Chapter Nine #3
“I can’t believe you’re here. When I think of you, I always imagine you in Italy, in one of the scenes in your postcards. It’s going to take a girl a minute to catch up.”
“How often do you think of me?”
Maybe Kennedy’s boldness had rubbed off on her, because she surprised herself—and perhaps Joe—by answering him.
“Often enough.”
Too often.
“I think about you, too. Often.”
He said it like a confession.
Be bold.
It was what President Kennedy had implored them to do when he proposed this audacious thing.
And now, they were all going to the Moon.
It was hard not to be inspired by an invocation to be bold, particularly when you didn’t have a natural propensity to such action.
“Would you like to get a coffee…or something?” Vivian asked him, her heart pounding.
“ ‘Or something.’ ” He swallowed. “I’d like that very much.”
Joe gestured toward the spot where she’d been standing by the TV crew earlier. “Are you finished with work? I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were filming, but it looked like you’d wrapped up, so I thought it was a good time to come over.”
If the letters they’d exchanged hadn’t increased her attraction to him, and the uniform hadn’t done it, either, then Vivian would say that it was the knowledge that he had waited while she finished working, had understood the spectacle it would have caused for him to interrupt their taping, and had respected the fact that she was trying to make a good impression on her colleagues.
She’d said as much in her messages to him, but it meant even more to know that he had listened to her and taken her feelings into consideration.
“I’m finished,” Vivian confirmed, and Joe fell into step beside her as they walked away from the stage.
“I’ve thought of you a lot since we last saw each other,” he said, causing her to stumble, the honesty in his voice catching her off guard.
Perhaps President Kennedy’s advice to be bold had resonated with him as well, because she couldn’t escape the feeling that he had decided to be different with her today, that everything was different today, all pretense stripped between them.
“I’ve missed your letters. Missed your friendship. ”
Vivian favored his honesty with some of her own.
“I wondered how you were doing. How you were enjoying your time in Europe. All of it. I missed hearing from you. Missed your postcards.”
She didn’t want to tell him the rest of it, didn’t want to admit that she had worried about him when she had no right to, no claim on his affections, no official place in his life. It felt like a strange thing to admit even as it was very much the truth.
So, she told him a different truth instead—
“I’m not with Graham. Not anymore.”
Joe stopped short, so quickly that she nearly stumbled into him, and he took her hand, catching her, keeping her from falling as his arm wrapped around her waist.
“Since when?”
She’d wondered if Polly or Frank had mentioned it to him, but his reaction gave her all the answer she needed.
Vivian swallowed. “Since the night of Polly and Frank’s engagement party.
I called Graham after I got home. I told him that I didn’t feel the same way about him that he felt about me, that it wasn’t fair to him to continue the relationship when I knew I wouldn’t be able to give him what he wanted or needed.
“Seeing Polly and Frank together—he deserves to have someone who loves him like that.”
“Was there anything else that night that made you realize that Graham wasn’t the one for you?” Joe asked her.
There was so much hope in his eyes, something akin to longing—that Alan-Shepard-launching-into-space look again—and they’d danced around what existed between them for so long, this connection that they had, and Vivian couldn’t deny it anymore. She didn’t want to deny it.
Be bold.
“When I saw you again—” Vivian swallowed, nerves bubbling up inside her. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t known she would see him here, that she hadn’t prepared for this. It didn’t give her a chance to try to reason her way out of what she said next.
“When I saw you again, I knew that there was something different in the way I felt when I was around you.”
“Viv.”
Oh my.
He’d never called her that before, but now she knew she wanted to hear her name—just like that—falling from his lips.
She had to ask. “Is there anyone—”
Joe shook his head. “No. No. Just you.”
Vivian looked up into his eyes, and she saw the question there, knew what he was asking, knew what her answer would be.
Little moments, strung together, that suddenly felt momentous.
A double date. A space launch. An invocation to be bold.
Vivian nodded, the words stuck in her throat as anticipation built, as she waited for him to finally kiss her.
As soon as his lips touched hers, she knew this had been a very bad idea indeed.
As soon as his lips touched hers, she knew she didn’t want anyone else to kiss her.
As soon as his lips touched hers, everything else disappeared and they were no longer on the fringes of the Rice University football stadium, but in their own little world where anything was possible.
At least for today.