Sassafras, Part 66

Joan


I was sitting next to Rick on the couch, leaning up next to him. It felt nice having his arm around me, his heart beating against my cheek. I don’t think I had ever felt so comfortable and relaxed. “Do you have to leave soon? Or can you stay? We could watch TV or something.”

He slid down into the couch, pulling me with him. “No, I don’t have to leave yet.” We looked through the TV guide but there wasn’t much to choose from. Jenny didn’t have cable or satellite, just local TV. We finally picked an old Bruce Willis movie from a pile of videos on top of the DVR. It was nice just sitting there with him, watching TV and talking. I would have probably enjoyed a root canal if Rick was around.

No one had ever been as nice to me as he was. No one had ever done as much for me. He drove me home from Tanner’s when I was feeling no pain, even though he barely knew me. He stayed with me when I was worried about Bill, even though he had never even met Bill. He even fixed my car in the middle of the night, and then again in the snow. He came to Jenny’s funeral even though he should have been at work.

“You didn’t hear anything I said, did you?” He was looking at me funny, and I realized he must have asked me a question.

“No. Sorry. What did you say?”

“It was nothing. Is something wrong?”

“No.” He lifted his eyebrows. “It’s nothing. Oh, really, it’s nothing,” I insisted, but he wouldn’t look away. “I was just thinking. Do you know what’s the nicest, most romantic thing anybody’s ever done for me? The one thing that I’ll never forget? It was today, when you went to Jenny’s funeral. You didn’t have to go. You had every excuse in the book not to go. But you did. When I saw you, it was like Christmas and my birthday all rolled into one. Can you believe that? The high light of my romantic life so far is Jenny’s funeral. Not a romantic weekend at some exotic place. Nobody ever gave me a new car or showered me with jewels. Nobody ever sent me flowers or candy. I never even got a Valentine’s Day card.”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like nobody ever gave me anything, just never anything I wanted. I remember in college once my boyfriend got concert tickets for my birthday. To a band I didn’t like. And the concert was on a Thursday night, when he knew I had a biology lab. The day before the concert he asked for my ticket back. He said since I couldn’t go he was going to take his roommate. I wouldn’t have minded that, but his roommate was my lab partner. That was how I met him in the first place. His roommate was going to be busy with me dissecting a baby pig. Then he had the nerve to act upset because I didn’t believe him. I shudder to think of how long I would have dated him if he had just been a better liar.”

“And then there was the man I dated for a short time in New York. He said he wanted to take me out for a romantic dinner for Valentine’s Day. At his mother’s house. She actually ate dinner with us. I never really understood what surreal meant until then. It was soooo weird. Definitely not romantic.”

I couldn’t believe I was telling Rick all this. If I didn’t shut up he was going to realize what a mistake it was to have anything to do with me, but for some reason I couldn’t stop talking. It wasn’t like talking about all this made me feel any better, either. Actually it made me feel worse. Everything seemed to crystallize in my mind. My whole life had been one mistake after another, one loser after another sucking all the joy out of my life.