The Guardian

by Nicholas Sparks

  "I really can't," she said, playing out the words, wishing she didn't have to say them. "They're good friends. I can't blow them off at the last minute."

  For an instant, an unreadable expression crossed Richard's face, but just as quickly as it had come, it was gone. "Okay," he said.

  "I'm sorry," she said, hoping he knew she meant it.

  "Don't worry about it." He seemed to look into the distance before focusing on Julie again. "Look, these things happen. It's no big deal. But you won't mind if I give you a call in a couple of weeks? When I get back, I mean? Maybe we could arrange something then."

  A couple of weeks?

  "Well, hold on," Julie said. "You could always come to the dinner with me. I'm sure my friends wouldn't mind."

  Richard shook his head. "No. They're your friends, and I'm not real good at meeting new people. I never have been-shy, I guess-and I don't want you to have to change your plans." He smiled before nodding toward the salon. "Listen, you made me promise not to keep you, and I'm the kind of guy who keeps his word. Besides, I've got to get back to work, too." He smiled again. "You look great, by the way."

  As he turned to leave and before she could stop herself, Julie called out, "Wait!"

  Richard stopped. "Yes?"

  They'd understand, wouldn't they? she thought.

  "Well, if you're not going to be in town next week, maybe I can change my plans. I'll talk to Emma. I'm sure she won't mind."

  "I don't want you to have to break your date."

  "It's not that big of a deal. . . . We get together all the time."

  "You sure?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I'm sure."

  He met her eyes, staring as if he were seeing her for the first time. "That's great . . . ," he said, and before she realized what was happening, he leaned in and kissed her.

  Not hard, not too long, but a kiss nonetheless.

  "Thank you," he murmured.

  Before she could think of anything to say, Richard turned and started down the sidewalk. All Julie could do was watch him go.

  "Did he just kiss her?" Mike asked, his mouth hanging open.

  Earlier, he'd been standing near the open bay of the garage when he'd seen Richard walking up the street. He'd watched Richard walk in alone, he'd watched Julie and Richard walk out together, and Henry had walked up just as Richard was leaning in to kiss Julie.

  "That's what it looked like to me," Henry answered.

  "They don't even know each other."

  "They do now."

  "Thanks, Henry. You're making me feel a whole lot better."

  "Do you want me to lie to you instead?"

  "Right now, I think I would," Mike mumbled.

  "All right," Henry said, thinking about it. "That fella sure is ugly."

  At Henry's comment, Mike put his head in his hands.

  Once inside, Julie went back to her client.

  "I thought you'd forgotten about me," the woman complained as she lowered her magazine.

  Julie checked the color on a few strands of hair. "Sorry about that, but I was watching the clock. It looks like you've still got a couple of minutes. Unless you want it this dark."

  "I think it should be lighter, don't you?"

  "I think so."

  The woman went on about the exact color she desired. Though Julie knew she was speaking, she wasn't concentrating on what the woman was saying. Instead, she was thinking about Richard and what had just happened outside the door.

  He'd kissed her.

  It wasn't a big deal, of course, not in the grand scheme of things. Yet for some reason, she couldn't stop thinking about it, nor did she know exactly how she felt. The way it happened had been so . . . so . . . so what?

  Forward? Surprising?

  Julie went to the sink in search of the right shampoo, still trying to figure it out, when Mabel walked up.

  "Did I just see what I thought I saw?" she asked. "Did you just kiss him?"

  "Actually, he kissed me."

  "You don't look too happy about it."

  "I'm not sure whether 'happy' is the word to describe it."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know," Julie said. "It just seemed . . ." She trailed off, still looking for the right word.

  "Unexpected?" Mabel offered.

  Julie thought about that. Though it was forward, it wasn't as if he'd gone too far with it. And she did find him attractive, she did agree to go out with him, so she wasn't sure if "surprise" was the right word. At the same time, she also knew that if he'd done it after their date next Saturday, she probably wouldn't have been questioning it at all. Next Saturday, she might have been insulted if he hadn't tried to kiss her.

