16. Lex
16
After nine days of waiting for this perfect plan to be enacted, today was the day. I had rescheduled everyone and everything except the florist, who at the last minute had nothing else to do with her flowers. So I wouldn’t have every single surface in the yacht covered with vases of roses and flower petals. Peonies and lilacs would have to suffice. Besides, they smelled better anyway.
I opened the door for my final patient of the day, ushering her into the hallway, and sighed as I leaned against the closed door when she was gone. It had been the longest week of my life waiting for today to get here. Charlie might never understand the torture it was for me to wait this long, but I knew since she was under the gun at work, it was the right thing to do.
I glanced at the time on my watch and guessed she had about twenty minutes left of her flight. Then she’d stop by baggage to pick up her checked bag, stop by the snack shop for a latte to keep her awake, maybe wait a few minutes for the car I hired to bring her to the yacht, and by then I’d be safely on the boat ready for her. I just had one stop to make and I was home free.
I locked up and headed out, choosing to drive myself today. My regular driver was booked, and my backup driver had to go pick up Charlie. I wasn’t going to have her get a rental and drive in this chaotic Friday afternoon traffic if I could help it. She’d done that enough over the past two months. But I didn’t mind driving. It made me feel more in control since I was on a timetable.
Traffic, unfortunately, was heavy. Things were bumper-to-bumper and stop-and-go for twenty city blocks. I found myself antsy and laying on the horn repeatedly, letting my grumpy nature take over. It was strange to me that other than a few temper flares, for the past six weeks at least I hadn’t felt this agitated unrest. Charlie had been such an influencing factor on my moods that I didn’t even recognize myself at times. My staff had made similar comments.
It wasn’t for that reason, however, that I was proposing to her, though it was a benefit of loving her. Charlie felt like home to me in a way I had never experienced before. When I thought even for a split second that she was going to vanish the way so many women before her had, my soul was crushed. I couldn’t breathe.
Then she agreed to come for this weekend and I was alive again. I couldn’t wait to get her on that boat and propose to her. I couldn’t wait to hear her say yes, she wanted to marry me. And most of all, I couldn’t wait to make her my wife. I didn’t want a long engagement, I wanted to marry her as soon as possible. I knew what I wanted, and to wait around only seemed to say that I was uncertain. I was old enough to know that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.
When traffic finally started moving, I felt a strange vibration in the rear end of the car. It sounded like a thumping noise too, like I was driving over rumble strips or speed bumps. I glanced in my rearview mirror but saw nothing, and I put my window down and the noise only got louder, until the car didn’t want to drive at all.
“Crap,” I grunted, looking down at the clock radio. I had about twenty minutes to get to the yacht after having done my errands, but now something was wrong with the car. I had no choice but to pull to the side of the crawling highway and turn on my blinkers. It just so happened, that in the distance I could see the flashing lights of a few emergency vehicles, which explained the traffic. Someone had an accident and it was holding everyone up.
Off on the side of the road just far enough that others could get around me, I stopped the car and put it in park. When I climbed out the sweltering heat suffocated me. A thick mixture of exhaust and salty air claimed the air in my lungs and choked me until I was coughing. I walked around behind the car to see the passenger’s side tire was flat and I was still partially in the driving lane.
“My God, what now?” I shook my head, ran my hand through my hair, and stared in anger and disbelief at the flat. Air was still slowly leaking out of it, a loud hiss barely audible over the sound of the traffic. People drove past with their eyes on the road ignoring me and I almost kicked the good rear tire as I rounded back to the driver’s door. I didn’t have time for this at all. Now, even if I got roadside assistance here to help me as quickly as possible, I was going to be late.
Charlie was probably in this line of traffic heading out to the yacht club even as I stood here hunched over digging through the crap in my passenger’s seat looking for my phone. I hoped she either saw me and understood or didn’t see me and didn’t get upset at all. After what happened two weeks ago when we were together, I wanted this weekend to be special with no interruptions. So much for that idea.
When I finally found my phone, it was blinking a red battery indicator, flashing 1 percent. Just my luck that my phone would be flat when I needed to call for help. It seemed my dreams were even falling flat. Nothing was working out for me, like the gods had frowned on my desire to propose to the one woman in my entire life I’d bonded with intimately. It felt like my childhood all over again, returning from summer camp only to be ushered back to boarding school without even a week at home to visit with my family.
I almost threw the phone. I was so upset by that point. I stood, staring at the long line of oncoming traffic knowing a tow truck would take hours to get here. My eyes scanned the vehicles passing by nearest me, then the line that extended farther up over the bridge. I didn’t recognize any of the cars, any of the drivers. My normal hired car wasn’t in the line, nor were any people I would consider my friends, though I had so few acquaintances I even associated with outside of work, that wasn’t such an unbelievable thing.
“Sir I’m going to have to ask you to get back in your car and move it.” I turned to see a traffic cop approaching me. He held his hand out toward my car and gestured with a flick of his wrist and I scowled.
“I have a flat, and my phone is dead. I need to call for a tow or something. I can’t change the tire here.” I had never felt more humiliated, not even when I made those stupid mistakes early in my career. Mistakes like that were part of the job, learning pains. Things like this were not.
I was forty-two years old and incapable of changing a flat tire. No doubt this kind officer would have helped me if there wasn’t an accident and he wasn’t directing traffic, but even he would have been wary of doing so right here on the edge of this bridge with my car halfway in the lane and the flat tire on the street side.
“I see…” He glowered at me and reached up to grab the radio clipped to his shoulder. He squeezed the trigger and spoke into it. “Dispatch, we need another tow truck. Flat tire on the side here behind the accident. This is unit three-twelve, over.”
“Copy that, three-twelve. Third truck in route, over.”
“Please just sit in your car…” The man nodded at my sorry excuse for a vehicle, and I could have sworn he mumbled something about stupid rich white men before walking away. For a moment I leaned on the side of the car next to the open door. My plans were falling apart and I wanted to scream. Charlie would be waiting for me, wondering where I was and what was going on.
As it were, there were three news vehicles out here now, one helicopter circling overhead showing the wreckage on the bridge, probably for traffic reports during rush hour, and four cop cars. The gawkers were out in full force too, staring as they drove past, as if I were part of the accident scene. This was exactly what the tabloids loved to eat up and distort. I couldn’t just sit here and wait.
So once again, I scanned the rows of traffic. They were all different cars now, the line of travelers still moving past me at a slow rate of speed. And I didn’t think I knew any of them until a silver convertible slowed and stopped next to me.
“Lexy? Baby! What are you doing out here?” It was Myra, with her convertible top down and her hair tied up in a silk scarf. Her makeup was thick as sin and her sunglasses hid her dark eyes, but I knew it was her.
Salvation!
“Oh my God, can you give me a ride to the docks?” My shout rose above the din of cars’ engines and she waved me over.
“Get your things, baby. We’re going for a ride!”
She threw her head back and cackled, and I was positively giddy for the smidgen of hope she brought. I took everything I could think out of the car while the line of traffic laid on their horns. The cops would have to sort out the car themselves; I’d happily rather pay a tow bill and an impound fee than miss this evening with my beautiful fiancée-to-be.
“Take me to my yacht, Myra. The woman I love is waiting on me.” I closed the door and buckled up with my arms loaded down with flowers and paperwork from the office.
So long as Charlie wasn’t too upset with me for being late, this still had the title “best day of my life” written on it. Now I just had to get to her.