“It tells me you’re crazy,” Beth laughed.
“Maybe I am. It is almost like my drug of choice you know. I have friends who do cocaine, I have friends who drink heavily, and I have friends who pick up new sex partners nightly. That’s their thing. I don’t do any of that, but I do go wild for on-the-edge experiences. One time I even tried walking on a tight rope, just for fun.”
“That’s fun?”
“For me it was. I almost made it too, but slipped.”
“There was a net, right?”
“Nope. That was part of the thrill. No net. But I was lucky, I caught the rope.”
“You were lucky.”
“Yeah, it’s almost as if I couldn’t die. Especially considering all the amazing things I’ve tried. Like I was not fated to die just yet. So that’s part of what has changed.”
“Only part?” Beth asked.
“Well, a few other things happened.”
“Like what?”
“I was deathly allergic to penicillin as a kid. After a night of studying like crazy, I took this exam in college. Well I finished it, but I passed out. Pneumonia, they told me later. The doctors didn’t have a medical history on me and injected me with penicillin. Instead of a terrible reaction, it actually saved my life. It could have been a fluke or something I guess.”
“That’s true. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.”
“Yes. My interests changed in high school.”
“You told me, you became interested in sports.”
“That and I began to hate English, which I had always wanted to go into. For all my childhood I remember wanting to be a college professor.”
“A noble cause.”
“Yes I know it is. And you’re great at it.”
“Thanks.”
“But in college I turned to business. Something I had never been interested in before. I even took classes in Accounting.”
“So? Kids change.”
“They do. But I had always hated math before, even stunk at it. Yet I found that I got better and better at it. And science too. I had liked English and history as a kid, but as I got older I became more proficient at science and math. Weird, huh?”
“Kind of. Most kids who like the humanities don’t do well in the sciences, and vice versa. At least from my experience. Not that you couldn’t have liked both. But you said you did better than you expected.”
“I did. I got better in science and worse in history. Of course, who really cares about the Renaissance?” Kevin teased, knowing she taught history.
“That is strange. But not from a guy who turned lef-handed,” Beth teased back.
“I guess I deserved that bit of ribbing. One other thing has changed since Billy died.”
Some kids screamed in the background. Beth said, “Hold on Kevin.” Then she moved the phone from her mouth, but Kevin heard her talking to her kids anyhow. The words were muffled but discernible, “Go play outside kids. I’m trying to have a conversation on the phone now. Your father said to come inside it was going to rain? Okay, stay in, but go up to your room and play there.” There was a rustling sound, “Sorry Kevin.”
“No problem. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No. I’ve got a while before dinner. Go on. You were saying there was one other change since Billy. What was it?”
“I met a girl. I mean a woman.”
“Oh, that’s great. What’s her name?”
“It’s Rose.”
“How’d you meet?”
“That’s the odd part. We met in a country and western bar. I’d always hated country music as a kid, until well, until I was about eleven years old. A friend of mine, actually just an acquaintance named Jack, suggested we meet there. While I loved the music, I usually avoided going to these bars because most of them were dives. Yet, for some reason I agreed to meet him there.”
“You must have been bored that night.”
“Probably,” Kevin said. But that wasn’t it. Dives stank of stale beer and played music that was too tinny. That night was no different. But he was different. He found himself toe tapping and singing songs.
Rose came up to him and said, “Hi cutie.” She was too bold for him. He saw instantly that they had nothing in common. She dressed in skintight pants, and wore an open shirt revealing hefty cleavage. But from the moment she approached, he couldn’t stop staring at her. Her raw sexuality hooked him, he told himself. But there was more. Much more.
The spaghetti straps over her naked shoulders made him tremble with desire, something he had never done before. And she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. In fact, Sarah Thomas had been more so, and he had dumped her after two dates. Still Rose attracted him like no other, she had an ease about her. The feelings of knowing her from before, some other time, a time that never existed, struck him. He had never believed in love at first sight, but she had changed all that.
Rose was crude, saying “Let’s get out of this dump,” after only saying hello. He normally would have refused, liking to get to know the women he slept with beforehand. This time, he had gone with Rose. Some feeling of rightness had pervaded everything, so he had done it. That in itself was unlike him, taking a chance like that.
“Hello?”
“Oops sorry. I guess I was just remembering how we met.”
“You old romantic.”
“Well, we’re planning on getting married next month. Valentine’s Day. Hope you and Dave can make it. That’s why I called in fact. And of course to catch up.”
“We’ll try. Make sure to send an invite though.”
“We will.”
Life went on. Rose and Kevin conceived a son, William. They started him in high school the same year that Rose found the nodule on her breast. It was the couple’s thirteenth anniversary.
Rose, the woman Kevin loved with his entire soul, died two short years after chemotherapy started. They cremated her.
With Rose’s parents unreachable in Europe for another week, Kevin postponed her funeral until they returned. That entire week his eyes remained fused with tears. Every morning he almost had to pry the eyelids from his face to open them.
The last hauntingly familiar thing he found out about Rose’s family was they had lived in the same small neighborhood he had for a time. The one where Beth now resided. His family had already moved when Rose’s landed. Eventually she moved away from them. Yet she had such fond memories she insisted upon having her ashes interred there.