Passion, Vows & Babies_Truth of a Dream Read online

  He closes my door behind me and walks me up to the front door. "About that real date," he says. "How does Saturday night sound?"

  I wrap my arms around myself, keeping the chill from seeping down the front of my shirt. "Saturday is perfect."

  He reaches into his back pocket and pulls a card out and hands it to me. "If you change your mind, here's my number."

  "What if you change your mind?"

  He laughs softly, almost under his breath. "That won't happen." Dale places his hand on my shoulder and leans forward, placing a kiss on my cheek. "I'll see you Saturday, Haley."

  I feel frozen as I watch him walk away, partly because I am kind of frozen from the cold, but I'm also still in shock that a man around my age would act so cordially. It's sad but true. Most men I have dated seem to be on some kind of schedule or agenda. Most don't want anything serious which means, everything leads to the epitome of something serious.

  I walk inside of the building and hike up the eight floors, finding Mary sitting at the desk like an excited dog waiting for their owner to come home. I'm smiling, and I can't help it. "Tell me everything right now."

  "He's a gentleman and it was almost weird," I tell her.

  "Why? Because you have a thing for assholes?" It's the truth.

  "Maybe."

  "Is there a second date?" she asks, eagerly. Though, she's asking it as if I got a second interview.

  "Yes, Saturday night," I tell her, taking a seat beside her at the desk.

  Mary claps her hands together with excitement and pulls in a slow, deep breath as if she has to try that hard to calm herself. "This is so great," she says.

  "Do you know why I go after assholes?" I ask her.

  "It's something I have been trying to figure out for years now, Haley," she says, clicking her mouse around on her screen.

  "People can't put up with me, Mary. That's why. With an asshole, I go into it knowing what to expect."

  "You’re just a little Type A, I don't think there's an actual problem with you," she argues.

  Except, she's wrong. I'm a little more than Type A. I'm type crazy. "I don't know. Brad can't even live with me...or I can't live with him. I'm not real sure which it is yet," I mutter quickly through a long exhale.

  "Has he found a job yet?" Mary asks.

  "No, but he has an interview at a bar today, though, so fingers crossed." I stand up from the chair, preparing to go clean up before the next patient arrives.

  "I'm proud of you," she says as I walk away. Proud of me for going out to lunch with a man? I don't know if this is sad or just pathetic.

  My next patient arrives and I daze through the process of extracting plaque, polishing, flossing and updating her chart. My questions are on auto-release, my every day spiel I try to mix up every few months so the patients don't catch on that I ask them all the same questions at the very same portion of the cleaning and exam.

  Most days, I enjoy what I do, but some days, I wonder how I ended up here rather than somewhere doing something far more enthralling than cleaning dirty mouths.

  Three hours come and go, each hour as monotonous as the one before all leading to my last patient becoming a no-show, which I still have to wait out most of the half-hour block in case she's running late. I should have some understanding and respect for those who can't be punctual, seeing as I'm one of them.

  As the minutes crawl closer to five-thirty, I conduct my daily cleaning routine and double check that all of my files have been closed out. Mary is straightening up the magazines in the waiting room and I shut down the computers for her to speed up the closing process.

  "Anything good for dinner tonight?" I ask her.

  She places the last magazine into the rack, straightening it to my liking and sighs. "Thomas has requested lasagna."

  "Again?" I ask with a laugh.

  "I swear, I married Garfield some days," she says, walking around the desk toward the coat closet. "I don't mind, really."

  "Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work after a full day here." I slip my jacket on over my shoulders and grab my bag from under the front desk. I'd tell him takeout will have to do. Which is probably why I'm not in, nor ever will be in a long-standing relationship. I'm not cut out for the good-wife-thing.

  "Eh, it's not a big deal, plus I'd rather him take it easy until all that blood work comes back."

  I walk over to Mary and place my hand on her shoulder, noting the pain she's desperately trying to hide. "He's lucky to have you. He's also going to be just fine. I can feel it in my heart."

