”

  Jason cleared his throat. “I don’t have a type, although bars are good for lots of things. I meet people.”

  “At school.” Michelle stared into the distance. “Oh. She’s a professor.” She clasped her hands together. “Wednesday, same time. I want to know more.”

  Jason held up a hand and opened the door. It was a good thing her next appointment was already chilling on the couch because he might have stopped to protest that she didn’t know what she was talking about.

  But she did. And if he figured out why his sudden turn of luck was surrounded on all sides by women who were too smart for his own good, he might make a change.

  Probably not, but sometimes a man needed to be dumb and unhappy. All this enlightenment was moving too quickly for him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ON SATURDAY, ANGELA was stretched out in the hammock she and Greer had hung about two seconds after she closed on her house. The phone was perched on her shoulder while she held a notebook with one hand and did her best to draw a cute spider with only seven legs. It was no problem to get the legs right. The “cute” part was giving her trouble. Since she was supposed to be jotting down ideas for poems, not doing bad doodles of circles with hairy legs, she ignored the notebook to focus on her daughter.

  “So, the nursery is almost finished. How did the doctor visit go? Did you get to see the baby on a sonogram?” Angela asked. Greer’s phone calls that week had all been rushed because her work schedule was disjointed. She’d gone with Kate to the doctor, a fact that Angela had done her best not to dwell on. Greer was going to have a life that had nothing to do with her eventually. She was getting an early start on it.

  “I did, and they decided to find out. They’re having a boy,” Greer said in a breathless rush. “Everyone is pretty excited.”

  Rodney most of all. He’d dreamed of having a son since the day he and Angela got engaged. “That’s great, baby. You’ll have a little brother. That’s awesome.”

  “Yeah.” Whatever was on her mind would trickle out.

  Angela dropped a foot to the porch below her and gave the hammock a nudge. It was almost too hot for this. Early morning was the only time she could stand to be outside in the Florida heat. Pretty soon, only air-conditioning would do.

  “It’s just that...” Greer sighed. “By the time he’s any fun, I’ll be away at school. Far away. Unless I change all my plans.”

  Angela closed her eyes to enjoy the cool breeze stirred up by the sway of the hammock. “G, listen. You’re going to be a great big sister. Even if you go to college on the East Coast, you’ll see him on holidays and during the summer and you’ll call and you’ll text and all the things we’re doing. It’s a challenge, but you can love your little brother from Harvard or Yale or wherever you decide to go.”

  Angela stared at the circles dotting the page of her notebook and turned back to the poem she’d come out here to work on. It was a blurry mess about distance that she needed to tighten up. At her own unintended pun, Angela tossed the notebook on the porch under the hammock. Obviously, she was not a good poet that day.

  “I know. I also know it’s not the same.” Greer’s quiet voice sharpened Angela’s focus.

  This was it. This was the thing that was growing between them this summer that neither one of them wanted to let get out of hand.

  “It’s not.” Angela studied the spot on the underside of her porch that needed a fresh coat of paint. “But you have a plan for your life. You’ve always had a plan.” The girl had ordered her stuffed animals by color and age before she’d started first grade. “Only you know when you can change that. The education you’ve always wanted is worth hard work, even if it’s work you do to make sure your little brother knows you instead of studying.”

  Angela closed her eyes. “But there’s a good education available there in Nashville, other choices in Tennessee, and so many within a half day’s drive that would mean you could go home when you needed to.” She ought to know. She’d done a thorough study of all those options before she’d landed at Sawgrass. Those big names? Yeah, they didn’t hire often and they certainly didn’t recruit the way Sawgrass had. What if she’d been able to make one of those choices work?

  “I don’t have to decide today. The senator says he’s not so sure Ivy is the option to go for anymore. He says they cost too much for too little return. I could go to a state school for half the price and land a good job easily.”

  Angela wasn’t sure what to read into Greer’s tone. The senator’s advice was good and important, clearly. But what about her mother?

  “And what does Dad say? Have you talked about this with him?” Angela asked and tried to roll up and out of the hammock without grunting. For this conversation, she needed to move.

  “It’s up to me. Like everything else has been since you guys got divorced, my whole life and every decision is up to me,” Greer snapped. “I’m so tired of getting that answer. ‘It’s up to you.’ I’m asking for advice and I can’t get any.”

  Angela bit her lip and refused to mention that this had always been Rodney Simmons’s route for as long as she’d known him. He couldn’t give advice, but he could certainly tell you where you’d gone wrong after everything was over.

  It was easy to point the finger at Rodney, but Greer’s frustration was with them both.

