Todd looked at Christy with a half grin. Then he noticed Katie and tilted his head, taking in the hula costume she still had on over her jeans and T-shirt.
“News flash, Big Kahuna,” Katie said. “One size does not fit all.”
Todd gave her a chin-up gesture and brushed the topic aside. “Hey, how’s Rick doing?”
“Okay. Why?”
Todd looked at her more intently. “Did you see him today?”
“Of course. At work. Why?”
“Did he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Todd looked at Christy. “I didn’t have time to tell you yet. Rick called me when I was at the church office this afternoon. He came home from work to check on Max, and something was wrong with him.”
“With Max or with Rick?” Katie asked.
“Max. He wasn’t moving, and he was having a hard time breathing. Rick called and asked me to come over to help him lift Max into the car.”
“What was wrong with him?”
Todd shrugged. “Don’t know. We took him to the vet and carried him in, but by then it was obvious Max wasn’t going to make it.”
Katie’s jaw went slack.
“Did the vet put Max down?” Christy asked.
“He didn’t have to. Max just went on his own. Rick took it pretty hard. His family has had that dog for a long time. The vet said Max was something like ninety years old in dog years. The move from the Escondido house to Rick’s place could have been too much for him.”
“That’s so sad,” Christy said. If she said anything else, Katie didn’t hear it. She already had jumped out of her chair and was going for where she left her car keys. In a spurt, she blasted out the door, leaving a flying grass skirt behind in her wake.
11
Running through the apartment complex, Katie felt the string on her coconut top snap. Both halves of the coconut flew off in opposite directions and went rolling down the walkway. She didn’t stop to pick them up.
Oh, man! How could I have been so insensitive to Rick? He wasn’t angry. He was sad about Max. Why didn’t he tell me? Or did he try to tell me, but I was too quick to defend myself because I thought he was going to say I was late for work? Why didn’t I see that something really was bothering him?
Katie arrived at the Dove’s Nest just as Rick was walking to his car. He was the last one to leave the cafe. She jumped out of Baby Hummer and hurried over to him. Rick saw her coming and stood by his car door.
“Todd just told me,” Katie said. “About Max, I mean. Rick, I’m so sorry.”
Rick nodded but didn’t say anything.
Slipping her arms around Rick’s middle, Katie gave him the same sort of cuddly hug she had given him earlier that evening in the kitchen of the Dove’s Nest. This time Rick responded immediately. He drew her close and rested his cheek on the crown of her head. His chest seemed to shudder involuntarily, as he took in a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Is he crying?
They stood together in the empty parking lot for a lingering stretch of closeness. Rick drew in his breath and straightened up, pulling back from their embrace.
“Rick, I’m sorry I was insensitive.”
“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t know. It seemed like we both were having a rough day.”
“You can say that again.”
“It seemed like we both were having a rough day,” he repeated.
Katie drew back and looked at his expression in the radiance of the parking lot’s overhead light. “Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?”
Rick shrugged, his lips turned up in the first half-grin she had seen all day.
Katie smiled back at him. “Do you want to get something to eat or some coffee or something?”
Instead of answering, Rick looked at her more closely. “What do you have behind your ear?”
Katie reached for the piece of orange plastic. She touched it and decided to leave it right where it was. Brushing her hair back casually, she said, “It’s a hibiscus, of course.”
“Of course.”
“The yellow part in the middle fell out, so that might have impaired your ability to recognize this work of art.”
“Should I ask why you have part of a plastic flower behind your ear?”
“It was a gift from an admirer,” Katie said with a twinkle in her eye.
“An admirer, huh?” Rick seemed to enjoy the banter as much as Katie.
“Two admirers, actually. Todd and Christy. This is what they brought me from Maui. There were other parts of the hula girl outfit, but I seem to have lost them on my way here.”
Rick’s grin grew so that even in the dim light Katie could see how much his affection for her was coming out at the moment. “Katie, you . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t have a word to describe you. You amaze me.” He paused. “I . . .”
Katie felt her face blush. Is he about to say that he loves me? Here? Now?
“Katie, do you have any idea how gorgeous you look right now in this light?” Rick said in a low voice.
What does that mean? Is he talking mushy or does he really mean it? Goofy flower and all, am I really gorgeous to him? Oh, Katie, stop trying to ruin the moment. Just relax!
Rick took her hands in his, lacing his strong fingers between hers.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“Right about what?”
“Maybe we have been in the slow lane long enough. It could be time for a lane change, like you said.”
Katie felt her heart pick up its pace. Her thoughts collided in a swirl. She heard Christy’s voice saying, “You won’t regret saving all those kisses.” At the same time, she heard herself saying, “This is what you’ve been waiting for!” On top of those voices she heard Carley’s voice: “He is your boyfriend, isn’t he?”
“Whoa. This is rare,” Rick said, letting go of her hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m . . .”
“You’re thinking,” he said. “Which means you aren’t ready.”
“I thought I was. Just maybe give me a minute to . . .”
