Loved - A Novel Read online

  We both seemed pleased with the outcome of our situation.

  We kissed some more and then we crashed. Wow, a whole three hours of sleep. But the next day every yawn was followed by a smile.

  Over the next few months, I learned some interesting things from Blake. Who would have guessed that I liked green peppers on my pizza or that offshore drilling was preventing the US from looking for alternative sources for fuel as eagerly as we should be? He called every day while I was in Pittsburgh visiting Meredith. He called while he was out for a walk, just thinking of me. He called while he was on his way to a protest downtown, save-the-trees-something.

  Sometimes he wouldn’t call for a few days and I would think, Here it is. I knew it. But then he would call and chat just like normal, ask me to come over or to go climbing or for a bike ride. He always had extra bikes at his house. I hadn’t been on a bike since childhood, but one night I decided that he’d been working so hard and I should throw him a bone. I rode the bike.

  It was cold so I wore boots and a sweater and some random hat that had been in my trunk on its way to Goodwill. We rode all over Vanderbilt’s campus, then up and down a parking garage ramp. I was more comfortable there with no cars in the parking garage. I rode up and down, up and down, and Blake just watched. I rode closer to him and smiled. I wanted him to know that I could do this. I could be a bicyclist. Kind of.

  “You look so fucking sexy on that bike with your little hat on,” he said.

  I laughed. I thought that I probably looked pathetic. They say you don’t forget how to ride a bike, but really you sort of do.

  One night he called from downtown. He was at a show with some friends and was about to ride his bike up to Dragon Park, where he was usually found when not working and where I’d been with him a couple of times lately. I drove over to meet him, and sat on one of the swings and waited.

  I knew it would take his bike longer than my car to get there but I felt like I’d waited forever on that swing. His bike didn’t come around the bend in the path, his fedora lit in the moonlight. How long had I been sitting there? Forty minutes? Fifty? I went back to the car and checked my phone. He hadn’t called. I didn’t care enough to call. Those times he would disappear for a few days, he always had an excuse: “My friend was in trouble,” or “I got in a fight with my brother,” or “I lost my phone.” I didn’t want to have to check up on him and I didn’t want to hear any excuses so I drove home, listening to a Pink song that I loved: “You’re the swing set and I’m the kid that falls.”

  He called the next day to tell me he had fallen downtown and broken his leg. He asked if I would pick him up from the hospital in a few hours. He called again when he was about to be discharged and I left work early to go get him. I took him to the pharmacy to get his prescription and I loaned him twenty bucks for it. He had paid his ER co-pay, a couple of hundred dollars, in cash at the hospital. That was all he had for the week. At least he had health insurance. I bought us dinner and then I told him to call me if he needed anything before I headed home. On my drive home and in the car, I wondered to myself what we were. We were dating but it had been months and I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. I knew what I wanted from him, but did I trust him? Did I believe that he could give me what I wanted?

  Without the ability to walk, he couldn’t work so he lost his serving job. He moved all of his stuff, which wasn’t very much, into his mom’s apartment, and his roommates who had been his only friends were no longer his friends for whatever reason. The man had nothing.

  Kellie called and I was telling her what had happened to Blake and why he hadn’t shown up at the swings.

  “Kim, he is so stupid! He does all this stupid stuff and you just go, ‘la la la whatever.’ I dated someone like him for five years. He’s just like Aaron! He’s immature and stupid and you’re wasting your time!” Kellie isn’t one for subtlety.

  “Kel, he’s not like Aaron though. I can see how you think that and yes, he was stupid for climbing a bridge and falling and breaking his leg, but he is different than he was and he wants to continue to improve his life.”

  “Stop defending him!”

  She made me feel like I had to defend myself.

  “I’m not, I said I know he was stupid, but that isn’t all that’s there. Plus, we’re taking it slow. I’m protecting myself! What’s wrong with that?”

  We went on like this for a few minutes. She and I had never fought like this before. I couldn’t believe that she had taken such a strong stance against him that in two years of friendship this would be the topic of our first fight.

  “Well, do whatever you want of course, and I love you, but I do not think this is smart,” she said and then we agreed to disagree and we both hung up the phone upset.

  I hate to say this but I wasn’t really sad to see him hit rock bottom. From what I’d witnessed, he had some growing up to do. Sometimes having everything taken from you can force you to make the needed changes in your life. We started talking every day and hanging out much more often. He had nothing else to do and no one else to see, after all.

  He was still on crutches when I was housesitting at the Jamison’s, and he came over and cooked dinner. He made pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and a tossed salad with strawberries. The meal was delicious and the presentation was brilliant.

  We sat at the big round dining table and talked until well after the food was gone. He told me what he remembered from his childhood in New Orleans. He shared some of his favorite memories from L.A. We discovered that he’d worked at a restaurant in Venice Beach where I knew the chef. I told him about my journey to Nashville, what my hometown was like, and about my faith. He asked more about my church and my beliefs, and I invited him to come to church with me sometime. I told him that I had once lost everything I had too, and that I think that can be God’s way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve had faith,” Blake said, “I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I found it again.”

  At least he was thinking about it.

