Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business)

by Gail Hewitt

  Barbara, the girl who sat next to her, leaned over and whispered, "Cute, huh? He's a Techie. I saw him come in with the visiting prof." She nodded toward the man who was now diagramming some sort of word flow on the blackboard.

  "Well, then, he won't be here after today," Maggie said dismissively, turning back to her notebook. Barbara laughed.

  Maggie made a couple of notes, and then found herself glancing again toward the back of the room to see if he were still there. He was. He was probably an inch or two over six feet, with broad shoulders and muscular arms that were clearly visible below the pushed-up sleeves of the sweatshirt that he wore over faded jeans. Like his outfit, his appearance lacked the kind of the polish that could be taken for granted among the boys in Maggie's set, for his light brown, curly hair was a little too long for good grooming without being long enough to be interesting and the one foot that she could see because it was propped, sole first, against the wall was shod in what looked like an old, scruffy Army boot. She remembered she'd been shifting her gaze away from him when she realized that he was looking at her again, this time openly and directly. He smiled. She didn't think it was a nice smile, but rather the kind of expression a brazen young man would exhibit after learning something about oneself that one thought private. She turned back to her notebook, half expecting him to walk around to where she sat and say something to her, but he didn't. When she sneaked another look, he had shifted somewhat and was definitely focused on the Tech professor. She felt silly that she'd thought him interested in her, and vaguely irritated that he obviously was not. Not that he was the kind of person of whom her mother would approve, but she couldn't deny that there was something about him that made her want to look back. She resisted the impulse and forced herself to copy the diagram that the Tech professor had now finished. When the professor said a few final words and shut his notebook, Maggie glanced around, but the arrogant-looking young man was nowhere to be seen, an observation that both relieved and disappointed her.

  It was her last class of the day, and Maggie had quickly formed the habit of joining Barbara and several other classmates in the student rec facility where they would get coffee or Cokes and sit around and talk. It was the first time in her entire life she'd had the freedom to be so aimless and unstructured. Her mother had always expected her to be doing something specifically productive, like dance or gymnastics class. Now, however, her mother was thousands of miles away, with no immediate expectations of any kind regarding Maggie save that she be home at 9 a.m. Sundays to receive the weekly phone call. It was nice to be an accepted part of a group, even one as casual as this, Maggie thought as she and Barbara trooped across the street with the others. The talk was fun too, invariably involving an acidic disagreement about something the teacher had said. Today, once they'd settled into their usual area, cups and glasses in hand, the discussion was especially heated.

  "That Tech professor wants to turn everybody into declarative-sentence slaves," protested Matt, who was the artiest of the group, a wild-eyed young man who was — he'd told her several times — working on a novel in the trash-can style that would revolutionize the genre.

  Maggie was listening to him intently, sipping Coke from a limp paper cup, when she got the same feeling she'd had in class. Someone was watching her. After a few seconds, she glanced around, and there he was, slouched casually in one of the chrome-armed chairs near the door. The difference now was that he had already turned his attention from her and actually appeared to be listening to the young novelist.

  Barbara had seen him too and leaned over to whisper in Maggie's ear, "I think you have an admirer."

  "Don't be silly," Maggie whispered back. "I don't even know him."

  Barbara, a few years older, laughed and looked at her pityingly. "Honey, you don't have to have a formal introduction anymore."

  Maggie blushed, hating to be thought naïve.

  "That's why his concept of writing has no place in a liberal arts curriculum," Matt was saying.

  "So you don't think Dr. Jarman is right? He wasn't talking about all writing, just technical writing for scientific or instructional purposes," the newcomer interrupted in a reasonable but firm tone. He had a good voice, Maggie thought. It was deep and well modulated, distinctive, like him.

  "Good writing is good writing." Matt protested, face reddening.

  "But isn't the concept of 'good' relative to the purpose?" the newcomer asked.

  "It's the thin edge of the wedge," said Harry, the oldest of the students in the class, in his vaguely English accent.

