“She’s going for a run with the man. Not to meet his parents,” Jac sticks up for Savannah, duly disagreeing with Vangie, simply an added bonus.
“Exactly!” Savannah says. “Trust me, I’m not looking to get into another relationship.”
“But, what if he makes a move on you?” Vangie asks.
Savannah’s smile stretches ear to ear, her tone breathy, “I just might have to countermove.”
“Atta girl.” The consummately single and satisfied Jac pats Savannah’s leg encouragingly.
“Mama! Mama!” Luka and Zoey chant, making their way back to Vangie, their faces covered in derby girl war paint, their arms laced with stick-on tattoos.
“Wrecking Ball Rita
signed my shirt.” Luka proudly shows off the signature.
“And she helped me come up with a new name,” Zoey announces,
“Zero Tolerance Zoey!”
Jac, Vangie and Savannah happily inspect the girls’ colorful, elated faces with a simultaneous, “Cool!”
“You girls ready?” Savannah prods Luka and Zoey.
“Yeah!” They shout their excitement at spending the night with her.
“Hug Mama and Aunt
Jac-You-Up,”
Savannah says, emphasizing the derby girl moniker in her best sports commentator voice. After kissing Jac and Vangie on the cheek, she takes her nieces by their hands, leading them from the locker room.
“Hey,” Luka says, “I have a great idea. Let’s paint Aunt Savannah’s face when we get to her house.”
“Yeah!” Zoey agrees with a hop, skip and jump, her excitement uncontainable.
Vangie and Jac chuckle to themselves, watching the three of them walk away. “Good luck!” Vangie calls after Savannah, knowing she’s in for a wild slumber party. “And enjoy your run. Be a good girl,” her emphasis on
good.
“Don’t worry.” Savannah turns back to her, grinning cantankerously. “I won’t do anything Jac wouldn’t do.”
Jac laughs, knowing that leaves the possibilities wide open.
Vangie shakes her head, muttering, “That makes me feel so much better.”
Chapter Four
The Georgia sun rises high over Hutchinson Island, just north of the city on a balmy Sunday, late in the morning. Savannah waves at Brody from her Jeep as she passes him by, searching for a parking spot. She brakes suddenly, scoping out a prime location, efficiently parallel parking her compact SUV.
Jumping out, her hair suits her youthful mood, pulled high and taut into a wispy ponytail. In her running duds, with a wide smile beaming just beneath her large-lensed sunglasses, she jogs to meet him for the start of their first casual meet-up. Overcome with her infectious energy, Brody throws his arms out to his sides, an invitation for a hug.
Accepting, Savannah bounds up on her tip-toes to accommodate his frame, her arms encircling his shoulders. Momentarily her mind wanders to the size difference between him and Jack, having grown accustomed to Jack’s muscled build over the past eight years, albeit narrower and shorter in stature compared to the
tall drink of water
she currently clings to. Thrown slightly off balance on the ends of her toes, she falls into Brody.
“Whoa!” he says, fully catching her into his secure embrace.
Savannah blushes, her hand unable to contain itself from trailing down the considerable mass of brawn over his heart. Finally gathering her wits, she pulls away. “I’m not used to the height,” she remarks, tugging her tank top down, the stretch having caused it to expose her tummy.
“It’s kind of like life’s detours. Not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse,” he chuckles of his above average height. “That’s some pretty fancy parallel parking you did there.” He points at her Jeep, neatly centered between two very compact white lines.
“Why, Mr. McAlister,” she starts through a playful grin, “you wouldn’t be of the chauvinistic mindset that insinuates women can’t parallel park, would you?”
He scratches his head, returning her playful grin. “Not anymore.”
“Okay.” She rubs her hands together, jogging in place. “What are we doing? How long you want to run?”
“You’re quite the little spark plug.” He comments on her energy, wondering if he’s up for the challenge. “I figure we’d just start running and stop when we’re tired,” he says, his laid-back manner a nice counter to hers.
“After you,” she says, encouraging him to set the pace.
Brody falls into an easy, steady rhythm, attempting to attend her comfort. “Good?”
“Perfect,” she approves, cutting to the chase. “There’s something I think you need to know. I’m recently divorced. I mean
real
recent. Like last week recent.” She looks at him, awaiting his response.
