Love Untold

Love Untold: Chapter 14

Love Untold: Chapter 14

Chrissie smiled until her mouth hurt.  She’d much rather scream and cry and smash something against the wall and stomp her feet, but considering how she just ranted about being treated like a two-year-old, that probably wouldn’t be the most ideal way to react right now.  

God, I can’t believe I grabbed his testicles!  What is wrong with me?

Well, she knew what was wrong...she wasn’t the person everyone thought she was.  But to boldly snag a handful of a man’s crotch?!  She’d never done that before...not even during sex!

Her head was starting to ache, and she really needed to get out of the house...get away from him.  He was clouding her mind, making her do things she’d never have done in a million years.  

“I’ll go pick up Mom,” she offered to Dena.  

“Okay,” Dena replied slowly.  She shifted the books in her hand and deliberately thrust the pharmacy bag at Chrissie.  What was Dena trying to say?  Chrissie needed medication?  If anything, Race was the one who should get doped up and toasted.  The man scammed her into feeling sorry for him.  She gave him one fleeting look before snatching the bag from Dena and going into her bedroom to put some decent clothes on.  He stared at her as though his soul was crumbling.

Chrissie wasn’t falling for it again.  

The sad, lost puppy dog look was getting old.  She knew what he was now.  She also knew that she might wake up tomorrow morning, remembering her marriage as it’d always been according to her sister and him, and that scared her worse than not remembering him at all.  After what he tried on her today, she honestly and truly didn’t want anything to do with him.  Yeah, he was gorgeous.  Yeah, he claimed to love her and would do anything for her.  But that wasn’t enough to sway her at this point.  

She stuck her legs through some slacks, buttoned up a blouse and dug out her favorite peep-toe pumps.  She ran a brush through her hair and added some mascara.  Normally, her getting-ready routine took almost an hour, but she managed to look presentable in only ten minutes.  Grabbing her purse and car keys, she breezed into the hallway, saw Dena and Race muttering ferociously under their breaths, and flippantly said, “I’m assuming that the interstate system is still the same?  I don’t have to worry about flying cars or military checkpoints or anything?”

Dena frowned at her.  “Chris...”

“Never mind,” Chrissie said, waving her off.  “I’m not as stupid as some people want to think.  I’ll figure it out.  Be back later.”

She got all the way to the end of her block before pulling over and crying her heart out.  To go back twelve hours and redo some of her decisions!  Maybe if she’d not gone out with Dena last night, she’d still be the Chrissie she was familiar with...or maybe if she’d listened to her better judgment and not succumbed to giving Race a massage, she’d still feel fairly amicable towards him.  But wouldn’t that have really been just as damaging?  To think he was so good and honest and then find out later that he hoodwinked her?

Yet Dena swears by him.  And Chrissie valued her sister’s opinion over most...as irritating and misguided as it can be sometimes.  So, Chrissie didn’t know what to think anymore.  She didn’t know if her “husband” was a good man with her best interest in mind, or a conniving one only out to control her and probably sleep with her.

Yeah, he’d want that.

Chrissie dried her tears and pulled her sedan out into the street again, thinking about him laying under her on the sofa in the basement.  She figured out kind of quickly that he got aroused during her massage.  She saw the gleam shining out the corner of his eye and the way he ground down on his back teeth.  

And yet, you didn’t say anything either.

Oh, no!  She was a tease!  Chrissie groaned as she maneuvered her car onto the interstate and dodged the flying traffic, trying her best to stay in the right-hand lane until her exit for the airport.  Race’s anger had been honest and righteous.  She lashed out at him with nothing more than a petulant, double-standard frame of mind.

She’d have to apologize, and she winced.  Where would she find the bravery for that?  She could take her anti-anxiety pills beforehand.  Maybe they would loosen her tongue and melt the lump of regret in her esophagus.  Or maybe, she could just cop-out and send him an impersonal text message.   “I’m sorry...You were right, I was wrong.”

Chrissie groaned again and scorned the advancement in modern-day technology.  Sometimes it was too convenient.  She tried to remember what she did before her cell phone did all those nice, neat tricks.  She would have called him on a landline?  Or sent a quick apology through an email?  God!  What did people do before all that?  

“Well, duh,” she muttered to herself.  “They wrote letters to each other.  Used real paper and stamps and all that.”

A letter.  Now that was a novel idea.  It was personal and she didn’t have to actually say the words to his face, so she’d be able to edit what she wanted to say, and it reminded her of a favorite movie, The Shop Around the Corner.  Oh, to be Margaret Sullavan, getting giddy over a piece of folded up paper.  Did that assume that Race was a Jimmy Stewart?

