One Step Away (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 1) (3 page)

Nonetheless, during his interview last week
at the Vista Heights Public Library, Alexander was intrigued that
the Board of Trustees sought to become one of the elite libraries
in the state. Alexander wondered what it would be like to take the
reins of a larger library without all the media-grabbing attention
of Bedford Falls.

His interest intensified last night when the
Board President offered him the position. Alexander asked for a
couple days to contemplate the opportunity, but the job didn’t hold
his interest right now.

Marisa did. She always did. No matter the
time, place, or day, his thoughts always returned to her. And the
future that never seemed destined for them.

A supportive expression appeared on Marisa’s
face. “You could do so much. You just have to believe you can. Once
you feel it, you could get whatever you put your mind to.”

He looked up and met eyes that believed
wholeheartedly in him. That empathetic look tore him up inside. He
wanted to once more feel her hands clutching his own, hoping that
her assurance could infiltrate his skin and surge through his veins
until it struck his heart, giving him the bravery to do the
simplest thing: ask her out.

It only took a few words, so why couldn’t he
drudge up the courage to do it?

Because she would reject him. He had no
illusions about that. He had nothing to gain and everything to
lose. So why risk it?

“You could turn the world upside-down.” She
unleashed a vibrant grin.

She had intended to increase his confidence,
but her remarks had the opposite effect. Not because he didn’t
trust her. She wanted him to be happy. He knew that. But she
presumed that he suffered from a lack of confidence. Irritated, he
grimaced as he got to his feet.

“What’s wrong?”

The question only increased his frustration.
Unresponsive, he headed for the exit.

“Where are you going?”

Alexander pushed through the door and
stepped into the mid-September sunshine. He sucked in a breath of
crisp air, hoping it would detox the anger stirring in his
chest.

Since he met Marisa two years ago, upon
accepting the position he currently held, she’d assumed that he
suffered from poor self-esteem due to his lack of success with
women.

“Don’t leave me,” she said.

Alexander stopped and chuckled humorlessly,
fury charging through his system as he looked skyward. He would
never leave her. That was the problem. Not if she got cancer and
had to go through a hundred rounds of chemotherapy. Nothing would
ever make him leave her side – if he ever had her.

He spun around, looking at the only person
he had ever imagined marrying, the only person he’d imagined
building a family with, the only person he’d imagined spending his
later years with while spoiling their grandchildren. Some would
consider this foolish – pinning all of his hopes on one woman, a
person who had no interest in him. But he had to follow his
instincts. And his heart.

“What did I say?” she asked, breathless as
she ran up to him.

He saw the worry lines around her eyes. “You
think I need a stroke of confidence to make it through the day.
Well, I don’t need an ego boost. And I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t pity you. What’s wrong?”

“You’re blind. Or maybe just ignoring what’s
right in front of you. Talking about a nice guy with a sense of
humor. A gentleman. I’m those things. And you say you can’t find
someone like that? I’m right here, Marisa. Right here! So where the
hell are you if you can’t see that?”

She opened her mouth to speak as tears
immediately entered her eyes.

Sensing that he’d finally gotten through to
her, Alexander didn’t want to lose her attention now that he had
it. “For two years, I’ve listened. I’ve tried to be supportive. But
I can’t do it anymore. Every single day in every single way, I’ve
shown you how much I care and how much I love you.”

Marisa just stared at him, shocked.

Alexander wanted to say more. He expected to
say more, but when that final statement had escaped his mouth, he
discovered that nothing could follow it.

Having mentally prepared how he’d finally
admit his feelings thousands of times, he never imagined that he’d
shout his affection at her, rather than disclosing his deepest
secret over a bottle of wine while Sade played in the
background.

“But we can’t.” Her eyes, which were always
controlled enough to never divulge her innermost feelings, released
confusion. “We’re best friends. I don’t want things to change.”

“Who said change would ruin things? We’d
just be taking our relationship to another level. A better
level.”

“But we’re co-workers. I’ve mixed both
things before, and they blew up in my face.” She shivered. “It
wasn’t pretty.”

“But I’m not one of those other guys.”

“I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want to
lose you.”

“But you never had me.” Hearing the double
entendre repeat in his mind, Alexander wished he’d never uttered
those words.

“You’re my best friend. Losing you would
just…crush me.” Deep sympathy lined her face. “God, it hurts to see
all that pain in your eyes.”

All of this from someone who spent countless
hours laughing with him in the break room. Someone who treated him
to a Bulls game each year as a birthday present. Someone who stayed
up with him late in the night while watching action movies and
playing board games.

“You want a perfect example?” she asked, her
voice quivering. “My parents. And look how that turned out.” She
shook her head, probably reliving the off-balanced give-and-take
nature of her parent’s relationship. “You’re the most important
person in my life, but I can’t love you that way.”

Knowing that her mother had warped Marisa’s
kindness into a mass of contempt saddened him. Marisa never
disclosed much about her mother: only made glib comments before
switching the subject.

“Alexander, please.” Tears spilled from her
eyes. “You’re already changing things.” A mountain of
self-condemnation dragged her shoulders downward as she shuffled
away.

While his legs felt as flexible as a rubber,
his mind was clear for the first time since they met. He’d finally
revealed his feelings.

But his heart was as desolate as a ghost
town with a lone wrapper floating through the streets, making no
sound as it skipped across the dust. The sensation made it
difficult for him to breathe.

Nothing had ever hurt so badly: not touching
the scorching hot exhaust pipe of his father’s Harley as a
five-year-old, resulting in melting two of his left fingerprints
off; not flying over the handlebars of his Huffy bike and skidding
across the cement face first at the age of seven; and not even
breaking a finger while playing football in middle school, only to
have two ignorant ER doctors inject a ridiculously long needle into
his finger for no apparent reason. Those physical injuries paled in
comparison to the emotional turmoil that now inundated him.

