Emily's Reasons Why Not

by Carrie Gerlach

  I look back over my shoulder at him and …

  WHAAAPPPP! My nose hits first, followed by my forehead, as the door to Starbucks is closed and I have just schmooshed into the glass. I am the crash-test dummy in the head-on collision minus the airbag plus the piping hot coffee. It shoots all down the front of my white sweater.

  Fuck! Fuck-n-A!

  “Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot! Ow, ow, ow!” I grab a bunch of napkins as American Pie Dimple Man watches me try to shake the coffee out of my sleeve.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yep, perfect. I think it’s more of a second- than a third-degree burn. I’ll be fine.”

  He walks toward me and I nervously scoot out of his way. Jesus, he must be six three. Wow! He reaches for the glass door and holds it open.

  I am frozen, looking up, studying his blue eyes like a schoolgirl with a crush until I realize he is holding the door for me.

  GO! my self-respect silently screams. I read the sign like a runner on second heading for third. The third base coach is sending me home. I hit the bag and run for it. The throw is on the way. There’s a play at the plate. Did we win or am I, more than likely, once again out?

  “Thanks,” I say with coffee all over me.

  He stands outside Starbucks, sipping his cool frozen frappy, watching my knee-length jean skirt and coffee-stained sweater cross the lobby.

  Slumping back into the chair with my computer, I feel defeated. I blew it. Head low, I eye the brown stain growing on my favorite white sweater.

  Carefully, I rest my coffee between my thigh and the inside arm of the chair, then begin again to read my computer screen.

  Unbeknownst to the homeless who use the river to bathe in, a scientifically designed river snake has been covertly added. It has become a game of cat and mouse as Walter, the mayor of the river shanty-town, has learned that the government is responsible.

  Wow. That sucks. I hit the delete button, look up, and Mr.

  All-American Perfect Dimples is peering down at me.

  I smile back. He sits in the chair across from me.

  All is not lost!

  I wonder if he knows that his smile could melt Cruella De Vil’s heart.

  He drinks his coffee, opens a USA Today, removes the sports section, and begins to read. His eyes glance over the top of the paper. I can feel him looking at me. I continue to type on my computer.

  jflhalgklhdkljalkhdgljalkhglkhalkhglhljak

  I stop typing and glance up. We are looking directly into each other’s eyes, separated only by three feet of oak table and four feet of bad carpet.

  He doesn’t look away. He just keeps gazing into my eyes as if he knows me. Our moment of eye contact has gone on many seconds too long. Yet neither of us look away.

  “R-r-r-reese,” a Cuban guy says, approaching, rolling the R. “R-r-r-r-reese.”

  My future Mr. All-American boyfriend looks up.

  “We going hor-r-r what?” the Cuban guy demands.

  Reese looks back at me, flashes a pearly-white grin with just the slightest hint of shyness, and gets up with his paper tucked under an arm. Fidel Castro’s cousin leads him away. UGH!

  This is that defining moment, the moment when you pass a perfect stranger in the crosswalk or perhaps waiting for a cab and … you know.

  You know somewhere in your heart and soul that you are connected to that stranger. Maybe it is because we are all connected in some way. Perhaps we knew them in a past life. I am not sure what gives us that feeling, but it was definably there with Reese. It was powerful, and it was real. The question that must be answered in a split second was to play it safe and just stay silent, walk away alone in the metaphorical crosswalk of life, left to wonder, “Was that my soul mate?” or risk making a total fool of myself and get shot down by a complete and utter stranger.

  “Make it a great day,” I say as he walks away.

  Slowly, he turns and looks at me. I glance at his back foot as it twists unconsciously into the carpet.

  “What?”

  “I said, make it a great day.” I’m feeling really stupid now.

  “What’s your name?” he says, low and sweet and slightly bashful.

  “Emily. Emily Sanders.” I stick out a hand over my computer.

  He shakes and holds it.

  Electricity just shot through both our bodies. I giggle.

  “Reese Callahan. And Emily Sanders, you have already made it a great day.”

  He lets go of my hand, shakes out his arm, and then grins that grin that says, “Yeah, I felt it, too.” “Nice meeting you.”

  And walks away.

