Page 20 of Unexpecting

″I would! I really would! That would be good—great. Everything’s good tonight,” I said embarrassedly. I could feel my face flush. “Thank you, enjoy the wine,” I told the customer happily as she left.

″Well, that’s good,” David said in a bemused voice. “Look, I’m busy tomorrow, but how about Saturday night?”

“Or Saturday during the day?” I eagerly suggested and then kicked myself. Saturday night would be like a date while getting together during the day said let’s just keep it casual—but I didn’t want to wait any longer than I had to. “I mean, if you’re not busy? I don’t have any plans, and I thought it might be good—”

″That would be great. Why don’t you come down to my place and…”

His place!

″I live down by the beach, and we could go for a walk, grab some lunch, and hang out for a bit. Sound good?”

″Sounds wonderful,” I told him with stars in my eyes. I was officially a loser, and now a whole line of customers knew it because they were all listening with rapt attention. Most of them were grinning now, including Cory, who brought up the end of the line, three people away.

″Great. Give me your number, and I’ll text you the address.” After which I apologized to the next customer in line and rang up David’s wine. Then he gave me a big smile and said he’d see me Saturday about eleven. Then he was gone, vanishing as quickly from my sight as he popped into it. In fact, if it wasn’t for Cory standing in front of me with four bottles of merlot and a gleeful expression, I might have thought I dreamed the whole thing.

″Well, that was fun!” Cory said loudly from the end of the line. “Fancy seeing each other after so long like that.”

″Old boyfriend?” asked an older woman in front of him, just a little too eagerly.

″How could you tell?”

″Oh, you can totally tell,” said a thin guy who wasn’t much more than twenty. When he smiled, the ring in his eyebrow stuck out. “You’re all flustered and smiley.”

″She can’t stop smiling,” the older woman said with a smile of her own.

″She’s glowing,” Cory announced.

″Well, now I’m just embarrassed,” I told them as I felt the colour mount on my cheeks. But I couldn’t seem to get the smile off my face for the rest of the night, despite the wicked heartburn I ended up getting from that falafel.

Chapter Ten

“Friendships will undoubtedly change at the onset of a pregnancy. Mothers-to-be will be preoccupied with the changes in their body and the impact a child will have on their future. They will have less inclination to deal with the petty problems of their friends.”

A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood

Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)

Idid realize itwas horribly pathetic to hold a candle for someone this long, but especially pathetic when you hadn’t had any contact with him for years. The big question was, why was I still hung up on David Mason? Because ever since he walked into the store Thursday night, he was all I could think about.

In my defense, I don’t consider that I’ve been holding the candle for him for the entire twelve years. I had a bad time of it when I came back from Europe, but I got over that in a couple of months. And except for the odd Google or Facebook search for him in the last year or so, I haven’t given much thought to David.

Until I was canvassing my list of past loves, of course, searching for someone who might be a good fit for the daddy-and-dump role I needed to be filled. I hit on David—a quick hit, not a dwell—because we had a decent, stable relationship. But when Morgan brought him up out of the blue, with no idea he had also been on my mind, of course, I started thinking about him a little more, especially now that I’m given to analyzing every man I see for a possible sperm donor. And then David just showed up at thestore, like some weird vision. Just seeing David made all my old, forgotten feelings fall into a perfect line before me, and I realized that, yes, it can be said that I’ve been hung up on him since we broke up. Pathetically so.

I fell in love with David when I was nineteen years old. At least I’m pretty sure I was in love with him, but the ease with which I surrendered the four-year relationship to go gallivanting off to Europe with Brit left many wondering. In my defense, though, Brit and I had this trip planned since we were sixteen. And it was an amazing trip. We were twenty-two—it was the summer after we graduated with our bachelor’s degrees, me from the University of Toronto and Brit from Queens. Both of us were headed back to school in September—me for my bachelor’s of education and Brit for her master’s of business (I later completed my master’s, just so you know)—but both of us felt we needed one last summer of fun before entering the real world.

Brit and I started off with one of those Contiki tours, the ones where you see seven countries in twenty days, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and get little or no sleep. And, oh yes, have sex with as many people as you can. Well, in Brit’s case anyway. I’m sure not all the tours are like that, but I just happened to see it from Brit’s point of attack. I think her final total for the tour was four, and I think she threw in a couple more when we were in Italy before we headed home. This, of course, from the girl who had only ever had sex with one person before we landed on foreign shores and who was on the cusp of becoming her now-gorgeous self. Brit traded away her relative lack of experience (not that there’s anything wrong with experience or relative lack of it) with a vengeance on that trip. Not to sound condescending, but two of the four guys she slept with on the tour had just gotten out of the Navy and were trying to get as much action as they could.

I, on the other hand, stuck with quality rather than quantity and spent half the trip sharing the bed of our tour manager, a hunky Australian named Butch. There are much more interesting stories to tell about my travels with Brit other than our sexual escapades, but this isn’t the time to get into it. I’ll finish with how we ended up in Greece three months after setting off from London, seeing a lot more of Europe than we had planned.

But back to David, since that’s what got me started down memory lane. When I got back from Europe, with every intention of throwing myself at David’s mercy and begging him for another chance, I found he was gone. Moved-to-Vancouver gone. I don’t know what it is about the western shoresof this country, but they do attract a lot of single Torontonians. Anyway, David was gone and I was on my way to Kingston to finish my education, so it wasn’t like I could go chasing after him. I thought about it for a while but decided against it. So that ended the history of David and Casey.

Was the trip to Europe worth sacrificing David? I have to say—absolutely. I did miss him, but I didn’t have to be miserable about it and I did enjoy my freedom. Did I regret breaking up with him? Again—absolutely.

That was twelve years ago. Since then, I’ve heard the odd tidbit about him from mutual friends, and when Facebook came out, I took the opportunity to check for him a couple of times. And I’ve Googled him a few times, but it’s not like I was stalking him or anything. And that’s about it. I don’t think I’ve been doing the whole holding-of-the-candle thing. It was just such a shock to see him after so long. And it was nice that he wasn’t bitter or anything about me ending things. And it was exciting that he wanted to catch up with me as much as I wanted to catch up with him.

More than anything, David had transformed from my first serious, non-high school boyfriend into an almost mystical symbol of the best boyfriend ever. I know things weren’t perfect between us (early twenties, still in university—when is a relationship at that time in your life perfect?), but I do remember it as pretty good. I’m sure I’ve romanticized it, but really, who can blame me with my disastrous stream of boyfriends? Thinking about David made me realize it might just be possible for me to find love.

All this went through my head on Friday, so I was a bit of a basket case by the time I got home—anticipation and nerves were creating havoc in my stomach. After work, I met up with some friends I’ve known from university, and I had the hardest time not announcing to all that I had a date with David for the next day. Or was it a date? I was meeting him at his house, which could mean David considers his home to be a nonthreatening, neutral place; he wants me to meet his wife or girlfriend or whoever he’s sort of involved with—or he wants me to meet his dog. I have to say, I’m hoping for the dog, unless he wants me at his home to be closer to his bedroom so there won’t be a logistics problem if he decides to seduce me then and there. That, of course, is my favourite option, and I know it’s the least plausible.

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