“No. We don’t have that kind of friendship.”
“Do you want that kind of relationship with him?”
I didn’t want to pause too long so I just said, “With Tyse?”
“Yes, that is who we’re talking about here. Are you interested in him other than as a friend?”
“Dawn, I’m waiting for Gage. I’m in love with Gage. The sooner he can figure out what he wants, the sooner we can get back on track. That is my focus right now.”
“Good, that’s a relief,” she sighed. “I just talked to him on the phone earlier when he called Wyatt. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”
My heart skipped a beat, but it was because I was worried. “Uh, did you tell him…?”
“No, I didn’t tell him you were with Tyse. But I did tell him you were having dinner with Mom and Dad. If he asks about it you should be upfront, Ellie.”
“I will be,” I replied, feeling a bit insulted.
“I didn’t tell him you were out with Tyse last night either, especially when he called here and wondered why you wouldn’t answer your phone.”
“I called him back last night, but he was already half asleep. He said he’d call back today but I haven’t heard from him.”
“He’s been helping a friend move. And how come I know this and you don’t?”
“Oh jeez, Dawn. Why don’t you get dumped and see how eager you are to call and pester the guy all the time.”
“Ellie, you didn’t get dumped.”
“Really? Well whatever it was didn’t feel good. I just think that it’s up to Gage to decide what he wants.”
“Honestly? Maybe that’s where your problem is, little sis. Maybe you should fight a little harder.”
I wanted to rip my hair out. How many times had I been the first one to call Gage, or to send him a text message? I was willing to visit him every weekend, just so we could be together.
“Dawn I can’t talk to you about this right now. I’m sorry, but I really don’t think you understand. I need to get to bed, okay?”
“Wait, Ells, I’m sorry—”
“I know, but I just don’t want to talk about it. Love you. Talk to you soon.”
I had to hang up before she said anything else.
I collapsed onto my bed, feeling physically and emotionally drained. I was tired of trying to figure out solutions to everything. Was that really what my life was all about? And the more I had to hear Dawn criticize my relationship with Gage, the closer I got to blurting out that she was married to a cheating pig.
I slept horribly that night, and I tossed and turned with all my thoughts battling each other every minute I was in bed. By the time I got up at four-thirty to get ready for work, I felt like a zombie. I applied more makeup than usual because even a shower didn’t liven me up. I smoothed on some citrus-scented lotion to make me feel peppy for the morning, but that didn’t help either. I went to work feeling worse than my Saturday morning hangover.
Tyse did call me around eleven. I was able to take my lunch break so I could meet him in the lobby, and I will never forget the look on Beth’s face when I entered the reception area. Both Tyse and Nate were standing by the doorway, but Beth looked completely and utterly infatuated with the two of them. She didn’t even try to stop staring.
“Hey guys,” I smiled.
Tyse looked mighty nice in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and I think Nate was wearing exactly what he wore the last time I saw him: a white tank top and super long, baggy denim shorts.
“Hey,” Tyse smiled back. “Uh…” He turned to Nate and then looked at me again. “Maybe you two should officially meet. Ellie Abbott, Nate Hernandez.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Nate. Uh, especially under safer circumstances.”
He partially smiled. “Uh, yeah listen… I’m really sorry about that. I mean for hitting you and then…and then being an ass. I was just kinda spooked, you know? I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. No harm was done. Well, not much thankfully.”
I glanced at Beth standing up behind the counter, and her mouth was hanging open. I was sure she was stuck on the fact that Nate had “hit” me.
“Oh, Beth Swanson,” I motioned to her.
She seemed pleased that I’d introduced her. “I love your tattoos,” she said to Nate almost breathily.
He glanced down at himself quickly. “Oh, uh…thanks.”
I wasn’t sure how weird the time with Beth was going to get, so I ushered the guys outside.
“Sorry about that,” I said when the door closed behind me. “She’s got a weird fascination with body art.”
“You got a way better reaction than I did,” Tyse said to Nate.
“That’s because you’re still in the pretty boy stage,” Nate replied. “You gotta get that el lagarto, man. Right up the forearm,” he motioned.
Tyse shook his head with a smile. “Maybe you should get one. El Legarto Juancho, right on your ass.”
Nate laughed really hard, and I was smiling even though I had no idea what Tyse just told him to put on his rear.
“El Legarto Juancho would want to see the world, if you know what I mean,” Nate said.
“Yeah, probably not a good choice for you.”
“What’s a lagarto?” I asked.
“Oh, a lizard,” Tyse answered.
I kind of scowled, bothered that I’d actually pictured a lizard tattooed on Nate’s butt.
“But El Lagarto Juancho is a special lizard,” Nate told me.
“It’s an alligator,” Tyse clarified.
“Ah, I see.”
“Uh, a famous cartoon alligator,” he added with a smile. “Wally Gator?” he tried when I still didn’t say anything.
“From Hanna-Barbera?” He nodded and I had to laugh. “Wally Gator, huh.” I looked at Nate’s arms and found somewhat of a blank space. “How about right there? Next to the uh… Is that a pair of hands choking a rabbit?”
