Faithful (32 page)

He cleared his throat. “Professor Sanders, I've been really bogged down with papers for other classes.”

Cyd nodded, coming forward in her chair. “And you thought you could cram and catch up whenever you needed to, right?” She looked around at the other students. “I stressed at the beginning of the semester that it's imperative that you stay on top of the work. You need to regularly drill your vocabulary, noun declensions, and verb forms—in English and Greek. You need to do the readings, the assigned exercises, both Greek-to-English translations
and
English-to-Greek, and if it would help, you should do the online reinforcement exercises that you've been given links to.”

Cyd turned back to Jonathan. “That was active voice you gave me. You said, ‘The mother was washing her children,' when the sentence should have said, ‘The children were being washed by their mother.'” She looked around again. “Can anyone give me the correct translation?”

Audrey raised her hand, and Cyd was thrilled. She'd been struggling in the class, not because she hadn't been doing the work but because she simply found it difficult.

“Audrey?”

“oiJ pai`de~ uJpo; th`~ mhtro;~ ejlouvonto.”

“That's correct.”

Audrey smiled to herself.

Cyd looked at the clock and rose to her feet. “It's time to go, but I have an announcement first. As you know, papers are due Friday, but some of you have let me know that you have real conflicts because of work in other classes. Just to prove that I'm merciful, I'll extend the deadline to Monday.”

One guy pumped his fist at his side.

“But if I don't have your paper in my inbox by midnight, I'm deducting points.”

Worry lined Judith's face. “Now
I've
got a conflict.”

Cyd showed her confusion. “But you didn't have a conflict with the Friday deadline?”

“Not as much.”

Goodness
. Sometimes she felt these
were
high school students, given the simple problem solving she had to do for some of them. “Judith, pretend the deadline is still Friday, and get it done and out of the way.”

Her head tilted. “I could, couldn't I?”

The students made their way toward the door, two stopping to schedule an appointment during Cyd's office hours. Cyd tucked her books and papers into her bag, and when the room was quiet and she knew she was headed home, her thoughts drifted to a familiar subject of late—Cedric.

It was Wednesday, and they hadn't spoken since she'd left his condo on Saturday. He didn't even come to the nine o'clock service on Sunday. She'd thought he might call, say something to challenge her decision to move on. Nothing. Not that she intended to change her mind, but part of her wanted to know he was serious at the Botanical Garden when he said he saw them together, that he wasn't just playing with her head. He'd been persistent when it came to pursuing her for the wrong reasons. Interesting how he'd given up so easily now, when it supposedly meant more.

Cyd shook the thoughts from her head. Her inclination on Saturday had been right. She needed to move on. Cedric had a lot of baggage to sort through, some of it dressed in lingerie. Besides, she wasn't convinced he'd really been changed. The whole morning at the Garden seemed like a distant dream.

She shrugged into her jacket and walked into the hallway—and her whole world skidded to a halt as she wondered whether
this
was a dream.

Cedric was on campus, in January Hall, leaning against the wall near the door to her Greek 101 class, holding an armful of white roses. He held her gaze a few seconds, then pushed off the wall and came toward her.

“How did you . . . ?” She tried again. “How did you know where I'd be?”

He gave a slow smile. “Class locations and schedules aren't confidential information.”

Her heart was beating fast. He was here. And he looked handsome as ever in a tailored blue suit. She stumbled for words. “Shouldn't you be at work?”

“I've had meetings all morning, got another one in a couple of hours. But I had to do this first.” He came closer.

“Do what?” Her heart was pounding.

“Let's walk. It's a gorgeous day, and you're done with classes.”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know?”

“The administrative assistant in your department is very helpful.”

“I bet, especially when you show up with roses.”

They walked out of the building and onto the artfully manicured grounds, with more than a few glances from students at the roses he was carrying.

When they came upon an out-of-the-way wrought-iron bench, Cedric gestured toward it. “Is this okay?”

