Page 20 of Just Like Starting Over
She smiles slowly, the expression lighting her features. “Was it love?”
“I thought so. It sure felt like it.”
“Have you fallen in love since? You know, to compare.”
I shake my head and tease her a little. “You keep nicking my date bra. I might never know.”
Her smile flashes. “One and done,” she says with satisfaction, like we’re living in some kind of fairy tale. Well, if she finds romance in the story, I guess that can’t hurt. “Time for a happily-ever-after, Mom,” she says and I’m startled.
“Some people fall in love more than once, you know.”
She looks skeptical, then tightens her grip around my neck, mostly so she can look me in the eye and I can’t evade her. “What did Una say about you two?”
“She thought we were too young to be serious. She told me to wait until he came home from university.” I widen my eyes. “You can probably understand that four years sounded like an eternity.”
Sierra is visibly horrified. “Four years! What were you going to do for all that time?”
“Wait tables at the diner in town.” I can’t tell her I had any hopes of going to art school. She’d assume I didn’t go because of her. In reality, we had no money for tuition. A scholarship was the only chance, and with Sierra on the way, I made a choice.
“Where?” Sierra straightens. “Not the same place where The Carpe Diem Café is?”
“The same place. My first job. I scooped ice cream my first summer, then in the fall, I got promoted to waiting tables.”
“Crummy job?”
“Kind of a fun job. Everyone came there in those days, so I saw everyone and heard all the gossip. Leon and Dottie were good to all us kids. We worked hard but we had a good time, too.” I smile in recollection. “They always had a staff dinner the week before Labour Day. They’d close up for the night and we’d all have a meal together before the older kids went back to university. Spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. It was kind of like a second family.”
She’s studying me. “Did you see them again after you left?”
I shake my head, sobering. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I left and haven’t come back.” I touch my fingertip to her nose and her gaze darkens. “No regrets,” I whisper then pull her into a hug. She wraps her arms and legs around me, just the way she did as a little girl, and I’m struck suddenly by the prospect of her departure from my daily life. In a couple of years, she’ll be gone, as she should be, off to follow her own dreams and build her own life.
I already miss her.
“You should get back together with Mike,” she says then and I laugh at the very idea.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You should date Rafe then. I’ll even give you back your bra.”
“Why Rafe?”
“He’s rich and he likes Merrie’s cooking.”
There is an entire lecture series here on the strategies of choosing a suitable mate, but I hear a car’s tires on the gravel drive. “I’ll keep your suggestion in mind. Now, hop out there and see if Una needs a hand. She might be really tired tonight.”
And Sierra, like the good kid she is, jumps off the counter to do just that while I set the table.
Get back with Mike. Honestly, could there be a crazier idea? (Okay, dating Rafe is a crazier idea.) I’ll probably never see Mike again. He’ll likely avoid me and the café like the plague.
Relief is what I should be feeling. The worst-case scenario has happened and it’s over. Time to move on.
My memory, though, slides back to summer evenings at the pier, parked in Mike’s car, the moon rising high, its reflection shimmering on the surface of the lake. I’m not going to think about his heat pressed against me, his arms around me, his mouth…
No, not me.
