“I’ve asked myself that same question.” Brody shakes his head. “Maybe it’s loyalty. Maybe it’s refusal to accept defeat. ‘For better or for worse,’” the broken avowal still causing him a degree of guilt.
“We’ve lived in separate households for two years. I had to file for the divorce because he wouldn’t. Which makes me feel like the monster in the whole thing,” her guilt now matching Brody’s as she contemplates her drawn-out, chewed-over decision. “Even if he was calling, texting and doing God knows what with other women,” Savannah bites, the newfound knowledge still razor-sharp in its regurgitation. “I filed, so I’m the bad guy.”
“Other women? You mean, cheating?” Brody’s tone reflects empathy.
“Doesn’t matter. It was bound to happen,” she considers their varied ZIP codes. “He just beat me to the punch, that’s all.” Uncomfortable with the vulnerability the admission causes, Savannah quickly reverts back to her point, “Even now, he’s resisting the separation. The inevitable. He’s not happy with me. He hasn’t been happy in our relationship for a few years. We don’t even want the same things out of life, really. But, somehow he’s convinced himself that he still wants to be with me. What’s that all about?” she seeks clarification, hoping he can shine some light on her dim understanding of the male mind.
“Maybe you’re his golden goose.” Brody peels his t-shirt off, looping it around the back of his neck, the early afternoon sun quickly heating up his frame.
“Golden goose?” Savannah chuckles, taking keen note of his shirtless, sun-kissed,
golden
form.
“Yeah. Every man has one. That woman he’s convinced is a rare find. The one no other woman will measure up to.”
“But his golden goose is a woman who will move to the country with him, have a few kids, and a normal life. A goose whose world revolves around him.” She gets wrapped up in the verbiage, growing curious. “Do you have a golden goose?”
Brody smiles, making eye contact with her. “I’m looking for one.”
“What traits would said goose have?” She smirks back at him.
“Attractive, athletic, comfortable in her skin…you know, confident with who she is. I like an independent goose…one that’s got her own thing going on. I can respect that.” He catches his breath. “But, at the end of the day, she wants to be with me. I
have
to be her shelter. That place she escapes to. Maybe for a bite to eat. Maybe curl up on the couch and watch a little tube to unwind. Just exist…together. Find comfort in one another. Let the day roll off, you know.”
“That soft place to fall,” Savannah adds, finding the picture he paints rather inviting.
“And a great ass,” he jokes, although quite serious in his declaration as he blatantly and approvingly sizes hers up. She laughs, giving him a reprimanding glance. “Sorry. Probably too inappropriate, too soon.” He shakes his head, an apology for his boorish behavior.
She smiles at him, biting her bottom lip. “Don’t think I didn’t take note of yours.” She inquires of his workout regimen, “What do you do to get that thing so perky? Squats? Lunges?”
“Sprints and hills,” he says, the college football star well-versed in such drills. “So back to the kid thing. You want kids?”
“I think I do,” she considers.
“You didn’t want kids with him?” he speaks of Jack.
“Funny you should ask,” she says. “That was the
get-real
moment for me. My sister and I were out to dinner. I was telling her about our problems and considering whether we should keep on trying or call it quits. She said, ‘Well, there’s only one way to answer that question.’ And then she proceeded to ask me if I saw him as the father of my children. That’s when it hit me.” The surprise and recognition still lingering in her voice.
“You didn’t think he’d be a good father?”
“It’s not that I thought he wouldn’t be a good father,” she prefaces. “It’s just that his coping skills were a little sketchy. Especially toward the end of our relationship. Very rollercoaster-ish. When it was good, it was really good. But when it was bad...whew,” Savannah emits, reflecting on the tumult of their latter years together. “I’m sure at one point, I admired that as passion.” She shakes her head, scolding at the thought.
“Intrigue. Drama,” Brody pipes, knowing all too well the dysfunctional yet stimulating hot and cold relationship attraction she speaks of.
“I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was when I heard him yell at his mama. He didn’t just yell. He brayed. And that did it.” She pauses momentarily. “You don’t yell at your mama. Any man that yells at his own mother…I mean, how is he going to communicate with his children? Bray at them?” She throws her hands out to her sides in total frustration, finally tiring of rehashing relationship past. “I don’t know. All I do know is that my clock never ticked when I was with him.”