  So why did it feel as if he'd just crossed a barrier without asking her permission first?

  Julie shrugged. "I guess that's it."

  Mabel studied her for a moment. "Well, I'd say that means he had just as good of a time as you did," she said. "Though I'm not really all that surprised. He's obviously giving you the full-court press."

  Julie nodded slowly. "I guess."

  "You guess?"

  "He also left a card on my porch. I found it this morning."

  Mabel raised her eyebrows.

  "You think it's too much?" Julie asked. "Considering I just met him?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "But it might be?"

  "Oh, I don't know. He might be the kind of guy who knows what he wants, and when he finds it, he goes after it with gusto. I've met lots of men like that. They have their appeal. And you are quite the catch, you know."

  Julie smiled.

  "Or then again," Mabel said with an elaborate shrug, "he might be bonkers."

  "Thanks a lot."

  "No problem. But either way, all I can say is welcome back to the wonderful world of dating. Like I tell everyone, it's never boring, is it?"

  It had been a long time since Richard laughed aloud, and in the confines of his car, the sound seemed louder than it was.

  He gets jealous, Julie had said about her dog. As if she honestly believed he was human. Cute.

  Their evening together had been wonderful. He'd enjoyed her company, of course, but what he'd come to admire most was her resilience. Her life had been hard, and most people would have been marked by bitterness or anger, but he'd seen no traces of that on their date.

  She was also lovely. The way she'd smiled at him with almost childlike excitement and the look of struggle as she'd debated whether to break her plans with her friends . . . he felt as if he could watch her for hours and never grow tired of it.

  I had a good time on Saturday night, she had said.

  He was almost certain that she had, but he'd had to see her today to make sure. The mind can do funny things on the day after a date, he knew. The questions, the worries, the concerns . . . Should he have done this, should he have said that? Yesterday, he'd recalled the date in detail, remembering Julie's expressions and trying to discern any hidden subtexts in her statements suggesting that he'd done something wrong. He'd stayed awake, unable to sleep, until he'd finally had to write a note and drop it off for her to find in the morning.

  But he need not have worried. They'd both had a good time-no, a great time. Ridiculous to have even considered that he might have been wrong about it.

  His cell phone rang, and he checked the caller ID.

  Blansen from work. The foreman, no doubt offering more bad news about the schedule, about falling behind, about cost overruns. Delays. Blansen always had bad news. The bearer of bad tidings. Depressing, that one. Said he cared about his men, but what he really meant was that he didn't want them to work hard.

  Instead of answering, he summoned Julie's image again. It had to have been fate, he thought, meeting her the way he had. There were a thousand other places he could have been that morning. He wasn't due for another haircut for a couple of weeks, but he'd pushed through the door of the salon as if guided by an unknown force. Fate.

  The cell phone rang again.

&
nbsp; Yes, the date had gone well, but there was one thing. Today, toward the end. . . .

  Maybe he shouldn't have kissed her. It wasn't as if he'd planned to kiss her, but he'd been so elated when she broke her plans in order to see him again . . . it just happened. A surprise for both of them. But was it too much, too soon?

  Yes, he decided, it probably was, and he regretted it. There wasn't any rush here. It would be better to take it easy the next time he saw her. Give her a little space, let her come to her own conclusions about him, without pressure. Naturally.

  The cell phone rang a third time, but he continued to ignore it. In the back of his mind, he replayed the scene again.

  Very cute.

  Five

  On Saturday night over dinner, Richard stared across the table at Julie, a faint smile playing over his lips.

  "What are you smiling at?" Julie asked.

  Richard seemed to come back to her, a sheepish look on his face. "I'm sorry. I was just daydreaming there for a second."

  "Am I that boring?"