  “It has been two days since my lobby encounter with Reese Callahan. What kind of name is that?” I ask Jimmy the bartender as he sets down a martini in front of me. I look up at ESPN Sports Center on the TV above the bar.

  “Irish,” says a voice behind me. I don’t turn around. I just look at Jimmy.

  My face scrunches. “About six foot, dark hair, nice smile?” I ask Jimmy. Jimmy nods.

  “Emily Sanders.” Reese pulls out a barstool. “May I?”

  I gesture to the chair like Vanna White turning a vowel on the letter board.

  “Corona,” he says to Jimmy, “with a lime, please, if you’ve got one.”

  That was how it started between Reese Callahan and I. The beginning.

  Sitting at the bar, 1:14 A.M., Jimmy is putting the chairs on top of the tables. Reese asks him for two Coronas and we head upstairs. He is walking me to my room.

  I open my hotel room door and can feel him brush against me as he holds it open.

  “Do you want to come in for a minute?” I try to sound like Marilyn Monroe, but it comes out sounding more like of a low-talker. Who am I kidding? A minute. An hour. A night. A lifetime.

  “Sure.” He follows me in and looks at the pictures of my mom, Grace, Reilly, Josh, Sam, all framed next to the computer on my makeshift desk in the corner.

  “Great dog. What’s its name?” he says, studying the picture.

  “Sam.” I pop my Corona and open his.

  “Thanks.” He sits down on the edge of the bed.

  I sit down next to him. Both of us drink our beers on the foot of my king Serta as awkwardly as high school freshmen. “So, are you in town on business?”

  “Yes, I am. Three days. I leave tomorrow.”

  My face must have changed because his expression turns sympathetic and knowing. “I’ll be back in two weeks. Will you still be here?”

  “I’ve got three weeks and five days left in the lovely William Penn Hotel. Then it’s back to California, and maybe Arizona to visit the family.”

  He starts laughing.

  “What?” I’m embarrassed I might have said something wrong.

  He pokes himself in the chest. “Iiiiii live in California and Arizona.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I knew there was something familiar or, hmmm … I dunno know … something about you”

  “Where?” I ask.

  “San Diego part of the year and Scottsdale the other part.”

  “Almost perfect. I live in L.A. and my family is in Phoenix. Why do you go you back and forth?”

  “Work,” he says. “I work in San Diego and live in Scottsdale.”

  “That’s one hell of a commute.”

  He sets his empty Corona down on the night table and gets up. “Can I call you?”

  “Are you leaving?” I quickly stand and throw my body in front of the door, blocking any possibility of his escape. The door is now to my back. There’s one way out and that is through me. We are face to face. I look up into his blue eyes. We stand for what seems like an hour in an instant.

  Is he going to kiss me or what? I can’t take it anymore. I move to the side because if I don’t, he may sense my need to rape and pillage him. He touches my hand, wrapping it in his. “Where ya goin?” he asks as he gently lifts my chin, leans down, and presses his lips to mine.

  Wet. I am wet. I am frozen, hot, and bothered. There is no
other kiss that has ever been better. Slow, tender, my breath in his. Breathe. I almost fall back onto the wall. Yet he pulls me close, catching me, keeping me safe, engulfing me in his body, his huge, strong, perfect body.

  I sooooo want to throw him on the bed even if just to cuddle into him for a lifetime! But I must appear to be a nice girl. Wait, I am a nice girl. I just want these feelings to keep tingling me that way!

  His smile grows on his perfect face with the perfect dimples. “Emily, I’ll be back in two weeks, but we have tonight. Let’s just take it slow.”

  He eases me down on the bed and lies next to me. He props himself up on his elbow, and we begin a conversation that keeps me listening and asking questions for hours. Who is he? Why do I feel like I’ve known him for a lifetime?

  Reese grew up outside Boston, in a small town with three brothers and one kid sister. He loves dogs and kids and romantic movies. I can’t really explain it, but he feels like the yin to my yang. We stayed up kissing, talking, and hoping all night that the sun would never come up. Hoping that this connection would never go away.