“Your clock?” He asks, slightly thrown.
“You know, my biological clock.” She pats her lower abdomen, reminiscing the comical adage made famous by Marisa Tomei’s performance in
My Cousin Vinny.
“That internal thing that every woman has. I guess you could call it intuition. The biological
need
to procreate.”
“Ah,” he concurs. “Women’s intuition, maternal instincts, biological clocks.” He chuckles. “You women come with all sorts of gadgets.”
Savannah laughs. “I guess you men only have to consult one gadget.” She raises her eyebrows.
He refrains from commenting, knowing fully well what
gadget
she speaks of.
“That’s what the
Millionaire Matchmaker
Patti Stanger says, ‘The penis is the picker,’” she quotes through a sheepish giggle. “What about you? You want kids?”
“Oh yeah,” he answers immediately. “I love kids. I think every man wants kids, don’t they? It’s the only way the world will know you were here. Your legacy.”
“You ever feel like you’re behind the eight ball? I mean with the whole marriage and kids thing?” Her mind reflecting on their thirty-year-old divorced status.
“Yeah. Most of my friends are married and have kiddos. I thought I’d be there by now, too. But since we’re discussing celebrity quotes, in the wise words of Morpheus from
The Matrix,
‘What happened, happened and could not have happened any other way.’” He catches his breath. “I’ll get there. You will, too. If we’re brave enough not to let the baggage that we carry bog us down,” he speaks of relationships past.
“The baggage that we carry,” she repeats. “You don’t mind if I use that, do you? For my column? I should warn you now, anything you say or do in the presence of my company is liable to end up in my newspaper column.” She laughs nervously, knowing some of her best professional works are pages out of her personal life.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so they say. Let me know if you use it. I’ll tell my mama I made the paper.” He winks at her, picking up their pace. “You ready to give that fine ass of yours a workout?”
“I’m game if you are,” she encourages, having to work to keep up with him.
“Sprint to the hill and then we conquer. Winner buys brunch.” He reverses the usual role of the bet, banking on his legs, fully intending to treat her.
Chapter Five
A perfectly tepid Monday morning rolls around, and the start of the work week is in full swing at the
Savannah Sun Times.
Savannah and her cubicle mate, Tami Lynn, return from their lunch break.
“So…he didn’t ask you out again?” Tami Lynn asks, still trying to figure out
gym boy
Brody’s, angle. “He didn’t secure the next date?”
“No,” Savannah says very nonchalant, surprisingly disinterested in analyzing his decision.
“What do you think that means?” Tami Lynn taps the end of her pencil against her chin, deep in concentration.
“I don’t know, Tami Lynn.” Savannah continues with the work at her desk. “Maybe it means he’s taking it slow. I told you he’s been married and divorced, too. Or, maybe he’s just not that into me.”
“Did he call last night?”
“No, Tami Lynn. He didn’t call last night. We spent the better part of the day together yesterday. Why would he call me?” her rhetorical question certainly not begging for a reply.
“Maybe he’s waiting until day two, to avoid looking desperate. You know that whole
guy code
thing.” Tami Lynn rolls her eyes with the term. “But you have to stop talking about your ex and his ex. That’s dangerous territory, Savannah. Although, it’s promising that the man is talking about his future with you. Kids and all.”
Savannah shakes her head, joking, “Would you like to name our children?”
Tami Lynn gives her the infamous head-cock. “I’m just saying. Do you know how rare that is? That a man initiates that conversation, telling you on the first date that he wants the whole enchilada…wife, kids, home.”
“I think the topics of date-talk conversation vary from your twenties to your thirties,” Savannah considers their ages. “Besides, he didn’t say he wanted any of that with
me.
He was just talking about things that are important to him. He’s very direct. I like that. And it wasn’t a date.”
“Whatever,” Tami Lynn dismisses. “What about you? Think you’ll ever get married again?”
“I’m divorced, not dead, Tami Lynn.” Savannah’s laugh settles with an afterthought, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe I’ll take a page from Goldie Hawn’s book. She and Kurt Russell have been together for years without being married. Maybe they’re onto something.”
“Maybe,” Tami Lynn acknowledges. “So…what are you going to do? When he asks you out again?”