And judging by Marisa’s tears and her
pain-stricken expression, the same agony tore her heart to shreds.
Not because she was angry with him, but because rejecting him had
caused her such anguish.

He should have expected such selflessness.
Alexander knew without a doubt that if he needed a new kidney, she
wouldn’t hesitate to donate one of her own. That same day. She’d
rush them to the hospital so the surgeon could operate as soon as
possible.

Marisa now reacted out of shock and
confusion. Alexander therefore decided to view the situation from a
different perspective: she had given many men a chance to love her,
but none of them ever measured up to the type of man she hoped to
marry.

He knew that he could not only meet those
high standards, but he could also exceed them – if she only gave
him the opportunity.

It became an intriguing challenge. And no
matter what he had to do, and no matter how long it took, he
wouldn’t stop trying until she gave him that chance.

CHAPTER TWO

Marisa extended her lunch break by visiting
the Bedford Falls town square. Half a century ago, the founding
residents named (and modeled) their town on the fictional setting
of the classic film,
It’s a Wonderful Life
.

And those individuals had spent an endless
amount of time, energy, and financial resources to make sure that
their
version of Bedford Falls maintained the same quaint
character of a small town – that would not grow beyond 8,000
residents – while ensuring they kept pace with modern society. The
town featured an enormous outdoor Commons that had courted all of
the best upscale department stores, restaurants, and entertainment
franchises, a state-of-the-art Cineplex modeled after the
enormously elegant theaters of the 1920s, and an immaculate beach
on the Vista Heights Valley River.

Still, the spacious, well-manicured Bedford
Falls Park served as the focal point of the community: a spot where
families congregated each season to take part in friendly,
old-fashioned contests that allowed them to retain close ties with
their neighbors; where residents engaged in various sporting
activities throughout the year; where joggers circled a couple
dozen small specialty shops before heading into one of four
different hiking trails; and where parents chatted while their
children played at an extravagant recreation area near the giant
gazebo at the center of the park.

Marisa now sat down on a cold, iron bench,
watching four and five-year-olds play on the swings, zip around a
slide, and dangle from the jungle-gym while their mothers stood at
the edge of the sandbox, talking.

At that young age, Marisa had taken great
care of Strawberry Shortcake and her friends, an assortment of
Cabbage Patch Kids, and a collection of Barbie dolls until her
mother, Jaclyn, scolded her for wasting time and energy on “useless
objects” when she should have been perfecting those caretaking
skills on her own appearance. Only now did Marisa realize that, in
taking such meticulous care of her dolls, she’d been treating them
in the way she’d hoped that her strict, negligent mother would
treat her.

Even at that early age, Marisa prayed that
she would eventually find the right man, so she could start a
family and give her children enough love to make up for her own
mother’s deficient parenting skills. Upon turning thirteen, she
assumed that doubling her age would give her enough time to find
her soul mate and begin a new life.

That timeline would have put her on par with
the mothers chatting nearby. But here she sat, a few years beyond
that age and still waiting to find love.

Marisa wondered if she expected too much
from a potential partner. Is that why she watched as relatives,
friends, and colleagues managed to find spouses and start families,
while her life remained stagnant? Nevertheless, she had always
expected to know when she found “The One.”

She didn’t anticipate a thunderstruck moment
to unite them, and she didn’t expect grand gestures that would
symbolize eternal bliss. But once she found him, she suspected that
a switch would flip in her mind, removing all doubt, allowing her
to trust her impulses and spend the rest of her life with the man
of her dreams.

An ever-present self-doubting voice told her
that she was afraid to hit the switch. After all, she’d
fallen
in love many times. But she’d never
been
in
love. Most people considered those terms as identical, but Marisa
knew the difference. Being in love required the other person in the
relationship to love her back. And since most of them men she’d
dated preferred to spend the vast majority of their waking hours
working, they obviously considered her much less important than
their careers.

Judging by the effortless smiles these
mothers exchanged during their conversation, they knew what that
experience felt like (diamonds sparkled on the ring fingers of
their left hands). But how could they have met their future
husbands at such young ages? Better yet, how had those women known
that they were destined to spend their lives with the men they
married? What factors pointed to a lifetime of happiness? And how
come Marisa had never received that same compass to navigate her
own romantic relationships?

Entering a relationship never posed any
difficulty. After all, Jaclyn had passed along an endless number of
techniques for her daughter to embellish upon her “facial
imperfections,” and to aid her in selecting the type of man who
could provide her with a secure future: strong in mind, body, and
spirit; ambitious; protective; and accomplished.

Unfortunately, the men Marisa dated lacked
either kindness, emotional and/or physical generosity, or an
interest in forming a tight bond of friendship. Just as
importantly, she couldn’t imagine any of them as fathers—at least,
not the kind who would attend his daughter’s school play or watch
his son play baseball from the bleachers, who would instruct and
correct, encourage and discipline, and above all love and support
them no matter the situation.

Something tapped her right foot and, looking
in that direction, she saw a four-year-old boy racing over to
retrieve the ball that had hit her ankle. An attractive man
Marisa’s age—probably the boy’s father—jogged after the little one
with a smile. His eyes met Marisa’s. “Sorry about that, miss.”

“Oh, no problem,” she said, grinning as the
boy grabbed the ball and turned around, only to get scooped up by
his father. “Have fun, you two.”

As they headed in the opposite direction,
Marisa thought about the situation she currently faced with
Alexander. It dwarfed all of the doomed relationships she’d endured
over the past fifteen years. Of course, ever since she had first
met him, she’d suspected that he sought more than just
friendship.