“No, you’re not ready to make a decision. If you were ready, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”
Katie knew what they would be doing instead. They would be sharing a kiss. A long-awaited, lane-changing, entering-the-next-phase- of-their-relationship kiss. Instead, they were hedging toward an argument.
“How do you know?” she asked Rick.
“Whenever you dissect a moment like this down to the last molecule, Katie, I know you haven’t made a decision. Your best decisions are your spontaneous ones. I know this because I know you. You’re an open book.”
“Well, you’re an enigma of legendary proportions.”
“Where did that come from?”
Katie was regretting what had just popped out of her mouth. Her words had gotten her into so much trouble today. “What I meant is that you’re private with your feelings and with what’s going on with you.”
“I know what an enigma means.”
“All I’m saying is that if I’m an open book, you’re a locked-up chest.” She added, “But a treasure chest,” in an effort to make her assessment more flattering.
“I can’t believe you’re trying to pick a fight.”
“You think this is a fight? This isn’t a fight.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a nothing,” Katie said. “Let’s drop it.”
“It’s something. What are you upset about? You must have something on your mind.” His voice no longer carried the buttery warmth that had made her blush a moment ago.
“Okay. Maybe I’m still upset over your not telling me about Max. Or that you didn’t tell me you hired Carley to take my place.”
Rick leaned back, his chin turned up to the dark sky. “Is that what you want to fight about? You want to fight about my hiring Carley so she wouldn’t have to go back to Arizona for the summer?”
“Texas,” Katie corrected him.
“Okay, Texas. Fine. So go ahead. Let’s fight about it.”
“All I’m saying is that I thought it would have been nice if you would have told me you hired her instead of waiting for me to mess things up and hug you in front of her. I mean, I’m sure you had a good reason for hiring her, but — ”
“Katie. She didn’t want to go back to Texas for the summer because she has a boyfriend here. She wanted to be around him for the summer.”
“She does?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend. Who is he?”
“I don’t know. The standard job application doesn’t have a line that says, ‘Fill in name of boyfriend here.’ ”
Katie looked down at her feet. She was beginning to feel cold in the night air. “I think I overreacted. Again. Not the first time I did that today.”
“As for your being embarrassed about someone seeing you hug me at work, well you were the one who overstepped the boundary there. So how can you put that back on me?”
“I know. You’re right. I apologize for that.”
“As long as I’m getting everything out, and you don’t want me to hide my feelings from you, I was going to tell you about Max, but I didn’t have a chance.” Rick’s voice rose perceptibly.
“More like you couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” Katie said.
“Exactly. So now you know. This has been a pretty intense day, and I can’t believe you’re not crying right now.” His voice went up another octave.
“Should I be crying?”
“Most girls would be crying by now. I’m standing here yelling at you, and you’re just taking it.”
“So? I’m not like most girls.”
“I know you’re not. We haven’t had a fight in a long time. I forgot how strong you could be sometimes.” Rick’s tone was mellowing.
“The things you’re saying are true, Rick. I can take truth. I just can’t take a lot of silence. I go crazy when I don’t know what’s going on. I make up stuff, and that’s when I make myself cry.”
Rick let out a huff and ran his fingers through the side of his dark, wavy hair. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but it feels really good to fight with you.”
“It does?”
He drew in a deep breath. “I have to be so polite all day to everyone, but now with you I can . . .”
“What? Be true to who you really are? Be normal?”
“Yeah.” Rick nodded. “I can be myself around you, and you don’t get mad or cry or tell me where to go.”
“I could tell you where to go, if that would make you feel better.”
Rick smiled. “You know what, Katie?” His voice lowered, and his eyes fixed on her green eyes. “I’m going to compliment you now, and I want you to just take it. Don’t say anything. Just take this. Katie, you are an amazing, one-of-a-kind woman.”
“Oh, you just figured that out, did you?”
Rick put his hand over her mouth.
“Shhh. Just listen, okay? Don’t smart-talk your way out of this.”
Katie nodded.
He smiled and continued with his hand over her mouth. “When I’m with you, I feel like my life is on track. I feel like I can be myself. I feel like you can be yourself around me too. Do you know how rare that is?” Realizing he was keeping her from responding to his question, Rick said, “Just nod.”
Katie nodded.
“Here’s what I like about you. You’re genuine. Your temper doesn’t bother me. I kind of appreciate it. Your honesty gives me the freedom to be honest with you. Ours is the best relationship I’ve ever had with a girl. Do you realize that? You’re my friend, my co-worker, and my . . .”
Katie kept quiet even though Rick had lowered his hand and her lips were free to speak. If he couldn’t bring himself to say that she was his “girlfriend” spontaneously, then she wasn’t going to try to pry it out of him. She looked down. Maybe they were still “ungummy” in their love. Maybe that’s why she had hesitated earlier.
Rick tenderly brushed her hair off her forehead and drew her gaze back up to his chocolate eyes. “Hey, listen, this is what I know is true. You rock my world, Katie. You know that, don’t you? You are amazing and beautiful, and if you want me to start calling you my girlfriend, then I think I’m ready to do that.”
