A Chance of a Lifetime (18 page)

After another long moment, Calvin unclenched his jaw and shook his head. “Truth is…I don't know.”

His response left an unsettled dissatisfaction seeping through her. “You must know something, Calvin. You were there, you were seeing him every day, talking to him, hanging out with him. Did you argue?”

He shook his head again, slowly side to side, his gaze distant. After a long time, he sighed, then answered in a low, heavy voice, “When we went in the Army, we were gonna have good times. We knew we were gonna go to war, but we were gonna kick ass and save the world. We were all gung-ho through training, but when we got over there, when we got into real combat, when people were trying to kill us and we were trying to kill them and we were seeing people die—our troops, theirs, civilians…”

His haunted gaze met hers, sending a shiver through her, one of pain and regret. Lord, how sorry she was he'd gone through that. He'd seen things no one should ever see, done things no one should ever do, and all his naïve youthful ideals had been shot to hell. He'd had to grow up quickly—and hard.

“It wasn't good times then, Bennie. Our buddies were dying, and we were afraid of dying, and we had to get tougher and stronger. After about three months in Iraq, I went up to our lieutenant one day and said, ‘I changed my mind, sir. College is looking real good about now. Can I go home for a while and think about it?'

“He just laughed, and so did I, and he sent me on my way.”

Despite his relaxed posture, tension flooded through him. She could see it spreading from his eyes and his jaw, tightening the muscles in his arms and chest, knotting his fingers around the beer he hadn't yet tasted, and reaching across the table into her. She wished she hadn't asked the question. She needed to know, but did her need to talk about it take precedence over his desire not to tell?

“The lieutenant died a couple days later.”

“Oh, Calvin…I'm sorry.” Dropping the gold heart to dangle on its chain, she took his hand, gently, forcibly unfolding his fingers from the bottle, gripping them in hers. “I'm so sorry.”

For a time he stared down at their hands, then slowly tightened his as if he needed to hold on to her. She'd teased him in high school that he had elegant hands for a boy. Artistic creative hands, for a pianist, a painter, a surgeon. He'd laughed, extending his long slender fingers as wide as they would spread, and said he had basketball hands.

“J'Myel…” His voice was husky and thick, the way her own voice got sometimes when she talked about her husband. He cleared his throat, swiped his nose with his free hand, and looked at her again. “I started taking college courses as soon as we got out of training. I worked hard, studied hard. I picked one hell of a career for myself, but going through everything we were going through, I was damned if I was going to come out with nothing to show but a few medals. And that was when things started going wrong with J'Myel.”

Though Bennie hadn't made the connection back then, she wasn't surprised now. With his perpetual life-will-always-be-fun attitude, J'Myel hadn't thought much of people going to college. He wasn't going to spend another four years or more sitting in classes, not when he'd just finished thirteen years of it. He was going to live a real life doing real stuff, he'd boasted—not reading about it, not learning about it, not sitting in an office working it like some jerk. She assumed he'd outgrown that prejudice since he hadn't made any snide comments when she'd started nursing school, but he'd been seventy-five hundred miles away. Maybe he'd seen acceptance as his only option at that time.

“When I wasn't working or in class, I was studying. I didn't have much time for going to bars or meeting girls, so—” Abruptly he stopped, guilt flushing his face.

She smiled. “I'm going to presume this was before he and I started dating.”

“It was,” he assured her. Finally, he took a drink from the beer, his head tilted back, the muscles in his throat rippling ever so slightly under his skin. Was it wrong of Bennie to be thinking what a lovely sight that was when they were discussing her dead husband?

She'd loved J'Myel. Always had, always would. But she had plenty of love left over, and she was much too young to spend the rest of her life in mourning. He would understand. And if he didn't, well, that would be another come-to-Jesus meeting.

“He started hanging out with other guys, guys like him, into partying and good times and living the life,” Calvin went on. “When I got promoted ahead of him the first time, he was ticked off. The next couple times, he was really pissed. He wouldn't see it was because he was just doing the bare minimum the job required. He called me college boy and suck-up, among other things. When I finished my degree and got commissioned, he finally got down to the point, to what was really bothering him.”