  "Not at all. I'm just glad you were able to come out with me tonight." Bringing up his napkin to dab at the corner of his mouth, he met her eyes. "Have I told you how lovely you look this evening?"

  "About a dozen times."

  "Do you want me to stop?"

  "No. Call me strange, but I sort of like life on the pedestal."

  Richard laughed. "I'll do my best to keep you there."

  They were at Pagini's, a cozy restaurant in Morehead City that smelled of fresh spice and drawn butter, the kind of place where the servers wore black and white and dinner was often cooked tableside. A bottle of Chardonnay sat in an ice bucket next to the table; the waiter had poured two glasses, and they glowed yellow in the soft light. He'd shown up at the door dressed in a linen jacket, holding a bouquet of roses and smelling faintly of cologne.

  "So tell me about your week," he said. "What exciting things happened while I was gone?"

  "You mean at work?"

  "Work, life, whatever. I want to know it all."

  "I should probably be asking you that question."

  "Why?"

  "Because," she said, "my life's not all that exciting. I work in a beauty salon in a small southern town, remember?" She spoke with good, brisk humor, as if to ward off sympathy. "Besides, I just realized that I don't know much about you."

  "Sure you do."

  "Not really. You haven't told me much about yourself yet. I don't even know what you do exactly."

  "I think I told you I'm a consultant, didn't I?"

  "Yeah, but you didn't go into a lot of detail."

  "That's because my job is boring."

  She pretended to look skeptical, and Richard thought for a moment. "Okay . . . what I do . . ." He paused. "Well, just think of me as the guy who, working behind the scenes, makes sure the bridge doesn't collapse."

  "That's not boring."

  "That's just a fancy way of saying I work with numbers all day. When it gets right down to it, I'm what most people would consider a nerd."

  She ran her eyes over him, thinking, I doubt that. "Is that what the meeting was about?"

  "What meeting?"

  "The one in Cleveland."

  "Oh . . . no," he said, shaking his head. "There's another project the company is getting ready to bid on in Florida, and there's a lot of research to do-cost projections, traffic projections, expected loads, things like that. They have their own people, of course, but they bring in consultants like me to make sure everything will go through the government bidding system without a hitch. You'd be amazed at the amount of work it takes before you can start a project. I'm single-handedly responsible for destroying vast tracts of timber, just for the paperwork required by the government, and right now I'm a little short staffed."

  Julie observed him in the dim light of the restaurant. His angular face, at once rugged and boyish, reminded her of men who made their living posing in cigarette advertisements. She tried, and failed, to picture what he might have looked like as a child.

  "What do you do in your spare time? Hobbies, I mean."

  "Not too much, really. Between work and trying to stay in shape, I don't have much time for anything else. I used to do a little photography, though. I took a few courses in college, and for a short time there, I actually considered making it my career. Even bought some equipment. But it's a tough way to pay the bills, unless you want to open a studio, and I had no desire to spend my weekends photographing weddings and bar mitzvahs, or kids whose parents dragged them in."

  "So you became an engineer instead."

  He nodded. For a moment the conversation hit a lull, and Julie reached for her wineglass.

  "And you're originally from Cleveland?" she asked.

  "No. I haven't been in Cleveland all that long. Just a year or so. Actually, I grew up in Denver and spent most of my life there."

  "What did your parents do?"

  "Dad worked at a chemical plant. And Mom was just a mom. In the beginning, anyway. You know, stay home, cook supper, keep the house clean, Leave It to Beaver kind of stuff. But after my dad died, she had to take a job as a maid. It didn't pay much, but she was somehow able to keep us going. To be honest, I don't know how she did it."

  "She sounds remarkable."

  "She was."

  "Was?"

  "Is." He looked down, swirling the wine in his glass. "She had a stroke a few years ago and . . . well, it's not good. She's barely cognizant of what's going on around her, and she doesn't remember me at all. Doesn't remember much of anything, in fact. I had to send her to a place in Salt Lake City that specializes in her condition."

