Do You Take This Man (89)

“I know I should.”

“But.” His eyes met mine again, thin white eyebrows lifting. “At a certain point, you got to start dancing again.”

The silence hung heavy, and I didn’t know how to respond or what to say, because he was right.

“I can teach you some moves,” he said with a wink. “My dance card is pretty full over at the senior center. I’m one of the few fellas left, and I can still cut a rug.”

I laughed, the tension breaking like it always did.

“How’s that friend of yours who called when you were up here that time?”

“She’s good.”

“She’s a girlfriend?”

I shook my head. “Not a girlfriend.”

“One of those women from the phone program? Grinders or Tindlers or something? The swipers?”

I choked on my beer at the idea of my sweet uncle Harold reading about hookup apps. God, I hope he was only reading. “No, no swiping involved. We work together.”

“Ah,” he said, fitting the last piece in the middle of a section of blue sky.

“She’s an officiant at some of the weddings I’ve worked. She’s kind of infuriating. Drives me nuts.”

He smiled, not looking away from the puzzle pieces. “Oh?”

“Just always has to be right, can’t let things go.” I imagined the way RJ had the most intimidating, icy stare I’d ever seen on anyone and how she sometimes stroked my neck in the softest way when I kissed her. “She’s difficult.” “Difficult” wasn’t exactly right. She had these walls I never seemed to fully make it over.

“That so?”

“What’s that look for?”

“Same as I always look.” He chuckled to himself and fit together two sections of the puzzle. “So, she puts you through your paces, huh?”

“She makes me feel like I’m walking a plank.”

Harold laughed, a loud one this time. “Sounds like quite the woman.”

“Yeah.” I sat back, resigned. “She is quite the woman.”

“In my experience, if that kinda gal pays you attention, you try your damndest to keep it.” He went back to his pieces but spoke again without looking up. “What’d you do?”

“You assume I did something?”

“Well, did ya?”

The way RJ had looked at me when she asked me to come up, the openness of her face, the way the softest part of her felt accessible to me, the way she’d hardened immediately. All of it was burned in my mind. “I wanted more, and she didn’t, and then she did, but I . . . Well, it went south, and I said some not so nice things to her and she walked away.”

“What did you say?”

The words flashed back to me. I didn’t regret that I’d called out her hot-and-cold approach to us, her armor, but I also couldn’t forget the way her face looked when I said it. I’d hit nerves I didn’t know I was aiming for. “I probably deserved her walking away.”

He nodded and gave a hm. “You’re still twisted up over that other woman and the baby.”

“It’s not that. I mean, yes, I kind of am, but RJ and I . . . we’re just not right for each other. You and Aunt Bette . . . I want something like you guys had. I’ve made enough mistakes . . . I don’t need to be with someone who makes me feel so uncertain all the time.”

He nodded, not looking up from the puzzle. “I ever tell you how I met your aunt?”

The second sudden subject change threw me. “You met at her dad’s company, right? Courted the boss’s daughter and all that?”

A faint smile crossed his lips. “Yeah, that’s part of it. She worked in the front office and would be on me all the time about my paperwork and reports. I started turning them in late, just to get a rise out of her, and ooh, she’d get so mad.” His expression took on a wistful, boyish look, eyes dancing. “One day she said, ‘Harold, what will it take to get you to stop making my life so difficult?’ and I told her she could go out on a date with me.”

“And she agreed?”

He tugged on his suspenders. “No, sir. She told me where I could stick my hat.”

I tried to picture my kind, charming aunt clapping back at anyone. “No way. Aunt Bette?”

“Oh, yes.” He rubbed his jaw as if the response were fresh. “I deserved it, of course. I think these days you’d call it sexual harassment. You kids now know better than we did, but after that I kept turning in things late and making her mad. I’d ask her out, and she’d tell me where I could go.”

“So how d’you get from that to getting married?”

“Well,” he said, stretching in his chair, “one day, she said, ‘You know, Harold, you’re a good-looking man. I might consider going out with you if I wasn’t so mad about your late work all the time.’?” Harold smacked his knee. “Boy, let me tell you the model employee I was after that. No i left undotted, nothing turned in even a minute late.”

“And she agreed to go out with you?”

“Two years later.” He smiled again, glancing over my shoulder to where their wedding photo hung near the mantel. “She outsmarted me. In my experience, you marry the girl who outsmarts you, and you always have someone smart in your corner.”