It Happened on Maple Street

I was really going to see him. After thirty years . . .

&n

bsp; And the what-ifs were deafening.

Tim called Saturday afternoon. He’d been with a buddy of his, watching a local basketball game. I was, as usual, in my office.

“I was thinking about you the whole time I was at the game,” Tim confessed. “Thinking about holding you.”

That liquid warmth spread through me again. For the second time in twenty-seven years. It whipped from my heart to regions down below in the space of seconds.

“How many pages did you get done?” he continued, while I was busy trying to analyze things that weren’t meant to be logically understood. Like how his voice could do physical things to my body, when physical touch left me cold and dry.

“Fifteen,” I answered his question. Thankfully the book was still cooperating. “Verne died.”

“He did.” Tim’s voice dropped. “Who’s Verne?”

“This guy. He died on the toilet.” I started to laugh. And then added, “I’m sorry, that’s sick. I didn’t plan it that way. It’s just . . . someone went into his apartment looking for him and there he was, dead on the toilet.” I laughed again.

“Who’s Verne?” He sounded odd.

And I realized that I’d left out a key part of my conversation. “An old drunk in the book.”

“Ohhhh.”

“He’s the uncle of a character in the book that follows mine. It’s a series of five connected books by five different authors, and I was told to kill him off.”

“Got it.”

“I have to have the book done before I get on the plane on Wednesday.”

“I won’t keep you long then.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just stay up late tonight.” I welcomed the distraction. I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed, in my own home. I wasn’t sleeping much, period.

“I called because I have something I need to tell you.”

My heart sank. He wasn’t going to Atlanta. He’d heard from Denise and was getting back with her.

“What?”

“I just want you to know that I have no expectations of having sex next week. As a matter of fact, I’ll just say it. We’re not going to have sex in Atlanta.”

Oh. I wasn’t sure what to say. The emotional turmoil that had taken over my life left me pretty much speechless. I was relieved. Of course. So did I thank him?

I wasn’t disappointed, was I?

“It’s not because I don’t want to,” he inserted into my silence.

“Okay.”

“It’s just, I’d never had sex before I met you back in college.”

“I wondered. You said you hadn’t, but . . .”

“Yeah, well, hopefully that can shed some light on why our relationship was based on my hands and not my heart. I was eighteen. When I met you, I truly was in love with you. I couldn’t wait until I saw you, I wanted to be close to you all the time, and it just came out wrong.”

“I know.”