“We went to church growing up too,” Cap had shared. “My mother still goes every week, as a matter of fact.” He looked far off for a moment, as if he was scanning his memory for images of his former church-going self. “Just cause I don't go doesn't mean I don't have beliefs.”
Leah nodded. She understood. She had heard that so many times before, but she also knew what her father preached about accountability and fellowship and being around a strong group of believers for support. “So what about the swinging stuff?” she finally dared to ask.
“I'm a single man,” Cap explained. “Now that may change at some point and then I suppose I would have to take into account what my partner wanted, although I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I hope she'd want to do it together. But for right now I don't think there's anything wrong with me having fun. And I think God has better things to worry about than who I'm hanging out with.”
As much as he'd promised to fully elaborate on his lifestyle, that was all he said on the matter. After three hours together, he noticed she was looking tired and offered to get her back home at a reasonable hour since she had to get up and go to work in the morning.
“So I guess you get to sleep in every morning during the off season?” she assumed as he stepped out of the truck and walked her to the door of her apartment building.
“Gotta love the off season” he admitted. “Now come this summer, I'll be getting up at 5 or 6 AM every day, weekends included, for the morning charter. I need to bank up my sleep now!” he chuckled, which precipitated the first awkward silence of the evening.
She was poised to go up to her apartment, the keys digging into the palm of her hand, imagining how eager Glory would be for a short walk outside before bed. But Cap stood firmly planted, leaning against the wall of the building, his eyes glued to her intently. She smiled, unsure of where things were supposed to go from here. Do I kiss him on the cheek? Do I wait for him to say goodbye? Do I just put my key in the lock? What the heck is the protocol here? her mind scrambled.
“Leah,” he whispered, stroking his finger down her cheek, feeling its smoothness against his rough skin. “I really enjoyed your company tonight.”
She tried not to let the butterflies in her stomach reach her throat and inhibit her speech. “And I yours,” she said evenly, surprised at how smoothly the words slid out.
"I would really like to see you again," he admitted, his finger still resting against her cheek. But now his face had inched closer to hers and she could feel his breath falling on her skin.
"I think that could be arranged," she answered, voice satin smooth, the butterflies still at bay. Then there were no more words; she felt his mouth on hers. So fast, like a heartbeat, it was pressed against her, warm and gentle, with just the right amount of moisture. She felt the softness of his lips sink into hers and after a moment his tongue parted her mouth. Then he tenderly grasped her face in his weathered palms as he continued to kiss her, pulling her so close to him that their bodies melded together from lips to thighs.
After what was a flash and eternity all at once, she reluctantly broke free and slowly climbed the stairs to her apartment. Allowing herself one last glance back at Cap and his dimples smiling up at her, she considered that deep kisses can often feel too wet, too invasive, or too intimate, especially when shared with a virtual stranger. But there was nothing "too" about Cap's kiss. It was just exactly perfect.
SIX
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:31 (NLT)
That kiss was permanently etched on Leah's memory. While folding laundry, the feeling of his lips against hers came back to her with a vengeance, stirring a feeling in her core so long forgotten she scarcely recognized it. When she took Glory for her morning walk, it pressed against her insistently. And then as she climbed up the back entrance to The Pearl to start her work day, again it haunted her. She felt dizzy, bombarded by erratic sensations: jumbled fragments of conversation, the smell of wine on their breaths, and the blue-tinged tendrils of candlelight from the table at the marina restaurant where they'd dined.
The memories were suspended in her mind like silky rose petals washed away during a rain shower, floating in a puddle yards away from their origin. Despite her best intentions to be herself and stay in the moment, she couldn't help but feel like the woman with Cap the night before was someone other than the Leah Miller she'd been for the past five years.
When Aimee called to review the date, Leah hesitated to answer her phone. How could I possibly articulate all these crazy thoughts I'm having? she wondered. But she knew her friend's curiosity would plague her all day if she didn't say something, anything to quell her thirst for juicy details. She would keep calling and calling until she got the answers she craved.