  When the sun finally did come up, I wasn’t tired in the slightest. We had talked, laughed, and kissed all night. I roll out of his arms to pee and brush my teeth. I shut the door to the bathroom and look in the mirror. My cheeks are rosy and glossy. My eyes have a hint of sparkle. I sit down on the toilet thinking to myself, This is it, finally. I flush, wash my hands, and stroll out of the bathroom.

  He is gone. “Reese?” The room is empty and deadly silent. Sun peaks through the heavy drapes. My pulse increases. My shoulders drop. I sit on the edge of the bed feeling an overwhelming sense of abandonment. Did I dream it? Then …

  A knock at the door. My heart leaps. I jump up, swing open the door, and there he stands, holding a Starbucks coffee.

  “Triple-venti-nonfat-no-foam-three-Sweet’n-Low latte.”

  He holds out my drink. “Oh, and don’t think your buddies at the coffee shop didn’t know who I was buying this for at six A.M.”

  The best. He is the best. I stand in the doorway, not wanting him to go. I take the coffee and he kisses me one last time. “Make it a great day,” I say again, for the second time. He smiles, hugs me, and walks off. “Wait.” I pull on his sleeve. “You never told me what you were doing in Pittsburgh.”

  He waited two or three good long seconds. Jesus, these pregnant pauses of longing eye contact are going to kill me. Then, almost afraid of all of the stereotypes, all of the questions, all of the innuendos, he throws it out there. “Playing the Pirates.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m a pro baseball player. First base, San Diego Padres.” And just like that, he was gone.

  The door to my room shut, my head was racing, and my heart sank.

  I lay back down on my bed, feeling miserable.

  Looking up at Dr. D., I plead with him for insight. “How did I shove a lifetime of dreams and who I really am, or better yet who Reese really was, or who I wanted him to be, into one night?”

  “Keep going,” he says. “We’ll figure that out later.”

  “For me, the worst thing in the world is being left. I don’t like to be left. I hate it, despise it, would rather face anything than the fear of abandonment, and Reese, as great as he seems, was destined to be leaving me ALL OF THE TIME!”

  “You’re not still in touch with him, are you?” Dr. D. asks, interrupting the flow of my thoughts.

  There it was, out there, the defining moment of whether to lie to my therapist. Truth. I choose truth. I choose good mental health.

  “No. Not technically, at least. We e-mail sometimes.

  Mainly just jokes. I think it is his way of just making me laugh as somewhere inside he knows I am still hurt.”

  “But it’s over?”

  I nod a sort of yeah, I guess, YEAH, it’s over, nod.

  “We’ll figure out why you’re still e-mailing, then.” He writes a note and encourages me to continue.

  I was completely enthralled with a man who was destined to be shutting the door on me seven months out of twelve. I knew what it meant to me. For me.

  This created “issues.” I know this. My friends know this. I need a man who is home, someone normal, someone who isn’t leaving all the time. And there are all those stereotypes about ballplayers having a woman in every city. Eighty-one road games. Eighty-one nights in hotel beds. Eighty-one nights left to wonder if your boyfriend has his penis in another woman.

  That night I get home to my hotel room after shooting scenes of the river snake eating locals, open my door, and smell nothing but roses from the moment I walk in. The entire room is filled with red roses. There must be six or seven dozen. I leap over the bed and rip open the card in the vase on my desk.

  You make my day great. XOXO, Reese. Roses. I haven’t gotten roses, hmm, ever. He is too amazing to be true.

  Reason #10, and although I try to shoot it down as pessimism before it can form, it pops into my head: If your man seems too good to be true, he probably is.

  Maybe we were just destined to fall in love. I have finally found my soul mate.

  I dial Grace. “Hi, it’s me. What’re you doing?”

  “What’s wrong?” Grace says with worry in her voice.

  “I’m in love!”

  Grace questions, “I talked to you two days ago. You’re not in love.”

  “Love, love, love.”

  “Lemme guess. An actor? A Clooney lookalike.” She pauses.

  “Nope.” I smell my roses.

  “Director?”

  “Nope.”

  “Producer, camera guy, best boy?”

  “Nope, nope, nope.”

  “Em, what’s a best boy?”

  “I dunno know.” I plop down on the bed, spinning a rose in my fingertips. “He’s a baseball player.” Ow. A thorn pierces my thumb. I stuff it in my mouth and suck it.