  “That’s because you’re a smart girl.” And she was going to do what she’d always done for Rodney: fill in the blanks. Every time he’d refused to make a decision or held back the words she wanted, she’d supplied them. “He loves you and only wants the best for you. Unfortunately, only you know the best for you. I hope you’ll keep the Ivies in your sights, because that’s always been your dream. Your dad’s life is changing, and you’re a part of that, but this is a piece that belongs only to you.”

  Angela thumped her head against the porch post and wondered if she was saying the wrong things.

  “Thanks, Mom. It’s because everything is baby, baby, baby here, all the time baby, that I’m too wrapped up in
it. Today, Dad and Kate want to have engagement photos taken. I thought that was what they did in front of the Eiffel Tower without me, but no, this is something official. That was to share the news with their friends and family. And rub it in, but whatever, they’re lovebirds.” Greer grumbled under her breath for a minute. “So, anyway, I’m getting ready to have my status as third wheel solidified forever by being in a formal photo with them.”

  The bittersweet pleasure of listening to her daughter talk like an almost-seventeen-year-old from hours away was hard to swallow. She was growing up and Angela was missing it.

  “What are you doing today?” Greer asked.

  “Trying to write. It’s not going well.” Angela refused to think of her badly drawn spiders. “Not well” really didn’t capture the mood. It had been more than a full week since the grades had been turned in and...nothing. Not a word from Jason Ward. She’d spent time in her office, finalizing files for the summer semester and preparing notes for the staff meeting she’d planned the next week. His mother had her phone number. He could find her if he wanted.

  She’d spent way too much time thinking that same thing.

  “Some days you need a change of scenery. Isn’t that what you told me when I was buried under that paper on Shakespeare, who has to be the worst writer that we are forced to study. I mean, what is the point of Romeo or Juliet? It’s dumb.”

  Angela rubbed the sudden pain in the middle of her chest. “It’s a good thing you are so far away or we would have to have a serious heart-to-heart conversation about your language. Shakespeare wrote whole plays in rhyme. Don’t tell me that’s not impressive. Do you know how many words he made up? I mean, give the dead guy some respect, at least when you are talking to your mother, who spends a lot of time trying to convince other students to do the same.”

  “Making up new words is your measure of greatness? Pretty sure any toddler can do that.” Greer was laughing. They’d had this conversation a hundred times.

  “And if you think he’s bad, let me introduce you to Hemingway.” Angela enjoyed adding that, mainly as a dig at her ex-husband and his preferences, but also because she’d hated every minute of For Whom the Bell Tolls and would never torture children with it in her classroom.

  “Yeah, yeah, but you’ll be on the tour of his house when we hit Key West because we are doing that.”

  Angela was relieved. “We are doing it. It’s a date, you and me.”

  Greer’s giggles were reassuring. She’d started out entirely too quiet. Now she might as well be six instead of sixteen. This baby brother was a blessing. If it caused Greer to evaluate her plans now, Angela would be certain Greer was doing exactly what she wanted when she went to college, instead of being carried along on daydreams of being a lawyer. When she was little, Greer had relished being able to shout, “I object.” She was old enough now to know that there was so much more to being a lawyer than courtroom drama.

  “I love you, Mom. I wish we were together today.” In the blink of an eye, Greer was almost an adult again. What a roller coaster sixteen-going-on-seventeen could be.

  Blinking back tears, Angela reminded herself that the roller coaster was a long one. Even for forty-and-a-little-bit-extra.

  “I’m proud of you, Greer. Now go get ready. Tell your Dad I got my invitation and my RSVP card is in the mail.” Angela had made sure to put a floral stamp on it, in honor of her ex-husband’s literary style. Not that he would notice. This was the lowest level of petty, but Angela wasn’t ready to give it up.

  “Did you include a plus-one?” Greer asked immediately. She didn’t even have to pause to come up with the question. As soon as Angela stopped talking, Greer fired back with her question, as if that was right there, at the front of her concerns about this wedding. Angela had hoped that her daughter would get the picture and come to understand that the plus-one wasn’t all that important in the big scheme of things, the long, winding road that was life.

  But no. Her practical daughter had one romantic hotspot: dates to weddings, especially as they concerned her mother.

  “I did not.” She’d been tempted to.

  “Don’t miss out on the captain,” Greer ordered. There was clapping in the background of the call. Either her daughter had learned how to clap with one hand or... Angela couldn’t come up with another option. “Stop waiting. Kate said he definitely wants you to call. It’s not the same as when you were young, Mom.”

  Kate said. Ouch. Another expert to knock “Mother knows best” out of the running.

