Chapter 6
Charles
“Let’s play a game.” I brought out the box full of old, dusty board games that were at the bottom of the closet. Jess had been avoiding me since breakfast. Despite her proximity, she was so distant she may as well have been in another state. This was not going well. I didn’t know how to get her to open up to me and share her worries. She was going to gnaw right through her thumb at the rate she was biting her nail, and I swear she hasn’t turned the page over in at least ten minutes.
“No.” She just shook her head and didn’t move from her seat. She had a mug of coffee and a book she brought was open on her lap. I tried to see the cover, but she was hiding it from me. It made me think it was a naughty book. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. Whatever it was, she wasn’t paying attention to it.
I sat down in the chair across from her and started digging through the games, anyway. I wasn’t ready to give up on her. There had to be another way in. I just needed another plan of attack.
“Oh, Scrabble!” I pulled the game out of the box and held it up for her inspection. “Remember playing this?”
“No.” She went back to staring at her book and sipping her coffee. I wasn’t deterred.
“What? We played all the time. You always beat me. All the reading you do, your vocabulary is much larger than a crayon eater like me.”
I laughed at the memory of how she beat me with sympathizingly. She had to define it for me to even realize it was a word. She had looked at me like I was dumb. I leaned right over the board and kissed her passionately, unable to resist her adorable and accurate look.
“Must have been another girlfriend.” Her tone was too careful and her body too still.
I barely held back a groan of frustration. “I’ve never had another girlfriend,” I said a little too forcefully. “There’s not been anyone but you.” Did she really think she was so unmemorable that would mix her up with someone else? Did she genuinely think I could get over her?
She looked at me then. “What do you mean you’ve never had another girlfriend? It’s been ten years.” She dropped her book, but carefully set her mug on the coffee table between us.
“I mean, I’ve never had another girlfriend. Every time I tried, it felt off, and it never worked out.” I wasn’t ashamed of my dating history and it had been years since I’d really even tried to date at all. Jess was it. It didn’t matter whether people believed in soul mates. She was mine, and that was that.
“But,” she sputtered for a moment, “that’s not — you’re so — but.” She didn’t finish her sentence. She stared at me for a moment before tossing the blanket to the side and leaving. Again.
Great. That was not my intention. I wanted to remind her how much fun we had when we were good. I didn’t bother calling out to her. It was still snowing hard and she would freeze if she tried to venture further. She wouldn’t risk herself like that. I worried I was wrong, but she was there on the porch, curled against the cold. I played with the bracelet in my pocket. She’ll come back and I can try again.
Semper Fidelis.
Always faithful.
Except in my head, it was always faithful to Jess. The Marines were simply a means to the end.
“You still going through with it?” Jess’s grandma asked me when she caught me cleaning out my old square body truck at a small car wash just outside of town. I needed to put it up for sale. I didn’t know what she was doing here. She had a strange habit of being exactly where you wouldn’t expect her to be.
“I signed the contract.” I pulled out the floor mats and did my best to vacuum them clean.
“Bah, contracts can always be changed.” She waved her hands in the air and a large ring almost flew off her fingers from the force of her movement. She seemed so much smaller than I remembered, and I wondered just how long she planned on sticking around.
“I don’t think the US government will just let me out of my contract to join the military.” She might get out of contracts, but I didn’t have her income and social standing.
Her stare pierced my soul. It took everything in me to continue to meet her gaze.
“Well, it’s as good a plan as any. It will keep you busy while she sorts things out, at least. I’ll be in touch.” She walked away before I could respond.
What the hell was she talking about?I thought. I knew, though. Jess. I don’t know how she figured out about our plans, well, my plans now, but getting her approval to keep going was… comforting. Made me feel like less of a creep, or maybe we just shared in creepiness now.
I had almost given up hope. Although Jess was single, it took a decade for me to get another chance with her. It was just the miracle I didn’t think would ever happen.
“Charles,” Charlotte’s frail voice said on the other end of the phone. “Can you come to Savannah? I have a proposition for you.”
I had kept up with Charlotte. She was my only connection to Jess, but she was also just a fun and feisty old woman that kept me on my toes and filled the role of grandmother for me since mine passed when I was young.
“You’re in luck,” I said as I zipped up my bag. “I was already planning to visit my folks on my leave and I’m flying out there today.” I wondered if Charlotte was psychic. Either that or she was spying on me.
