Within a Man's Heart (9 page)

I didn’t look back—not until I climbed into my Volvo in front of the secondhand shop. Gina’s truck was no longer parked in front of the library. She was already at the four-way stop. Barely slowing down for it, she cut her wheels hard to the left and hot-footing it up Portland Road. Her tires squealed as I slid my key into the ignition, and I felt absolutely miserable. By the time I turned onto Portland Road, I was feeling even worse.

“You’re a real hard-ass!” I scolded myself as I picked up speed heading for home. “She actually cares, you jerk!”

Then I thought,
Maybe she had a legitimate excuse for what she did at the party. You should give her a chance to explain. No, forget it! There’s no excuse for ignoring me the whole time. Move on with your life, man. Forget about her
.

I kept going back and forth like that
, as I steered along the deserted, two-lane. And as if that wasn’t enough, there was yet something else complicating things. For some reason, visions of Elyse’s loving face began slipping through my stream of thoughts. None of her images lasted very long, but they kept flashing in and out of my head like a nostalgic slide show. “Why,” I asked myself, “is
this
happening right now?”

Was my subconscious mind playing games with me? Had it turned sadistic? Was it cackling as it made my decision even more difficult? Maybe it wasn’t! Maybe my inner mind meant no harm and was only trying to console me. Maybe it was telling me that Gina’s deserting me at the party
, the argument we’d just had, the feelings I’d had about her—none of it really mattered anyway. Was I being told that, even if I wanted to, I could never again love another the way I loved Elyse? I just didn’t know. It was all so confusing.

Then, as I got closer to Gina’s road, something else happened. All jammed up as my head was, I started hearing things in there. They were shouts—loud and clear shouts. Upset as I was by now, I didn’t know whose voice it was. I thought it was my own but wasn’t sure. It demanded,
Go see Gina! Go see her right now! Listen to what she has to say! Allow yourself this one small chance to possibly love again!
 

I just didn’t know what to do. I needed more convincing. Then it came.

You don’t meet a woman like her every day! You may never again! She wanted to make up with you, stupid!

Gina had been too far ahead
and driving too fast for me to see her truck. But then as I passed her dirt road, I did see dust settling in the shade of the pine trees.

“Oh hell,” I said
to myself, “I can’t do this! It isn’t right! I’ve
got
to talk to her.”

I hit the brakes hard, hung a sharp left into the Contented Moose entryway, completed a u-turn, and motored ahead to the narrow road. As I turned onto it
, I thought to myself, w
hat the hell am I going to say? Is she going to be glad to see me or will she be pissed off by now? She might very well tell me to get the hell off her property!

Moments later I rounded a tight curve through the trees. The first chipmunk I’d ever seen ran past the front of my Volvo. And as soon as I passed where he’d scurried into the woods, I suddenly heard dogs barking. Seconds later everything opened up
, and I came upon a wide, grassy clearing. Sitting about thirty yards back was a small ranch-style house with a porch running along the front of it. Behind that I saw a small pond with still more forest on the back and sides of it. But what really grabbed my attention was the huge mountain way off in the distance. It may have been twenty or thirty miles off, but it was still immense. Immediately I knew it was Mount Washington. In the early evening light, the vision with the house, the pond and all the rest was as tranquil a setting as you’d ever want to see. But it didn’t help a whole lot. Awesome as it was, it didn’t do much to ease my anxiety. Neither did the two, hulking Labrador Retrievers now charging across the lawn at me.

By the time I raised my window most of the way
, the dogs were trotting right alongside the SUV. Hoping they wouldn’t jump up and scratch at my door, I spoke as calmly as I could through the small opening at the top of the window.

“Okay guys. It’s okay. I’m just coming to see your momma.”

A moment later, reasonably satisfied that my door would be safe, I turned my attention ahead again. And as I looked back through the windshield I saw Gina stepping out onto the front porch. A short length of rope was hanging next to the doorway, and she gave it a few yanks.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

At the other end of a rope there was a wall-mounted bell. The instant the yellow Labs heard it they stopped in their tracks, glanced over at Gina, and retreated. Their short run back to the porch was half-hearted, as they kept glancing back at me; but they obediently headed right toward their owner. I rolled forward a bit more, killed the engine, and got out just as Gina ushered the dogs inside.

As I walked up to the porch, she closed the door and turned to me. Standing there in jeans and a snug black tee shirt, her arms crossed over her chest she said nothing. I wasn’t sure what to make of the look on her face as I climbed the wooden steps. She seemed perturbed
, yet relieved at the same time. It was one of those times when I didn’t know for the life of me what I was going to say. Stopping in front of her the best I could do was say in a gentle, apologetic tone, “Does that dinner invitation still stand?”

A long moment passed as she studied my eyes and face. Finally, she said, “I’ll tell you what
  . . . why don’t we talk first?”

“Okay. Sure. Let’s talk.”

“Have a seat,” she said, waving an open hand toward two wicker chairs with floral cushions. “I’ll go put the stove on low. Beer?”

“Yeah, okay. That would hit the spot.”

She went inside and the dogs let out a few barks, as if asking, “Who’s that out there?” She hushed them, told them it was okay then returned with a can of Bud Light and a glass of red wine.

“Sorry about being so rough with you back at the library,” I said after she sat down, “but I’ve been a little put out after what happened at your
Mom’s party.”

“Look,” Gina said, resting her g
lass on the table between us, “It’s just like you said back at the library . . . we don’t know each other all that well. But I can’t help but to feel an attraction toward you. And I’m not just talking physical here. For as short a time as we’ve known each other, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I have this feeling that you and I just might be able to build a relationship.”

“Build a relationship?”

