Chapter Twenty-one

Cindy was already seated at a table when Eric showed up at Antonio's. He'd gotten to talking with the Lancasters when he dropped off Gracie. He scurried into his chair and muttered, "Sorry I'm late."

"I was afraid you'd stood me up."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't know what that was like, would I?" He raised his eyes to hers coolly, and then abruptly looked away again.

He was bothered by the fact that her abandonment still bothered him. It hadn't bothered him for years. He hadn't thought about it. Hadn't thought about her. But her sudden appearance had stirred up a hornet's nest somewhere inside his gut. It made him feel weak, that he should feel anything at all at this point.

He forced himself to draw his eyes back to her. "The margheriti pizza is good here."

She laughed. "I don't remember you eating anything except meat on your pizza."

"Yeah…well….my wife…she's broadened my horizons. In a lot of ways." Tami sure was more adventurous in bed, for one, not that he was going to say that, even if he was thinking it, and why was he thinking it? He blushed. "The sausage pizza is good too."

"Well I do like sausage," Cindy said, surveying her now open menu, "more than I used to."

Was that sexual innuendo? Eric wasn't sure. It had been a long time since a woman other than Tami had flirted with him, or, at least, a long time since he'd been cognizant of the fact. He wasn't sure if that's what was happening now or not. Tami would certainly say it was, but Tami would probably have read flirtation into anything Cindy said, and he was the one who had been thinking of sex.

The waiter was standing at their tableside. Cindy had probably been sitting here for fifteen minutes. Eric hastily ordered a beer.

Cindy asked for a Diet Coke. "I'd get wine," she said as the waiter left, "but maybe that's part of what got me into this mess."

"What mess?"

"The breast cancer."

Tami drank wine all the time. One glass a night, every night. Sometimes two. On Saturday nights, they often split a bottle. "What do you mean? What does wine have to do with breast cancer?"

"There's just a correlation is all. Women who drink more than three glasses a day have a 1.5 times higher risk."

"Oh." Well, Tami didn't drink more than three glasses a day. Did that mean Cindy used to? She'd been an alcoholic, perhaps? She'd left him to find herself, and found the bottle instead?

When they were dating, Cindy would have two beers on a Friday night after his games. That was the only time she drank, and she'd be tipsy as hell, and he could usually count on getting laid. It was about the only time he could count on it.

After they'd lost their virginity to each other (in the wake of a year-long build up), Cindy had seemed eager enough for about six months, and then she'd started throwing up a lot of red light signals. Eric thought maybe he just wasn't any good at it, so he'd secretly read books and tried to improve his play with the same determination he used to approach football. Gradually, he decided it was just a male/female difference and he'd have to settle for what he could get. It never occurred to him that her reluctance might be a sign that their relationship was in trouble. She said she loved him, she seemed happy, and they rarely fought. (He'd fought way more with Tami in their first few years together).

"How long did you…you know…drink that much?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Longer than I should have. I started drinking heavily when my marriage started to go sour, which was about two years after we got married. Unfortunately, we stayed married for another six years after that. He cheated on me."

"Oh."

"I forgave him the first time. I thought he was sincerely sorry. We went to counseling and all that, and he put on a big show, but then he did it again."

"Ah."

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…" She shook her head and leaned back as the waiter put down their drinks. They ordered a marghareti pizza to split. She took a sip of her Diet Coke. "Except, I took him back the second time too."

Eric gulped a couple ounces of his beer.

"But third time's a charm. I think it was the cancer diagnosis that woke me up. I realized I was going to die one day and that I didn't want to waste my life trying to make some guy who didn't love me…love me."

Eric rapped his fingers on the table top, one at a time. He wondered, why had she married such a jerk, when she hadn't married him? "I never cheated on you."

"I know."

"Or did anything…I mean…." He shook his head and finished quietly, "anything."

"You were a good boyfriend, Eric."

"Then…why?" He couldn't believe he'd humbled himself enough to ask the question. Hastily, he said, "Not that it matters anymore."

She smiled weakly. "A wound like that, even when it heals, it leaves a scar."

She was right. There'd been a few times in his marriage when he could remember being afraid he might lose Tami, even though she'd never given him cause to doubt her fidelity. One was when she refused to move to Austin with him. Another was when she'd watched Mo McArnold taking off in that helicopter, admiration shinning in her eyes. Yet another was when she wanted to take the Braemore offer, and he thought, "She'll get in with that college crowd, and I won't seem so successful anymore." The feeling surfaced again soon after she told him she wasn't taking the Braemore job, which was a funny time to doubt her devotion to him, since she'd just given up something really important for him. But he'd looked at that stationary, with Braemore emblazoned across the top, and the job offer below, and he'd thought, "What if I make her stay in Dillon, and that makes her unhappy, and she leaves me, like my mother left my father?" Maybe somewhere else in the recess of his mind, there'd also been – "Like Cindy left me."

Eric had never spoken of these doubts openly with Tami, largely because he knew they were entirely unfounded, knew she'd proven her dedication to their marriage time and time again. But that didn't stop him from feeling them, and then silencing them as quickly as he could.

"That was so long ago," he said. "I'm very happy in my marriage. With my family. I've been blessed."

"I'm glad for that, Eric. You were always a good guy. You deserve happiness."

"So do you," he said automatically.

"You don't believe that. Come on, admit it. Part of you thinks I got what was coming to me."

"No," he lied.

She smiled into her Diet Coke. The waiter brought the pizza. "Wow, fast," she said.

Eric bowed his head and said a quick, silent grace before he grabbed a slice.

