Is He Someone for Me?

    I look at my reflection in the ladies’ room mirror in this classy bar. I see the age in my face, in my eyes, the traces of grief that is unassuageable.
    I should have put my hair up. Its length emphasizes the lines, the sagging skin and jawline. Thankfully, the gray in my hair isn’t very obvious; being past middle age and naturally blonde has a few benefits.
    Travis Tritt’s “Someone For Me” is playing through the ladies’ room sound system. It has  made me wonder about my date for the evening. We met online after he private messaged me about an innocuous comment I made on someone’s Facebook post. We have been communicating for several months, exchanging bits and pieces of information about ourselves, occasionally broaching the subject of a “date.” Last evening, he told me he was in town for a conference and we could meet wherever I liked.

    Wherever I liked. I didn’t want to be seen with a “date” at my usual hangout. I didn’t want to answer questions or listen to comments from the regulars there about it being time I found a man. Neither did I want my “date” wondering about my habits. So, I told him to meet me here.
    I take a last study of my reflection and drop the unused mascara back into my purse – something else that isn’t a habit for me . . . purses, black patent loafers, dress pants, silky blouses . . . so far outside my comfort zone that I am disgusted at myself for agreeing to this date and for choosing this place.

    A “date” with a younger man. One who is successful in his own right. One who has seen the world, has been praised for his talents, has achieved much more than I have done.
    He says in our online chats that he loves me, that I am his angel. Does he? Am I?

    The door opens and a trio of young women enters. Tall, willowy, fashionably dressed. Laughing until they see me, then they murmur hellos as they look in the mirrors at their reflections, fluff their hair, reapply tinted lip gloss, glance sideways at me – my cue to leave.

    I return to the table where my “date” awaits. He smiles when he sees me walking toward him. He has a warm smile and calm blue eyes that seem to appraise everything around him. I wonder about his appraisal of me. Does he know how nervous I am, how hard I resisted the urge to sneak out the back door and leave him alone? Does he consider me worthy of his attention this evening?

    I smile at him as I sit down at our table. I wonder what to say. So far our conversation has avoided anything personal, I don’t know why. Are we both leery of the pull between us? I felt it as soon as I saw him, and, judging from his expression, he did also.
    So we have spent the evening discussing the weather – too hot, politics – too crazy, the golf tournament playing on the television above the bar – too boring.

    I twist and turn the shot glass on the table in front of me. I can feel him watching me, but I do not look at him. Instead I watch my fingers move the shot glass around.
    He suddenly places his hands over mine. And the answer is there, in his touch. His warmth, his strength, his tenderness.
    I look at him, at the love in his blue eyes, the sweetness of his slight smile, and know. He is someone for me.

Tailgating

    Roderick and I were sitting on the tailgate of our red 1971 Ford pickup, parked under an elm tree by the side of a gravel road. It was Sunday afternoon, and we had been riding around, relaxing from a hard work week. He had driven down a road that I was unfamiliar with, saying, “There won’t be much traffic here,” and he was right. We hadn’t seen a single vehicle besides ours.

    Our Igloo Playmate cooler and ice from the ice house had cooled the six-pack of Pepsi and kept the package of Fischer’s ham cool and nutritious. Ruffles and Roman Meal bread, along with Keebler Rich'n Chips cookies, which were perfectly warmed and softened after riding around for a couple of hours in the bed of the truck, made up our lazy picnic fixings. 

    We watched birds and butterflies swoop and flit by our roadside retreat. Wildflowers bordered the road on either side and honeybees were busily collecting nectar.
    A cornfield across the road was nearly ready to chop for silage. A breeze rustling the blades of corn produced small dirt devils that meandered down the road for a few feet before disappearing.
    We were enjoying the shade and the breeze, laughing at the dirt devils’ random travels, and had relaxed even in the stifling August heat. Roderick was singing snatches of “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” tapping out the beat on the side of the truck bed. I was humming along until he told me to get on key; I laughed and stopped humming. I’d rather listen to him sing anyway.

    I finished the Pepsi I was drinking and put the can in the paper grocery sack. Roderick asked if there was another Pepsi. I checked in the cooler; there was so I shook off the water, popped the top and handed it to him. He chugged about half of it, and handed the can to me. “Take a drink then I’ll finish it and we’ll get rolling.”
    I took a good swallow, handed the can back to Roderick and he finished it off. I added that can to the five in the sack, along with the half-empty package of chocolate chip cookies and most of the loaf of bread, then picked up a couple of fist-sized rocks from the side of the road and put them in the sack. I stashed the sack in the corner of the truck bed, with the cooler next to it. I knew the items would get jostled around, hopefully not too much.

