CHAPTER THREE (3)

... And A Little Bit of Bad Behavior...

CHAPTER THREE(3) : … And A Little Bit of Bad Behavior…

Tuesday arrived and the snow was cleared and plowed although Abbie often wondered what exactly the landscapers who plowed her development were thinking as they piled the snow in the most random of spots and often blocked people in. She assumed they didn’t want to participate in winter either and just did what they wanted to express that notion. At any rate, it was breakfast and coffee time.

Abbie wasn’t working that Tuesday, so she decided to dress in black leggings and her favorite boots as well as a pair of white socks with silver stars and hearts on them. Valentine’s Day would be arriving in just a few weeks and now was as good a time as any to put her celebration socks on! Her birthday fell around this time and she always enjoyed decorating for the holiday as well with the pretty colors. She threw on a pink top for good measure and a black and purple hoodie with a heart along the front of it. She looked the part of Valentine’s Day.

After getting dressed she put some mascara and a little bit of ChapStick and lip gloss on top and smushed her lips together. She grabbed her car keys and headed for the Coffee Corner, the spot where Ryan and she had been meeting up for a few weeks now.

She slipped into her red Nissan Rogue and got comfortable and put her “butt seat” and steering wheel warmer on. Then she tapped onto the dash screen. She wanted to make sure Turbo XM was on. She always listened to Sirius XM on her way to work and at nine o’clock in the morning she was used to hearing an array of her favorite DJs. She wasn’t sure if it would be Caity Babs this morning, but she hoped so! “Voodoo” by Godsmack was on now and she hummed along as she drove the three miles to the Lanstown coffee shop.

As she pulled in, she saw Ryan in his truck looking animated. He must be on the phone. I wonder what he is talking about and to whom? He looked angry; she couldn’t help but notice while in her thoughts. I wonder what’s up?

She sat in her car for a couple of minutes then suddenly, her phone started to ring. It was Ryan.

“Hey there! I am here, just saw that you were too—” she said, but he interrupted her.

“Yeah, I’m not going to be able to have coffee today. Something has come up. I’ll take a raincheck though for next week if you can offer that?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, sure, is everything okay?” Abbie asked.

“Not really. I’ll explain it another time though. I have to get going,” Ryan said. “Again, sorry.” Then just as fast as he had called when she pulled in the parking lot, he was gone. Abbie was disappointed to say the least.

From where he was parked, she watched him back the truck out, spot her and give a little bit of a wave and then pull out of the parking lot onto the main street.

I wonder what happened? Abbie thought. She wasn’t going to waste a good trip to the coffee shop though. She went inside and ordered herself a double shot espresso with almond milk and a drop of honey and some vanilla sweetener. She couldn’t help but order the almond scone special too. Then she sat down. She people-watched for a few minutes, then decided to get up and take her scone home with her and hang out a little bit with her kitty before she would spend the rest of her day off catching up on paperwork, her own leisurely reading, and a good intense workout on her exercise bike.

Sounded like a good day to her—and it was. If only she could make sure that Ryan would have a good day too, all would be fantastic.

********

It would take a couple of days to hear from Ryan, but Abbie kept her mind busy and focused on work and her own life. She couldn’t worry about Ryan, she figured they weren’t even dating. They were friends with coffee dates and a raincheck now for a coffee date and a real date. She didn’t know what to think about the situation if she was being honest, but she did know Ryan was going through a mess of a lot. She knew because she was a grief counselor, and she had been through her own grief too. She needed to give him the space he clearly needed, and the space he was putting between them.

On Thursday evening, he called while she was in the shower and left a message. He had said he was sorry he hadn’t been in touch, but if she could call him, he would be available to talk tonight. He wanted to explain a couple of things to her, but he wasn’t exactly sure how.

She decided to call him back an hour after she had her hair dried and was comfortable and sitting on her couch with mister Meowington. Mister Meowington was always sitting on the couch with her in the evenings and she loved giving him a brush-over and telling him about her day. He was always a good listener, and she respected that they would have this time together. “I’m a crazy cat lady!” she said out loud to only him, but he was appreciative and she knew it because he gave her a little purr.

She picked up her phone to dial Ryan and call him back.

