It Happened on Maple Street

We weren’t kids anymore.

I wasn’t Tara Gumser anymore. I couldn’t feel attraction or desire. Tara Taylor Quinn didn’t need them. She was a writer, and the only sex in her life was in her books. My books. Tara Taylor Quinn had writer friends and professional associations. She did not have sex.

That’s when I remembered that I still didn’t know if he was free.

I saw the lights come on in the house. Chris was home and I hadn’t made dinner. Or poured Cognac. I hadn’t been in the house at all. I’d booked my hotel room for one more night.

And then Tim’s words obliterated all other thought.

Tara:

I just want you to know that I’m so happy to hear from you. I never had any doubts that you would be famous someday. I remember your older brother. We were at your house and sitting at the dining room table. I can still remember to this day that he played “Hot August Night” by Neil Diamond. Whenever I hear that song I always think of that day and you.

I never married but was in a relationship for the past twenty some years until about six months ago when she left me for another man. One who would marry her. They got married this past fall and she’s pregnant already.

He caught me up on his life then. His mother was gone. And his brother Mike, too, who had died suddenly of a heart attack on Thanksgiving a few years before.

He mentioned my dad, too, telling me that he knew my father had never liked him.

Tara, the one thing that I want you to know is that I was very much in love with you. I know our relationship seemed physical all the time, but at that time I didn’t really know how to express my true feelings. To this day I regret how I treated you and made you feel. So, please don’t ever doubt how I felt about you. The biggest regret I have is when I let you walk away from me that day in the hall when you asked for your ring back. I didn’t want you to know how much that hurt. I should have gone after you. I’m sorry for that. I don’t mean to be too sentimental about the past, but it does bother me that things ended so suddenly and without any emotions on my part. Every now and then I catch myself thinking back to that cold and rainy Oct. day when this cute little blonde haired girl from my geology class talked to me. You had me from that moment. I can remember that next Monday trying to find you everywhere on campus. I even had Steve looking for you, and then there you and Ann were outside the library.

Whenever I meet someone, I always judge my feelings about them based on that good feeling I had when I met you at October Daze. Oh, by the way I would have taken you back in a heartbeat.

Let’s talk soon. You know it’s very intimidating writing a letter to an accomplished writer such as yourself!

Lots of Love to You!!!

Tim

I finished the letter, and my blurred gaze went immediately back to the top of the page. “Tara, the one thing that I want you to know . . .”

I was sobbing by the time I got through that paragraph a second time. He couldn’t possibly have known, but Tim had just given me back a piece of myself.

For all these years, I’d felt like I’d given Tim something precious and he’d just used me. I’d felt like the whore that James had called me. Like maybe James had been right and I had something wrong with me— something that called out to men, inviting them to do bad things to me. And it hadn’t been that way at all. I’d given myself to a man I adored. A man who’d loved me, too. A man who’d still been boy enough to fumble at communicating his feelings. It hadn’t been lust that had driven Tim’s behavior, but the love I’d believed in.

I read the letter a couple of times more, slowly, taking it all in. Maybe this was why Tim had found me now, right at the time I was coming to terms with myself and taking control of my life. Was he there to set me fully and completely free from the binds of my past?

From the belief that I was somehow bad?

My face was still wet with tears as I read the closing over and over. Lots of Love. The exact words I’d used all those years ago when I’d needed to tell him I loved him, but couldn’t come right out and say the words without him having done so first.

My fingers flew on the keyboard.

Tim,

I’m leaving my office and I have plans this evening but I’ve got much to say about your letter. The universe has been active today and I am very thankful. More on that tomorrow.

Send me your address and I’ll send you a book to read.

Sleep well.

Tara

Sleep well. It was warm. Loving. Without committing to any more than a reconnection between old friends.

Still, with a smile on my face, and a huge weight lifted from my life, I locked up the office, walked out to my car, and went to meet a local writer friend I’d called earlier in the day. She was divorced, had a huge house, and was struggling to make ends meet. By evening’s end we’d agreed that, as of the next day, I was her new boarder.

The next morning, after a night’s sleep filled with dreams of Tim, I checked out of the hotel, drove through a local fast-food place for a diet cola, and headed straight for my office. My head was spinning with things to say to Tim.