  The “young” part was a direct hit, too. In her own mind, she was still young. Would Greer agree?

  “Even in the dark ages, when cell phones were new and rare, we could call them, G.” Annoyed at how difficult standing her high ground with her daughter had gotten, Angela added, “When I decide it’s time to date, I’ll do it because I want to, not because of some artificial deadline or the overwhelming peer pressure I’m experiencing.”

  “Right.” Greer’s flat tone communicated her disappointment.

  “Make sure your father knows I don’t intend to bring anyone—that will make his penny-pinching heart content. I don’t want to hear another word about the budget for his destination wedding.” Angela shook her head. This was what she wasn’t going to do—she would not drag Greer in between them. “Forget I said that. It’s nice of them to include me. I can’t wait to spend time with you, my favorite person in the world.”

  “I just wish...” Greer huffed out a breath. “Dad is totally gross with how ecstatic he is about this baby. I wish you were really happy.”

  “What? I am!” Angela laughed. “Get off the phone.” She was. What was the problem? Why was she having to defend her happiness over and over?

  Greer said, “I will, but you gotta know I still have my fingers crossed for a guy, someone who makes everything in your life, all the good things you have, great, Mom. It’s not really wrong to want that, too. Is it?”

  Angela winced. This was an easier lecture when Greer was drawing castles and princes. Even then, her girl had been determined to be the one on the horse with the sword. “Of course not, baby. It makes perfect sense to want that, but not to rearrange your life, your goals, your plans in case it might happen someday. If that man shows up while I’m out there, doing my thing, great. I’ll ask him to your father’s wedding.”

  Greer snorted. “Not after the guest list is set and budgeted accordingly, you better not.”

  Relieved, Angela said, “He’d just get in the way of our trip to Hemingway’s house. Whoever he is, he probably doesn’t even like cats.”

  “Or he’s the world’s second biggest fan of war stories and bull fights. Then what?” Greer asked.

  “Impossible. There cannot be two.” Angela closed her eyes to wipe away the thought of spending any time with another Hemingway fan.

  “Love you.” Greer waited for Angela to say the same and the call was ended.

  Angela picked up the notebook and frowned at the ugly spiders she’d drawn. They were still better than Jason’s. She’d planned to give him the name of someone in the graphic arts area at Sawgrass. A real artist could help him. It was a cute story. She didn’t know much about kids’ literature, but there might be something there.

  But Jason had done a good job of never being in the same place she was. She’d even gone to the beach closest to Sawgrass on a nice Wednesday afternoon on the off chance that he or his mother might have chosen that day to explore the same spot. It had worked when she wasn’t trying to find him. When she wanted to run into Jason? No way.

  She could call him. That was easy. She had the perfect excuse.

  Then she was reminded that he’d taken the high road with their selfie and told her she’d have to ask for his number if she wanted it. She hadn’t asked.

  What did it mean that he hadn’t gotten hers, either? Maybe he wasn’t really interested in any
thing more than conversation whenever they ran into each other.

  Angela could call his mother, suggest they meet somewhere for something and hope he came along. Mae had insisted Angela have her phone number in case the urge to try something as exciting as parasailing or brunch hit. She and Jason could find a bench somewhere while his mother jumped out of an airplane or something. Not quite as easy but not totally unreasonable.

  Or she could regress to high school and drive by his house to see if he was home, freak out if he was and drive off in a panic or mope around the house if he wasn’t because he’d found a much better way to spend his time. That was the worst option.

  She wanted to see him. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way.

  And she was picking up her car keys before she could explain to herself that she was entirely too old for ridiculous crush shenanigans.

  It was a beautiful day for a drive and Concord Court was less than ten minutes from her bungalow, so she enjoyed the leisurely drive as she carefully navigated the hordes of people on bicycles. Some were wearing training gear and spandex; others were twelve and had baskets on the fronts of their bikes. All of them had blinking red safety lights on the seats, which reminded her of the first time she and Jason had talked on a bench.

  She was singing along with the radio as she spotted a group of runners. In the sea of extreme fitness, they stood out because they had no wheels. Just pumping arms and really nice muscles in tan, strong backs covered in sweat. She slowed down to a crawl because of safety, obviously. The fact that it was nice to watch them run was a bonus. They turned into the driveway of Concord Court ahead of her and she realized the runner at the front of the group, the one setting the pace, was Mira, the student she’d told Jason about. And as they slowed and spread out to trickle over to the sidewalk in front of a beautiful pool, she could see that one of the runners was wearing a prosthesis, the metal kind that serious athletes wore. She’d never seen one in real life, just in pictures. It hadn’t slowed this guy down a bit.