Nate smiled. “Ah, good eyes. No such thing as luck when you work hard,” he said, pointing to its significance.
“Oh. Yeah, I believe that. I hear you’ve built your own business. I’m sure that was a lot of work. Did you get your car, uh, what’s it called? Re-done? Made over?”
He smiled and pointed to a car in the parking lot. Surely that wasn’t the same car that hit me, was it? It looked totally transformed! Had it not been an older model of a vehicle, I would have thought it was brand new.
“Wow, you’re kidding me.”
“You like it?” he asked. “Maybe you’ll let me redecorate your car.”
I pointed to mine in the parking lot. “Pretty basic.”
“Oh, no way. Lime green?” he asked Tyse with a smile.
“Maybe a ginger, with the wheel wells ablaze,” he replied.
“Ah-ha, nice.”
“Okay, you guys are not going to repaint my car, flames or otherwise.”
“You’d be one special lady driving that baby around,” Nate assured me.
“I’d rather not stand out. I’ve already been pulled over four times and been ticketed twice. And white is supposed to be a cop-friendly color,” I joked.
“Not when you burn ninety-nine down the freeway,” Tyse told me.
Nate laughed. “Ooh, a speed demon. We’ll add a pretty little diabla loca in those flames.”
“I do not go that fast on the freeway,” I argued.
“Okay, maybe eighty. On average.”
I rolled my eyes. “My car is zippy. It just feels that way. I don’t think your truck even went past seventy, did it?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, maybe once or twice.”
“Oh yeah, what’d you gain on the ’88 Nissy?” Nate asked.
“Just four hundred. I didn’t do as much work to it as I wanted to.”
“Well that’s not bad. You should’ve brought it back to Cali and we could revamp it to get another six.”
Tyse shrugged and then he seemed to remember something. “Crap, your lunch break, El
lie. I’m sorry, I totally forgot.” He motioned me to Nate’s car and took something out of the front seat. It was a white paper bag and he handed it to me. “You probably don’t have time to eat now, do you?”
“It’s okay, I can eat at my desk. Thank you so much. You really spoil me, you know.”
He made a noise of disagreement. “Whatever. How many things have I done in this city because of you? You’ve really made my time up here memorable, Ellie.”
I glanced at Nate’s movement, and he was strolling along the parking lot toward the street corner. I suddenly became nervous, wondering if he’d left Tyse to be alone with me on purpose. He took a look down the street, and then hung a left out of sight.
“Well it was memorable for me too,” I said. “I had a few more things I wanted you to do while you were here, but maybe next time, right?”
“Right.”
“Maybe you should come up for the holidays?” I suggested. “What do you have going on for Thanksgiving or Christmas?”
“Uh…usually not much.”
“You don’t, uh…”
“No, I don’t spend it with my family. They like it that way.” I could have delved into that particular subject again, but Tyse ended up asking, “When do you have vacation time? When would you be able to come down to California?”
I took a breath to think about it. “Well, I have a full week in December and a full week in April—plus the weekends added on there. Other than that I can manage to take off a Friday or a Monday to make a three-day weekend. I have Labor Day and Memorial Day off…uh, Fourth of July…I don’t know. I work a basic schedule I guess.”
He slightly nodded. “Okay, I’ll write you in for all of those dates.”
I laughed. “I wish, Tyse.”
“I know, I’m kidding.”
“I could probably plan for April for sure if that works for you.”
“Yeah, that would work. It’s a long time away, but it’s better than nothing. You’ll be just in time for baseball season.”
With a smile I said, “That’s right, I could watch you play.”
He nodded again, but the look on his face didn’t really match his agreement.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
He sighed. “Just the fact that people always commit to ‘keeping in touch’ or ‘visiting sometime’ and most of the time it doesn’t happen. I guess I’d rather you not make the decision out loud. I don’t want to be disappointed. I mean I understand if you can’t make it, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”
I wanted to disagree with him, but I knew he was right. It was the way people were. How many friends from high school or college had I agreed to keep in touch with and never so much as spoke a word to them since? It was human nature; the intent was there, but not realistically so.
“I don’t see that as being the case this time,” I replied. “I want to come see you in California, so I’ll make sure it happens. I’ll plan on coming in April, but there could be a weekend or two before then that I could come, too. I’ll just have to see. But what about you? Would you be able to come up for Christmas, maybe?”
I guess I expected him to answer yes right away, so when he paused, I wasn’t sure how to take it. Finally he said, “If that’s what you want then yeah, I could do that.”
“Of course it’s what I want. Why would I invite you if it wasn’t what I wanted?”
“So you’re not planning on being with Gage at that point?” He studied me closely and then added, “Because I would assume that he’d be back for the holidays, too. And if you guys are still on, it’s probably not a good idea that I’m here, too.”
I shrugged and said, “I don’t know what to say, then.”
“It wouldn’t work, Ellie.”
“Yeah, I realize that.”
