Page 40 of Someone to Watch Over Me

“It could be.” I’m not sure where this flirty girl is coming from. I haven’t seen her in years.

“All right, since you promised, I’ll let you go.”

Smiling, I get up and go into the kitchen to finish dinner, thinking about all the things he said and trying to figure out how I feel about them. I’m astonished to know he had a crush onmein high school. I can’t wait to tell my friends that. They won’t believe it. I wonder how my life might’ve been different if I’d known that then.

But if I had known, I might never have met and fallen for Jim in college. The thought of missing out on him and us is heartbreaking. We had a wonderful five years before disaster struck. They were the best years of my life so far, and I’ll never regret them, even knowing what was coming.

Life is so freaking weird. Just when you think you have it figured out…

As I cut up the chicken and toss the salad, I’m not thinking about Jim. I’m thinking about Tom and the things he said and the sincerity I heard in every word. I believe him when he tells me he’s cared about me for a long time, even though I didn’t know that.He didn’t go to his senior prom because he couldn’t ask me!

Now that I do know how he felt, however, I’m filled with a kind of giddy excitement that I haven’t felt in ages. I’ve been so dead inside, slogging through years of terminal illness as well as Jim’s tragic, premature death and the devastating aftermath.

It’s such a relief to feel something other than awful. Not even what Cora said about their aunt dying two years after her bypass can bring me down tonight.

I have no idea if anything will come of this new stage of my relationship with Tom, and I’m still seriously unsettled about his health situation, but for right now, today, it feels damn good to feel good again.

9

Tom

I hope I didn’t make a mistake by laying it all on the line with Lexi. I’ve had a big wake-up call that time is precious and all that matters is the people we care about.

I care about her. I want to be with her, but only if that’s what she wants, too.

It’s such a relief that she knows how I feel. Keeping it secret from her all these months has been torturous, but she was extremely fragile when she first moved in. I didn’t want to do anything to add to her grief, so I played it cool. I gave her friendship, because that’s what she needed most.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m a jerk, or that I invited her to live with me with ulterior motives. I knew from the beginning it was possible nothing would come of it because she was in such a difficult place in her life. I offered her the place to live before I even gave it half a thought. I had something she needed, so I made it available to her. I wasn’t thinking,Oh, maybe someday Lexi will be more to me than a roommate.First and foremost, I was thinking I could make her life easier, so I did.

I’ll never regret offering her a place to live. If she moved out tomorrow and said,Let’s just be friends, I’d be fine with that, even if it would be disappointing. At some point during these last few months of living under the same roof, Lexi‘s happiness has become more important to me than my own. After hearing more about what she endured during Jim’s illness, I know no one deserves happiness and peace of mind more than she does.

I’ll never do anything to mess with either of those things, especially in light of recent events. She’s probably thinking she’d be crazy to get involved with a guy with a faulty ticker, especially after spending years as a caregiver to her terminally ill husband. She’ll probably give it some thought and decide to cut her losses before things get any more intense.

I wouldn’t blame her for that. When I think about her coming home to find me laid out on the floor, I cringe. I have no memory of that entire day. I haven’t told anyone that, lest they think I’m nuts, but my brain is a total blank. I went through my phone to see what I was doing that day, read texts from customers and employees and was able to unpack most of what went on, but I don’t remember any of it.

Doctors, family and friends have asked if I had any symptoms.

I didn’t have a single ache or pain, no shortness of breath or any indication that I was primed for a massive heart attack, except maybe being more fatigued than usual. I’d chalked that up to the hectic schedule I keep while running my own business. The lack of a real warning is seriously unsettling. I never got the chance to ask my dad if he had signs that his number was coming due, because he died almost instantly. None of us recalled him saying anything about not feeling well or any changes in his overall demeanor before that day.

It’s scary as shit to know that something like this can strike like lightning and end the whole ballgame in the early innings.

Why in the world would someone like Lexi want to risk that when she’s already been through so much?

She might want to, but when she has time to consider it, she’d be wise to bail out before it’s too late.

That thought depresses me as much as anything has in longer than I can remember. Even nearly dying wasn’t as much of a bummer as surviving would be if my future doesn’t include her.

I sound overly dramatic, even to myself, but in the years since I fell for her in high school, I’ve dated a lot of women. I had more first dates than any guy I know. Cora tells me I’m too picky, that I don’t give people a chance, and she’s right on both counts. I can tell in the first five minutes of a date whether I’m going to want to get to know the person.

Is that fair? Absolutely not, but I can’t change how I’m wired. If I could, I’d do something about my cardiac wiring first and foremost.

What my sister will never know is that every one of those first dates was measured against a girl I knew years ago, and they were all found to be lacking in comparison. She’s my one. She always has been, and how funny is it that she achieved that status before we ever even had a meaningful conversation?

Some things can’t be explained. They justare. She’s that for me. The night I saw her sitting alone at the bar of a local restaurant will go down in my personal history as one of the best nights of my life. As I took the seat next to her, I told myself to breathe and relax and not be weird.

Easier said than done when the crush of all crushes is sitting next to you for the first time ever.

She did a double take when she recognized me, which was a relief. I didn’t have to say,Hey, I’m Tom Hammett, and I remember you from high school.Thank God for small mercies.

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