    Back in the truck, Roderick started the motor and lit a Marlboro Red before putting the truck in gear and slowly pulling onto the road. He was driving much slower than his usual breakneck speed so I asked, “What are you thinking about?”
    He grinned. “It’s too hot to go home and sit in the trailer and it’ll be hours before it cools off. Do you want to head to the creek?”
    “Which one?” 
    “The closest one,” he replied, and increased his driving speed.

    A few minutes later we were on the banks of a beautiful slate-bottomed creek with large trees whose branches shaded the water and sandbars. Roderick pulled to the side of the crossing and parked before putting out his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray.
    We got out of the truck and walked downstream. It was an oasis in the midst of the heat. A breeze stirred the trees and gently rippled the surface of the shallow water. Around a bend in the creek was a smooth sandbar with the creek curved around it, creating a secluded and well-shaded refuge from heat and spying eyes.
    Roderick wrapped his hand around mine and we went the few steps to the sandbar. Roderick was stepping on dry rocks, and I was wading in the cool water; my canvas sneakers would dry quickly. Once there, we sat side by side on the sandbar, which was cool and dry, and I told him, “This is nice. We should’ve brought our lunch here.”
    “I’ll remember that the next time,” he replied, then laid back on the sand and pulled me down to him. His brown eyes held the promise of a lovely afternoon, enjoying each other and the cool breeze across the slowly moving creek. 

The Eighth Man

    Emma Lou stood by the bed, watching David sleep. Half a sleeping pill in the bottle of ale had knocked him out sooner than she expected. 
    Maybe it’s for the best, she thought. I can finish here and be out of the state earlier.

    On-line dating had been Emma Lou’s hobby for several years. She knew she was lying to the men she met through dating sites as much as they were lying to her. She had worked at keeping in shape, so it didn’t take much to convince these over-confident men that she was their equivalent of Raquel Welch at twenty-five. 
    Over-confident losers, she mused. The closet cross-dresser. The “I’m so hot I can barely stand myself” narcissist. The former jock who thought a beer gut at forty-seven made him as sexy as his toned physique had made him at sixteen. 
    There were others. Most of whom she had managed to forget.

    David was different. He hadn’t pretended to be anything he wasn’t. He was an average guy, with a decent job and no obvious bad habits. Emma Lou figured a long weekend together would expose any irritating personality traits. 
    It was early Sunday evening and David had been sweet and attentive for three days. They had had lengthy conversations about nothing, long drives down country roads, and David had even held her hand while they were walking through a roadside park. When she had suggested picnicking in this abandoned farmhouse surrounded by woodland he had laughed and said it sounded like a good way to finish the weekend.

    After a nice picnic in the living room, they moved to the bedroom where an antique sleigh bed in near-perfect shape was still residing. A quilt Emma Lou brought along served nicely as a clean surface over the old mattress and they had spent a sweet afternoon enjoying each other’s bodies.

    But now Emma Lou realized she had fallen in love with David, a complication she had neither expected nor wanted. She had searched many on-line dating sites looking for the man who had stolen from her with his lies and sweet promises. So far her search for him had been futile, but she had prevented some troublesome males from making victims of unsuspecting women like she had been. Love had not been considered while she was making her plans.

    She ran her fingers through David’s wavy brown hair. It was soft and curled around her fingers as she gently turned her hand. It was long enough to curl over his shirt collar and across his forehead. Perhaps she could keep a curl.
    No souvenirs, she reminded herself, and pulled her hand away. She looked at the straight razor in her other hand, then shoved it into a back pocket.

    The eighth grave would remain empty.

Getting Our Feet Wet

    There is always something magical and frightening about a first date. You’re nervous. You have high expectations. You have no expectations. You hope you and he can hit it off and have more dates.

    I had all of those as well as fear of the unknown. 

    Daniel and I met in the check-out line at Walmart. We talked about the slowness of the checkers, the miserably hot weather, and what music we’d listened to recently. By the time it neared our turn to check out, we had introduced ourselves and Daniel had asked me if I’d like to spend a day with him.
    When I said, “A day?” he grinned and said there was some driving required to get where he’d like to go. Since we are at least eighty miles from anything that resembles a city, I told him okay.