Bennie's shoulder muscles started to cramp, and she realized she was hunched forward, wound tight as a spring. At any moment, whatever was coiled inside her might release, shooting her across the table in a quivering mass. She consciously relaxed her shoulders, rolling them, stretching them down from her neck, as B.B. King and Eric Clapton combined their guitar mastery on a soulful tune coming from the speaker mounted above them.

“
Ambition
was kind of a dirty word to J'Myel.” She didn't feel disloyal for saying what everyone knew. His mother was a paralegal, his father a bank finance officer. They'd always encouraged him to study hard, work hard, and make the best life possible for himself.

That ain't me,
J'Myel used to say. He was a live-for-today worry-about-tomorrow-when-it-comes sort of guy. If he wanted to do something, he did it. If he had money, he spent it. If he saw an opportunity, he took it, and he never worried about the consequences. He'd been carefree, happy, and always up for anything, and she'd loved that about him. She'd known when he proposed that she would have to be the responsible one in the marriage, and she hadn't minded. She'd been good at keeping him in line.

And she'd honestly thought that before long he would grow out of it. That a couple combat tours of hard living would make college and an air-conditioned office look a lot better—for his own sake, for hers, and for the family they were going to have.

Maybe he would have grown out of it…but time hadn't been on his side.

The waitress interrupted to deliver their food: a regular dinner plate for Bennie, a super-sized one that was loaded to overflowing for Calvin. After she left, they sat in silence a bit longer. Bennie was patient. She could wait as long as it took Calvin to finish.

He released his grip on her hand slowly, the callused skin of his fingertips sliding along her fingers, across her palm, brushing her wrist, before he finally let go. After unwrapping his silverware from the napkin, he squirted Bad Hank's Devil Sauce over his entire meal and stabbed a piece of brisket on his fork, but he didn't lift it to his mouth.

“He said he left home with his best bud.” Calvin's affect was flat, no emotion in his voice or on his face. “Two black kids out to save the world, but somewhere along the way I forgot that I was black. I was trying too hard to be white, he said. And that was the last thing he ever said to me.”

Bennie cringed.
Trying too hard to be white
was the worst insult in J'Myel's arsenal. She'd believed all this time that whatever had come between the men had been of substance, something that
might
be worth ending a lifelong friendship, something that they shared responsibility for. She'd been wrong.

It didn't speak well of her husband.

It didn't speak well of her that she'd acceded to his demands that she cut off contact with Calvin, too. She should have insisted on an explanation, but of course he wouldn't have given it, not when the truth would have tarnished his reckless and fun-loving knight's armor.

Heavens, she'd loved such an idiot.

After being mostly quiet for so long, now it was her turn to talk. “I'm sorry, Calvin. I'm sorry he took that attitude, and I'm sorry I took his side. It was just easier to go along with him than to argue, and I really didn't want to argue. We had so little contact, and I wanted to keep things happy.”

She expected him to shrug, brush off her apology. That was what people usually did. Instead, he ruefully shook his head. “I missed you, Bennie. With J'Myel out of my life, then you, it felt like part of my soul had been ripped away.”

Her breath caught in her chest, and guilt washed over her. When he'd left town to go to basic, she'd promised she would always stay in touch, that she would be his link to home and real life and normalcy, and she'd done it until J'Myel convinced her otherwise. She was ashamed that her
always
had lasted only six years.

“I missed you, too,” she admitted. “I'd seen you guys every single day for nine years, and then you were gone. I didn't know what to do with myself. There was no one to hang out with, to sit with in church. No one to cheer up or to cheer me up or to tease mercilessly. It was tough.” On second thought, she added, “Not your kind of tough, of course.”

He smiled faintly at that. “So is that enough questions for tonight?”

