Day-Day
Page 8
“I just don’t like him,” she said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with him . . .”
“Well then,” I said. “Just stay away from him . . .”
She looked down at the floor.
“Can’t you just stay away from him?”
“I guess so,” she said. She nodded slightly but I could tell she was far from convinced. She finally glanced up at me.
“What?” I asked her.
She bit her lip and sighed.
“What?” I asked again.
“If I tell you something,” she began, “do you promise not to ever tell anyone . . . ever?”
I nodded, but I was thinking that if Jordan had somehow done anything to hurt her that I was going to break that promise very quickly.
She sighed deeply.
“Does God ever tell you stuff?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Like he talks to you?”
“Well,” I admitted, “He doesn’t really talk to me . . . He leads me, guides me. He talks to me through Scripture though . . . stuff like that. You know what I mean?”
She nodded.
“That’s what He usually does to me too,” she said, “but . . .”
She hesitated for a long moment before going on.
“He told me something,” she said. “It was different than just Him leading me or guiding me. It was really clear. It wasn’t a voice exactly . . . I can’t explain it really. Somehow I just knew it was God . . . does that make any sense?”
“Sure it does,” I said. “Laci’s had that happen.”
“She has?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay,” she said, looking immensely relieved. “Well, God told me . . .”
“What?”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?” she asked me again.
“I promise, Charlotte.”
“Except maybe Laci,” she decided. “You can tell Laci if you want to.”
“I can’t tell her anything if you don’t ever tell me . . .”
She sighed heavily and shook her head.
“What’d He tell you?”
“That Jordan . . . that Jordan and I . . .”
She didn’t say anything else, but I got it.
“Really?!” I asked, trying very, very hard not to smile.
“It’s not funny!” she said, on the verge of tears again.
“I never said it was funny,” I told her. “I think it’s sweet.”
“It’s not sweet either!” she argued. “I can’t stand Jordan!”
“You’re talking about something that’s years away, Charlotte. You might feel differently about it when you’re an adult.”
“I doubt it,” she said, wiping her eyes again.
“Charlotte, you’ve got to be faithful to what God tells you.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, shaking her head.
“I know, Charlotte, but . . .” I paused for a minute. “Can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“God told Laci that she was going to be with me.”
“Really?” she asked doubtfully.
“Really,” I nodded. “And after Greg and your dad were killed I just pushed her and everyone else away. Did you know that we didn’t date the whole time we were in college until last spring?”
“I guess so.”
“How do you think Laci felt during that whole time?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“Don’t you think she probably felt like God had made a mistake? Like she didn’t want to believe what God had told her?”
Charlotte nodded.
“She probably felt just like you do right now, but she listened to what God said . . .”
“Did you always like Laci?”
“Charlotte,” I laughed, “if you’d told me I was going to marry Laci when I was your age I would have told you that you were crazy. Absolutely crazy!”
She gave me a slight smile.
“Please don’t get so worried about it right now,” I told her. “Just try to enjoy things. One day you’re going to be looking through a scrapbook and you’ll remember how great these times were. Try to enjoy them while they’re happening.”
“Did you enjoy them when they were happening?”
“I really did,” I nodded. “That’s something I’ve always been thankful for. After Greg and your dad were killed I never found myself thinking ‘I wish I’d appreciated them more when they were alive . . . ’ or anything like that. I really did appreciate everything when it was happening. You need to do the same thing.”
“I’ll try,” she said, but she still didn’t look convinced.
That night I told Laci about my conversation with Charlotte . . . she was very interested.
“Wow!” she said. “I can’t believe it! That sounds just like what happened to me.”
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “She doesn’t like Jordan at all.”
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t like you at all either.”
“Oh, you did too,” I said, waving my hand at her dismissively.
“No, I didn’t,” she said, laughing. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”
“From you!” I said. “You said you liked me ever since preschool!”
“That’s not what I told you,” she argued. “God told me you were the one for me when I was in preschool. I never said I was happy about it.”
I looked at her with my mouth open.
“You honestly thought I liked you? As mean as you were to me all the time?”
I rolled my eyes at her.
“You liked me by the time you were Charlotte’s age.”
“No, I didn’t . . .” she said.
“Yes, you did . . . Greg told me you did.”
“Well,” she said, shaking her head. “If Greg told you that then he lied to you.”
I started thinking back.
“Did he ask you to a dance in the seventh grade?”
She nodded at me.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, he told me that he asked you and you wouldn’t go with him because you liked somebody else. That was me . . . right?”
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head again. “I never told him that.”
“Why didn’t you go with Greg then?”