"When did you start saying grace before meals?" she asked.

He'd been a self-professed agnostic when he started dating Cindy. It was as close as he came to rebellion against his church-going, Episcopalian mother, and it was a sort of bond he had with his father, who had always grumbled about his mother's habit of attending.

Eric and Dad sometimes played hooky together (Bobby never did, because he liked to see the girls all dressed up for church and to flirt with them). Eric and his father stayed home from church and watched football at least twice a month during the season, and those were some of the few times Eric could remember his father just hanging out with him and not criticizing him. He'd held onto those rare warm Sunday memories, even to this day.

"I don't know," he said. "I guess when I started working at First United Methodist. I got a job as a janitor there, after you left. The minister….my wife's uncle actually…I guess he helped me realize that when you're thankful for the things you have, you stop noticing so much the things you don't." He paused and then admitted, "I was really angry after you left. I hated the world. We were together four years. You were my only girlfriend that entire time." He'd given up lots of opportunities to date other girls. "I was ready to marry you."

"I know. I wish I could have loved you back. And I thought I did, at one time. But then…I stopped."

"When?"

"I don't know," she answered. "More than a year before you proposed."

"Then why did you say yes?" The pizza sat losing heat between them.

"I felt…obligated. I couldn't figure out why I didn't love you. There was no reason I shouldn't. You were good-looking. Responsible. Smart, even though you were kind of single-minded about football. I never liked football, by the way. I just pretended to."

"You were a cheerleader for two years."

"That's what you do in Texas. You don't join the math club."

He ate his slice of pizza and wiped his fingers.

"Do your daughters cheerlead?" she asked.

He snorted. "Gracie's only in preschool. Julie hated the idea." He looked at her toying with her pizza, cutting it into small pieces and taking tiny bites. "Why do you think you didn't love me?" he asked.

He hadn't expected the conversation to go like this. He had expected to listen to whatever she had to say, accept her apology, make a little uncomfortable small talk, and then quickly be on his way. He hadn't expected things to twist and turn to a point of openness, at least not on his part. He wasn't even sure how they had.

"Probably because I didn't love myself."

He tried not to roll his eyes, but he failed.

"Don't laugh," she said. "it sounds cheesy, but it's true. You know how my dad left when I was little. And how my mom used to constantly tell me I was fat."

"She was a cruel witch, that woman." Eric had completely forgotten about Cindy's mother, and how angry that woman had once made him by belittling her daughter. "You were fit."

"Yeah, I was a fit size 10. That's another reason I quit cheerleading. I was the only size 10."

She'd told him she quit because she sprained her ankle and couldn't do the moves anymore.

"But you were beautiful. I mean…you still are. That's not a compliment! I mean, it is, but it's not a…I'm happily married."

"I know. And she's a lucky woman. You made me feel good about myself, Eric. Really good. But I think…what I loved was you making me feel good. And that wasn't fair to you. To put all that on you. Because what if you couldn't make me feel good about myself one day? What if we were married, and you needed to feel good? And…I don't guess I'm making any sense, am I?"

"I think I get what you mean. It has to be mutual, the support in marriage. And it did feel a little one way with us, when I look back. I guess I didn't notice so much because I already had other support."

He'd been fairly popular in high school, as the star quarterback. Girls complimented him frequently. Guys wanted to be him. His mother had always been an encourager, a champion of everything he wanted to be and do, even if his father had sometimes dragged him down. Even Bobby, for all their sibling rivalry, had supported him.

"Tami," Eric said, "she's an amazing support. God, I don't know how I'd have done half the things I've done without her." He took a bite of his second piece of pizza. "I'm sorry you didn't find that. For you."

She shrugged. "I love my career. I know it doesn't sound exciting. Accounting. But I love it. I have friends. And I have my life. Like you said, being grateful for the things you have…it makes you think less about the things you don't."

He nodded.

"I'm sorry, Eric. I'm sorry for the way I hurt you. I'm sorry I was a coward and I just took off, that I didn't have the words or the courage or the understanding to explain why I needed to leave. I'm sorry I didn't leave sooner, so you wouldn't have wasted so much time with me."

"Nah. It wasn't wasted. I learned how to be in a steady relationship, for one, instead of just chasing girls, which is what I might have been doing otherwise. And if you'd broken up with me sooner, I might have ended up with someone other than Tami…and no one could be as right for me as Tami."

They talked some more. Eric ate two more slices of pizza, but Cindy had only one. She insisted he polish off the last slice, and he did.

When they were in the parking lot, Eric with his keys in one hand, he said, "I didn't want to go to lunch with you. I just agreed to get you out of my office. But I'm glad we talked."

"I am too."

"Next time, you'll meet my wife."

"I don't think there should be a next time," she said. "This time was perfect. This time was enough."

He nodded. "A'ight. Good luck to you."

She smiled. "Can I hug you goodbye?"

"Uh…" Tami had hugged Mo, hadn't she? Mo had kissed her on the cheek at least three times. "Sure." He made sure their bodies weren't touching too closely. He'd never been a cheek kisser, like some southern men, so he didn't do that. But she kissed his cheek - a short, quick, tender peck. A goodbye kiss.

"Nice seeing you again, Eric," she said, and slipped away.

He tossed his keys up and down in his hand. Funny, he thought, how people weren't always as they seemed. Josh had appeared to have good intentions, and they'd been ill. Cindy had appeared to have suspicious intentions (at least to Tami, and, he had to admit, also to him), and they'd been good.

Life wasn't always black and white he thought as he slipped into his SUV. He should have learned that in Dillon.