Page 11 of The Cadence
“Great!” I answered enthusiastically, and I did give this woman my number so she could pass it along. She waved and I continued to push the chest into the cargo space, feeling much better about how this long, empty day had gone.
I was in the driveway vacuuming Will’s nice car when he got home, and it hadn’t been a conniving plan to see him.
I’d had to clean out the dirt since the chest of drawers had apparently been outside in a shed or up in a very dusty attic, and it was a happy coincidence that I was in his way when he arrived. It was mostly a coincidence.
“Hello, Calla,” he said, as he walked out of the garage. It attached to the main house and he could have gone right inside, but he came to talk and I was so glad. It wasn’t like he’d been ignoring me, but I could understand how it felt awkward to have a stranger around all the time.
“Hi, Will,” I greeted him back, and I tried not to be overly enthusiastic. I couldn’t help smiling a lot, though. “How was your day?”
“Not too bad.” He sounded a little cautious. I was trying to be more aware of his tone since I was fairly unable to read his facial expressions. “You don’t have to clean the car.”
“I do, because I made it nasty,” I told him. “Look what I got today!” I gestured and he followed me around to the patio in front of the guest cottage, where I’d finally managed to move my new furniture piece. “It was free on the side of the road, and I’m going to redo it.”
“Huh.” He grabbed the top and shook it, and it did seem a little rickety.
“I’m going to fix all the problems,” I assured him.
“When did you learn carpentry? What tools are you going to use? I have a hammer and a screwdriver, but that’s about it.”
I brushed aside those concerns with a wave of my hand. “I thought you might be able to put this in your house, since you don’t have a lot of stuff.”
“Huh,” he said again. His tone told me nothing. “Did you carry it by yourself?”
“I dragged it. The hardest part was lifting it into the car,” I said, and then also explained about meeting the lady who wanted to connect me with her granddaughter. “Isn’t that nice?”
“I’ve been thinking you might want to meet some Woodsmen people,” he mentioned, and I said yeah, I sure did.
“It’s funny because in high school, I didn’t have many friends my age that I hung out with.
After the first year, I did eventually find classmates that I liked,” I explained, “and they seemed to like me back. But I was so busy that I didn’t have much time to spend with them.
Now I have time. A lot of time. A whole lot. ”
Will frowned, an expression that I definitely caught. “Have you had dinner?”
“Not yet. I got involved in doing this,” I said, pointing to one of the dusty drawers. He frowned at that, too.
“Do you want to go eat?” he asked and before the words finished emerging from his mouth, I was already answering.
“Absolutely! I definitely want to go.” But first, I would have to change out of the dirty t-shirt I had worn to scrub the new furniture item and vacuum out the car. “Give me five minutes.”
I let myself into the main house a little more than five minutes later, just as he was walking out from what I knew was his bedroom.
When I was in here, I spent most of my time in another room that he’d set aside as the office, which was the most furnished area.
It had a lot of bookshelves (full of the non-fiction that he enjoyed) and a big desk with a chair that was large enough to fit his oversized frame.
The desk, by the way, was mostly empty, due to the lack of stuff for me to do.
“That’s nice,” he complimented me, and I looked down at my dress.
“Thank you. My grandma made this. You can only tell because of the high neckline for modesty, because otherwise, it looks like something from a store.”
I hadn’t said that in order to draw his dark eyes to my chest, but that was where they went anyway. “It’s very nice,” he told me, and then his gaze moved to focus over my head.
He did the same thing when we went into the restaurant.
On the ride, he’d had talked to his agent and they went on for a while about a deal that would have Will representing the energy bar company, the same one advertised on the t-shirt he’d given me.
When they hung up, we were just pulling into the parking lot and when we went in, he walked to the table with his eyes focused on the spot where the walls met the ceiling.
“Sorry about taking that call,” he said as we sat.
“That’s fine.” I smiled. “I’m glad to get out and do stuff.”
I was genuinely happy, but that statement made Will frown again and I didn’t want that. “Why are you angry?” I asked.
“I’m not. I’m thinking about you being in the guest cottage all day with nothing to do.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” I told him.