She squirmed in her seat a little before pivoting in my direction. Leaning forward now, she looked at me from the corners of those gray eyes and said, “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you Chris?”

“Look Gina, I’ve got a lot of mental baggage. I can’t go into any of it right now, but the last thing I was looking for when I came up here was another relationship.”

I paused for a moment, and her face tightened up even more than it already had. I felt terrible. But what I said next had nothing to do with sympathy. It was the truth.

“No, Gina, getting involved with somebody was the last thing on my mind when I left New York. If that was what I wanted I would have had a far better chance of finding someone in a city with eight million people. Anyway, do I find you attractive? Yes, I sure do. You’re one
good-looking lady. More important than that, I think you’re sincere. No, I know you are. And that’s why I got so upset and disappointed at the party.”

The wheels were turning fast in Gina’s head now. She leaned back in her seat a little, keeping her eyes on me as she took a sip of wine. Then she slowly lowered the glass to her lap and said, “Rusty Barnwell and I dated for a while.”

“I know that. Wally told me.”

“Anyway, that is
so
over. Any feelings I had for him left, when he did a few years ago.”

“It sure didn’t look that way.”

“I’m sorry about that, I really am. It’s just that Mountain Step is a small town. The people who were at Mom’s party are all very close. They’re like family. Quite a few of them actually are. Anyhow, what I’m trying to get at here is that while some folks aren’t all that fond of Rusty, they all know him. And despite his hang-ups, the party turned out to be a homecoming of sorts for him.”

I straightened up in my chair some, leaned forward, and said, “Look, Gina, why don’t we just let it go at that. You don’t really owe me an explanation. Let’s just forget about the whole thing.”

Shaking her head, giving her hand a little wave, she said, “No. You were right. You and I were getting to know each other better. I knew I really liked you. I shouldn’t have walked away and ignored you for so long.”

“Okay. Forget it.”

“I will, but let me say one last thing. I honestly didn’t realize how long I’d been with Rusty at the party. Don’t forget, we have a past of sorts. And it had been quite some time since I’d seen him.”

There were times when I could be honest to a fault. And this was one of them. I turned to the trees beyond the lawn and looked into them as I took a swallow of beer. I knew I shouldn’t say what I was thinking, but I looked back at her and did it anyway.

“Sounds to me like you might still have a thing for him.”

“Chris,” she said, “Rusty Barnwell has already gone back to the Mideast. He’s in Afghanistan, and I couldn’t care less. What little we had is long over. It’s dead! I sometimes wonder what I ever saw in him to begin with. The whole time we dated I never once felt the earth shake beneath my feet. But I kept rationalizing
. . . fighting off the feeling that I was settling. I started seeing him shortly after I turned thirty. My age was beginning to bother me, and I was starting to wonder if I’d been keeping the bar too high. So I lowered it for a while, and that was stupid.”

We looked at each other even more closely now and, as we did, both of our expressions softened. Surely she could tell by mine that I was accepting her apology and that, though it really wasn’t any of my business, I well understood the feminine angst she felt about hitting thirty. I had assumed that she’d never been married but, for at least the time being, I wasn’t going to go there. As for the look on
her face, I could tell she was very relieved to have told me everything she did. And something else dawned on me. I now knew that she’d been every bit as upset as I had for the past two weeks. I could feel it. And again, I could feel her honesty as well. 

Finally I said, “You know, Gina
. . . as attractive as you are, you’re a long, long way from having to worry about getting old.”

“Oh stop,” she said, actually looking a little embarrassed now, “I’ll bet you tell all the girls that.”

“
Girls . . .
hrmph! Who are they? It’s been a long while since I spent much time with one of them . . . a long while.”

My words were weighed down with heavy
-heartedness, and Gina picked right up on it. She looked down at her wine glass on the table between us. She touched the rim, twirled it once or twice then looked back at me.

“You said before
—the last thing you were looking for when you moved up here was a relationship. Is that why you left New York? Did you leave a bad relationship back there?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly as I watched two large ravens land in the pines together. “I mean yes…I did have a relationship. And that was the
main reason why I left Manhattan. But it wasn’t a
bad
relationship.”

I turned back to Gina then, and her face was somewhat blurred. I knew she could see that my eyes were welling up. I also knew she was feeling my pain. I just knew it. And I could tell she wanted to reach out to me. 

For one long, heavy moment, we went deeper inside each other’s eyes. Then she reached out. She leaned toward me, reached over the table between us, and laid her hand on top of mine.

“I see,” she said in a soft, sympathetic tone. “Is it something you’d like to talk about, Chris?”

Dropping my gaze to her hand; then raising it again, I said, “No, Gina, but thank you. I really appreciate you trying to help. But I’m . . . I’m just not ready to talk about it. I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.”

She forced a small smile, gripped my hand, and said, “Well
. . . if and when you’re ever ready, I’ll be here. I can promise you that.”

Old Feelings Return

All through dinner those last words Gina said on the porch echoed inside my head; “
. . . if and when you’re ever ready, I’ll be here. I can promise you that.”

Scrumptious as her chicken casserole was to this plain-cooking widower, the satisfaction I got from the meal took a back seat to those words. Studying her kind, captivating features as we ate and talked, I knew now that Gina Elkin cared for me and
I felt as if I’d been given a very precious gift that I didn’t deserve. It had been a long time since anything good had happened to me. I wasn’t used to strokes of good fortune. Though they had been gone for years, I once again felt the glow of hope, excitement, peace, benevolence, and even a tinge of love inside. But there was something else in there as well—a debilitating feeling that I still couldn’t shake. It shaded all the new good light inside me. It prevented it from shining as bright as it should. My stubborn old nemesis—guilt—refused to leave.