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“Okay, so, enough about me,” Eve said, waving her hand dismissively. “I know we’ve both been busy lately, but I know you haven’t forgotten what we were talking about the last time we talked.”
Katy couldn’t help but to blush. She sipped her drink, looking away. Thank you, Jesus, she thought. The waitress suddenly zipped out of nowhere and came back by their table to take their order.
The plump waitress hurried back away. Eve turned to Katy then tapped her shin under the table. “Katy?” she said. “Don’t act like you forgot what I asked you. So,” she smiled, “are you getting yourself out to meet people or what?”
Katy sighed because she feared this very question would be coming when she pulled out of the school parking lot. “Eve, you know we talked about this. I’m not really looking to be doing any kind of dating. I’m still deciding if I might want to go back and get my Masters so I can be a principal or not.”
“Okay, okay, Katy,” Eve said. “That’s all well and fine, but that still doesn’t mean you can’t date. You have to be getting lonely and desperate, Katy. I mean, look at you.” She gestured across the table.
Katy’s forehead scrunched up. “Huh? What do you mean look at me? Desperate? Eve, seriously, I’m fine.”
Eve glanced around the small restaurant then leaned in across the table. “You still haven’t gone out and gotten any yet have you?”
Katy purposely pretended to not know what Eve was talking about. “To get any what, Eve?”
“You know, Katy,” Eve said, smiling like a teenage girl. “Seriously, you’re not going to become that ole spinster lady who lives in that dark house at the end of the block with her two cats, are you?”
“Stop saying that, Eve,” Katy said. “And no, I’m not. I told you I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. That was always my goal and I’m going to stick to it.”
“Yeah, that’s great, Katy,” Eve said. “But, well, that’s kind of based on you getting married.” She leaned back, crossed her long legs, and sipped her drink. “And from the looks of it, that’s not going to happen. Why are you so scared to date, Katy? I told you about some guys I know that I think would be great for you. You could even go on a date with each one and have your pick. You’re a pretty girl, when you wanna be, anyway. I don’t see why you would choose to just keep going on being so desperate.”
Katy rolled her eyes and sighed again. Her head shook as she realized Eve just wasn’t hearing what she had to say. “Just drop it, Eve. You don’t get it… Just drop it.”
“Okay, okay,” Eve said. She glanced away, looking out at meaty construction workers working on a sidewalk across the street and down the block. “Geesh, I can tell you’re really frustrated.” She giggled under her breath. “You’re probably having crazy dreams that just make stuff even worse. Well, I would tell you about this guy I hooked up with, but God knows how you might react. I’m not looking to say a prayer or anything.”
Katy laughed then shook her head again. “Eve, I’m not even in to church like that.” And how did she guess I was dreaming about wild, passionate sex – the kind of sex I imagined I would be having with my future husband when we make love?
“Yeah, you say that now,” Eve said, sipping her drink again. Her head shook disapprovingly. “You’re going to be that old church lady by the time you’re forty. I don’t know why you’re doing it to yourself.”
Katy sighed once again as a show of her frustration. She continued pleading her case – arguing that she wasn’t lonely and that she wasn’t doing “anything” to herself, as Eve would like to suggest. Their food came, they ate and talked the entire time. When they had paid and headed out to the parking lot, they stood on the sidewalk for a moment to close out their chat. Eve kept stealing glances at the construction workers across the street, toward the end of the block.
“Eve, well, damn,” Katy finally said. “Do you want to go over there and just drool right in front of them?”
Eve squinted at Katy then shrugged her shoulders. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about, Katy. Prime example. You’re getting so used to being alone, that simply noticing a few strapping construction workers guys is seen as being lustful or a sin or whatever church people would call it.”
Katy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not churchy, Eve. Just because I’m a virgin and not chasing after guys in bars doesn’t mean I’m churchy.”
Eve squinted suspiciously then nodded. “Yeah… Okay, Katy. Anyway, I better get going. I’ll let you know if what’s-his-name’s wife comes up to the office today. I might even go strike up a conversation with her. I need more pay and that time of the year is coming up. Hmm.”
Katy quickly said bye to her childhood friend then rushed back to her car. She looked at the time, realizing she’d been out for lunch a little longer than she had anticipated. The kids’ lunch and recess only lasted for so long. She zipped back down Market Street, went under the highway, then zigzagged through the older neighborhood’s tight, quaint streets. When she rushed back into the building, she headed for the cafeteria and got to the doors just in time. The teacher on cafeteria duty was lining the students up to be picked up by their teachers and taken back to the classroom. Katy put on her best smile and went back to being Ms. Miller. Yet, Eve’s words swirled around at the back of her mind, their backs into a corner. She was starting to hear them louder and clearer.
***
Katy pulled into the gravel driveway at home then curved with it as it walked up a slightly wooded incline to a clearing that circled around in front of the garage. She looked up at the 1900-built house, Victorian, and thought about it’s history. Her parents had been married nearly 35 years, which she thought was amazing. This was especially true when she looked at some of her mother’s cousins...women who had been married three and four times.
Katy admired the way her parents’ house had become the family home. Marriage was something she wanted – she envisioned herself being a wife and a mother as a little girl. Her lips curled into a slight smile in the mid-afternoon sun as she pulled her bag out of the backseat and headed up toward the wrap-around porch. She let herself into the house, tossed the keys onto the end table against the wall, then dropped her bag.
There had always been something about the late afternoons at home – the house in which she grew up. So much of the furniture was still the same...and still in the very same places they’d been when she was a child. So many of her friends had moved out of their parent’s house years ago – gotten their own places, their own lives. Katy, now biting her bottom lip in thought, wondered what path was right for her. She was so comfortable at home, but there was a swelling loneliness from not really having a love life.
As Katy headed up the stairs, the phone rang. It echoed around the 5-bedroom Victorian as she quickly dashed back down the steps. She slid out of her shoes at the bottom then zipped into the living room where she grabbed the phone off of the base. “Hello?”
“Whew, glad you’re home, Katy,” Linda – Katy’s mother – said. “You didn’t forget about the gathering this evening, did you? It’s not going to be a big thing, you know, but we still have some things to do.”
“No, Mom, I didn’t forget,” Katy said, giggling. “You always ask me if I’ve forgotten and I never have. What do we still have to do?”
Katy leaned against the wall while her mother explained what all needed to be done around the house. She finished by saying that she was just calling to make sure Katy was home and didn’t forget. “I’m leaving work now, so I should be home in about thirty minutes or something like that. You know there’s that construction going on at the interstate, but it’s early enough in the afternoon so I should be okay.”