Cyd nodded, her heart out of rhythm still as she sat, hands in her lap. What was he going to say?

Cedric lowered his head a moment and looked away. When he looked up again, he stared into her eyes, and she was almost certain she could see a depth in those brown eyes that she'd never seen there before.

“First,” he began, “I want to say that I have a new mentor.”

Cyd wasn't expecting that these would be his first words. “Okay. Who is it?”

“Scott.”

She frowned, surprised. “Really? How did that come about?”

He laid the roses between them on the bench. “I called him Monday night. I did a lot of thinking Saturday and Sunday.” He sighed at the remembrance. “A lot of thinking,” he said again. “And I was reading a little in the Bible you gave me. I had so many more questions, and I remembered Scott and Lindell were meeting for lunch on Tuesdays, so I asked if I could come.”

“I'm glad, Cedric.” She truly was. “I think it's awesome that you want to find answers to your questions.”

“Believe me, I had a lot of them,” he said. “One thing I wanted to know was how Scott went about dating his wife before they got married.”

She frowned again. “You asked him that?”

He gave her a slow nod, his eyes boring into hers. “And I told him why I was asking. I told him and Lindell about Saturday morning— even the part at the condo—and I said I needed to make a lot of changes, but I didn't know how to go about it.”

“I'm not following you. What do you mean, ‘make a lot of changes'?”

He gazed into her eyes so long she thought she would float on the feeling it gave her. “I said I wanted to make you my wife.”

Cyd watched the students and faculty and birds and squirrels move in slow motion as his words played over and over in her head. By the sixth time, she could almost be sure she'd heard him right, but she was just as sure that he was crazy.

“Cedric, we barely know one another. I think you have good feelings toward me because God used me in your life, but that doesn't mean we're meant to be together.”

His expression didn't change—except the gleam that entered his earnest eyes. “I told them you'd say that. That's why I wanted to know how Scott dated his wife. I want to show you that I'm serious, and I want to do things the right way, however long it takes. Because I do believe we're meant to be together.”

His words alighted on her heart, someplace deep within, and in that unguarded space she could almost believe it too—that they were meant to be together. But her head commandeered deliberations. The whole thing was crazy. Cedric? Talking commitment? Sounded like he meant well, especially given his meeting with Scott and Lindell, but how long would those good intentions last? He was four days into a new mind-set. He'd had decades of living the other way. The pull to return to it would be strong.

But she was feeling an undeniable pull herself . . . to get to know him. Her mind couldn't grasp the wife part—too far-fetched. But she no longer wanted to walk away.

Maybe she never had.

“For your birthday,” he was saying, “I gave you lavender roses— and by the way, I'm still enchanted with you, but in a different way. Anyway, now I'm giving you these.” He lifted the white roses. “I know it sounds corny, but God must have seared these words on my brain, because I hear them in my sleep: I pledge to be true. These roses are a symbol that I want to do things God's way, the pure way. If you agree to let me see you, that's what our relationship will be about—purity. I don't even want to kiss.”

Cyd's expression made clear she found that hard to believe.

“Okay, let me clarify.” His smile melted her heart. “It's not that I won't want to kiss you. I'm not
going
to kiss you. I'm that committed to showing you that I'm all about getting to know you for you. The rest will come, after you become Mrs. London.” He placed the bouquet into her arms.

Cyd didn't know what the next hour, day, or month would bring for her and Cedric. But she knew that right then in her heart, scary as it was, she had stepped onto a new path.

C
EDRIC CALLED THAT
evening after she'd eaten dinner. He seemed unusually shy at first, at a loss for what to say. After an awkward silence, he said, “Just tell me about you. All about you, from childhood on.”

They talked for more than three hours, and Cyd learned much about him as well, like the kinds of rocks he collected as a boy, his knowledge of bird species, and his experience on the basketball team in high school. They shared favorite movies, laughed at favorite scenes, counted the number of states each had visited, then countries, marveled that neither had been to an island, and agreed there was no point in eating ice cream if you couldn't have chocolate.

