Full of Grace (3 page)

“Yeah, great.  Thanks,” I say, and just as I glance to the garden path again, there’s Sher, walking back, still at a snail’s pace, holding Hale’s hand.  It just about cracks me in half.

I leave the bar and as I make my way to them, Hale drops Sher’s hand and kisses her cheek before walking right past me, to Oscar.  Sher’s barefoot, her stilettos looped over her fingertips, and she stops on the path when she sees me coming.

“You shouldn’t walk around barefoot like that,” I tell her, because I don’t know how

the hell I’m going to start this conversation.  “You could get something in your foot.”

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Ok, well, good,” I say, glancing around at the guests.  They’re mulling around all over the place, making it even more impossible to talk about what I need to talk about with Sher.  I point back down the garden path.  “You want to walk with me?”

“I’m kind of down with sitting around for a little bit,” she says.  She adds quickly, “My feet are killing me.  It’s my shoes.  I’m not used to sky-scraper heels.  I’m a hillbilly.  I’d rather go barefoot than anything.  Or Chucks.  I’ve got a good collection of Chucks...”

All her babbling brings it home to me, just how young she is.  I knew she was eighteen, but she looks like she’s twenty.  Maybe it’s just the wedding, and the heels, and the endless flow of champagne and shots that made me think that.  But she sure looks every bit of eighteen now.  Maybe even younger than that, with her shoes dangling from her hand.  I’m only twenty-four, but I suddenly feel like a creepy old guy.  Like I took advantage of her.

“Let’s just go someplace so we can talk,” I say. “We can find a bench out in the garden.”

She winces her smile, but she turns and shuffles along beside me, into the garden.  The second bench we come to, Sher stops.

“Seriously, Landon?  Do we really have to walk all the way into the pit of the jungle?  If you’re looking for privacy, this is fine.  My feet are killing me.”

I don’t think it’s her feet that are killing her.  It gives me another jab to the gut.

“Wait,” I say, before she sits on the stone bench.  I take off my tux coat and fold it up so it’s almost a cushion.  I put it on her spot on the bench.  She doesn’t argue and another wince pulls at her smile as she sits down on my coat.

“Thanks,” she says.  I sit down beside her, still unsure of how I’m even going to start the conversation.  I take a breath and when nothing brilliant comes to me, I just dive in.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”

She looks away.  “Probably because it’s not your business.”

“Are you kidding me?”  I ask her. She’s still not looking at me.  I stand up and move around to block her gaze.  “Not my business?  You don’t think that’s kind of important to say?  You should have told me.  I would’ve been a hell of a lot more careful.”

“It’s just virginity, Landon.  It’s no big deal.” A shamed giggle straggles out of her, but my mouth still falls open.  I’m the youngest, with five sisters ahead of me, all raised by a single mother.  Not one of my sisters ever thought virginity wasn’t a big deal.  There were frequent talks around the dinner table about it.  Two of them insisted on saving it for marriage.  One held out till she was engaged.  One just wanted to save it for the ‘right one’ even though the first ‘right one’ that popped up was completely wrong.  One sister is gay and she waited until she thought she had found true love.  It didn’t work out, but she’d given it a solid effort.

It’s not even just about how she should feel about her own virginity.  I grew up hearing most of my sisters sobbing about guys who broke up with them because they wouldn’t give in.  I heard my mother and sisters call men
assholes
enough times that I made it a goal not to fall into that category.  All the women in my family drilled me endlessly on respecting women and how to be a gentleman and, most of the time, I think I do alright by them.  So, I know the protocol for virginity and this isn’t it.

“It’s a big deal to me,” I tell her and she giggles.  It’s a maddening sound.

“Well, it isn’t to me.  You just helped me get rid of something I didn’t want.”

“I still wish you would’ve told me first,” I say.  “I could’ve made it a whole lot better.”

“It was fine,” she shrugs. 

“That’s why you’re walking like Pinocchio just gave you a nose job?”

