The Wedding Veil(49)
“I don’t want to beat you or lose to you anymore, Barbara. I want to be your partner, if you’ll let me.” Fortunately, I was already warm enough from the exercise that I knew he couldn’t see the blush rising up my cheeks. Goodness, the man was coming on strong. It pained me to admit that I had thought of him often these past sixty years, had wondered more than once what we could have had. But it made me feel unfaithful, ungrateful to my beloved husband. Reid had been a sure thing back then. Miles, with his big dreams, was new and exciting, which scared me a little. Or maybe the woman I became when I was with him all those years ago was what scared me. I couldn’t be sure.
“Such a flirt,” I said playfully.
“Not a flirt,” he said back. “Most sincere. And at the risk of sounding like a high schooler, would you accompany me to the dance tonight?”
My heart fluttered dangerously, but then I remembered I already had plans. “Unfortunately, my girls are coming out here for dinner tonight.”
“Unfortunately?”
I laughed. “Oh, that sounds awful. I positively adore them. It’s not unfortunate, except that I know they’re only coming to scold me for making this big decision without them—and that I can’t go to the dance with you.”
“Don’t most people want their parents in places like this?” Miles asked. “Where they don’t have to worry about them?”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “That’s what I said.”
He stepped closer. Oh, my heart. It baffled me how feelings of nearly sixty years could just flood back like this. Maybe that’s just what these were: memories of feelings. But, at my age, maybe memories were enough. “Tell you what. I’ll meet you there early so we can get in a dance or two before the girls arrive.”
“It would be an honor,” he said. “Now, may I escort you home?”
I nodded, following Miles to his Carolina-blue golf cart.
“Did you feel like I do when you lost your wife, Miles?” I asked as I slid in the front seat beside him. “Like enjoying anyone’s company, smiling, having a bright day is wrong? I want to dance with you tonight, and I already feel guilty about that.”
Miles smiled sadly at me. “Oh, Barbara. You were in a loving, committed marriage. Of course it’s going to be hard to take a step forward. But I know that Reid must have been a wonderful man for you to have chosen him over me.” He winked and I laughed, feeling those butterflies again. “I think he would have wanted you to have a second act.”
No one would ever be to me what my Reid was. He was the love of my life, now, then, and forever. But I know he would want me to be happy. “We talked about it every now and then, how we wanted each other to find happiness again if one of us left before the other,” I said, voicing my thoughts. I paused. “But it’s hard when you’re the one left behind.”
Miles took one hand off the wheel and reached over and squeezed my hand. I looked down, expecting to see the same soft, unlined hands I had had when he first held them. Instead, I saw two hands that were wrinkled, with pronounced veins and dark age spots. But they were hands that remembered. Hands that, maybe, could find solace in each other.
“Did you ever think of me over the years?” Miles asked, putting his eyes back on the road. “Not to be too forward, but I always wondered. I’d catch myself in these moments remembering you—your laugh, something you said—and I’d wonder if you ever thought of me too.”
“All these years, Miles, I have always had a soft spot for you.”
At eighty, when one has had and lost her great love, even the thought of a man that makes her come alive again is perhaps more than a woman should hope for. But hadn’t it always been like this with Miles? Isn’t this part of what had scared me about him?
“You still have one of the prettiest forehands I have ever seen,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“And that serve of yours…” he replied.
We both laughed. Miles pulled in front of my house and walked around to my side of the cart to escort me to my door. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said, grinning broadly, making me feel like a kid again.
“I look forward to it.”
He leaned down to kiss my cheek goodbye. “I’m so sweaty!” I protested. But I secretly loved every moment of his affection and attention toward me.
“You’re perfect,” he replied, taking me in. “I’ll see you at six.”
That evening, showered and fresh from the on-site beauty parlor, I hummed as I spritzed my neck with my favorite perfume, smiling at my reflection in the mirror. I mused that age had brought such perspective. In my youth, I would have lamented every line, scrutinized my waist, my legs, any spots I found. Now, sure, my face was wrinkled, my lovely figure long gone. But I was alive. I had lived eighty years on this earth, and even though my knees hurt, my elbow ached, and it took me a little longer to get around, I was still proud and grateful for every day. As I fastened a belt around the waistline of my favorite blue dress, I felt happy for a second chance.
I grabbed my small purse from the dresser after I slipped on my kitten heels, noticing the postcard I had received that morning. Sweet Julia. What grandmother worth her salt wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to go on a trip with her beloved granddaughter? It was silly, but even though I was excited at the prospect of a getaway, part of me couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Miles for what would be at least a weeklong trip, if not two. And it was certainly entirely too soon to ask him to go with me. Wasn’t it?