Whatever It Takes (3 page)

It’s not that I’m some psycho, anal retentive freak whose husband needs to handle her.  As a result of my unstable childhood, I just find it comforting when I know things are as they should be.  Thoughts and ideas about what could happen or would happen as a result of my not being in control is what bothers me.  Fear of the unknown is what Gavin calls it.

“I’m too exhausted to talk to you,” I told him.  “I need to clean up outside and then I just want to shower and go to bed.”

I grabbed my cleaning supplies from under the sink and started making my way outdoors.  Without me asking, Gavin grabbed the broom from the hall closet and followed me.  The stereo system was still on and Boston’s
More than a Feeling
played while I wiped down table tops and Gavin swept up bottle caps and other litter.  I hummed along to try to keep my mind occupied but when the line “I see my Marianne walkin away” was sung I noticed the swishing of Gavin’s broom stopped.  I looked over at him and he was staring at me, a scared look on his face.  He looked years younger at that moment, almost like when we first met. 

4

Seven years ago

“Why, Miss Emma, I do believe you are nervous.”

I laughed at my cousin Diane’s pitiful attempt to sound like a southern belle as I checked my lipstick in the car’s visor mirror for the third time and made sure my dark brown hair was still holding the waves I spent hours putting in it.   It hung just past my shoulders with a little bit of bounce and my thick, side-swept bangs were still in place.  My large, brown eyes were bright with excitement and, okay, a little bit of nervousness.

“Shut up and watch the road,” I told her.

“Jesus, Emma, take it easy,” she scolded.  Having grown up with me, Diane knew and understood how it made me nervous to not be in control of things.  That included driving the car I was being transported in.  Even though I trusted Diane and her driving skills enough, it still made me just a tad anxious that I was not the one behind the wheel.

She turned the conversation away from my neurosis and back to our double date that was about to take place.

“You have no reason to be nervous, Em.  You look fantastic and you know Gavin already likes you.  It’s not like this is the first time you’re meeting him, anyway.”

“It’s the first time I’m meeting him in person,”  I corrected her.

Diane had been talking up Gavin to me for ages and her boyfriend, Mike, had been doing the same about his best friend.  They tried talking me into meeting him on several occasions but I told them I was not interested in a blind date.  Diane’s solution to the problem was that she give Gavin my phone number and we could talk over the phone before meeting.  I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that, but I did compromise by allowing her to give Gavin my screen name.  The next night, Gavin messaged me and we chatted, though only through text, to introduce ourselves to one another.  After a few conversations like that, I felt confident enough that he wasn’t a lunatic, and we graduated to actual phone conversations.  Now, two weeks later, we were finally going to meet face-to-face.

The conversations we’d had over the last fourteen days already had me pretty smitten, I had to admit.  I could tell that Gavin was polite, and he was quite charming, even just over the phone.  He’d been forthcoming about himself, giving me some information but not too much, and asked me questions to show that he was interested in me as well.

Gavin Fitzgerald was a single child, raised by his mother after his father died in a car accident when he just a baby.  He was close to his mother, but he insisted he was not a momma’s boy by any means.   His mother never remarried, and his one male father-figure in his life was his Uncle Dominic, his late father’s brother.  He graduated college the year before with a major in finance and worked as a junior investor with a brokerage firm.  He had high expectations of himself and made it his goal to become a senior executive before he was thirty. 

From what I understood from Mike, Gavin was well on his way to becoming successful.  His father’s life insurance policy left his mother and him with a decent amount of money and she had put a large chunk aside until Gavin turned twenty-one.  Rather than blow the money, Gavin invested it wisely.  At only twenty-six, he was financially secure and on his way to being moderately wealthy. 

His money didn’t come up in our conversations though.  I’d never be so rude as to ask and Gavin wasn’t the type to brag, this I could tell.  Instead, he told me about his family, his love of science fiction and sailing, and how he hated golf, though he was forced to play from time to time with older members of the firm he worked for. 

I shared some things about myself too, of course.  I’d told him how I had one sister two years younger than me, Stephanie, and we, like him, had been raised by a single mother, though my father left us when I was eight.  He met another woman, fell in love with her and started a whole new family.  They lived in Arizona now and I had two half-brothers I’ve never met.  I only spoke to my father about once a year and hadn’t seen him since I was twelve.  My mother had a string of relationships, only one of them resulting in a marriage that lasted less than a year.  When Gavin asked me if I was resentful towards my father for leaving us, I told him I had been but I had gotten over it long ago.

I left out the part that after my father left, my mother had become depressed and withdrawn and my sister and I became neglected as a result.  She’d forget to pay bills, forget to go shopping, and forget to wake up in the morning to get us ready for school.  Me, being the older sibling, took as good of care of Stephanie and myself as I could at such a young age, but there were times when the water or electricity was shut off, or my sister and I would have to eat dry cereal for dinner and what could an eight-year-old do about that?  One day, when I was ten there was literally nothing in the house for us to eat I broke down and called my grandmother.  I cried to her that Stephanie was starving and she and my grandfather drove the four hours to get to us.  They took one look at the messy house, the empty cupboards, and the unpaid stacks of bills on the countertops and confronted our mom.  She cried while her father screamed at her for how poorly she was taking care of her children and for not asking for help, while my grandmother packed suitcases for Stephanie and me.

I was terrified of leaving my home, as awful as it was.  Luckily, this happened at the end of June, while school was out for the summer and my grandparents gave my mom two months to straighten herself out.  When we returned at the end of August the house was clean, there was plenty of food and mom made a big deal of showing Grandpa how all of her bills were up to date after putting in as much time as she could cutting hair at the salon she worked at.  I hugged my mom so tightly that day, grateful that she was able to pull herself together before Stephanie and I had to start school again. 