“Gross.”  She slaps me with the back of her hand.  The awkward silence springs up in every dark corner of the garden.  I finally clear my throat and decide to figure out what she really wants out of me.  My sisters were almost unanimous that virginity = you’re in a relationship, and with my first girlfriend, they’d been right, but Sher seems like she’s trying to throw a curve ball in the equation.  My sisters warned me about stuff like this.  How they’ll say they don’t want a relationship when they do.  Since virginity has always equaled relationship, I’ve got to go with the reliable math and assume that’s what Sher really wants too.  Whether she says it or not.

“So, what you’re trying to say is that you just used me, is that it?” I nudge her with my shoulder. “And now what?  You’re throwing me away?”

This next stream of giggles is unreal. I wait for her to exhaust herself.  The giggles ebb and flow, ebb and flow, and finally, she takes a breath.

“You want to date?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say.  Why not?  She’s cute.  I just hope she can throttle back on that giggle. “Don’t you?”

“Sure,” she giggles again.  I should have made the request conditional: that she stop giggling long enough that I can kiss her.  Since the giggles don’t stop, I offer her my hand instead.

“Come on, Date,” I say.  “I’ll take you back to the party and buy you a piece of wedding cake or some aspirin.”

“I hear sugar is a great pain reliever.”

She giggles even as she wobbles stiffly onto her feet.  I’m hoping a piece of cake will stopper up her nerves.  If I can just slow down the giggles, I’d be more than happy to coat my tongue with icing and apply it anywhere she needs it.

***

The rest of the night, I ricochet between enjoyment and guilt.  I could stare at Sher for hours.  She’s got blond hair with all kinds of colors in it, so it looks like she could be blond or red headed or even brunette, depending on the type of light where she’s standing. Her eyes are large and expressive; the way her lids lower and the way she looks to the side before she giggles, my God, she nearly sends me to my knees.  And she’s sharp as butcher knives, effortlessly holding her own and even going toe-to-toe with the biggest mouths that show up around the bar and at our table.

But it’s the damn giggle, the one that follows every question I ask and every answer she gives, that actually sandpapers my nerves.  By the end of the evening, I liken her giggle more to a grinding chainsaw that never finishes the job.

That’s what churns up my guilt.  I was this girl’s first and there’s no way to change that now.  I should’ve eased out gracefully while we were in the garden and she gave me the chance, but even then, it was the guilt that got me.  As I knock back another shot, I realize how much the giggling is already wearing on me. Even a bottomless shot glass can’t fix it.  But then, when she asks me to dance with her, I sway around the dance floor, breathing in her gorgeous girl perfume and feeling her incredible body against mine, and I almost convince myself that I can make this work.

“Can I see you tomorrow?” I ask.

“Yeah, sure,” she says.  She looks up at me with those incredible eyes and her giggles spray out of her like an assault rifle.  Thankfully, her head lands back on my shoulder before she sees my smile go jagged.  I loosen my grip on her waist a bit and begin to devise a smooth exit plan from this guilty little relationship.

***

There’s no reasonable explanation for it, but Sher doesn’t answer my calls. 

The first call, I didn’t even want to make, but I did it out of duty.  I wasn’t going to be the guy that slept with her for the first time and then dumped her like a huge douchebag the next day.  I planned on taking her out, and being a complete gentleman for at least one more date, in which I would quickly highlight for her how extremely incompatible we were for one another.  If all went well, she would arrive at the right conclusion and let me down easy, no harm done.

But she didn’t answer my call and by the end of the week, I started to worry that maybe I hadn’t dialed right or that there was some fluke and she didn’t get the call at all.  So, I called again.

The second time, I made sure that the numbers, recited by the computerized voice on her answering service, matched the ones she’d written down for me.  They did.  I left her a carefully friendly message—nothing amorous or even too charming—with a polite offer to take her to dinner.  I hung up and the relief and reprieve from the guilt lasted only until the end of the second week, when she still hadn’t called me back.

I didn’t feel comfortable calling Oscar and Hale, even though they had some travel delay that kept them from leaving for their honeymoon right away.  Then, at the end of the two weeks, I still hadn’t heard from Sher and the newlyweds finally left for their four-week honeymoon.  I suffered through the next two weeks in a sporadic state of panic, like a drowning man who can’t reach for a life preserver.

Now, with Oscar and Hale only three weeks into their month-long honeymoon, it’s not like I can just call them up and ask Hale to find out what’s up with Sher.  And it’s driving me nuts.

