Page 15 of Beside the Rolling Waves
going to have
time to go out
with you anymore.
Thank you for
the time that we
spent together.
There. She thanked him for that. Which she felt was stretching it just a bit, because… She kind of felt like it was mostly wasted time. Even though he assuaged her ego at times.
Leaving the check where he would be sure to see it, she took one last look at Rick, leaning back between the door and the seat, tilted toward her just a little, his head back, his mouth wideopen, snores that would wake the dead coming out of his mouth, his hands limp at his sides. A half-drunk beer in the cupholder beside him.
She wasn’t going to miss him, and she wasn’t sad about this. She never should have started anything, and she should have broken up long ago. If that’s what this was.
Yanking on the handle, she hopped out, slid down the rail, and reached out to close the door behind her. It felt like she was closing it on a part of her life that she really didn’t want to look back on at all. Those memories could sink down a black hole and disappear for all she cared.
Seven
“Welcome to the Blueberry Beach diner. Can I get you something to drink?” the waitress asked as Rodney sat at the corner booth, watching for Becky to come in the door.
“I’m waiting for someone, thank you. I’ll order with her.”
“Gotcha, darling.” The waitress winked and then walked off.
He didn’t want to stare but turned his head back out toward the street. Typically, Becky had always been early. In fact, she had given him a hard time more than once for being just a couple of minutes late.
She had driven that into him more than his own mother had, and he’d ended up being very punctual, early even, as a businessman. It was a habit that had paid him a lot of dividends over the years. Other people couldn’t stick to deadlines, but he had Becky in the back of his head, urging him on, and he had to say, he never missed a meeting and had never been late to one.
And yet here he was, it was 2:11, and she still wasn’t here.
And then the thought struck him. She was going to stand him up. She was going to do that to get back at him for ghosting her five years ago.
Really? He couldn’t believe that of Becky. Especially since they were meeting to talk about her sister’s kids. There wasn’tanyone in the world who meant more to her than her sister did, and the idea that she would stick it to him, just to get back at him, and throw her sister and her kids underneath the bus…that wasn’t the Becky he knew.
But people changed.
He got his phone out and set it on the table. At 2:20, he would leave. He had her old number, but he’d tried it after her sister had called him, and it hadn’t worked. That’s why he had ended up going to see her. He supposed he knew people who’d probably have her new number, but he was annoyed, and he wasn’t going to try to find it.
If she blew him off, she could find him. That’s the way he felt about that. He would show up on Friday, because he promised Rita, but if Becky wanted to deal with him, she could track him down at the hospital, and they could do it then. He didn’t care.
At 2:20, he admitted that Becky wasn’t who he thought she was, or she changed a lot anyway. He threw some money down on the table for a tip for the waitress. She’d brought him ice water, even though he’d not requested anything, and he figured he owed her something for her time. Plus, one of the things that Davis and Matt and especially Ford Hansen had drummed into his brain was that when a person had money, that made them more generous, not less. It was always better to be generous. And all of those men, at one time or another, had quoted Luke 6:38:
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
As he thought about that, he stopped, walked back to the table, and put a one-hundred-dollar bill down. There. Hopefully that would make someone’s day.
He turned around and walked out. Disappointed. Disappointed in himself for what he had ruined with Becky years ago. Disappointed with Becky for not showing up, for not being the person he thought she was, for jumping to assumptions about him, not giving him a chance to explain. And most of all, for blowing off her sister and her babies. For not keeping her word when she agreed to meet with him, for not trying to figure out a solution that would be best for both of them. Instead, the babies were going to be born, and they were not going to have any kind of plan in place for them.
He stomped off down the sidewalk, wishing he hadn’t driven the whole way back from Chicago just to face an empty diner, just to drive back to Chicago to finish up what he needed to do before he went to the hospital on Friday.
Still, there was a part of his heart that hurt. Because…he loved Becky. Loved the girl she had been anyway, the woman she had become, and…maybe the person she was now. He wanted to love her. To him, love wasn’t just a feeling, it was kind, it was not prideful, it was patient.
And there he was, he’d given her twenty minutes and no more.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and stopped right beside his SUV.
