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‘Hope it goes well. She was going to the bar we all went for beer at the other night, right?’ I asked nonchalantly, as if I knew anything about where she was.
‘No, not the bar. They wanted to meet somewhere quieter.’
‘That sounds… logical, I guess.’ I was hoping she’d mention where Charlie was, but she didn’t take the bait.
‘If we have a new case, this isn’t the right time to go out on a blind date. We should call her…’ I started, but didn’t continue as we stopped in front of Douglas’s office.
Gayle opened the door before meeting my gaze and responding quietly. ‘Stop worrying, she is only four blocks away. Plus, we can do without her for one night. Let her have some fun. Rick is still around.’
I opened my mouth, but she stopped me with a shake of her head as if I was exasperating.
‘She’ll be here if she is needed.’
* * *
It took me over half an hour to find the restaurant she was at… after looking in a handful of wrong places. Four blocks didn’t actually narrow things down all that much. I didn’t leave the office thinking: here’s my chance to go stalk her and then ruin her date. No. That wasn’t it. I just wanted to make sure she was okay and that runaway Ralph hadn’t left her waiting one more time. The plan was just to make sure she wasn’t alone and that this Ralph guy wasn’t an axe murderer or anything, then go home.
When I finally spotted her, I didn’t quite know what to do or what the hell I was thinking. Showing up unannounced didn’t seem like the best idea after all. Neither did leaving.
I stood there considering the lack of my options. Ralph the Runaway had showed up after all. So as soon as I saw that, I should’ve turned around and left, which was the rough plan in the first place, but I didn’t. I stood there like an absolute idiot and watched her with another man. Just as I had done all those years ago. Dread and disappointment filled my chest, and I couldn’t move. She looked just as beautiful as she had then, even more so really. Because I knew her better now.
She wasn’t a stranger I had been attracted to and curious to learn more about. She was more now. Sweet, kind, beautiful, smart, thoughtful… beautiful. I knew more about her. More of her. Of who she was. How she was. What she wanted from life. What her motivations were. What pushed her, what made her smile. And I wanted her even more for it. But I was stuck in place, on the other side of the window yet again as she smiled. The only difference now was that she wasn’t sitting alone waiting for me. This time around she was sitting across from someone.
A date.
Not me.
This time around, I couldn’t find the strength in me to walk away. Not that I had planned on walking away back then either. But just as I stood on the other side of the window of that diner that night, about to walk in so we could maybe give our newly and unexpectedly found friendship a try outside of that bubble, I had gotten a phone call from Lindsey after not seeing her or hearing from her for weeks after the breakup. I still remembered Charlie’s shy words from the night before that day.
If we happen to be here tomorrow evening, again, maybe we can go somewhere else. Maybe try?
I remembered smiling at her.
‘You mean like a date?’
‘Yeah. Maybe. If you’re interested, of course.’
And then the next night, as I was about to walk in, I hadn’t been able to. Lindsey had been my girlfriend for three years, and I had asked her to marry me only a month before I had met Charlie at that diner. When Charlie came into my life, I wasn’t looking for anyone. At all. But she had just been there as if she had always been waiting for me. She was different from everyone else. Something about her. The fact that I’d ended up at that diner, night after night, just on the offchance that I’d see her again and we’d just talk, had been unexplainable. And when I was right across the street from the diner, watching Charlie, a sudden phone call had changed everything.
Lindsey was ready to marry me now. She thought she was pregnant, and not only that, she had realized that she didn’t want to spend her life without me. She was the one who had said no to my proposal. But this was her wake-up call.
I didn’t go to her that night because I was still insanely in love with her – something had shifted in me when she had said no so easily. But the possibility of a pregnancy…