“Okay,” he says, never losing stride.
“I mean, we’ve been separated for a while and all of that. But I just want you to know.” Being the youngest, Savannah was often sheltered from pivotal family information, a tradition she has grown adamant in breaking, propelling her directness in her own personal life.
“Since we’re divulging truths,” Brody begins, “you should probably know that I was married and divorced, too. Not last week.” He smiles at her. “But I may have a little baggage yet to work through.”
“How long does that take?” she asks sincerely, her tone quite heavy.
“Well, I’ve been at it about three years now.”
“Three years?” she exhausts, hopeful the two she and Jack spent in separate households somehow factors into the total. “You have kids?”
“Nope. You?”
She shakes her head. “I know I’m committing a major faux pas here. They say you’re not supposed to talk about past relationships. But, do you mind if I ask what happened? With you and your ex?” she asks, genuinely interested, having grown more curious as to why couples divorce since experiencing her own.
“Not at all. I think it’s good to talk about it. Lets people know where you are, emotionally,” he speaks through the exertion of their jogging pace. “We wanted different things, basically. Grew apart. We worked at it. Tried to get back to where we started. But it was pretty much a lost cause by then.”
“Gotcha.” Savannah nods, fully conceding and empathetic.
He continues, his tone detached, “We lived in the same house, but we were leading totally separate lives. She was a night owl. I’m a morning person. She didn’t care to spend time with my friends or family. She wanted me to change careers, something more
lucrative,”
he chokes out the term. “Disappointment and resentment got the best of us, I guess. It got so bad, most of the time, she slept in the bedroom and I slept on the couch.”
“Do you snore?” Savannah interjects, a slight giggle escaping, attempting to keep the mood light considering the unpleasant subject matter.
Brody eyes her, the corners of his mouth upturned. “Not that I know of.”
“Did she have good eyesight?” Savannah quips, the question surely unintended to slip out.
He looks at her puzzled, not fully comprehending what she’s getting at.
“Has she seen you? I mean, look at you.” She scans him up and down, surely a cruel joke of nature to create such a delectable form, one of a kind. Every woman should have one. “No woman in her right mind is going to lie in a bed alone with a body like that on the couch.” She speaks of the superficial, her newly guarded heart feeling inclined to do so.
“Well, maybe that’s because you haven’t lived with me,” he jokes humbly. “She wasn’t that into sex, anyway.” He raises his eyebrow, prefacing his next question, a crooked grin forming. “Were you a
withholder
of the booty?”
A male jogger passes by them. Having caught the last part of Brody’s sentence, the man can’t help himself from laughing out loud.
“Oops,” Brody mumbles, his tall frame momentarily slouching. “Guess I could keep my voice down.”
“Withholder
of the booty…” Savannah ponders through a giggle. “I like sex, a lot,” she stresses
a lot.
“But I can’t say I was turned on much toward the end of our relationship. You know what they say…the secret to a healthy sex life is how you treat a woman…outside the bedroom. Fighting doesn’t make for the best foreplay.”
“Fighting? The guy never put his hands on you, did he?”
She looks at him, slightly turned on by his protective nature. “No. Never,” she clarifies, grateful for the fact that Jack didn’t have an abusive bone in his body. “Arguing may be the more operative word.”
“What did you argue about?” He continues, guiding her along the running path. Even though the topic of conversation not necessarily first-date material, Brody proceeds, knowing that talking about his own failed relationship helped him to reckon with it somehow.
“His attitude. His disposition. I don’t know what happened, but it was like this gradual, progressive thing, you know. When I met him, he was funny and active, energetic. But then he got all moody, depressed maybe. But he wouldn’t go to therapy. And he drank, a lot. You know, beer and whiskey. I never liked that,” she recalls. “I think he just grew unhappy, unsatisfied with the progression of our relationship.”
“That sure can change a person’s outlook,” Brody acknowledges, having grown uncustomarily sad of heart and unmotivated in his own failed relationship.
“Not that I was any better,” she admits. “He wanted to move out of town, start a family. I wanted to stay in Savannah, keep climbing the ladder at work.” Savannah catches her breath before continuing. “He said I was pushy. Too driven. Too focused on work to make time for him and our future. Maybe I was, or am.”