We were both quiet for a few seconds, and I was just starting to wonder if I had been kidding myself all this time. There was no way that I could be fully involved with Gage and have a friend like Tyse at the same time. If I were to make a couple of trips to California to see Tyse, and also have him visit for Christmas, Gage would have a cow. I couldn’t blame him for it either, could I? I didn’t believe I could ever get Gage to feel comfortable about Tyse.
“Well you’ve got my number, Ellie,” he finally said. “Let’s just start there I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he smiled. “Such is life. But if you find a weekend that you can come and see me, I’ll make it worth your while. And I’m not talking about crap like Sea World and Disneyland.”
I laughed. “But what if I want Sea World and Disneyland? I’ve never been to Sea World.”
“Well I’ll take you if I have to.”
“Actually do you know what I really want to do in California?”
“Hmm, what’s that?”
“I just want to sit on a warm beach. We don’t have the same beaches up here.”
“Sit on a warm beach, huh?”
“Yep, just sit on a beach. I could probably sit there all day and be content.”
“That’s a lifelong dream of yours?”
“Yes.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Well warm beaches aren’t anything new to me, but I think I’d like to sit on a warm beach with you. I’d be pretty content, too.”
And then we were back to the awkward silence. I hated that awkward silence, and it only seemed to make saying goodbye even harder. Nate had reappeared in the parking lot with what looked like a bag of jerky from the jerky shop around the corner. He kind of lingered for a while, keeping his distance and even chatting up someone that walked by.
“Well I can’t do this anymore,” I finally admitted. “I should let you go so you can get some freeway under you. I hate goodbyes, and I would normally hug you, but I know hugging isn’t your thing, so I’ll just—”
“What? Why isn’t hugging my thing?”
“Well, you were freaked out the last time I hugged you, so I just thought it wasn’t something you were comfortable with.”
He stared at me for a few seconds and then he kind of smiled. “You said you were a hugger, and then I never got a hug from you again.”
“I know, because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t make me—” He stopped short and then sighed. “It just caught me by surprise, Ellie. And no, I’m not used to being hugged, but I did like it. It was nice being hugged by you,” he smiled again.
I didn’t know what to say but I did return the smile. We were back to that awkward silence again, until Tyse took the paper bag from my hands and set it on the hood of the car. Then he stepped toward me and gathered me in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my face against his shoulder, relishing my last few moments with him.
“You smell really good,” I murmured against him.
“So do you,” he replied. “Like oranges or something.”
“I was really tired this morning. Citrus is supposed to be uplifting, but I don’t think it worked this time.”
“You didn’t sleep good last night?”
“No, not really—”
“Ellie! Bob Howard is on the phone for you!” Beth exclaimed from the door to the building.
I very reluctantly pulled away from Tyse and smiled at him sheepishly.
“I guess this is it, then,” he said with a slight frown.
“Ellie, Doug is looking for you, too!” Beth hissed dramatically.
Great, if the boss was on the hunt…
“I’m sorry, Tyse—”
“It’s work, don’t be sorry.”
I slightly nodded and he gave me one last hug. “Take care of yourself, okay? Try not to do too much.”
“Hmph.”
“Yeah,” he replied knowingly, pulling away to look at me. “Just at least call and let me know how you’re doing, okay?”
“Okay,” I nodded.
He handed me my lunch and said, �
�Bye, Ellie.”
I couldn’t even respond, so I just gave him a wave and headed into the building after Beth. She motioned to the phone on hold, so I just took the call right there so Bob didn’t have to wait any longer. Between watching Tyse get into the car with Nate, Doug entering the lobby to talk to me, and managing a phone call at the same time, I hardly had a chance to let my emotions settle too deep.
As soon as I got off the phone with Bob, Doug eagerly asked, “Well?”
“He’s in.”
“He’s in? He’s in? Yes!” he added with a fist pump. “Nice job, Ellie. So you said Friday… He agreed to coming in on Friday?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, this is big,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Bob Howard as a guest on the afternoon show… I can’t even wait.”
“He said he’d consider getting us in touch with a couple of his major clients if he liked his experience.”
“Are you kidding me? I couldn’t even guess who it might be, but any one of them would be huge. Bob represents the largest…”
I tuned him out by then, glancing into the paper bag that Tyse had left me with. Yeah, I knew the numbers on Bob Howard because I’d done the research myself. All Doug ever talked about was the big names in the industry. Sometimes it got annoying because there were so many other artists that I thought would be great to have on the show, not just the ones that were the most exposed already. But I knew how it worked, and getting Bob Howard to our radio station was pretty huge.
“Ellie, I want you to personally see to every need that Mr. Howard has while he’s here on Friday. I want him to have the food he likes, and any other comforts that he deems necessary.”
“Okay.”
“And I want you to meet with me tomorrow so I can approve it.”
“Sure thing.”
He left after a decisive nod, and I remained alone in the room with Beth.
“Wow, Ellie. How’d you get Bob Howard requesting to talk to you?”
“I met him last year at the Portland Fashion Show. He agreed to a brief phone interview while he was in town, but then he ended up having to leave early before we could make it happen.”
“So how’d you get him to come into the studio?”
Summer Swing Page 25