Things were great for a while and she was the attentive parent that she should be.  But then her current boyfriend broke up with her and she reverted back to being negligent.  She’d get better and then something else would happen and she would get worse.  Our whole lives yo-yoed from good to terrible and back again.  My grandparents would always check in with us and Stephanie and I would lie and say everything was fine.  The thought of moving away with them permanently terrified us, only because we didn’t want to have to change schools.  Our school life was the only stability we’d known. 

We couldn’t keep up the facade for long though and when I was thirteen my grandparents made an unexpected visit.  The times before, when we knew they were coming, I’d get mom to shop while I cleaned to make sure everything looked like it was fine.  This time, we didn’t have any time to prepare and they knew as soon as they set foot in the house that things weren’t fine like we said they were. 

I cried and begged my grandmother not to take us from our friends and teachers that we loved.  She and Pop understood, and God bless them, they made things as easy on us girls as they could.  Diane’s mother, mom’s cousin, lived not far from us, and their family took Stephanie and me in until my grandparents could sell their home and move out to us.  When I was fourteen I finally had the stable, loving, home every child needs.

I didn’t go into that much detail with Gavin though.  I just told him that from the time I was a teenager, my grandparents raised my sister and me when my mom wasn’t able to handle it on her own.  Then, blessedly, he’d changed the subject and we started talking about our mutual love of classic rock music.

“So what music do you like to listen to?” Gavin had asked during our second phone conversation.

“I like all kinds,” I had told him.  “I’m not really into country though and I can’t stand hard-core rap.”

“Ugh,” Gavin had agreed, “I hate rap.  You can’t sing it and you can’t dance to it.  It’s a bunch of grunting with rhymes.”

“Exactly,” I had laughed. 

“What was the last song you heard on the radio today?”

I smiled and leaned over from where I was lying on my bed to my radio on the nightstand.  “Actually,” I told him, “I’m listening to the radio right now.”  I turned the volume up and Eric Clapton was singing about a certain illegal drug.

“
Cocaine
is one of my favorite songs.  Listening to old rock, huh?  A girl after my own heart.”

Diane pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant/bar we were meeting the boys at.  It was a trendy little place on the beach called Dickie’s and there was a band that night, playing outside on the patio that overlooked the ocean.  I fidgeted with my little black dress I had worn for the occasion as we were led to where Mike and Gavin were already sitting.  When Gavin noticed us, he looked directly at me and a warm smile spread across his face.  My heart thudded at the sight of him.  He really was a good looking man.  Stylish too, I thought, as I took in the black slacks and dark blue button down he was wearing.  He didn’t wear a tie and the top two buttons of his shirt were open revealing a white undershirt.  He clothes said “I’m classy, but not a snob”.  I loved it. 

I urged my legs to keep steady as I closed the distance between us and he rose when Diane and I finally reached the table.

“Emma,” he said, and leaned over to kiss my cheek.  “It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.  You look beautiful.”

I blushed but smiled and agreed that it was nice to meet him in person as well. 

Dinner conversation came easy for the four of us and I was grateful that Gavin and I had gotten the small talk out of the way in the weeks prior.  We talked and laughed but I was still a bit nervous.  If Gavin noticed the way I carefully lined up my silverware seven times, kept my drink precisely placed in the center of the cardboard coaster, or wiped the table area in front of me any time there was a stray crumb or drop of liquid, he didn’t let on.  He was charming and witty and gentlemanly and I was eating it all up.  I really liked him.

After dessert, Mike asked Diane to dance and Gavin suggested we take a walk on the beach.  I was more than willing.  I still wanted to learn more about Gavin and that was hard to do on a dance floor with loud music playing. 

He took my hand in his and, like a gentleman, carried my heels in his other.  We talked more about school and work and likes and dislikes. 

“What was your favorite thing to do when you were a kid?” I asked.

Without taking any time to think about it, he declared, “Pretend to be a Ninja Turtle.”

I laughed and he continued.  “Seriously, I was obsessed with them.  When I was in grade school I used to hang around sewers hoping they’d pop out one day.”

“Well, the Ninja Turtles were pretty awesome,” I agreed.

The wind picked up and I shivered and he turned me to face him, rubbing my sleeveless arms to warm me.  The moonlight, and the waves, and the soft music carried down the beach from the bar made it like a Meg Ryan movie.  It was swoon-worthy.

“I wish I had a jacket I could offer you,” Gavin said, still moving his hands up and down my arms.

I stared into his eyes, completely smitten.  “It’s okay.  I’m not that cold.”

We stood staring at each other, all Hollywood moment like, and then his eyes dropped down to my lips.  He smiled and said, “Would you think it too bold of me if I kissed you right now?”

Sigh.  Be still, my heart
.

I shook my head and he brought his lips down to meet mine.  The kiss was feather soft and light at first and then our lips began to move against each other’s.  My hands rested gently at his chest while his held me close to him by my hips.  He continued to kiss me softly and sweetly until I was sure I was going to melt into a puddle that would quickly seep into the sand beneath us.  I broke apart from him first, needing to gather my wits and some air but I couldn’t bring myself to pull completely away.  I buried my face into his chest and inhaled deeply.  He smelled like fresh towels. 

He pulled me closer to him, wrapping his arms around my back and bent his head so that his nose skimmed my neck.  And then he sighed contentedly.

“Mmm,” he whispered.  “I love that smell.”

I pulled back to look into his face while trying to think of what smell he could be referring to.  Hopefully not “woman in heat” because that’s exactly what I felt like at the moment and I didn’t wear perfume.