    Today was the day. Daniel called yesterday and told me to wear “outdoorsy” clothes. There are several state and national parks within a hundred miles, so I didn’t think anything about that.
    Our destination, however, was a surprise. Daniel picked me up around nine this morning. He was driving a seventies-something truck-type Bronco, well worn, and I wondered if it was his usual ride or a test of my personality. We rode about thirty miles on back roads, some two lanes only if the two vehicles meeting were small. Daniel had to get into the edge of ditches a couple of times when we met full-size trucks.
    Near the foot of a long, winding hill, Daniel pulled into a driveway with a gate across it.
    “Isn’t this private property?” I asked
    “It is,” he replied, “but I know the owners. I hunt here sometimes.”

    Once through the gate, Daniel drove on a graveled driveway that curved around the hillside. A hayfield was to the left and trees on the right shaded the driveway. At the end of the looping driveway was a log cabin.
    “This is pretty,” I said.
    “The original cabin is over two hundred years old,” he told me. “The owners left it as original as possible.”
    He parked close to the trees on the hillside and we got out. Daniel got a backpack and two walking sticks out of the Bronco’s bed, and said, “Let’s go.”

    I took the walking stick he handed to me and we walked along the driveway to the creek. The weather had been dry the past few weeks so the creek barely had two inches of water running in it. I was glad I had worn my water-resistant hiking boots.
    “Let’s follow the creek,” Daniel said, and we walked upstream for an hour or longer, making note of the wildlife and wildflowers along the way. There were a few deep pools with minnows enjoying the coolness under overhanging branches.
    We came to a bend in the creek that had a gravel bar shaded by a huge sycamore. “Lunch time,” Daniel announced. “I hope you like peanut butter sandwiches.”
    I’m not a fan of peanut butter sandwiches, but I told Daniel that would be fine. He unfastened the backpack and removed our lunch – peanut butter sandwiches, apples, chocolate chip cookies and Pepsi.

    We sat on one of the sycamore’s exposed roots while we ate, talking about the clear water running past us and the cool breeze coming down the hollar the creek was running through. The pleasant gurgling of the water as it traveled over the nearly flat slate rock layers was a musical backdrop to the birdsong in the trees.
    I always enjoyed wading in a creek so when we finished our lunch, I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pant legs, and gingerly walked across the gravel bar to the running water. Daniel soon joined me and we waded upstream to a slightly deeper spot in the creek.
    I stopped to watch minnows swim around my feet. They would sometimes nibble at my toes, which made me giggle. When I started to walk farther upstream, my bare feet slipped on the rocks. Just before I hit the water, Daniel grabbed my arm. He pulled me to him and said, “Man, that was close.”
    Yeah, I thought . . . close. Close enough I could feel the beat of his heart through his sweat-dampened T-shirt. I pulled away and thanked him for his rescue. 
    “No problem,” he said while gazing steadily at me. “Do you want to walk farther up the creek?”
    “Sure,” I replied. We returned to the gravel bar to put on our socks and shoes.

    The sun was just dipping below the treetops when we returned to the Bronco. Even though I was tired from the amount of walking we had done, I had enjoyed the peaceful afternoon. Daniel and I had discussed many topics in our rambling conversation, from nature to space exploration to religion to education, and discovered we thought alike on most of the topics we discussed; our differences were slight on the ones we didn’t agree on fully.
    We put the walking sticks and backpack in the Bronco’s bed and got in. Daniel started the engine then drove back toward the gate. At the end of the driveway, after closing the gate, he turned downhill. We crossed a creek that he said was a different creek than the one we had walked along most of the day. Up another hill, around more curves and along more narrow roads, we eventually came to the wider road leading back to town. 

    At my house, Daniel walked me to the door and told me he had had a wonderful day. I told him I had also and asked if he would like to come in for a cold drink. He said he needed to get home – wherever that was; for some reason I had not asked – and that he’d call me, then he leaned in and gave me a short, sweet kiss.

    I waited until he was out of sight before I put my fingers to my lips, savoring the sweet kiss at the end of the day, sweeter than the tiramisu I had chilling in the refrigerator. I hoped for more days of wading creeks and sweet endings to the days.