Page 5 of Reaching Hearts

“Thank you. I haven’t seen him since back then. I'm sorry. I thought I was all done crying. Apparently I'm not. It's just that, last night he walked in here like a gift from heaven. He flirted with me and didn't remember me from before and thank God because we got into a horrible fight back then. So he asked to help me clean and he was late. But then he showed, right Manny?”

Manny nods and the girls glance at him.

“He helped me clean up the booths. The chairs are up because he put them there.”

We all look around, knowing the man who put up these chairs, nearly died last night. I take a deep breath. “And voila. The universe proceeded to give me the biggest fucking-never-gonna-happen ever. Gunshot. Surgery. Girlfriend at his hospital bedside. The works.”

Taryn winces. “Girlfriend at his bedside? Oh no…how awkward.”

“I walked into the room and there she was holding his hand.”

Manny closes his eyes and the girls make sounds like the wind is knocked out of them.

“She’s gorgeous. Elegant. An older woman. Taller than me in every way. I felt like I was a barefoot redneck with no teeth, holding a dead chicken, next to her.” I wave my near-empty glass in the air. “So, yeah. If awkward means: heart dragged down to hell and stepped on by forty laughing demons… then yeah, it was awkward.”

Taryn is staring ahead. I can see her face in the mirror against the backbar wall trying to process what I’ve yet to understand, myself. “He just walked in… by accident?”

“There are no accidents,” Laura mumbles.

Ruefully, I smile. “I was thinking the same thing. But then we both almost died, so there’s that.”

Laura taps her pint glass with a single fingernail over and over. “That’s bullshit. Let’s go. Get up. Come on.” She jumps off the barstool and starts sliding on her bracelets; she means business.

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