“Excellent, stop by while you are here. I can’t promise you cookies right now, but I can promise you won’t regret the trip,” she said evasively.
“No cookies? How am I supposed to survive that?” I teased her to cover my anxiety. She always had cookies. Always. Something must be very wrong for her to forego her second favorite retirement pastime. The first being meddling in others’ lives.
“It will be difficult, I’m sure.” Her tone was consoling with her unique tone of prim and proper, but her voice was fading like she was running out of energy, and my anxiety stepped up a notch.
“Good thing the Marines taught me to deal with difficult things.” She coughed, and it sounded like she moved the phone away from her just to conceal it.
“Jess will be out all day Thursday. I’ve got her running around town for me and she shouldn’t be back until late. Can you come by at noon?”
“I’m putting it on my calendar now.” I always stopped by when Jess wasn’t around, though I wish I didn’t have to and that I could use my time to see her, but she didn’t know I was still in contact with her grandma and Charlotte seemed to think it should stay that way. As much as it pained me, I trusted her judgment when it came to all things Jess. I had no other choice, after all.
When I visited her, things were worse that I thought. She looked so frail and weak tucked into her massive bed. It’s just a normal king size bed, but under her slight frame it looked huge.
“Charles,” she said brightly when I stepped into the room, as if she wasn’t confined to her bed and we were having this discussion over cookies and milk in her kitchen like we usually do.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded as I made my way to her and took the seat positioned closest to her bed. I imagined Jess sat in this chair regularly and relished the very weak connection between us even as a pit opened up in my stomach when Charlotte’s hand shook as she reached for me.
“Tell you what?” She batted her eyes at me as if she could distract me from her obvious ill health. “Oh this, it’s nothing some rest won’t take care of.” She dismissed her fragile state so easily, but under her words sat a weakness in her that couldn’t be denied. She gripped my hands with surprising strength and the thin, soft wrinkles on her hand brushed my calloused ones.
I just stared at her, refusing to acknowledge that this was ‘nothing.’
“Now, I wanted to talk to you about something before I made it final. I’m giving Jessica my cabin in the mountains of Colorado, and I was just thinking of all the times Thaddeus and I got stuck up there by an unexpected snowstorm.” I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I listened intently as she continued on.
“How would you feel about getting stuck there yourself?” She asked, and I was lost for a moment before I realized what she was saying. “Oh yes, you would like that. Good. I’d hoped you still wanted to be with her. You two are perfect. She just needs another chance to see it.”
Hope bloomed in my chest and I gripped her hands tight. I stamped down all thoughts of being with Jess again, though. “There’s no guarantee anything will work.” I couldn’t let myself consider that, not yet. “Besides, she’s going to be so angry when she finds out. She won’t go along with your plan. Jess is too stubborn.”
“She will. She just needs the proper incentive.” Charlotte coughed after that and I handed her the water that was on the nightstand.
“If you insist,” I said as I worried over her.
“I insist. Now you just need to figure out what you’re going to do when she’s ready for you because she’s not going to follow you around like a lost puppy. She has a life here.”
I smiled at her because I was more likely to act like a lost puppy than Jess ever was. “You’re not the only one with plans, Char.”
“Good.” She handed me back the cup of water before she patted my hand, and I squeezed the one I still held. I didn’t like where this was going. Oh, I liked the thought of having another chance with Jess, but I loved Charlotte like she was my own grandma and the way she was talking, she didn’t think she would be around for much longer.
“You can’t come to the funeral,” she said after we sat in silence for a time. “Jess can’t know you’ve been hanging around.”
I still didn’t understand that part. We had gone back and forth on this over the years, but Charlotte kept insisting that Jess wouldn’t handle me still hanging around very well. Why would that change after Charlotte was gone? I just hoped I wasn’t wasting my time by trusting her.
She fell asleep with my hand still gripping her tight and I didn’t see her again. I respected her wishes and stayed away from the funeral, as painful as that was. I didn’t stay away from her grave, though. She didn’t ask that of me, and I put fresh flowers there every time I visited Savannah, including the day before I left to come here.
I still prayed she was right and that I just needed to use this chance to prove myself to Jess, prove that we can work again, prove that my heart is hers and always has been.