********

The next day, Abbie awoke with a startled gaze out her window. The dark sky was lit up with tiny baubles that glowed. Stars. She loved that about her window: she could look out and see all the stars in the sky. It always made her smile and now was no exception, she thought to herself in her own dark bedroom.

Living in an end unit townhouse had its benefits Abbie was able to experience every day. She once lived in an apartment and all she ever could hear were her neighbors and their infant’s cries. As the baby grew up, it lessened, but it didn’t help that she could also smell cooking scents through the walls and outlets and vents. She despised that a lot. What was once a nice apartment had become an invasion into her life in so many ways once those people moved in. But once she gathered some money together from her old job as a receptionist and got herself a mortgage and then spoke with her father about lending her some money for the down payment, she got out of that situation and that tiny apartment.

She started to reminisce in the middle of the night when she woke up, and then she realized what woke her up. She had an intense dream about Ryan. She wasn’t sure why he was in her dreams yet, she usually didn’t dream about people, more of situations she was in with strangers. Intense dreams she experienced involved her in the ocean trying to swim back into shore. She shook her head, that PTSD feeling again, she couldn’t help but think to herself.

When she was a teenage girl, Abbie and a good friend of hers got stuck together out in a riptide while swimming in the ocean. Abbie was able to safely swim into shore, but then she looked around her and saw her friend was still out there trying to swim to shore. After yelling to swim parallel and getting nowhere because her friend by now couldn’t hear her, she swam back out to rescue her friend. Eventually, they were both pulled into shore by the lifeguard as one can imagine. It is hard to swim against a riptide in August in the oceans off the coast of the Jersey Shore. That day was memorable for both her and her friend.

They had gone back to their spot on the beach that day to continue people-watching, but they decided to leave and sit and watch TV inside that day instead of what they couldn’t help doing but imagine a certain death of drowning if not saved by the lifeguards. Sometimes Abbie would worry because she would overthink and wake up from dreams about this incident in her life. It was over twenty years ago, she thought to herself. But maybe she just never processed it.

She tried closing her eyes but instead decided to get up and make a cup of coffee. It was four thirty in the morning. She had a wake-up time of six o’clock on Wednesdays so she could get a quick work out on her exercise bike before she went to the office.

She didn’t have as long of a day this week. The grief group she worked with on Wednesdays had a brief break this week. She usually gave the five-week group a break between the last two weeks and the first three weeks of the Loss of Friend grief group to allow her clients to practice processing their grief on their own. This test always worked out, but sometimes at the end of the grief groups she had one or two of the members come back and ask for individual therapy. This was great for business, but Abbie very much cared for her clients, especially as she got to know them, so she wanted to make sure they were able to handle their emotions. But she made a point to let them know the Center for Hope was always a safe haven for them. There was always someone on call to talk to briefly and they usually directed the person after 5-10 minutes of emotional discussion and a breathwork grounding technique to another phone number if they were to need it. She knew 988 is a great usage tool in the United States and her mind wandered to the fact she knew 112 was the number in Europe. She wished that it was universal for the entire planet, but she could understand how that would be difficult, but at the same time, “Come on technology. Get your shit together!” she said out loud, and realized her mind was wandering big time.

She had spoken to Ryan for a few minutes the night before, and he hadn’t explained anything to her as he had promised he would. She chalked up his weirder than weird responses to her as his bizarre reaction to his grief. As she dealt with this, she was starting to wonder if maybe she should walk away from this man. She did meet him in the grief group she ran, but she was wondering if maybe it would be useful if she stopped pursuing this relationship with him, until after the group ended.

There were no specific set in stone rules against her dating this man or even having coffee with him which is what she was doing now. He had kissed her hard and intensely on the lips after the benefit but that could be chalked up to him saying a Thanks! in his own special way. She giggled to herself at the thought of that. Cute!

She was beginning to wonder though, and she couldn’t explain exactly why, but she thought maybe there was someone else, and for some reason, she couldn’t help but think it was the wife of his friend who passed away. Now she was his widow and no longer married.

She had met the woman at the benefit that Ryan had so generously thrown for the family of the lost firefighter chief. It was such a sad moment she sniffled a little bit thinking about it. She couldn’t figure out what to think as Ryan had mentioned the woman a couple of times in their conversation. It wasn’t hard for Abbie to read people; she was taught how to do that in even her Introduction to Counseling class in graduate school. I wonder what is going on? she thought to herself.