  Then we sat in front of the fireplace for a while, sometimes talking and sometimes silent, and he said twice what a nice time he’d had.

  On my last night of house-sitting at the Jamison’s, I was having some friends over for a dinner party. I invited Blake and asked him if he’d help me cook. I knew Kellie was coming and decided it best not to tell her that Blake would be there. She’s generally a polite person so I knew that she’d stay quiet or avoid him and deal with me later.

  I picked up Blake when I got off work and we went to the store for fresh pork tenderloin and chicken. I noticed that his face was getting a bit scruffy, and I said something about it.

  “Yeah, I know you like beards,” he said.

  He made a beautiful and amazing meal while I put together the hors d’ouvres, greeted guests and poured the wine. Everyone loved him. He was talkative, asking each guest about what they did and how they knew me. It was evident that he was both a very great man and very smitten with me.

  Once everyone had left, he stayed to watch a movie. I was pleased. During the movie, he kissed me. It had been such an amazing night and it became clear to me, sitting next to him and surrounded by my friends at dinner, that there was really something good between us. He was showing me that he felt the same way.

  I was too nervous to hear the truth from Kellie and Sophie’s mouths about what they thought of Blake, even though I felt like dinner went really well. Sophie called the next day while I was packing up at the house.

  “So,” she said after a few minutes of small talk. “Jerod and I really liked Blake.”

  “Really!? Oh, I’m so glad. I was scared to ask!”

  “Yeah. We aren’t sure about his maturity level, but he’s intelligent and we were impressed.”

  I was so happy. Blake had really liked all of my friends too. He said he’d much rather have dinner and wine with these kinds of friends than be out in the middle of the
night getting plastered with his old friends. This was moving in the right direction.

  Things went on pretty much like that. He came to bonfires with me. We had a picnic on my living room floor, having been rained out from picnicking in the park, where we had been playing Mexican Train Dominos while he took pictures of me on his phone. Once his leg was mostly healed, I bought a silver bike at the Salvation Army, and we rode our bikes through the park in my neighborhood to the coffee shop on Saturday mornings. I got a library card and we borrowed movies from the library and cooked dinner in my kitchen. Well, he would cook and I would eat pear slices and Parmesano cheese and watch him cook. One night, I dreamed that Chase and Blake were step-brothers.

  Every now and then, we’d make plans and then I wouldn’t hear from him. Plans for a 9:00 movie night would pass and I would hear from him the following evening. He’d apologize that he was in a fight with his brother and he couldn’t call or he’s wrecked his bike and he didn’t make it home till too late.

  I proceeded cautiously. I liked him and I saw something in him. I felt drawn to him enough not to let it go. I believed he was capable of carrying on a successful relationship but I also knew that he was capable of the opposite. By now I was a survivor. I knew how to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

  I casually invited him on a trip home to Westville with me. I knew he would want to get out of his mom’s place for a few days, and he wasn’t working again yet so he agreed to come. I was protecting my heart well, which was a new habit for me, so I didn’t believe that he was really going to come until he got into my car with his backpack.

  Blake drove much of the way and we arrived at Meredith’s house just in time for dinner. Her family loved him right away. Meredith and her mom were telling me how cute he was as soon as they had a private moment to do so. I knew he was and I couldn’t believe that he was there with me, that he felt lucky to be there with me. He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.”

  Cuddled up on an air mattress in the basement, the moon shone through a little window high on the wall. “You look insanely beautiful right now,” he whispered and kissed me.

  We had decided to do no more than kiss; we wanted to take our time, wanted this to really mean something. We were always intertwined though—awake or asleep. We couldn’t stop touching and I loved it.

  I let him sleep in the morning while I went to a friend’s bridal shower, and when I got back, Blake and Meredith were ready and waiting for me. The three of us went to a wine tasting event at a local winery before heading to the playground on the lake where Meredith and I played growing up.

  It was cold at the playground but we had so much fun climbing and swinging from the monkey bars and jumping on the old rubber tires, warmed a little still from the wine. Meredith snapped a picture of Blake and me up on the bridge, arms around each other and smiling at each other blissfully.

  It had been my favorite trip home since I moved away almost nine years earlier. As we drove back to Nashville, I played my new Kings of Leon CD on the stereo and we both sang along.

  You know that I could use somebody,

  Someone like you.

  I wish that was the end of this story, but then again I never did like fairy tales.

  April, 2009.

  Blake asked me to be his girlfriend officially on the day before Sophie’s birthday. I had just run a half marathon, and he came over to teach me how to make mojitos for Sophie’s party the next day.

  “So, I met these people at the show today,” he told me, as he muddled mint leaves in a glass. He stopped and put his arms around my waist and pulled me to him. “And they were talking about dating and sex and stuff, and they asked what my situation was, and I said ‘I have a girlfriend and I’m happy about it.’”

  “Oh,” I said, smiling but trying not to be too dramatic. “Okay.”

  We had fun at Sophie’s birthday. I let Blake ride my scooter and we were all happy from mojitos and celebration. It was one of those nights when things feel as if they’d fallen into place. It was effortless. My friends felt like his friends. My heart felt like it was safely in his hands. Our story felt like it had a happily ever after.