“Lord, no,” Chrissie answered herself.  She wasn’t going to profess her dying love for the man through a ballpoint pen.  She just wanted to explain that she wasn’t acting like herself, and she normally wasn’t this mean and petty.  That was all.  She didn’t expect forgiveness.  She just wanted the chance to make things right again...and if that meant she didn’t have to be present when he accepted her explanation, then all the better.

Besides, Race seemed definitely to be the kind of guy who’d walk into a restaurant and mess around with her head, knowing full well that she was waiting for her true love, and then leave her stranded, alone and restless.  Just like Jimmy did to Margaret.

Well, that won’t happen to Chrissie Hill, no siree.  She already knew who Race was, and she didn’t foresee a happy ending here.  But he did deserve an apology, so she’d give him one.  Yes, she’d write him a letter while she waited at the airport.  The perfect way of chickening out and still looking mature about it.

She smirked at that last thought.  Her mother would be proud of her.  Dolly Hill embodied artifice.  The woman hid out on her mountain, looking and acting like a queen to those who didn’t know her well, but Chrissie believed differently.  Her mother’s heart had been broken sixteen ways past a Sunday sermon when her husband died years ago.  And she never recovered.  

Oh, one look at Dolly, and people saw a proud, stubborn, elegant woman who spoke her mind and didn’t sway a single freaking centimeter if she didn’t feel like it.  Chrissie heard the term “Snow Dragon” passed around a few times, but she could never think of her mother that way.  Dolly Hill was just a woman -- like any other -- trying to finish her life the best way she knew how, claim a few grandchildren during that time, and then finally go off to meet the love of her life in the sunset.

As Chrissie pulled into the airport’s parking deck, she smiled, recalling her mother’s stories about her and Dena’s dad.  Dolly never talked about her husband going to Heaven, because she lost her faith when he died.  No, her mother always pointed toward the western sky as the sun sank lower and lower, clouds of orange and purple mingling with the still-blue sky, and said, “See there, Chrissie?  There’s your daddy.  Wave to him.  He’s telling you he loves you, and he’ll see you again tomorrow when the sun comes up over there.”

She parked on the top of the deck and rested her head on the steering wheel.  She didn’t remember much about her father, only flashes.  Brown, cheerful eyes, a kind smile, and lots and lots of tubes and wires and beeps.  The cancer took hold, hard and fast, and within three months of finding out, her mother was a widow.  Chrissie had only been five; Dena, two.  

Twenty-five years later, Chrissie found herself wishing for that kind of love.  To hold a candle for one man, even after death, for so long...

If at any time in the last six hours she considered that she might have that kind of marriage with Race...well, that thought was long gone.  Never being one to agree to the practice of divorce -- if you married someone, you’d better be prepared to stick with him -- Chrissie truly believed she might have found a loophole to her principles.  How could she stay married to a man she didn’t remember and quite frankly didn’t like very much?

Even God would forgive her for this, right?

With an hour to spare before her mother’s flight landed, Chrissie commandeered a small table at the airport’s only diner/bar, and scribbled some words onto a legal pad she dug out of the trunk of her car.  “Dear Race...”

Nope, too personal.  He wasn’t “dear” to her right now.  She scratched that off and started again.  “Race, I’m sorry for the way I acted today.  I have been thinking that what I did today was inexcusable, and I know that I was wrong for it.  But I can’t help but wonder if I’m not the same person you think I am.  I said somethings to you that were meant to anger and hurt you, and at the time, that was the way I felt.  However, I can only hope that you look at things from my perspective...”

Chrissie read over that part and groaned.  Too many I’s.  She sounded like a petulant teenager trying to sound sophisticated.  So, she tore off that page and crumbled it, getting very annoyed.  There used to be a time when she could write a very elegant letter, BS-ing around the whole subject without really saying anything.  Where had the art of penmanship gone off to?

“Race,” she began again, pressing down so hard on the paper in her irritation that she ripped a hole in the page.  

“Dang it!”

“Ma’am, would like another drink?” a waiter asked, coming up to her elbow and scaring the crap out of her.

“Oh, no.  Thank you,” she said, smiling politely. “I’m fine.”

“Holler if you need anything,” he said and walked away.  Chrissie scowled at her legal pad.  There had to be a way to apologize without placing so much blame on herself.  That was the way she was thinking, anyway.  

This was all his fault anyway, she thought to herself, crunching the ice from her glass.  If he’d just left her alone all morning, she wouldn’t be so aggravated right now.

