It Happened on Maple Street

“If I don’t call you by five o’clock tomorrow, please call the police.” I told her where I was staying.

“Okay.” Pat took down the numbers. Read them back to me. “You’re going to be fine,” she added just before we hung up. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Have fun.”

Her words incited another onslaught of excitement and fear that not even the scotch I was drinking could quell. They rang in my mind like a permission slip to do whatever I wanted to do. No matter what that might be.

He went out to dinner the night before he left for Atlanta—a way to keep himself occupied s

o minutes wouldn’t turn into hours.

The work he was going there to do seemed like a pretense. As far as he was concerned, he was flying to Atlanta to meet up with Tara.

He thought about her all night and called her just before going to bed.

“Hey, Babe,” he said, relaxing once he heard her voice. “Are you in your hotel?”

“Yeah. All checked in. The room’s nice.” He pictured her there. Where he’d be in just a few hours. Interminable hours.

“How are you feeling?”

“Nervous.”

“Do you miss me?”

“So much.”

“I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight knowing you’re down there alone and I’m up here alone.”

“Me, too.”

“I’ve been thinking about the whole sex thing.”

“Yeah?”

“It dominated our relationship the last time. I let it get in the way of the things that were most important. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

“I completely agree.”

“So we’ll take it slow and easy. Conversation first.”

“Okay.”

There. He’d done it. And he added, “Then if it happens, it does.”

Just couldn’t let it go. Even now. Twenty-seven years after he’d lost her because he couldn’t keep his hands off her long enough to let her know how much he loved her, he was still aching to touch her.

He was wide awake before the alarm went off. He’d been awake most of the night. The thought of seeing Tara for the first time in almost thirty years had kept him conscious. With Tara in Albuquerque and him in Ohio, creating a two-hour time change, he’d been up until 2:00 AM many times, talking to her after she finished work for the night. And he still had to be up at six to get to work on time.

It was almost déjà vu. Reminiscent of the days when he drove from Huber Heights late at night to clock in late at the grocery story.

This time he was older, but he’d still make it work. There was plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead, he thought.

For now, he was living again.

Just before he shut off his phone for the trip, he texted Tara.