Her own smile was sly and naughty. “Oh, I have dozens more, but they're all much easier. You know, things like how come you aren't married and how long is the trail of broken hearts behind you and what have you been doing with yourself. But they can wait for another time.”

After he'd taken a bite, she smiled sadly. “Thank you for telling me, Calvin. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.” Even though knowing sharpened the shame of her own actions and made her heart feel two sizes too small.

Eight days had passed since what Joe thought of as the failed first-kiss attempt. He had seen Lucy every day, had spent time with her, and hadn't gathered the nerve to try again, especially since she hadn't said anything about it the next day or the day after or the day after…Did she think if she ignored it, she could pretend it never happened? Did she wish it had never happened? Was friendship all she wanted from him?

“Of all the people in the world to sabotage me,” he said softly, rubbing Norton's throat, “you were the last one I expected it from.”

The dog's big eyes studied him a moment before drooping shut. On the sofa cushion, nestled against Norton's belly, Sebastian was already snoozing, making tiny whistling sounds with each exhale.

Lucy came in from the kitchen with two bottles of water and a bowl of grapes. After setting them on the coffee table, she pulled a stack of flattened items from under her arm. “Look what I got today.” There were bakery boxes in different sizes, bags big enough for a couple cookies, and shopping bags to hold the smaller ones. They were white and green and blue, with the bakery name, address, and phone number and decorated with heart-shaped flowers. “I got business cards, too,” she added, pulling a handful from her hip pocket. “Aren't they adorable?”

He took about half the stack of cards, glancing at them before sliding them into his wallet. “Almost as adorable as I am.” He feigned a hopeful look. “I am, you know. Everyone says so.”

“Aw, you need some ego strokes?” she teased.

“My ego is just fine. Not too big, not too small, but just right.” He patted the sofa cushion beside him. With Norton stretching out from the tip of his nose to the tip of his toes, there wasn't much room left.
Thanks, buddy.
“Sit.”

“Do I get a cookie if I obey?”

“No, but you can have a grape.”

She plopped down beside him, her feet barely reaching the coffee table to rest on the scarred wood. They were both still in their walking clothes. Well, she was. He wore ragged shirts and shorts or sweats all the time. Her ponytail was slipping loose from the band that held it, and her cheeks were still tinged with pink from the exertion and the chill as the sun had gone down.

“How was the parade from your perspective?” he asked, twisting enough on the cushion that he could watch her without being obvious.

“It was great. I love parades. We used to go up to Pasadena to see the Rose Parade, until Mom and Dad finally realized that it was almost as good on TV as in person. No driving, no camping out for a good spot, bathroom right down the hall…” She leaned forward to pick up her water and the grapes, popping one into her mouth and talking around it. “How was it from yours?”

The football team had a long history of riding a float in the parade, right behind the Tallgrass High cheer squad and ahead of the marching band. Since Joe had been in charge, that had changed to walking in the parade. If a bunch of older veterans could walk the two-mile route, the team darn well could.

“There were more people than last year. That's cool.” He grinned. “I saw you. John was lying on your lap and you were bent over him while Ilena changed his diaper.” Seeing Lucy's smile and the silly faces she'd made to entertain the baby had given him a pain around his heart. Being the youngest of six kids hadn't always been conducive to paternal feelings, especially when the five older ones could outrun him, outsmart him, and outwit him until he was in his teens.

But when he'd become his dad's assistant with a youth football team, he'd found he had a knack for teaching younger kids. He'd continued volunteering through high school and college, and even now he oversaw regular clinics for kids to learn the fundamentals and safety of football. Somewhere during those years, he'd decided he wanted kids of his own—wanted them a lot. Wanted them with Lucy.

“Ilena's lucky,” he remarked. It hadn't been easy for her, widowed and pregnant, with her family in South Texas. But with Juan's family little more than an hour away in Broken Arrow and the margarita girls here, she and John were doing fine.

“Yes, she is. I was so jealous of her when we met. I mean, Mike and I had talked and waited and talked, and…here I am.”