A pair of happy tears skidded down Katie’s cheeks.
Rick smiled. “Oh, so now you cry.”
As happy as she was to hear him finally say the word “girlfriend,” it brushed over Katie that his words weren’t spontaneous.
He placed both his hands under her chin and dabbed each tear with his thumbs. “You are the red-headed woman of my dreams. Katie Weldon, do you want to be my girlfriend?”
Katie looked into Rick’s eyes. She had longed for this sort of declaration from him, but now that it had come to her, she didn’t know what to do with it. If Rick was right about her truest decisions being her spontaneous ones, then she knew she wasn’t ready to make this decision.
“Not yet,” she said.
Rick drew back. “Are you serious?”
Katie nodded. “I’m not ready for us to be official.”
Now Rick was the one who wasn’t speaking.
“Don’t get me wrong, Rick. I’m crazy about you too. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just thinking about how safe it is in the slow lane, and how we probably should stay there just a little longer.”
“A little longer,” he repeated.
“Am I driving you crazy?” Katie asked.
“Always,” he said. Then catching himself in light of Katie’s reaction when he used the term “always” to her at work, Rick added, “Look, this is crazy. We said we wouldn’t rush anything in our relationship, and we haven’t. I can wait. You can take down your deflector shields. I’m not going to kiss you. Not now. I want to. I almost did earlier. But I’m not going to. There. Now you know what I’m thinking. Mystery solved. I am no longer an enigma to you. At least not one of legendary proportions.”
His final sentence made it clear to Katie that he wasn’t too exasperated. Just enough. It would be good to leave things right where they were and not try to continue this conversation. Especially not in the parking lot.
“Here’s the thing, though, Katie. And this is going to be a nonnegotiable for me. I don’t want to keep having this conversation. I don’t want to keep going back and forth. We’ll drive each other crazy. I think we should just be what we are now through the rest of the summer, without having to declare any official titles, okay? This is what works.”
“Okay. You’re right. As nebulous as this is, somehow it does work. At least most of the time. Slow-lane summer. Okay. Fine.”
“Fine,” Rick repeated.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, neither of them initiating the next gesture. Katie suspected Rick was feeling the same thing she was. As soon as they established they were going to take things slow, Katie wanted to kiss him more than ever. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and Rick wrapped both his arms around her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He gave her a final squeeze and let go.
Katie got in her car and waved as they parted ways. “Self-control is highly overrated,” she muttered.
The only thing that kept her driving back to her dorm and not turning around and following Rick to his apartment was the echo of her visit with Christy. Yes, Christy had said all the right things, being the ideal candidate for the now-married-but-once-abstinent poster child. But it wasn’t Christy’s words that ricocheted through Katie’s heart at the moment. It was Christy’s look. It was the glow. Katie was willing to be exasperated on nights like this, if she knew that all the waiting would one day make her glow like that.
12
As awkward as Katie and Rick’s conversation in the parking lot had been, all was well in the land of Katieness. She and Rick were back in their “floaty” place, as Christy called it. And it w
as okay. It was familiar and stabilizing. Katie even stopped thinking of their rhythm as being a rut. For them, for now, this is what worked.
Katie reminded herself of that truth as her days of summer school and work fell into a steady pattern. She developed an appreciation for days without drama.
Then, on a Friday morning the last week of June, Katie woke to the musical chime on her cell phone indicating she had a text message waiting. Tumbling out of bed, she went over to her desk and picked up her recharging phone. The message was simple.
IT’S A BOY!
Sometime in the night Doug and Tracy’s baby Daniel had made his grand entrance into the world. Katie texted back one word: AWESOME!
She laughed aloud and tried to call Doug. When his voice message came on, she said, “Hey! I’m just calling to add my happy hooray for you guys. Call me when you get a chance.”
Next she tried Christy’s cell phone. Todd answered.
“I talked to Doug about half an hour ago,” Todd said. “Trace is doing great, and Daniel is doing even better. They went to the hospital at 10:30 last night, and Daniel was born at 7:30 this morning. I guess that’s pretty good for a first baby.”
“How much did he weigh?” Katie asked.
“Something like 14 – 7. Does that sound right?”
Katie laughed. “It was probably more like seven pounds and fourteen ounces.”
“Yeah, that could be it. Doug said he has long fingers, so it looks like we’re going to have another guitar player in the family.”
Todd’s comment brought a smile to Katie. Todd’s family situation was dicey like Katie’s. That he referred to Doug, Tracy, and Daniel as “family” affirmed the sense that Katie had about her Christian friends. While her parents had dropped passively out of her life, Katie’s God-Lover friends had filled the gap.
“Are you guys going to the hospital today to see them?” Katie asked.
“We’re thinking about it.”
“I want to go with you, if you do.”
“Sounds good. I’ll tell my bride when she gets out of the shower. Why don’t the two of you set up a time?”
His bride. How sweet.