  "We shall see," she argues. “Meanwhile, thank you for getting my mind of all that today so I could instead obsess over your lunch date, and maybe, sort of vicariously live through you a bit." She grins and places her hands on my shoulders, forcing my hand away from her. "I know this isn't easy for you, but you don't want to be alone forever. Trust me, it's my biggest fear in life."

  She's scared Thomas is going to get a death sentence when his bloodwork comes back. It has been completely consuming her for an entire week, longer, really. It took her two months to convince him to see a doctor for a migraine that wouldn't go away. Clearly, the man would have rather suffered for eternity than get some answers. "You're not going to be alone, Mary. Ever." She wraps her arms around my neck, knowing I truly mean that I will never allow her to be alone, just as she has done for me this past year.

  "What are you doing for dinner tonight?" she asks while hitting the row of light switches.

  "You know, the usual."

  "Plain spaghetti?" I can't see her well with the lights off, but I can nearly hear her eyes rolling by the tone of her question.

  "Maybe I'll mix it up tonight and divulge with Ramen Noodles."

  "Come to my house for dinner tonight." What I would expect to be a question came out as a statement and it's not one I'm going to say no to without an argument. After Mom died, I ate at her house a lot. Brad too. It wasn't that I couldn't take care of myself, it was more of the fact that I didn't want to take care of myself. I'm only about thirty-percent better now, eight months later. Mom and I lived together up until her last day. We were like roommates—the perfect kind of roommates. I worked, she cooked and cleaned. I had a hot dinner to come home to every night, a full breakfast in the morning, and someone to watch trashy TV with every night.

  "You have your hands full, Mary," I remind her. She's forcing Thomas to stay seated on the sofa with his feet up all day and night and that leaves everything on her plate.

  "I do, but I want you to come for dinner. It's been months since you've eaten over. Tell Brad to come too. I already made the lasagna this morning. It just needs to be heated."

  I know Brad won't argue. He loves Mary's cooking, but it's probably because he can't cook and it's the only home-cooked meal he'll get.

  "Okay, I'll give him a call. I have to do a quick errand first, but I'll be over in about an hour. Does that sound okay?"

  "That sounds perfect, honey."

  Mary and I go our own separate ways once in the parking lot and I slide into my icebox of a car and start up the engine while turning the heat dial all the way to the max temperature. God, it got cold.

  I slide my phone out of my bag to call Brad and I see a social media request for Dale. My heart flutters at the mere sight of his profile picture as I open his page. I can probably learn more about him in the next thirty seconds than I did the entire time were having awkward conversations at lunch. Or not. He has very few friends. Less than twenty it looks like. The last post he made was on Memorial Day where he thanked the troops. His twenty friends all posted Happy Birthday to him a few weeks ago, but beyond that, it almost looks like his life is as boring as mine. Actually, his appears to be way more boring. I have decent activity on my social media pages.

  I accept his friend request and shoot Brad a text, telling him dinner is at Mary's tonight. With my phone clenched tightly in my hand, I power off the display and stare out onto the busy street full of rush hour drivers. A smile touc
hes my lips and it's the first time today I've allowed myself to feel the tiniest bit happy about my lunch date.

  Having never met a man like Dale, it all felt different. Good, even. Though, in the midst of falling for his dreamy eyes, I can't help but wonder what will happen when he learns of my not-so-fun traits. Most men don't love a woman who needs to have everything in a particular order or has anxiety when things go awry. The claustrophobia and the other several phobias I deal with every day. I've been called a nutcase, a crazy chicken, and a cuckoo bird by exes, and while Mary might be politically correct in saying I've dated all assholes, there's no real saying what caused them all to be assholes.

  As I'm pulling out of the spot, Brad replies to my text with a drooling face. I swear he's ten, rather than the whole eighteen months younger than me.

  It doesn't take long for me to get to Mary's. She lives closer to the office than I do and I've gotten good at staying just late enough to avoid the mass of traffic that seems to pull out onto this single lane road at the same moment.

  Brad pulls in behind me steps out of his car the same time I do. Scratching at his gut, he groans with excitement. "Real food. It's been so long."