“Guess I’ll figure that out,
if
he asks.”
“How long has it been?” Tami Lynn begins. “Since, well, you know…”
“A looong time,” Savannah answers, knowing her sex life has finagled its way into the conversation. “Too long,” she reviews. “Still trying to figure out how that happened.”
“What?”
“Here I am, thirty years old…just beginning my sexual peak. And I don’t have anyone to enjoy it with.”
“I know, right,” Tami Lynn sympathizes. “When we’re young and hot and sought after by every man on two legs…in
his
sexual prime, it doesn’t have the same significance. And then, bam! Thirty rolls around and all the juices are flowing, and we’re left to consult the shoebox.” She refers to the location of her most prized vibrator.
“Jac has been telling me, ‘Get ready for your thirties, Savannah. You’re going to feel like an eighteen-year-old boy,’” she quotes her eldest sister. “I thought she was exaggerating.” Savannah throws her pencil down on her desk. “That’s all I think about these days. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex!”
“Did somebody say SEX,” their associate editor, Sam McDonald, inquires, stopping at their cubicle on his way through the office space. His pretty-boy face beams, sitting atop a lean and toned physique. “Who’s having it? Who wants it? Spill.” He props himself upon the corner of Savannah’s desk.
“Sorry to burst your bubble,” Savannah says. “We’re pretty boring here. Nobody’s having it, but we want to.” She grins.
“Speak for yourself,” Tami Lynn pipes, offended with the inclusion into such a category, even though it is the truth. “Savannah here is all hot and bothered.”
“Heterosexual dating will do that to you. Why do you think I’m gay,” Sam states. “We sideline all of the dating, meet and greet, get-to-know-each-other rubbish. And skip straight to the goods. What we’re all really after, the pièce de résistance.” He smiles proudly, his French accent impeccable. “I’ll never understand why you straight people insist on torturing yourselves.”
“Maybe because it’s been drilled into our heads by Dear Abby and every other relationship goddess, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,’” Tami Lynn mutters.
“Well, there’s your problem,” Sam says. “You wouldn’t go to a mechanic about problems with your plumbing, would you?”
Tami Lynn and Savannah look to each other and at Sam, their confusion evident in their expressions.
“You’re going to the wrong source,” Sam begins to explain. “Dear Abby is a
relationship
expert. Now if it’s sex for which you’re seeking advice, you go to a sex expert. Like
Talk Sex with Sue Johanson,”
he briefs them on Canada’s foremost sex educator.
“You mean that old woman with all the sex toys?” Tami Lynn asks, mortified. “I saw one of her shows where she featured her favorite toys. She had a rubber duckie, dressed up in bondage gear with a vibrating beak!” Tami Lynn bugs her eyes out. “It was called
I Rub My Duckie.
A waterproof vibrator.” She waves her hand in the air, quelling the illustration relived in her mind. “There is just something so wrong with a prehistoric woman talking about clitoral stimulation.”
Savannah and Sam laugh with her animation. “Bet she has a lot more sex than Dear Abby,” Sam jousts, causing Tami Lynn to gag, her hand quickly covering her mouth at such imagery. “You ladies suit yourselves.” Sam rises from the desk, his tone counseling. “You sit right here and wait for your men to make the first move, when all the while the ball is in your court.” He looks at Savannah.
“Miss Hot and Bothered…
I don’t know the object of your affection. But I do know, all you have to do is ask. Throw the poor fellow a bone.”
“Woof, woof,” Tami Lynn calls after Sam as he walks away.
“Easy
Old Yeller,”
Savannah giggles. Grabbing up her pencil, she finds a sticky note. “Where would one find this show,
Sex Talk with Sue?”
she fumbles the unfamiliar order of the title.
Tami Lynn shakes her head. “Just Google it.”
“Savannah,” a voice, that of a female intern, comes through the intercom sitting to the side of Savannah’s desk.
“Yes,” Savannah answers.
“You have a visitor, at the front,” the intern informs. “He says he’s your husband.”
“Jack,” she whispers, disproving of the conjugal title. “I’ll be right there.”
“He’s still calling himself your husband?” Tami Lynn says, her eyebrow cocked with concern.
“This is a new revelation.” Savannah departs the cubicle.