They only hung up after Cedric made sure they would talk the following night—which they did, for
four
hours. This time they made dinner plans for the following night, and all day Friday Cyd had a giddiness about seeing him again. They chose a casual restaurant— jeans and a sweater for both—and hunched over in a booth like two schoolkids who couldn't get enough of one another, deep in conversation and laughter. Already they had an unspoken rule: they could delve into anything. Nothing was off-limits.

Still, Cyd was taken aback when Cedric said, “So who was the guy?”

Cyd's brow furrowed. “What guy?”

Cedric took a sip of cappuccino. They'd long been finished with their meal.

“You told me that first night we went out that you had been with a guy once, a long time ago. I know he had to be special. Who was he?”

“Gary.” Cyd's mouth went dry, and she took a gulp of water. “There's not a whole lot to tell really.”

Cedric raised a brow. “I doubt that, not if you let him get that close.”

“True.” She looked sheepishly at him. “To be honest, I just don't feel like talking about him.” She traced a finger along the condensation on the outside of her water glass. She'd never talked to anyone about Gary but Dana and Phyllis.

“You don't have to tell me,” Cedric said. “I understand.” He sounded sincere.

Cyd bit her lip, considering. “No, we've basically made our lives an open book. I want to tell you.”

“Yeah, I've shared things with you I've never shared with anybody. Even
feelings
and stuff like that.” He shook his head in mock disgust.

Cyd gave him a brief smile, then sighed. “I was twenty-nine, and I thought I had found my future husband. Gary and I dated for more than a year, saw each other constantly, held hands at church. We were in love. Or so I thought. He got a promotion that required a move to Philadelphia, and interestingly enough, Bryn Mawr had been trying to recruit me to their faculty, and they're right outside Philly. We decided he would go, get settled, and then I would follow up with Bryn Mawr. So before he left . . .”

Cyd took a steadying breath. “We had a special dinner, and he came back to my apartment and stayed later than normal. Said he wanted us to spend as much time together as possible. Things just got out of hand. He said if I loved him . . .” Cyd looked down, her emotions rising.

Cedric finished for her. “If you loved him, you would make love to him.”

Cyd barely nodded. She still remembered how she felt the next morning, waking to him in her bed, feeling stripped of all that was sacred. But she did have one thing to hold on to—their relationship.

“After he moved,” she continued, “we kept in touch almost every day for the first couple of months, but the calls lessened on his end, and then he was slow to return mine. It took him weeks to admit that he'd found someone else.”

She met Cedric's gaze with a sigh. No tears had fallen, but they were pooled there for him to see.

He reached a hand across the table and locked his fingers with hers. “I'll bet he really did care for you, and when he moved, it was hard to maintain. But I'll tell you, hearing that story dredges up so much of my own past. I told you, Cyd, I played with women's minds. I did whatever it took to get what I wanted.” There was sorrow in his voice. “And I never once said I was sorry.”

“But you've told God.”

“I know.” He dragged his hand across the back of his neck. A determination entered his eyes, and he tugged on her hand. “Can we pray together?”

“Of course.”

“I don't want to fail you, Cyd.” He paused. “I don't want to fail
us
.”

Us
. The sound of it made her jittery, more so after memories of Gary had been awakened. Would this relationship fare any better? She'd known Cedric a fraction of the time. Should there even be an
us
so soon? Should she be feeling this close to Cedric already? Was she in one of those whirlwind deals that would come crashing down in an instant?

His other hand reached across, and she took hold. “I'm not good at praying yet, but I'll try.”

She squeezed his hand and bowed her head.

“God,” he began. He waited a moment before he continued. “I'm just going to talk like I've been doing in my heart. I know You've put this woman in my life. I feel like she's the one. And I don't want to mess it up. Help us do everything just like You want us to.” He looked up, then bowed his head again. “In Jesus' name. Amen.”