Naturally the sole word out of Aimee's mouth on the other end of the line was a very inquisitive: “SO???”
“Oh, Aimee, it was amazing!” Leah exhaled the words before she could grasp control of her tongue. She had been dying to let out that sigh, and it wasn't as if she could go gushing to Barry or the morning front desk staff or the head of housekeeping about her night out with the local fisherman.
Aimee seemed a bit dumbfounded as evident in her long pause before finally reacting: “Wow....really?”
Leah straightened her back in her leather desk chair and crossed one leg over the other, attempting to regain her composure. “Actually....yes,” she found her pragmatic tone. “It was a nice change of pace to go out with someone who is mature and comfortable with who he is. He's really very sharp, well-educated, believe it or not, and worldly and—”
“So he's not just a dumb hick fisherman from the backwoods of Delmarva?” Aimee interrupted.
Leah gasped a second before a giggle set in, “Oh, come on, seriously, do you think I'd go out with some stupid redneck? I'd have stayed in Nebraska if I wanted to do that!”
They both laughed. Hailing from the big city, Aimee had a pretty stereotypical impression of anyone from a rural area, despite everything Leah had done to try to dispel those stereotypes. “So...what about the swinging thing?” she changed directions.
“Well,” Leah began, having already prepared herself for an inquiry along those lines, “he didn't say that much about it really, just that he was single and enjoying himself and would obviously reconsider his lifestyle should he ever find himself in a relationship.”
“Ah, good answer, very diplomatic,” Aimee said approvingly. “But he didn't share any other details about it? How he got started with it? Nothing like that?”
Leah shrugged. “No, not really, but I didn't pry either. Maybe next time?”
“So there'll be a next time?” her friend questioned, her pitch rising with excitement.
“I think so,” Leah answered, trying to sound like the mature twenty-seven-year-old she was and not like a boy-crazy teenage girl. “He did say he'd like to see me again...and...he kissed me goodnight.”
“Oh!” Aimee squealed, not caring whether or not her voice betrayed her age. “How was it?!” She sounded as if she was perched on the edge of her seat, as much as a very pregnant woman could be without losing her balance anyway.
“Perfect,” Leah replied evenly. “Absolutely perfect.”
Barry breezed into Leah's office at precisely ten o'clock, his large hand wrapped around a navy blue mug of coffee bearing The Pearl's logo. “Everything's set for Casey's Group this weekend, right?” he asked as though he already knew the answer.
She glanced up from her computer screen, instantly wishing she was less discombobulated. “Is that coffee for me?” she joked, stalling while she fumbled for the right file folder from the stack on her desk.
“You look tired,” he observed with a smirk and raised eyebrow. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, of course!” she forced her lips to pe
rk into a smile. She fought the urge to rub her eyes, vigorously thumbing through the papers in the folder instead. “Do you want to take a look at these drink specials? I think everything else is coming along nicely.” Nice cover, she patted herself on the back.
He took the sheet of paper from her hand and she watched him scan the words. “Looks great to me, as always,” he remarked then searched her eyes again as if he was trying to figure out what was different about her. “Do you want me to get you some coffee? You just seem a little...I don't know...I hope you're not coming down with something.”
Geez, I go out one night during the week and the whole world can tell, Leah chided herself. Is it really because I look tired or am I just so distracted thinking about him that it's written all over my face? She dismissed his offer with a sparkly laugh and a wave of her fingers through the air. “Don't be silly. I would never expect my boss to get me coffee!” she assured him.
“Well, an ordinary boss would never offer!” Barry retorted. “Good thing you have the World's Best Boss!” He began to gesture with the mug extended toward her before realizing it was The Pearl logo mug and not his “World's Best Boss” mug that she'd given him the year before as a joke since he perpetually claimed the title.