  Silence.

  “Did you hear me?” I ask.

  “Oh, I heard you. I am just trying to figure out at what point I need to get on a plane and come out there for an intervention. How far gone are you?”

  “He lives in Scottsdale.”

  “Oh shit, you’re planning the wedding. What happened to taking it slow?”

  Maybe she’s right.

  I instantly hang up on her.

  What the hell am I doing? I’ve known this guy less than twenty-four hours and I’m planning our retirement in Arizona. Mental. I am mental. Two hours, one bath, and one Band-Aid from thorny rose later … my phone rings.

  “Hello.”

  “Emily? It’s Reese.” I can hear the other players on the bus talking and celebrating in the background.

  “I just got the roses. They’re beautiful. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Well, I figured they’d live in your room long enough for me to at least get back. This way you won’t forget about me.”

  As if that’s ever going to happen.

  “That’s so sweet.”

  “You deserve them. I gotta go. We just got on the bus and we’re heading to the hotel. I gotta call my parents and I’m beat, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Well, thanks again for last night and today and the roses.”

  “No problem. I’ll call you tomorrow, bye.”

  “Bye.” I hang up.

  Why do I feel sick?

  The phone rings again. I pick it up halfway through the first ring. It’s Grace and Reilly three-way-calling me. They sound like they’ve got a game plan. I can tell they’ve conferred and strategized.

  “You should have known, you big fat bonehead,” Grace says into the phone. “Better yet, you should know now. If you know your issues, which you do, Em, and the guy you date pushes these buttons knowingly or unknowingly … Don’t date him! ‘Cause he’s going to make you batty.”

  “Ahhh, but I can still smell him on my pillow,” I counter. “And the room is full of …”

  “I sense a train wreck,” adds Reilly on the other end of the
three-way call.

  “I haven’t figured out what about Reese is making me nervous.” I flop back on the bed and write the plusses and minuses of dating Reese while I listen to the girls.

  “Nausea, headaches, and sleepless nights are your body’s way of telling you what’s going right, or wrong,” Grace says. “Your body is the first thing to warn you, and in nine cases out of ten, when you feel nervous energy, there is a reason to be nervous.”

  My focus moves from her ever-more-frantic voice to my list. Plus column: Hot, sweet, funny, seems family-oriented, tall, dark, handsome, calls, sends flowers.

  And the minuses: Is not here, could have an account at 1-800-FLOWERS, is too hot, and has a job where senseless women hurl themselves at him, thus making my ploy to “hold out” not productive.

  “… Wait and ‘suss it out,’ ” Reilly finishes.

  For the next two weeks, Reese and I talk on the phone twice a day, once when he is going to the field for practice at around 2:00 P.M. and the other time when the game is over and he is either heading out on the town for the night with the boys or to his hotel room, depending on whether they win or lose and whether he hits or strikes out.

  Day fourteen. Exactly 336 hours and 24 minutes since Reese left.

  Is it love or obsession when you know how many hours it was since you last saw him?

  I am delusional. But, on the phone I have learned every detail about Reese’s three brothers, one sister, their wives, husband, families, and his parents, who are still married. A bonus, as it means he knows that commitment and relationships take hard work and love.

  Of course that could all be wrong if, say, Reese’s parents HATE each other, sleep in twin beds on opposite sides of the house, and never talk.

  Other tidbits I have learned … He had trouble in school with academics, yet graduated from college. Had one serious girlfriend in high school, another when he got drafted, and a psycho girlfriend who currently wants to kill him because he broke up with her and, apparently, she didn’t think the game was over.

  Another reason breaks through my mental defenses while I sit on the couch in Dr. D.’s office. Is it bad if an old girlfriend, ex-wife, or even female friend has cause to want to shoot my new boyfriend in the head? The thought happens before I can stop myself from thinking it. But it never gets vocalized. The ex knew everything I had to learn. Just like with Craig. Remember, not every ex-wife, ex-girlfriend is a crazy, drama-filled, needy, money-grubbing, lying slut. Be wary of men who hate their ex and be warier still of an ex who hates your man. I learned that one already. I’m starting to see more patterns.