“I decided that I could work for you part-time, and then get another part-time job somewhere else. You would get to pay me less and I could meet more people, too. It’s a little lonely in the guest cottage.
It’s beautiful,” I stressed, “but I’m used to being with someone.
Right now I feel…” I paused. “It’s that roller coaster again. Sorry.”
“That’s ok.” He handed me his napkin. Due to this being a nice restaurant, it was cloth, and due to him being a football player for the home team, the rest of the patrons were already staring at us and now they were watching me wipe away tears.
“I don’t want them to think that you’re making me cry,” I said. “You wouldn’t do that.” Not on purpose.
“No one thinks that. They think you have bad allergies.”
Now he was making me smile. “I don’t think I have those. I remember the first time my grandma took me to the doctor and they asked me if I was allergic to medications.”
“Are you?”
I shrugged, because I still had no idea. “Luckily, I was never very sick, either with allergies or otherwise.” I carefully folded his napkin and then passed over my clean one. “What’s good to eat at this place?” I asked.
“I’ve only been here once,” Will answered. “I don’t go out a lot.”
“You’re so busy, I don’t know how you have time to do anything,” I said. “You’re hardly ever home.”
He was frowning again, so now people were going to think that he’d made me cry and I’d made him angry. “That was a mistake,” he said, but it seemed like he was talking to himself.
“What was?”
“I’m going to spend more time at home. I thought that living in the guest cottage would be enough, but it isn’t.”
I understood even less. “What?” I asked again, but the server had come to our table to get a drink order.
Mindful of the last time I’d been with him and overdid the whiskey, I went with water, and when she was gone, Will started talking about Fan Day and then how he’d have to go away to an island near here for meetings.
“We can’t bring anyone,” he explained. “It’s all bonding crap.”
“Is it crap?”
“I think so, but some of the guys get into it. I’m not of the opinion that a few nights in a nice hotel brings me closer to my teammates.”
“But it gets you closer to room service,” I pointed out.
“It’s not a high-rise but there are a few elevators there, too, so I shouldn’t complain. What if Miss Mozella came up to visit you while I’m gone?”
“She would have to drive, because there’s no way that I can convince her of Bernoulli’s principle—wait a minute. Are you thinking that I need someone to stay with me?”
“It might be nice to have company.”
I considered that, and he was correct. It would have been nice but I didn’t need a babysitter.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “Pretty soon I’ll get used to this new situation.
It shouldn’t take too long.” That was what the ladies fromchurch kept telling me, that I’d feel at home in Michigan just like I had in Chattanooga after I’d moved there to live with my grandma.
“You mean, you’ll get used to being lonely,” Will translated.
“No, I meant that I’ll remember how to be on my own. I’m certainly old enough to take care of myself,” I pointed out. “I started that well before most kids have to.” I picked up the menu again. “What looks tasty to you? What’s calamari?”
We chose a lot of good-looking items and ordered them, and he talked about what he’d been doing. Exercising, preseason practices, meetings with his teammates, and meetings with the coaches seemed to be taking up most of his day.
“You’re gone from morning until night, sometimes late night,” I pointed out. “Even with all those meetings, it’s a long time to be away from home.”
“I keep busy.”
“Is that because you’re trying to stay away from me?” I asked, and he hesitated but didn’t answer. “I read that there was a Woodsmen event for players and families, football practice and then a big lunch party.” The local news sites here reported on all the football activities.
“It wasn’t that big.” He hesitated again. “I left after practice and didn’t stay for the lunch.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” he asked.
“I don’t expect you to treat me like I’m something special to you. Didn’t I just finish saying that it takes time to get used to things? It will take you time to get used to me and to be comfortable with a stranger hanging around your house all the time.”
“You’re not a stranger,” Will said. “We know each other. You’re an employee of my company and you’re also my guest. I was staying away because I felt…”
I waited.
“I felt like I should give you space to get your bearings.”
Not a feeling, but ok. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“I mean that I’ve never wanted people around when I had a problem to tackle,” he answered. “I want to do it without interference. You have to work through the grief and I thought you’d want to be by yourself.”
“No, I don’t want to be sad and alone. I’m not like that,” I told him. “Not at all. I would much rather have you or anyone else there with me.”