“Was that the plan? When y’all got together? To eventually move and start a family?” The ever-logical Brody assumes everyone has a plan.
She shrugs. “We never had a plan, really. We were pretty young when we got together. I had just finished college. My career was a priority for me. Writing is so competitive. It takes a while to get where you want to be.” She contemplates momentarily. “Guess our future plans weren’t exactly on point.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, sometimes the future doesn’t work out, even when you do talk about it in the beginning.” Their conversation keeps pace with their feet trekking along steadily on the pavement. “I guess the trick is compromise.”
“We failed that part,” Savannah huffs. “He moved out, thinking I would follow. And I stayed put, thinking he would come back. I harped on him about his crappy attitude. ‘Life’s all about attitude. Make it what you want it to be,’ I would say. ‘Well, if you had more time for me, maybe I wouldn’t have such a crappy attitude,’ he would reply.” Savannah shakes her head with the thought of the tiring, revolving banter. “I do work a lot of hours, but I thought he would understand that. As a man…usually y’all are very career oriented and driven, right?” she asks, surprised at the ease with which she confides in Brody, feeling inclined to do so seeing as how he has been through something similar.
“Some men are,” he acknowledges with a shrug.
Savannah continues, her words interrupted intermittently by her breath as they jog along. “It was weird. When we first got together, he said he loved my independence. But, ironically, that became the source of his agitation. He said I didn’t need him.” She pauses, contemplating. “He was...
is
a good man,” she points out. “Maybe I changed him somehow. Made him that way. With my actions. You think?”
“Maybe,” he says, further explaining. “Most men are attracted to independent, get-it-done type women. It’s just that some can’t handle it. Their egos are too fragile. A lot of a man’s worth is tied up in being needed.”
“I get that. But being independent doesn’t mean I don’t need a man.” Savannah matches him pace for pace along the trail.
Brody takes note, meticulously handling his checklist of ‘must-haves,’
number six—athletic,
dutifully checked off. “Correction,” Brody says. “You, Savannah Bondurant, don’t
need
a man. Question is, do you
want
one?”
“Yes, I want one,” she says adamantly. “It’s just that maybe I want one who can handle me. Not like a tamer
handles
a lion,” she admits in a quirky tone. “But one who can hang…who can keep up with me.”
“I see where you’re coming from.” He grins. “It’s like dancing. You need a strong lead.”
“Exactly!” Savannah enjoys his euphemism.
“So, what you’re saying is, you made all the rules.” He takes the liberty of sizing up her testimony. “And your ex, even though he didn’t necessarily like the rules, went along with them anyway. Grumbling about it at every turn.”
She looks up at him, never hearing it from that perspective. “I guess, maybe, if you want to put it that way.” Her eyebrows furrow, contemplating her subconscious
rule-making.
“He knows he doesn’t have what it takes…or doesn’t want to put forth the effort…to keep up with you. But, he doesn’t want to let you go. All the while, he thinks he’s holding on to you, when in fact, he’s pushing you further away with a poor attitude and constant complaining.”
“Well, yes. Women are attracted to strength and independence, too, you know.” She grows slightly defensive. “We like a man with direction and purpose. Preferably one who’s happy doing whatever it is he does.”
“What is it he does?” Brody asks.
“He’s a firefighter with the city.”
Brody pivots his head in her direction, his eyes speculative. “You don’t have hero-worship, do you? One of those women who only dates cops, soldiers, firefighters?”
“Ugh,” she huffs, an expressed exhale. “No.” Further contemplating, she fesses up, “I mean, sure, I found it quite attractive. His position. The uniform.” Her guilt growing, she counters, “But that’s not the only reason I went out with him. Everybody has to have a job. He just happened to have a pretty cool one.”
“Twenty-four on, forty-eight off, paid vacations, great retirement,” Brody walks through the firefighter schedule and benefits, having a few friends who are employed as such. “What did he have to complain about?” he asks, considering Savannah’s report.
“You tell me,” she spouts, a moment of silence passing between them as they both catch their breath, continuing in their jog. “What I really want to know is what makes a man stay in something that doesn’t make him happy?”