“Oh well,” she said out loud. “Not even my business, even if he tells me, but why kiss me? She might have seen that!” Abbie thought of Lydia. She didn’t want to enforce more pain and grief on the woman if she could help it. She didn’t know her, but she had met her at the benefit a few weeks ago. The woman wasn’t unpleasant, but she wasn’t particularly nice either.

Abbie couldn’t help but begin to recollect their short interaction. It was only about where to sit at the table and to say hello. Abbie had attempted to engage her in conversation, but thinking back Abbie couldn’t help but realize, “Ryan talked with her a lot. He seemed to know the kids well too and be at ease. Hmmm… especially with the one little boy. What was that kid’s name? Oh wow…” Abbie said to only herself.

********

RYAN

Hi, my name is Ryan and I’m a compulsive cheater.

I just can’t help myself. I love to be with a woman. And one of the last times I got involved with someone, she just happened to be my best friend’s wife.

I didn’t mean to; do we ever mean or plan these things? But, yes, Lydia and I had a fling, that ended about a year ago. But the fling had a result; little Stephen, that 8-year-old boy you saw sitting at the dinner table of the benefit with George’s widow, you know my best friend in the world’s wife, yeah, that kid is mine. Not in my possession of course I don’t mean it like that, but he is my son.

Do I regret this? That is a loaded question, isn’t it? But no, I don’t regret my actions because I would never want to give up my son.

If George had ever found out, geez, which he never did, thank God, but I don’t regret my son. And now… well, now that George has passed away, because of the terrible breathing problems he had the night of the fire, and his oxygen tank not working properly when he got home, things got even more complicated than they already were.

I was never okay with Lydia, hiding the fact that the child was mine. George never found out, at least according to what Lydia was willing to tell me. I don’t know how he couldn’t have found out, unless she was lying to me the whole time. But, who even knows?

What I do know is I don’t regret my son, little Stephen. He even looks like me! But this is about what we are going to do now, and I don’t want to explain things yet to anyone. Especially that beautiful girl who I met… wow, Abbie is so beautiful. She seems so smart too, to the point I even feel a little intimidated by our conversations. She is interested in things only smart girls talk about, so I don’t know what to do about that part yet.

We are on a different level, and totally different paths in life, but she seems to like me.

But I am sure that Lydia does like me.

If anything, Lydia is in love with me.

She fell in love with me when we were sleeping together, I guess that kind of just happened and I didn’t prevent it. I went along with it, but I never shared her feelings. I love my son very much and it has always been so hard not to see him every day, and now that he is 8 years old, and George is gone, maybe it’s time to suck it up and be with Lydia for real. Even if it means being a part of a woman’s life who I don’t have feelings for.

At least my son will have a family. That’s something I didn’t grow up with whatsoever and I would do anything to give my son the proper family he deserves so he can grow up enriched and happy. All I want is for a happy son.

So, things are a bit messy right now, and I worry for Lydia to raise three kids herself. I just hope that Abbie understands, and for some reason I can see how she would, she has a good level head on her shoulders, but she did tell me she has been having trouble meeting a man for a while now.

A couple of years or something? I don’t even know.

Some of the times we were talking about at breakfast or coffee talk as we have been jokingly calling our time together, some of those times she would be talking about something I didn’t have any idea about and I would smile, nod and at the same time, just stare at her beautiful blue eyes lined perfectly in a purple eyeliner she seemed to have on daily.

I could fall in love with that girl, but I do want what’s best for my son. I truly do. Is that so wrong?

Lydia doesn’t have much left going for her. In fact, I was doing okay after George’s death and went to the grief group really as a research project to see what if any information I could bring to the table, for Lydia mostly. But yeah, I want a family for my son to grow up with, and Lydia and I could be one.

Maybe, maybe --I think and I feel my left eyebrow raises-- maybe Lydia and I could raise my child together in the same house and Abbie and I could still be together? Only in a perfect world.

And this world, as we all know, is NEVER perfect.

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THANKS SO MUCH FOR READING CHAPTER THREE (3) OF MY ONGOING FICTION SERIES STARRING YOUR NEW BESTIE, ABBIE! =)

LOOK FOR ANOTHER CHAPTER COMING TO YOUR INBOX SOON. <3

LWB*