It's Better This Way(26)

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, we both had basically given up on relationships.”

“With cause,” he reminded her.

“With cause,” she agreed. “We even share similar backgrounds. Your wife left you for another man, and my husband fell in love with another woman. We were each the innocent party.”

“I can’t speak for you; however, I accept at least part of the blame for Lee leaving me. We’d drifted apart. I knew it, only I didn’t take it seriously. I was content and didn’t take into consideration that Lee wasn’t.”

Julia admired his willingness to see his own part in the breakup of the marriage. It hadn’t been like that for her.

“I loved my husband. I did everything I could to save my marriage. I was determined to do whatever it took to get my husband back. If the divorce went through, I wanted the reassurance I had done everything humanly possible to save what we had together. Only…only…” She paused, as the familiar pain struck her like a kick in the solar plexus.

“It doesn’t do any good to look back now,” she continued, after composing herself. “I did what I could, and when it didn’t work out, I knew I had to let go and move forward.” She remembered the good-bye letter she’d written as closure, and how that had helped her to look to the future without the regrets of the past.

    Heath had stopped bicycling and was closely studying her. “Can you tell me what any of this has to do with the two of us?”

Explaining it would seem ridiculous. “It’s like I said. Our relationship has come together so easily. So perfectly.” Her biggest fear was that something was about to happen that would drive them apart. This giddy happiness wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Before either of them were ready, it would come to an end.

Heath considered her words. “It’s hard to believe you were close all these months and it took until now to find each other.”

“I feel the same.”

“You should know, Julia, I’m crazy about you. These last couple days with Steve, my buddy from college, have been great. We had a good time reminiscing and catching up. And yet, it felt as if a part of me was missing because I couldn’t be with you.”

Julia’s heart felt as if it was going to melt at his words. “I feel the same about you. I’m afraid, Heath. Afraid everything is coming together too quickly.”

“Does this have anything to do with your dream?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“Tell me about it,” he said, “and then let us reason it out together.”

“Okay. The condensed version goes like this: We were together and ecstatically happy, then something happened. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. What killed me was watching you walk away. I was left sobbing and heartbroken.”

He listened and shook his head. “No way. That’s never going to happen.”

“I…I sometimes have prophetic dreams,” she said. This wasn’t anything she had encouraged and rarely mentioned. Only two people in the world knew about this. It didn’t happen often, and it always seemed to forecast bad news.

    Before Eddie confessed that he’d fallen out of love with her, she’d dreamed about it. The day before Hillary had gone skiing, Julia had dreamed her daughter would break her leg. And she did. It was while she was undergoing physical therapy that she’d decided to specialize in physical rehabilitation. And it had happened plenty of other times while growing up. The worst had been dreaming about the death of her grandmother a week before she died of a stroke.

“No matter what, I’m not going anywhere, Julia. I can’t imagine anything that would make me want to walk away from you. It took me nearly six years to find you, and I am not letting you go. I learned my lesson with Lee. You’re too important to me to even consider such a thing.”

“You’re right. Time to let it go.”

They finished their routine and reunited later over coffee. Heath’s reassurances helped. Still the dream lingered, and she feared it would be like other nightmares she’d had over the years. She was experiencing the same feeling now as she had so often before, and did her best to ignore it.

“Do you have plans for tonight?” Heath asked, sitting across from her, sipping his coffee.

She shook her head.

“Let me cook for you again,” he suggested.

She knew what he was doing. Bless him, Heath was offering a way of distracting her from her anxious thoughts.

“Dinner would be lovely, only it’s my turn. You cooked last time.”

    “Fine, only I have the larger kitchen.”

“Then fine, I’ll use your kitchen and you can provide the wine.” They never seemed to leave a tasting room without at least one bottle, and had put together a small but nice collection.

“Perfect. I need to go into the office this afternoon, so putting you in charge of dinner works best for me. What are you serving?”

“I was thinking about a Caesar salad with homemade croutons, topped with either barbecued shrimp or chicken, whichever you prefer. How does that sound?”

“Like a date.”

“Deal,” she said, eager to move past the nightmare.



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