  "Different strokes," the newcomer shrugged. His calmness made him seem even more mature than the others, Maggie thought, more consequential. She thought, too, that seen up close he was even better looking than she'd realized. This time it was she who was caught out staring, and she knew she blushed as she turned away. She hadn't blushed so much in years. What was wrong with her today?

  After about an hour, as usual, the group began to break up. The newcomer waited by the door. She was going to nod and pass, when he reached out and touched her arm. She felt as if she'd contacted an electric probe, her skin continuing to tingle even though the touch was fleeting.

  "I think it's time we met," he told her. Next to her, Barbara giggled. "I'm Tom Scott."

  "I'm Maggie McLaurin, and this is Barbara Norton."

  The three of them shook hands as formally as if they had been at a tea party.

  "Well, Maggie and Barbara, would you girls like to go and grab a bite? I can't stay long – big exam tomorrow, but we all have to eat, right?"

  "Not me, at least not now" Barbara declared. "I already have plans, but don't let that stop the two of you going on."

  Before Maggie could object — and had she really tried, she now wondered? — it was just the two of them, she and Tom Scott, standing together in a room that suddenly felt very empty.

  "Well, how about it?" he asked.

  "How about what?" She felt awkward. Surely he didn't expect her to go with him by herself?

  "An early bite to eat. Somewhere highly respectable," he grinned as if he guessed what she was thinking. "It can't be anything fancy or take too long, but it's clear we need to get to know each other. And I'll carry those." He reached out and took the stack of books she held in the crook of her arm. As he did so, his hand brushed her skin again, and again there was the unmistakable tingle.

  All the while he'd been moving her out the door and onto the street, and before she could decide how to leave without hurting his feelings he was striding away. Unless she wanted to risk losing her books and notes, she had to follow along as briskly as possible. There was a small casual restaurant up the way, little more than a sandwich shop, popular at lunch but now almost deserted. He led her to a corner booth next to the window and slid into one side as she slid into the other.

  Menus were propped in front of the tabletop jukebox controls. There wasn't a lot of choice, and Maggie didn't protest when he ordered for both of them.

  "Two cheeseburgers — am I right you're an all-the-way kind of girl? — make 'em all the way. And a couple of orders of fries and large Cokes."

  "So," he said, turning back to her as if continuing an ongoing conversation, "What now?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Well, it's clear that there's something going on here and, if there's not, there ought to be. So what do we do about it?"

  "You're just talking silly," she protested, blushing.

  "If you keep blushing, I won't be responsible for what I'll do," he laughed. "I haven't seen a girl blush in years."

  "Then you must be seeing the wrong kind of girl," she said tartly.

  "Probably," he agreed with equanimity.

  After that, the meal had been fast, and the conversation general, the same sort of conversation she might have had with anyone except that this had been more exciting because it was with him. Afterwards, a very short time afterwards, he walked her back to her car. As he handed over her books, she thanked him for t
he hamburger from behind the wheel of the Saab. He hesitated as if deciding something.

  "Well," he said finally, "see you around." He shut the door and gave a half-wave as he turned and moved away.

  She felt she'd done or said something that had made him change his mind about her, and she thought that was the last she'd see of him. She'd been wrong, of course. The next day, she found him waiting for her outside History 101.

  She was surprised. "How did you find me?"

  "How could I not?" he grinned. "It seems to have become an instant rule that I appear where you do."

  She smiled uncertainly, not sure of how to react.

  He seemed oblivious to her discomfort. "My exam's over. I can take the afternoon off if you can. It's a beautiful day, and I picked up some sandwiches at the deli. How about a picnic?"

  He hadn't struck her as the picnic type, but maybe she'd been wrong about him. He seemed nicer today, not so intimidating, and so she went with him. As soon as she was inside his car, an old Chevrolet that had been meticulously restored, she regretted it. This was exactly the sort of situation against which she knew she should be on her guard.

  "We're going to a place I discovered in an old neighborhood in Midtown," he told her. "Maybe you know it. It's called Winn Park."

