“Not this time,” I muttered aloud, the phone to my ear.
“Uh… what?” Claudia’s voice sounded bemused on the other end.
“Sorry. I’ve been having lots of realizations and resolutions today.” I cut the small talk and jumped right into the reason for my call. “Anyway, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Sure. How can I help with these realizations and resolutions?”
I grinned at her snark and thought for a moment. “Could you get Nate’s number for me? No, wait, hold on,” I forged ahead as Claudia started to interrupt. “Can you also give my number to Nate?”
“Give him your number as in telling him that you want him to have it, or give it to him and tell him ‘Hey, my friend enjoyed seeing you the other day, and I think she’d be open to catching up’?”
A good question and I should have known my friend would catch on so quickly. “The second option, preferably. I just… since he was the one who-” I tried to find the words for what had happened, failed and just went with what was closest to what I meant. “Since he was the one who broke things off, I’d just like to see if he’ll be the one to contact me first now, you know? I’m planning to call him if he doesn’t call me after a few days, but I’d just like to see what happens.”
“Are you still mad at him?”
“No,” I responded with conviction. “I’m not. I’d like to catch up, and seriously, I just want to see if he’ll call me first.”
“Alright. I’ll text you his number after we hang up, and I’ll let you know when I’ve given him your number. I think I can do it in person tomorrow, actually. He’s coming over to see Zeke since we’re still in town.”
“Oh, yeah!” I exclaimed. “We have to hang out some more while you’re still right next door. When are you going back to Paris?”
We talked for a while longer about Claudia’s brand, my wedding planning business, Paris, travel in general, Claudia’s baby and anything else that happened to come up. When we finally hung up, I sent a surprised glance out of the open front curtains to see the setting sun fading over the horizon.
That sun set, rose, and then jumped high in the sky the next day before I received that text from Claudia telling me that she had given Nate my number. That was around eleven, and I spent the next hour trying to decide how many days to wait before I called him.
I ended up not deciding on a specific number of days. Playing things by ear was the best solution sometimes. I would give Nate a chance, see what happened and give him a call on a day when I missed him and didn’t want to wait any longer.
Privately, as I watered the plants out front, I made a couple of little bets with myself. If Nate called me today - highly unlikely, of course - I would vacuum the whole first floor of the guest house. I’d been putting that off for days, and I could either keep procrastinating for a few more or I could lose my bet with myself and do the chore today. If he called tomorrow, I would cook that chicken that had been in the freezer for a week. If he called the day after that-
My phone rang just as I aimed the hose at a bed of amaranthus. Their feathery blooms bowed beneath the man-made rain, then sprang right back up again as I dropped the hose to answer the phone… then hesitated when I saw an unknown but definitely local number on the screen. The beautiful butterflies fluttering from blossom to blossom converged into a pit of nervousness that suddenly formed in my stomach.It could be anyone,I told myself, staring down at the number. I had probably given out my number to thousands of people over the course of my business.
I cleared my throat and answered the phone with professionalism. “Hello, this is Tammy!”
“Hello Tammy, this is Nate,” the man himself echoed back at me with a chuckle. “Is your personal phone also your work phone?”
“It saves money,” I stated, retrieving the hose. Nate’s voice freed the butterflies from my tummy and even gave me a sense of relief.I missed him,I admitted to myself.Even though it’s only been a few days.“Oh man,” I groaned as I remembered something?
“What happened?”
“Oh, just a little bet I made with myself. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.” I grinned against the mouthpiece of the phone. Nate hated being teased with withheld information, so I had done it all the time in high school.
“I see that some things don’t change. Fine, keep your secrets. I’ll find out eventually. I always do.”
It was true, and I couldn’t help but giggle. Nate always got the information out of me one way or another. Tickling and buying me dinner had proven equally effective in the past. “We’ll see. I can be stubborn sometimes.”
“Sure, okay. Anyways, I got your number from Claudia this morning when I went to visit Zeke. Dinner was nice - dinner with everyone, I mean - but it would be nice to catch up, just you and me.” Nate paused. “Maybe we could talk this time… you know.”
“Like really talk. I’d like that… how does lunch sound?”
“Good, but I have to fly to Lexington on business. Do you have time for lunch today?”
“Actually, I was supposed to meet with clients this afternoon, but they canceled, so I’m free. And I haven’t eaten yet,” I added, thoroughly pleased with this new development. To think that I had been disappointed when I got the call about the cancellation! What good luck. Now I could go out with Nate on a very platonic catch-up lunch that was definitely not a date and would not be referred to as one.
“Perfect. There’s a Vietnamese place with good pho about halfway between us both, if that sounds good.”
I was quite pleased with the idea, and we finalized our plans to meet in an hour at the restaurant. A little nervousness lingered in the back of my mind, but mostly I was just pleased I would get to see Nate again and we could finally talk about the past.
An hour later, I stood in front of the man I had last seen on a television screen. During the short walk across the parking lot to where Nate was leaning against his car, a dozen different greetings of various levels of appropriateness flashed through my mind. In the end, I picked the greeting that was mostTammyand just gave him a perfunctory hug, taking control of the situation before anything could get awkward.