Leah laughed. “Don't worry about a thing, Barry. Everything is set for Saturday night,” she assured him. It's a good thing I feel competent and accomplished at my job, she thought, because I sure as heck feel like a fish out of water with this dating thing. Then she realized that not only had she made use of another fishing idiom but that she'd also forgotten to check her messages on the dating site. With all the excitement of her date with Cap, she hadn't really felt the desire. She had a distinct feeling none of the site's potential suitors would measure up and she'd have to toss them back into the water.
As Barry left her office, satisfied that Casey's Group was well taken care of by his trusty assistant general manager, Leah's phone buzzed with a text from Aimee: So are you going to sleep with this Cap guy or what?
OMG, seriously? What kind of question is that? Leah fired back.
A pretty damn legitimate one, that's what, Aimee responded.
Rolling her eyes, Leah questioned: How did we get to be friends again?
Because I'm irresistibly lovable. BTW you really need to get laid, she claimed.
Leah fought the urge to send back something snarky but then Aimee sent this: Hasn't it been more than two years now?
Leah sighed as she remembered a couple of nights she went out with co-workers from The Pearl when she first started her job. It was the beginning of the summer and she was in an unfamiliar town where she hardly knew anyone. The locals had dragged her out to Macky's or Fager's or some bar that wasn't Seacrets but was close by, promising her that she'd feel a lot less stressed if she just enjoyed a few drinks and let loose. She had warned her colleagues that the last time she “let loose” it had been a disaster, which wasn't entirely true, but seemed to well serve her attempt to decline their invitation. They probably think I got arrested or something, not that I was careening toward eternal damnation, she had mused. But her new friends weren't deterred and continued to insist she accompany them. What ensued was ironic considering their likely assumption that her last night out on the town culminated in a rendezvous with local law enforcement.
After myriad frozen concoctions and some pretty crazy but unarguably athletic dance moves, she woke up the next morning in the bed of a stranger. The young, good-looking, well-muscled man in bed next to her was an Ocean City seasonal police officer who also had a little too much to drink on his night off. Well, at least he was polite, Leah reflected, remembering how although he seemed just as surprised to wake up beside her, he promptly scrambled into his uniform, ushered her unceremoniously into the back of his patrol car, and dropped her off at her apartment very early in the morning on his way to work. She recalled thinking those were really the best circumstances for being in the back of a police car she could imagine, especially compared to the vast array of frightening, not to mention embarrassing alternatives. He promised he'd text her later, but he never did.
And that was the last casual encounter Leah had experienced. She had dated a couple of men in her next two years living in Ocean City, but those relationships had suffered due to her commitment to The Pearl. One of the men was named Andy and he lived and supposedly worked in Washington DC, but was fortunate enough to have access to the condo his family owned on the beach. He was the son of a politician who lost his congressional seat after the next fall's election and was eventually forced to sell the condo and move back to his hometown, which, if memory served Leah, was in Michigan. Or maybe it was Minnesota? In any case, it was a short-lived fling as she quickly discovered that Andy was twice as smarmy and double-talking as his politician father likely was. He turned out to be a player; evidently his “job” was seeing how many women he could bed on his daddy's dime. She was just relieved that she figured out his MO before becoming yet another notch on his bedpost.
The other man that Leah briefly dated was a slightly nerdy but very sweet architect named Phillip from western Pennsylvania. He spent the summer in Ocean City and was considering permanent residence, but when things didn't work out with Leah the way he'd hoped, he decided not to make the move after all. She was sad that she hadn't been able to give him as much time and attention as he wanted, but summer is, naturally, the busiest time at The Pearl, and she only had a few hours to herself each week. She and Phillip shared several spectacular sunsets over the bay, walks along the moon-drenched beach, and yes, a few nights of fumbly, if not impassioned lovemaking. He was a good guy, Leah reflected, although she had not felt anything for him beyond friendship.