  "I know about it," she said cautiously, wondering if he knew it was just around the corner from the carriage house where she now lived, just as he'd somehow known where to find her. It even crossed her mind that he not only knew but that he'd chosen this park specifically so he could be in her neighborhood and use that as an excuse to drop by her place. Well, she vowed, that wasn't happening. Whatever his plans might be, he'd see she could take care of herself.

  As it turned out, his plans seemed to include only what he'd said: a picnic in Winn Park, where the trees were just beginning to change color. He spread an old quilt on the grass of a gentle hillside overlooking one of the park's two ponds, then set out paper plates and lidded cups filled with ice, wrapped sandwiches, packages of potato chips, and a couple of candy bars. When he was done with his careful arrangement, he'd glanced up at her as if asking for her approval.

  "It looks good," she said. Surprisingly, it was. Tom was a considerate host, a little rough around the edges, maybe, but obviously concerned that she enjoy herself, which made her feel very grown up.

  Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she had added. His father had been a mechanic — "when he worked," Tom said ruefully. They learned that each of them had lost their fathers. His mother had subsequently moved to Tampa to live with her sister, he said. Her mother, she told him, still lived in the house in which Maggie had grown up but was now visiting friends. (Somehow, Maggie hadn't wanted to admit that her mother was on an extended cruise, for she could tell that Tom wasn't from the kind of background where people took cruises.) She told him she was an only child; he said he had an older brother who had died in Vietnam, that he himself as a teenager had served briefly at the end of the war before returning to work utility construction around the state. They talked shyly at first, but then the words tumbled out. When he looked at his watch and said he had to meet a student for a tutoring session, she was sorry. Their conversation continued nonstop on the return drive to school, and it was only after he'd deposited her at her car that she realized he had made no reference to the fact that she lived just around the corner from where they'd picnicked. Either his choice of a place had been coincidental or he didn't know where she lived — or maybe he did, she thought, and was just too tactful to make her uncomfortable by mentioning it.

  The next day, when he showed up outside her classroom door, she gave up any pretense of being either surprised or put off. The day after that, she brought a contribution to the meal – a tin of chocolate chip cookies that she'd managed to bake herself in the tiny kitchen of the carriage house. To her surprise, although he'd said only that they were good, he'd been obviously touched that she'd done something for him. That was the day that the conversation became more serious, when he told her about how losing his older brother had been so traumatic he'd dropped out his freshman year at college and volunteered for the Army when he was seventeen.

  "But that's so sad," she said.

  "He was a good guy," Tom said briefly, obviously not wanting to say more. "As for school . . . " He made a face. "My leaving was no big loss to the academic world. I got in on a football scholarship, and all I was doing was tossing balls around and jerking off with girls. Sorry . . . " his voice trailed away as he tried to decide if she'd find the description offensive.

  "I know what you mean," she told him. "You were just a kid."

  "You're just a kid," he told her. "How old are you anyway?"

  "That's an impolite question to ask a lady," she grinned.

  "Seriously," he told her, reaching out to touch her hand, "I've got a feeling that . . . Well, I need to know. You seem awfully young sometimes. Are you old enough to know what you're doing?" He made a funny face, but she knew the question was serious.

  She blushed furiously. "What a thing to say! How would you like it if I asked you how old you are?"

  "I'm twenty-six. How old are you?" he persisted. "If you won't tell me, I'm taking you back to school, and I'm not showing up tomorrow."

  "I'm nineteen," she lied, suspecting that telling the truth would put him off. "But I'm not sure if I want you to show up again, if you're going to talk like that."

  "Of course, you do," he said matter-of-factly. "We both know there's something going on here." He looked at her appraisingly, almost as if he were not totally pleased with the fact of their mutual attraction. It was then that she half-expected him to make a move toward her, but he continued to be scrupulously hands off.

