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“I don’t know,” I say. “After spending time together, things started to shift.”
“For just you, or the both of you?”
“I can’t speak for Lucy exactly, but I think it’s mutual.”
“So did you not want to kiss her?”
“I did,” I tell her.
Gloria smiles then. A closed-mouth one. She sets her pad on the table. “Graham, I’m not sure what the problem is here. You made a friend and then it blossomed into more.”
“Yes,” I say. “Proving I’m incapable of just being friends with a woman.”
She shakes her head. “Actually, what it proved is you are capable of making a genuine connection with someone.”
I pinch my brow. “What do you mean?”
She weaves her fingers together, placing them in her lap. “Graham, what you’ve built with Lucy sounds to me like a genuine relationship. Starting with friendship and letting it evolve naturally into something more shows growth. It’s a foundation for a healthier connection and proves you are capable of it. You didn’t fail at all.”
“But it all happened so fast. Too fast. It’s only been a month.”
“Who’s to say what the timing should be on these things? There are no hard-and-fast rules.”
I let her words sink in. “So, I didn’t fail. Then why does it feel like I did?”
She shakes her head. “You’ve spent your whole life avoiding deeper connections, Graham. It seems to me like you might have found that with Lucy.” She tilts her head to the side as she looks at me. “And maybe that scares you.”
Oh. She’s right. That’s the problem here. What if I let things happen with Lucy? What if we get deeper into this and I ruin it? What if I fall back into old patterns and I push her away? I don’t know if I’m worthy of someone like Lucy.
“I don’t know if I deserve her,” I tell Gloria.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because ... that’s how I feel.”
“You are worthy of love, Graham. Whatever your past, whatever mistakes you made, you are always worthy.”
I can’t remember the last time I cried. Probably when the Eagles beat the Patriots that one time in the Super Bowl. This is the second time since yesterday that I’ve felt that telltale tightness in my throat, the tingling around my nose and my eyes. The first time was when Lucy told me she didn’t want to see me again, as she climbed up the ladder and out of the pool.
“I may have messed things up, though,” I say, my voice sounding thick.
“How so?”
I swallow. “I told her the kiss was a mistake.”
“Oh,” she says, her eyebrows moving upward. “It’s been my experience that a genuine and sincere conversation can usually fix that.”
“What do I say?” I ask, at a loss. I feel like I’ll just make it worse.
“I can’t tell you that,” Gloria says. “But if you want this with Lucy, then tell her how you feel, from your heart.”
“THANKS FOR MEETING ME,” I say as I take a seat at a table at a Starbucks in Carson City the next morning.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Kyle says, his frown evidence that he doesn’t want to be here.
“I appreciate it, man.”
I realized after talking to Gloria that I do want to try this with Lucy. She was right; I was scared. I am scared. That’s really the crux of it. Me, being a chicken. I don’t trust myself quite yet, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen. And maybe just taking a leap is how I’ll learn to do it.