“Well,” she said, “Greg and I were already pretty good friends by then and I really liked him a lot . . .”
“You liked him?”
“Of course I did,” she said.
“You mean you liked him as a friend, right?”
“Well, no,” she said. “I mean I liked him, liked him.”
“Greg? You liked Greg?”
“What was there not to like?” she asked, grinning. “He was funny and he had such a heart for God and he was so cute . . .”
“I never noticed,” I said dryly and she laughed.
“And David!” she said, excitement growing in her eyes. “He started growing his hair out just so he could send it to Locks of Love! I mean he was like a man after my own heart! How could I NOT like him?”
“I cannot believe this . . .” I said, shaking my head.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” she asked, an impish look on her face.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “You do like me now . . . right?”
“You’re okay . . .”
“Anyway,” I said. “So, why didn’t you go to the dance with him then?”
“Well,” she said, “I’d pretty much spent the past eight or nine years not happy with the idea that I was supposed to be with you and when Greg moved to town I was pretty certain that God had made a mistake and that Greg was really the one for me . . . I mean, he was so perfect . . .”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes again. “I got that part. Keep going . . .”
She smiled and I decided she was enjoying this way too much.
“So, when he asked me to the dance I said yes and-”
“You said YES?”
&n
bsp; “Uh-huh,” she nodded and smiled again.
“Go on . . .” I sighed.
“Well,” she said. “One day I made some remark about how I wished he wasn’t friends with you and he asked me why I let you bother me so much and . . . I don’t know. It just kind of came out. I basically wound up telling him what God had told me . . . just like Charlotte did with you this morning.”
“Then what?”
“Then Greg said we shouldn’t go to the dance together . . . he just totally backed off. I said I thought we should still go, but he didn’t think it was a good idea. He said that if God had spoken to me that I had to be obedient to that – no matter what I thought or felt and no matter what you did. He said you were God’s problem – not mine – and that God would see to it that you’d come around . . . eventually.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“Greg was a really good friend to me for all those years,” Laci said. “He was just very encouraging and helped me have faith – especially after I did start to have feelings for you.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“It was gradual,” she said, smiling. “When we came down here on our mission trip I decided that maybe you weren’t so bad after all. And then you started helping me in math and you finally apologized to me for being so mean when we were little . . . that’s when I really started to fall for you.”
She kissed me and sat back, still smiling.
“When did you start having feelings for me?” she wanted to know.
“I’m still waiting for them.”
“Oh, come on!” she said, swatting at me. “Tell me.”
“Well,” I said, winding a strand of her hair around my finger. “It was really gradual for me too. I guess after our mission trip is when I decided to stop being mean to you because I really began to appreciate your heart and then over the next couple of years we started becoming really close friends and I cared about you a lot . . .”
“But just as a friend, right?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “But a really, really good friend . . . one of my best friends . . .”
“So,” she said. “When did you start feeling something more?”
“I guess prom night . . .”
“Seeing me with Tanner?” she grinned.
“Well, sort of,” I said.
She nodded.
“Yet another good-looking guy who stepped out of the way to make room for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He asked me to the prom and I told him it would have to be just as friends because I liked somebody else and he rolled his eyes at me and said: ‘Let me guess . . . David?’ and I nodded. He said we should go anyway . . . that maybe it would shake some sense into you if you saw what you were missing. I guess he was right, huh?”
“Well, sort of,” I said again. “But really, it started earlier that night.”
“I didn’t even see you earlier . . .”
“When I was out to dinner with Samantha,” I said.
“Oh?” Her face clouded slightly and I sensed an opportunity for payback.
“Well,” I continued. “Talk about your good-looking prom dates. You remember what Samantha looked like, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Laci said without much enthusiasm.
“Do you remember her hair? She had great hair! Remember?”
“You’re obsessed with hair, aren’t you?” Laci asked, not smiling.
“Possibly,” I grinned, tugging at the strand I’d been twirling around my finger. She swatted my hand away.
“Oh!” I said. “I get it! It’s fine for you to tell me how cute Greg was and how nice-looking Tanner is, but if I start talking about how pretty Sam is then suddenly you don’t want to have this conversation anymore – is that right?”
“Do you think she’s prettier than me?” Laci asked in a quiet voice.
Not by a long shot . . . not even close. That was the truth and that’s what I should have said, but instead, I teased her.
“Well, she probably doesn’t have a great big ol’ belly like you do . . .”
Laci burst into tears.
Hormones . . .
“Oh, stop it Laci. I’m just kidding. Stop!” I put my arms around her. “No one is prettier than you . . . no one. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world and you know that. You know what the most beautiful part of you is?”