  Julie winced. Seeing her expression, Richard shook his head.

  "It's okay. You didn't know. But to be honest, it's not something I usually talk about. Kind of brings conversations to an uncomfortable stop, especially when people hear my father died, too. Makes them wonder what it must be like to be without family. But you don't need me to explain that, I suppose."

  No, she thought, I don't. I know that territory well.

  "So that's why you left Denver? Because of your mom?"

  "That was only part of it." He glanced at the table before looking up again. "I guess now's the time to tell you that I was married once. To a woman named Jessica. I left because of her, too."

  Though a little surprised he hadn't mentioned it before, Julie said nothing. She could feel him debating whether he should go on, but finally he did, his voice flat.

  "I don't know what went wrong. I could spend all night talking about it and trying to make sense of it, but to be honest, I still haven't figured it out. In the end, it just didn't work out."

  "How long were you married?"

  "Four years." He met her eyes across the table. "Do you really want to hear about this?"

  "Not if you don't want to tell me."

  "Thank you," he said, exhaling with a laugh. "You have no idea how glad I am that you said that."

  She smiled. "So Cleveland, huh? Do you like it there?"

  "It's all right, but I'm not there all that much. Usually I'm on-site like I am now. After this project finishes up, I have no idea where I'll go next."

  "I'll bet that's hard sometimes."

  "Yeah, sometimes it is, especially when I'm stuck in hotels. This project is nice because I'll be here for a while and I was able to find a place to rent. And, of course, I got the chance to meet you."

  As he was talking, Julie was struck by how much their lives seemed to have in common, from being only children raised by single mothers to their decisions to start over in someplace new. And though their marriages had ended differently, something in his tone suggested he'd been the one left behind, that he'd struggled with real feelings of loss in the aftermath. In her time in Swansboro, Julie hadn't met anyone who could understand how lonely she sometimes felt, especially around the holidays, when Mike and Henry would mention that they were going to visit their parents or Mabel headed off to Charleston to
spend time with her sister.

  But Richard knew what it was like, and she felt an emerging kinship with him, the kind visitors to a strange country might feel upon discovering that the people at the next table come from a town in their home state.

  The evening wore on and the sky deepened in color, unveiling the stars. Neither Julie nor Richard rushed through dinner. They ordered coffee at the end of the meal and split a piece of key lime pie, eating their way in from opposite sides until only a sliver was left that neither would claim.

  It was still warm when they finally left. Expecting him to offer his hand or arm, she was surprised when he did neither. Part of her wondered whether he was holding back because he sensed that she'd been caught off guard by his kiss earlier that week; another part wondered if he had surprised himself with all he'd told her about his past. There was, she thought, a lot to digest there. The little tidbit about being married in the past had come out of the blue, and she wondered why he hadn't mentioned it on the first date, when she'd first told him about Jim.

  That was okay, though. She reminded herself that people were different when it came to talking about the past. And anyway, now that they were more comfortable with each other, she realized she was enjoying this date at least as much as the first one. It was nice-not earth-shattering, but definitely nice. When they stopped at the crosswalk, Julie glanced at Richard. I like him, she thought. I'm not crazy about him yet, I'll be ready to say good-bye later, but I like him. And that's enough for me right now.

  "Do you like dancing?" she asked.

  "Why? Do you want to go?"

  "If you're up for it."

  "Oh, I don't know. I'm not all that good."

  "C'mon," she said, "I know a great place."

  "You sure you don't want to stay around here for a while? We could probably find a place to get a drink."

  "We've been sitting for hours. I think I'm ready for some fun."

  "You don't think the night's been fun so far?" he asked, pretending to be hurt. "And here I was, having a great time."

  "You know what I mean. But if it makes you feel any better, I'm not a very good dancer, either, so I promise I won't say a thing if you step on my feet. I'll even try not to wince."

  "Suffer and smile?"

  "It's the woman's plight, you know."