She had not felt much for anyone since her breakup with Will way back in college, even though she'd tried with Todd. She thought about all the men she'd been in relationships with, attempting to distill her “type” and possibly explain why her dating life had been such a miserable failure. She divided her former beaus not into one, but two clear cut “types:” the player and the too-sweet guy she could never make herself fall for. Thinking back to the kiss she had shared with Cap the night before, she was pretty sure which category he was going to fall in.
She realized it had been almost three years since she met Phillip. Almost three years since a man had kissed her, touched her, been inside her. She reached for her phone and her fingers went to work returning Aimee's text: IDK if I'll sleep with Cap. I very well may.
Leah was waiting to hear back from Aimee about which dress she should wear to the party on Saturday night. There was a sleek black number that showed some skin above her knee but had a high neck, a deep crimson dress with a plunging neckline and a floaty skirt and a silky hunter green dress with ruching around the middle that also showed a fair amount of décolletage. “So are you going to the party as a guest, as Cap's date? Or are you going for work?” Aimee had asked for clarification.
“I'm still going to be there in an official work capacity, but I won't be bartending this time, thank goodness. My function is mostly to make sure everyone stays happy, and also because Cap says I should mingle and see what one of their parties is all about. He thinks I will be pleasantly surprised,” Leah explained.
“Gotcha. Well...does that mean you've been talking to him since your date?” she asked.
It had been two days since her date with Cap and she had not heard from him other than a text to say he'd had a good time sent that night when he arrived home. Leah was trying to hold out and wait for him to contact her again, but she was starting to lose patience. “No...not since that night. Maybe he just assumes we'll talk on Saturday night? He knows I'm going to be there.”
“Yeah,” Aimee agreed with her theory. “That could be. Well, let me take a look at the dresses again and I'll let you know.”
That had been the night before. Now Leah was back at work and starting to feel fidgety and restless. Friday afternoons weren't exactly known for their productivity in the c
orporate world, and Friday afternoons at The Pearl during the off season were no exception. Barry had gallivanted across the Bay Bridge to a swanky lunch meeting in Baltimore. He had invited Leah to accompany him, but she had declined in favor of holding down the fort in his absence. Besides, she had a feeling that Casey Fontaine would call with last minute questions about the party, and thus far she had phoned twice, justifying Leah's decision. And it was barely noon.
She lifted her long arms high above her head and felt the muscles and tendons stretch in her shoulders and down her ribcage. Her sweater sleeves bunched around her elbows, exposing her pale, slightly-freckled skin to the chill that had settled in her office. I need the maintenance guys to take a look at my vents, she noted. It's been freezing in here lately. No wonder I can't concentrate. She peered out her window which overlooked the parking lot. She squinted when she thought she saw a navy blue extended-cab truck with big tires pulling in, but upon further inspection she was sure it was one of the county street department vehicles instead. Disappointment rushed over her before she could stop it.
She studied the sky with its thick layers of gray clouds. Even though she couldn't see clear to the ocean, she knew the waves would be topped with choppy white crests rhythmically slamming against the dull beige sand. Looks like rain or snow, she surveyed. More disappointment. She had briefly considered running home to grab Glory and driving down to the boardwalk. Never know who you might run into down there, she had thought wistfully before the bleak weather squashed the idea entirely. Winter was a double-edged sword on the Eastern shore of Maryland. The break from the hustle and bustle of the other three seasons was welcomed and much-needed, but the bitter cold dampness blowing off the water seeped into one's bones.
“I still need to go take Glory out,” she resolved aloud to the empty office as she slowly scooted her desk chair back and fumbled for her black pumps with her big toe stretching as far as it could reach across the carpet. Just as she slipped both of her feet back inside her shoes and stood up on wobbly, half-asleep legs, she heard a sharp little assertive knock at the door. There had been no announcement of a visitor by her assistant, so she assumed it was someone from the kitchen with the revised menus she'd asked for, or perhaps the daytime front desk manager wanting to discuss last minute weekend staffing needs. Those were the two items of pending business she needed to wrap up before going home for the day.
Fisher of Men Page 8