  We left Sophie and Jerod’s and walked back to my apartment, enjoying the silence and in awe of the multitude of stars in the inky sky. He was mine and I was his, and the night felt like it marked the beginning of everything.

  May, 2009.

  We knew things would change when he started his new job the next week, helping to open a new restaurant. I knew he would be busy getting things ready and working long hours, but then I didn’t hear from him at all for several days. He could have at least called, I thought.

  That weekend, I finally had a chance to see him. I tried to believe that he was making the best effort that he could. I knew that doing well at this job and finding a place to live that wasn’t his mother’s house should be his priorities, and I was supportive and patient.

  But the more time that passed, the less that I saw him and the less he seemed to care. The month was very back and forth: I was okay then I was anxious. I understood then I was livid. He was sorry then he didn’t do any better. I hoped that this was temporary, however, by then, I knew in my gut that it wasn’t and I was right; he flat out stopped calling.

  Somewhere between “Someone Like You” and forever, I’d lost him.

  But this time, I didn’t lose myself.

  I started going back to the pizza place where I hadn’t been since the night Chad chose me, fleetingly, over “Jay.” I ordered pizza with green peppers and ranch dressing every time. I called it ex-boyfriend pizza. Maybe I should have ordered a large pizza with everything and named one topping for every ex-boyfriend but little nods to Blake and Chad entertained me well enough.

  I was more disappointed about the demise of my fledgling relationship with Blake than anything else I’d had lately, but I didn’t know him well enough to cry about it and I started hearing things about him that would have concerned me. He got fired for one. I also heard that he had a habit of going through a lot of women the way he went through me.

  There was a guy from my group of friends at church who was a guitar tech for a band on tour and we went out a few times during the fall, but we ended up just being friends. I also went out with a guy who worked in sales for a major computer company and was in a band, but he had been seeing another girl and decided to pursue an exclusive relationship with her. After all, he had been seeing her first and had “invested a lot of time and emotion” into that relationship already as he explained to me more times than necessary.

  Despite these quickly fizzling relationships, and despite the fact that I still found myself investing more than I should, I was moving on faster and keeping the focus on everything else that I had going on in my life. I didn’t claim to have loved any of them, but I did believe that I could have loved and married each of them if I had been given the chance. With the guitar tech, I thought, “Of course, I always knew I’d end up with a guy who tours.” With the salesman, I mentally decorated the townhome he owned, imagining furniture that would compliment his Tuscan Gold walls.

  But don’t most girls do these things?

  November, 2009.

  I turned twenty-seven that fall, and to celebrate, I invited everyone that I knew who I felt I would be carrying into the future with me. Anna and her boyfriend, Sophie and Jerod, Kellie, Ben, Liv, friends from church, from styling and from the marketing office, my dance buddy, and even Paul, who had known me through everything. I made a reservation for twenty at a Mexican restaurant and put on a coral colored dress, curled my blonde hair, applied an extra coat of mascara and headed to the restaurant. By the time I got there, the table was already full and the waiters were adding chairs to accommodate more people.

  I sat and ordered a margarita, accepted hugs and happy birthday wishes, and then looked from face to face as friends,
new and old, all talked and laughed together. It wasn’t just the table that was full. It was my life that was full. I was happy with my friends and my career, my home and my hobbies, my relationship with God and my church community, and the way that I was taking good care of myself. I couldn’t help but remember my tragic birthday - could that really have been seven years ago? - when no one came at all, and thought about how far I’d come.

  When Chase died, my easy belief in true love and soul mates was shaken. When Chad left me, the ability to feel secure and trusting was torn from me. All the guys who didn’t see the “me” that I believed I was, or wanted to be, caused me to doubt what I was capable of. It isn’t because of these devastations or let downs that I am now, finally, no worse for the wear when those kinds of thing happen. It’s because I pushed through them. It’s because I did not allow other broken people to break me. I held tightly to the faith that I would someday be a woman of character, strength, and grace, and that people would see that in me. I hoped that she would be loved.

  And I am.

  Most importantly by one person in particular.

  Me.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  Extra special thanks need to be doled out to so many amazing people. I don’t know how I came to be surrounded by the wonderful people I have, but I’ll take it!

  Coach Evy: You brought so much spice to this story! Thank you for asking the tough questions and helping me to be brave enough to use the answers. I’m proud to call you a friend. To my family: Mom, Dad, Keith, Grandma and all my aunts, uncles and cousins: Thank you for your love and acceptance, and your humor. We all laugh at each other enough that I had no choice but to learn to laugh at myself. Lindsay: You share so much with me! Your time, your home, your children, your words and your heart - and all are so special to me. Krista: From that summer on the soccer fields to our visits now, you always support me and make an effort to be a part of my life, no matter where life takes us. Superglue! Jeremy Westby: You’ve believed in me and in this story since before a single word lay on a single page. Thank you for being a part of my story. The Perdue family: Thank you for “adopting” me and allowing me to be an honorary Perdue! I couldn’t ask for a better Nashville family. Carrie and Heather, I love you more than a novel full of words could say.