She glanced at her cell phone and got an idea.  This was what happened to the letter-writing craft.  Technology.  Well, that technology can serve her wonderfully right now.  She opened up the browser and swiped in “letters of apology” just to see what popped up.  The first one was very business-like, and Chrissie gagged a little.  

“Please allow me to apologize for my behavior this week...It was extremely inappropriate, disrespectful and immature...”  Blah, blah, blah.

On to the next one.  “There are no words to express how truly sorry I am...I miss you and can’t sleep at night...”

Chrissie was starting to get a headache.  “If there is anything I can do to make up for my actions...”

She turned off her phone and tossed it aside.  This obviously wasn’t going to be as simple as she presumed.  Picking up her pen, she wrote, big and bold, “I’m sorry,” and thought, There, that should do it.  Short, sweet and to the point.  

Like fate was speaking to her, a modern remake of Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” began playing over the bar’s stereo system.  Chrissie hummed along with the familiar tune.  Below the two words she’d written, she absentmindedly jotted down some of the lyrics.

“...It’s sad, so sad...It’s a sad, sad situation...and it’s getting more and more absurd...it’s sad, so sad...why can’t we talk it over...oh, it seems to me...that sorry seems to be the hardest word...”

The airport’s intercom announced the arrival of her mother’s plane.  She stuffed everything into her bag and walked toward the security gate where Dolly Hill would eventually emerge, most likely not a hair out of place and smiling elegantly to all who passed by her.  She might even flirt with a few airport personnel or saunter down the ramp with a pilot on her arm.

Oh, yeah.  Her mother was the embodiment of tomfoolery.  No one around would ever imagine that woman to still be mourning the loss of her husband for twenty-five years now.  So, when a blond chignon was spotted through the crowd, Chrissie wasn’t the least bit surprised to see a tall, devilishly handsome man bearing her carry-on as though he was proud to have the honor.

“Chrissie, dear,” her mother called, smiling brilliantly.  Chrissie waved at her and waited for her mother to breeze through the security with barely a glance from the two employees manning the departing line.  The handsome man only had to speak to the security team, and Dolly Hill was free to pass.

Typical.  Everyone else on the plane practically had to suffer a strip search, which Chrissie would never understand.  Those people had to go through that to get onto to plane.  Why in the world would they need to do it again?  Was someone swiping the peanut packages?

“Sweetheart, you should be at home resting,” Dolly commented as she kissed Chrissie’s cheek.

“I needed to get out of the house,” Chrissie said, glad that her mother, at least, was still the same.  She’d been half afraid that in the two years missing from her brain, her mother might have gotten herself hitched again, and that would really screw up her opinions of her mother.

“What’s wrong, dear?  Trouble in paradise?  Is your husband treating you badly?”

Chrissie sighed.  “Mom, did Dena tell  you anything?”

“Of course, she did,” Dolly said.  She turned to the man still hanging onto her bag like it was his ticket into her bed, and Chrissie blinked at him.  He had to be twenty years too young for Dolly.  

“Thank you, Stanton,” her mother said, taking her bag.  “My daughter will take care of me from here.”

Stanton shifted.  He seemed to have lost his pride at that moment.  But instead of creating a scene, he said, “You’re welcome, Dolly.  Remember to give me a call when you’re ready to fly back to Denver.”

Her mother laughed gaily, and Chrissie raised an eyebrow at her.  “I will, Stan, I promise.”

He left and Chrissie rounded on her mother.  “Stanton?  Are we new members of the Mile High Club now?”

“Don’t be crass, dear,” her mother said.  “Now about this memory loss of yours.  You just tell  me what your husband did this time, and we’ll get you all fixed up.”

Chrissie groaned.  This wasn’t going to be a pleasant visit.  Already, her mother assumed that Chrissie was acting out like a child over something.  Chrissie squeezed her eyes closed and gathered some strength.  

“Now, where’s your car?  I absolutely appall airports.  If it weren’t for that nice man, Stanton, I would have had to sit in coach.  Luckily, he was able to secure me a seat in first class.”

“I take it he was a pilot?” Chrissie asked as she escorted her mother out of the airport and onto a shuttle that would take them to the parking deck.

“Oh, no, dear.  An air marshal,” her mother corrected her.  She leaned over and whispered, “He showed me his weapon.  It was enormous.”

Chrissie stifled a giggle.  “I’m sure it was, Mom.”

Her mother chattered nonstop about everything under the sun all the way back to Chrissie’s house.  Chrissie didn’t even bother to insert anything into the one-sided conversation.  By the time she parked her car outside of her garage, she was smiling.  What kind of relationship did Dolly and Race have?

Oh, this might be fun to watch.