“What?” she managed to sniff.
“Your big ol’ belly,” I said, patting it with one hand. “I wouldn’t change anything about you at all, but especially not that.”
I might as well have been saying blah, blah, blah because she kept on crying.
Two and a half more months . . .
“Laci . . . listen,” I said, shaking her shoulder. “You wanna know how pretty I thought you were back then?”
“How?” she sniffed.
“Remember when we danced together at the Valentine’s dance when we were freshmen?”
She nodded.
“Do you know why I danced with you?”
“Because you promised Greg that you’d dance with the next girl who asked you and you were trying to make Sam jealous.”
She was making this impossible.
“Okay,” I admitted, “but I was really glad that you’re the one who asked me. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, tipping her chin up and turning her face toward me. “You were the prettiest girl there . . . you were beautiful. You still are.”
She managed a smile and wiped a tear away.
“Now,” I said, “do you want to hear the rest of the story? Do you want to know why I fell in love with you?”
She nodded.
“You have to stop crying,” I said.
“I have stopped,” she sniffled again.
“I took her out to eat . . .”
“Where’d you take her?”
“McDonald’s . . .”
Laci smiled again.
“We went to Chez Condrez,” I said. “We were eating escargot and she pulled up all of her hair onto one side of her head into a ponytail . . . you know – like to keep it out of the way?”
Laci nodded.
“And I just looked at her hair and all of a sudden I wondered how many inches long it was and how some little kid would look wearing a wig made out of her hair . . .”
“That made you start having feelings for me?” she asked skeptically. She didn’t look too impressed.
“Don’t you see, Laci? No one will ever know how Sam’s hair would look on a wig because Sam would never do that! I mean . . . I don’t know, she might, but I doubt it. That’s something you would do!”
“Sooo,” she said, slowly, “you like me because I send my hair to Locks of Love all the time?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s because you’re the type of person who would do that and she wasn’t. It’s like Greg told me one time . . . Sam didn’t have the same heart as me. That’s when I started to realize that he was right, and once I realized that, I knew who did have the same heart as me.”
“You knew it was me?” she asked, finally smiling.
“Well, that’s when I started realizing that Greg had been right . . . that you were the one for me.”
The smile dropped off her face again.
“Greg told you that?”
I nodded.
“What else did he tell you?”
“Well, that Sam wasn’t the one for me and that you liked me and–”
“He TOLD you that I liked you?!”
I had a feeling those hormones were about to kick in again.
I nodded, very slightly.
“He promised me he would never tell you that,” Laci said almost in a whisper.
“Well,” I said. “Then it looks like he lied to both of us.”
We sat quietly for a moment and then she looked at me.
“When did he tell you that I like
d you?” she asked.
“Christmas . . .”
“You knew at CHRISTMAS?” she yelled. “You still kept chasing after Sam and you took her to the prom and everything and you knew that I liked you the WHOLE TIME?!”
“I was an idiot,” I said. “I think that’s why Greg finally told me – I was being such an idiot and he probably couldn’t stand it anymore. It just took me awhile to realize that he was right.”
She looked a little happier and I made a mental note to call myself an idiot more often.
“I’m sorry you had to wait for me for so long,” I said, not just talking about high school.
“Whatever it took for us to get to where we are . . .” she said after a moment, “I’m really glad for it.”
“And I’m really glad that you listened to God.”
“It was worth every minute that I waited.”
“You and this baby are everything to me . . .” I told her quietly. “Everything.”
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
We went to the airport when it was time for the Cavendish mission group to go home. I gave Charlotte a big hug before she went through security.
“I want to talk to you for a second about Jordan,” I said. I saw anger flash in her eyes just at the sound of his name.
“Charlotte . . . do you know what Greg would say to you if he were here right now?”
She shook her head.
“He’d tell you that you have to be obedient to God. If God told you that Jordan’s the one for you, then he is. God will make that happen.”
“But I don’t even like him . . .” she said, shaking her head.
“You will,” I said. “One day you will.”
“Even if I do, he won’t ever like me. He hates me!”
“Jordan is God’s problem, not yours. You need to have faith and trust God. Jordan will come around one day. Just be patient.”
She looked at me doubtfully.
“Trust me, Charlotte,” I said. “One day Jordan will thank God for you every day and he’ll be so glad that you obeyed what God told you to do.”
“Thanks, Davey,” she said, hugging me again. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said. “I wish I was there to remind you every day . . . don’t forget what I said, okay? He’ll come around.”
“I won’t forget,” she said.