  That afternoon, as she sat in the English class in which she'd first encountered Tom, Barbara asked if she'd seen him again, and Maggie was shocked to realize how short the time of their acquaintance was. It was as if she'd known him long enough that she could predict how he would respond to what she said and what he was likely to say in return. All through class, she thought about him. About the shape of his head and the curliness of his hair. She realized that she knew how his hair would feel, even though she'd never touched it. She thought of what it would be like to touch his face, to smooth away the faint crease that appeared between his eyes when he was puzzled. She thought of how his hand had felt when his fingers brushed hers. She wondered how it would feel to have those hands reach out for her, to hold her. It was the first time she'd ever thought that way about anyone, and she felt that she was blushing continuously. She wondered that no one noticed. The picnics in Winn Park continued for two weeks, nice but subtly edgy times as the trees blazed with increasing brightness overhead and the tension between her and Tom grew palpable. Then came the day when a downpour made it obviously impractical to go to the park. Tom waited outside for her as usual, holding an old trench coat over his head, which he promptly draped over her as well.

  "I've got lunch in the car," he told her. "But we'll get soaked if we go to the park. We could go back to the sandwich shop, or . . . " He hesitated, obviously trying to decide whether to continue.

  "Or what?" she asked, breathless from being close enough to smell his shaving cream and feel his breath on her forehead.

  "We could go back to my place. It's not far, just a half-mile or so from Winn Park, and I've got a table and chairs. But if that makes you uncomfortable . . ." His voice trailed away.

  "We'll never get in the sandwich shop this time of day. We may as well go to your place," she said with an assurance that surprised her. It was the first time she'd ever been to a man's apartment on her own.

  In contrast to every other time they'd been together, they said almost nothing during the drive. Luckily, the radio, which was seemingly incapable of any volume adjustment, filled the void, booming so loudly that it was difficult to understand the words to a series of songs that seemed to deal exclusively with one aspect or another of love or, at least, physical attraction.


  When Maggie sneaked a look at Tom, he was driving as methodically and surely as ever, silently singing along with the words of the overloud music, his eyes straight ahead. He might have been anyone giving a ride to a girl he knew a little better than slightly, but only just.

  She wondered what she was doing, why she was feeling so tense, freezing one minute, burning up the next, but when she tried to think about it logically she found she could not focus. This was silly. There was no reason to think that, just because the weather had forced them to find another place for lunch, anything was going to happen. He'd set out the food; they'd eat and talk; he'd return her to her car in the parking lot at school. It might be a little awkward, but that was all. She leaned back against the seat and, feeling very grown up and in control of the situation, watched the rain hit against the windshield in between the areas swept by the wipers.

  The drive north was unusually fast. In what seemed like almost no time, they were parking on a side street next to an older building she'd never noticed before even though she knew the neighborhood somewhat by now. She supposed she was less aware of this block because it lay on the wrong side of Peachtree Street. It was an odd sort of building, she realized, just two stories high, built flush against the sidewalk on three sides (the fourth, she later saw, was along an alley). In each of the three sidewalk exposures, an opening – protected only visually by plain wrought iron gates that were never locked – led from the sidewalk into an interior courtyard.

  Tom pushed open one of the gates, which squeaked in protest, and stood aside as she went into the rectangular patch of a half-hearted courtyard garden. She looked around curiously. She'd never seen such a peculiar building. It looked more like an old motel than anything else, with the doors of each unit opening off long, open exterior walkways that lined the walls of both floors. On the second floor, plain iron railings provided a modicum of safety. The sizable area that formed the courtyard had, in addition to its scraggly patches of grass and shrubs, several concrete benches and a cracked swimming pool half-full of dead leaves that looked as if it had been permanently drained years before. Next to the pool was a gazebo, now lopsided but still showing signs of elegance. It was clear that, at one point, whoever designed this layout had intended it to be an area of pleasure and relaxation for a stable group of renters. Now, with its air of general decrepitude, the place had all the earmarks of cheap student housing. Scattered about were several bike racks and trash cans chained to concrete blocks. An empty, crumpled beer can lay on a bench past which they walked. Across the courtyard three young men leaned against the second-floor iron railing, drinking from similar cans and arguing loudly about something. One of the boys looked down and noticed them.