Mostly, I keep hoping that Sher hasn’t called me back because she’s realized we weren’t meant to be.  I try to convince myself of it for the rest of the week, whenever the thought of her pops up.  I try to believe that she really meant everything she said about wanting to dump her virginity.

I try to believe it, but by the middle of the third week, I’m wondering if she’d gotten either of my calls at all.  I wonder if her phone has been turned off, or if she’s misplaced or lost it.  For all I know, I could be leaving messages on a phone that’s in the bottom of a sewer.  I can’t remember anymore if I left my number with my messages, in case she wants to buzz me back, and on reflection, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.  Maybe her call log isn’t working.  Or she could have programmed her phone with the wrong number to begin with, when I recited it to her at the end of the night.  We were both drinking.  Well, mostly me.  I was a full blown 10 bananas by the end of the wedding and who knows what number actually came out of my mouth.  Who knows?  She might have been calling some payphone in Zimbabwe for the last three weeks. 

I dial her number for the last time.

***

It’s the end of the fourth week and this is absolutely insane.  I’ve left my phone on my desk all week and I check it every ten seconds, to be sure the thing isn’t malfunctioning. I’ve become a deranged lab rat.

I decide to call her one more time.  This is it.

The automated message comes on, and it doesn’t say her message box is full, so I leave her my name and number again and ask her to let me know if she gets the call.  I hang up and go about my business for the next ten seconds.  Then I pick up the phone and check the blank screen again, right before I slam the damn thing back down on my desk.

I’d like to say I’m secure in the knowledge that at least I’ve done my part with the whole follow-up-with-the-virgin thing, but my confidence has been completely kicked over, and it’s time to face the hard facts.

I know this: I’m safe.  I’m definitely not a douchebag.

I’ve just turned into a fucking stalker.

It’s the end of the fourth week and I have to give up.  I have to, for my own sanity, if nothing else.  If her phone is busted, or sitting in the bottom of a well, or if she’s just kicked back someplace, selectively deleting my calls to keep me in the douchebag group, I’ve still got to give up.  I’ve done everything I could do.

It is all I am going to do too, until Oscar gives me a call two weeks later.

“Want to swing by tonight?  We’re having dinner.  We got the photos back from our trip.”

“Hell yes, I’ll come by,” I tell him.  “It was a good time then?”

“Beyond good,” he says. “The best.”

“Good.  Good.  Hey, listen, do you know if Hale’s heard anything out of Sher?”

“Yeah, she talked to her right before I called you.  What’s up?”

“It’s no big deal.” I feel a weird shrug inside me that isn’t strong enough to lift my shoulders.  “I just called her a couple times and haven’t heard back.”

“I can ask Hale about it,”  he says.

“No, don’t bother.  Like I said, it’s no big deal.”

“You for sure?  You like the girl?  I was wondering if you were going to make a move after the wedding.”

“She was a
good girl
,” I say with hesitance.  “You know how it went down. I had no idea and I didn’t want to do the drop on her like that.”

“Ah,” Oscar says.  “Got it.  You liked her, but you didn’t
like her.
”

“No, I did like her, but...holy shit, do you know how much that girl
giggles
?  It’s like a language to her.  Or a disease.  Half the time, she couldn’t even talk, because she was too busy giggling.  It was just over the top, man.  I feel like a douche for doing the deed, but I tried calling her and she never got back to me.  To tell you the truth, I’m kind of relieved.  The girl can’t even get a whole sentence out without giggling!”

My stomach feels like liver left out in the sun as I try to sell how relieved I am, but on the other end of the line, Oscar just laughs.  “I know exactly what you mean.  I’ve talked to her.”

“Damn, does it ever stop?”

“Not that I can tell.  But I know she actually does
talk
to Hale for hours.  She is capable, but whenever I’m in on the conversation, she starts up again.  Must be a nervous reaction to men.”

“That’s great,” I say.  “I’ve got the luck lately, don’t I?  Is she coming tonight too?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Alright,” I sigh, but my insides tighten up in a way that makes me think I’m going to burp out my own giggle.  “Alright.  Might as well get it over with.”