I get to pick.'
He countered with his own conditions. 'No subtitles. No cartoons.'
Hard bargain, but it was a deal.
A warning to the wise. Don't rent one of those
friends-who-fall-in-love movies with an old lover you've sworn off as
just a friend. Around the time Harry asked Sally if she wanted to
partake of a piece of pecan pie, I made the mistake of pointing out
that the film's only flaw was how implausible it was that they didn't
figure out earlier that they belonged together.
'Yeah?' Chuck said. 'Well, take a look at us. Some people might say
that we should've figured out a few things ourselves by now.'
It was the first time either of us had ever acknowledged out loud the
potential to be more than friends again. I might like directness in
every other aspect of my life, but I didn't think I liked it in this
context.
'No mistakes here. We were made to have a beautiful friendship,' I
said with my best Bogart impersonation.
'Nope, not this time, Sam. Whenever I move a little closer to you, you
pull out something goofy to help you scoot away. Cut it out with the
Casablanca. I'm serious about this.'
'Well, maybe you missed your chance to be serious. If you were
serious, and you thought we were meant to be together, you wouldn't
have dumped me.'
He laughed out of exasperation. 'Sam, we were kids back then. And I
didn't want to dump you, as you put it. But I also didn't want to move
down to California to learn how to be some corporate drone.'
'Then you could've come with me and done something else,' I said. I
stood up and started heading toward the kitchen, but he took my arm and
pulled me back down.
'You wouldn't have been happy, Sam. You had this idea in your head
about what your life should look like, and back then I just didn't fit
into it.'
'Well, what makes you think you'd fit into it now? Maybe you'd start
to feel like I was trying to change you again, and we wouldn't want
that, now, would we?'
'I'd fit in, Sam, because you don't want to change me. We like each
other just the way we are. The problem has been that you won't admit
it. You won't accept that you like everything about me.'
'Including your modesty?' I said, trying to laugh.
'Be serious for just a moment, OK, Sam? You know I match every part of
that conflicted personality of yours. You like that I have this crazy
job. You like that part of me is still a big kid. And you'll never
admit it, but you love that I do what I want, even when it meant
letting you down.'
This time, when I stood, he let me. I went into the kitchen, poured a
glass of water, and sat down at the table.
He came in after a few minutes. 'When you found out your mother had
breast cancer, you came to me, not Roger. And, today, when I heard
about the letter to the paper, you were the one I wanted to talk to. We
don't have to work out everything in our history and our future right
now. But don't pretend you haven't thought about this, Sam. I'll go if
that's what you want, but I really do need you tonight.'
It wasn't until the door closed that I realized I didn't want him to
leave yet. And that it was important enough that I was willing to
figure out the rest of it later.
He was still on my front steps when I opened the door. He came back
in, and we didn't talk again for the rest of the night.
Given my long-standing commitment to keeping things with Chuck
platonic, I would have expected larger repercussions from the night's
activities. But the sky didn't fall, lightning didn't strike, and I
didn't even regret it in the morning.
The truth was, I hadn't felt that good for months. Whether it was just
the aftereflects of the great sex remained to be seen.
And it had apparently taken Chuck's mind off the Taylor investigation.
He hadn't even watched the local news before we went to sleep.
Unfortunately, reality set back in quickly. While I scurried around
the house picking up the various items of clothing strewn on the path
between the front door and my bed, Chuck grabbed the Oregonian from the
porch.
The story about the anonymous letter was a long one and had made the
front page of the Metro section. Putting aside my outrage that the
press had gone forward on the basis on a single anonymous unconfirmed
letter, I could acknowledge that the story was actually fair. It
raised the possibility that