  "Maybe, in all of your free time, you could learn to cook," I tell him as we hike up a dozen stairs to Mary's front door.

  "Maybe I'm not going to have any more free time soon," he says, grinning like a moron.

  "McDonald’s finally called you back? They gave you the dishwasher job you had been dreaming of?"

  "No," he mocks in his sour puss pouty face. "I got the job at Jumpin’ Jacks as a bartender."

  "All I just heard was, I get the TV and my couch back at least a few nights a week," I say with excitement.

  “I’ll be working from five at night until two in the morning, Tuesday nights through Saturday nights.” I want to celebrate. This is an actual reason for a celebration. I get my space back.

  I knock on Mary's front door and hear a faint "Come in" echo through the house. Brad opens the front door and heads right for the kitchen where he wraps his arms around Mary's neck, planting a big wet kiss on her cheek.

  "How has my big Samy been?" she asks.

  "Starving," he groans while opening the oven door and pokes his head inside.

  "So, Haley," Mary begins. "I wanted to chat with you about something."

  I'm slower to make my way into the kitchen than Brad was, but I walk in and sit down on one of her bar stools across from where she's preparing a salad. "Something you forgot to mention while we were working together all day?" I ask with a hint of sarcasm.

  "Something I didn't feel was appropriate for the office, yes," she says while carefully gliding her knife through a red pepper. "I may not have been completely honest with you about something." A pit in my stomach engorges with the thought of what she could have been keeping from me.

  "What is it?" I ask, hearing a breathy void mix through my words.

  She stops slicing through the pepper and places the knife down. "It's about Dale," she says, her eyebrows dancing around while she avoids looking up at me.

  "What about me, Ant Mary? Oh, shit. Is it already seven?" The breath I had planned to use for the next question about Dale has been sucked from my lungs, leaving me winded and speechless as I look behind me to see Dale. In a towel. Soaking wet, drying his hair with another towel.

  "Oh boy," Mary says.

  "Haley?" Dale questions with confusion. "What are you—" He crosses his arms over his bare chest that I'm trying my hardest not to look at, but it's like another one of the World's astonishing wonders. Perfection like that only comes with airbrushing, smoke, and mirrors. I must be delirious from no sleep. That's it. "So, I'm going to go put some clothes on and I'll be back down in a minute to discuss this not-so-coincidental encounter.”

  Dale leaves to go back upstairs, but the fog his existences has created remains. "Mary," I say, coldly.

  "Haley," she replies nervously.

  "Anyone want to fill me in here," Brad says, shoving a cucumber slice in his mouth. "And who is that?"

  Mary finally meets my burning gaze. "Dale is Thomas's nephew."

  I close my eyes to clear up the thoughts flying around my head. "Wait, I didn't know Thomas had a nephew and I thought his family lived in California?"

  "They do and, but he’s here in Nebraska now."

  "Why would you keep this from me?" I feel as angry as I sound and I feel as red as I probably look.

  Brad grabs a beer out of the fridge, completely unfazed by the conversation and calls out to Thomas in the other room. "I know how you feel about match-making, and..."

  "You thought you'd trick me?" I finish her sentence for her.

  "I didn't think you'd actually agree to go out with him today and then you did, and I felt like I should come clean now rather than wait any longer. I realized as soon as I saw you making googly eyes at him that I should have been honest from the start." It's hard to be mad at Mary. She's been here for me in ways no one would ever be here for me, especially since Mom died, but I'm having a hard time understanding how she could do this.

  "He's living here now?" I whisper in case Dale suddenly pops up again.

  "I never would have introduced you two since he was only supposed to be here from September through May, but he's decided to stay and start a practice here. He basically knows no one in the area other than a few people he works with so, I—"

  "Mary...he's living here with you and you never mentioned it?" I ask again.

  "He was living in an apartment about twenty minutes away for the first couple of months, but something happened and the building was sold. Since the schools in the city had already started for the year, there weren't many living options left, so we insisted that he stay with us until the end of the year. He moved in about three weeks ago, but he's looking for a house right now since he's moving here permanently."

  Mary wipes her hands off on a dishtowel and runs her hand through her greying hair. "I'm really sorry, Haley. I never meant to make you angry or upset." She cautiously makes her way over to me and places her hand under my chin. "I thought it might be nice for the two of you to meet since, you know—"

  "Which is it? I have problems and he has solutions, or he has no friends or a girlfriend, and I have no friends or a boyfriend?"

  "Honestly, the first part didn't even cross my mind, but who knows, maybe he'll be helpful with those silly phobias of yours." Silly phobias—my life-consuming phobias are anything but silly.

  "Okay," Dale says, stomping down the stairs. He turns the corner, wearing a loose hanging pair of sweatpants and a snug black t-shirt. His hair is still wet and his face is glowing from the heated shower he must have been in. "I think someone has some explaining to do, Ant Mary." Dale doesn't look nearly as irritated with the surprise as I do, but I can see he wants answers.

  "I'm sorry," Mary says. "I was only trying to help."

  "My mother warned me about your match-making habits," Dale jokes. "I think it was half of the reason she was so supportive of me moving cross-country." Dale pulls up the stool beside me and straddles it to lean forward it on the counter. "You could have at least given me a heads up so I didn't come downstairs in a towel, however." Dale looks over at me with a hint of a smirk, followed by a quick wink. "Here, I thought I wasn't going to be able to see you until Saturday."

  "We did just meet yesterday, you know, when I was cleaning your teeth..." I huff. "Spontaneity must run in your family."

  "That may be true if Mary and I were blood relatives," Dale quips. "Well, in any case, as much as I 'd like to say I'm disappointed in you, Ant Mary, I'm actually quite grateful." Dale says this while looking directly at me, his stare frozen and unfazed, yet at the same time, it's as if he's trying to make me crack.

  "I’m sorry, Haley," Mary says again. She's ignoring Dale's kind remarks and instead, focused on my reaction. "Will you still stay for dinner?" The look on her face is making me feel bad, but I have every right to be angry. She tricked me. I don
't like tricks and I don't like surprises. She knows this.

  Brad walks back into the kitchen as if he knew the storm was beginning to subside, but the only reason for his reappearance is to snatch more food from the cutting board. Brad shoves another cucumber slice into his mouth and wipes his hand off on his jeans. "Hey, man, I'm Brad...the sibling with the personality. I don't need to tell you that, though, it seems you've already met my lovely sister."

  With hesitance, Dale shakes Brad's hand. "Dale, nice to meet you."

  "Haley," Mary says. "Please forgive me."

  I groan with frustration. I can't stay mad at Mary. She's all I have and I need her. "Fine. Just...don't ever do that again."

  "I promise, I have no other nephews," she says, testing the water with a cautious laugh.

  "So, what do you do for work?" Brad asks him, chopping down on a carrot stick.

  "I'm a psychologist," Dale says. "I'm about to open a practice in the area."

  Brad releases an awful deep-belly laugh and nearly chokes on his carrot. "Oh my God. Are you serious?" Brad turns to Mary and offers her a high-five. "Smart move, Mary." Turning back to Dale, Brad chokes again and clears his throat. "Dude, you just found your perfect case-study. My sister is bat-shit crazy."

  Both Mary and I slap Brad from opposite sides. "What the hell, Brad?" I snap.

  His eyes bulge as he glares at me like I'm the one who's being an ass. "It's true! She has like...every phobia you could think of. She can't even take a hot shower. The steam freaks her out. And an elevator...forget that." Brad laughs a little more and I want to kick him where it hurts, but he's making himself look like an asshole so I let him continue. "The best one, though, she never stops cleaning. Dust is like her nemesis."

  "It's okay, man, we all have our things, you know?" Dale responds calmly.

  "Brad, don't be a jerk," Mary tells him. "Go watch TV until dinner is ready."

  Brad leaves us all in silence and the embarrassment slowly creeps in. "Sorry about him," I tell Dale. "He's a man-child who can't get his shit together, so he likes to rag on me. What else are younger brothers good for?" I try to laugh, but I sound like a dying cat.