The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter Twenty-Five
IT WAS THE BEGINNING. Erin had to face her own feelings about her attraction to Preston. He had declared his longstanding desire to kiss her and both understood that meant far more than being best friends. But was she ready to move on to this phase of life?
“I don’t know what I should do,” she confessed to Dolores later that evening. “I like him. He’s smart and kind. And creative. And handsome. And… I like him.”
“Why are you arguing with yourself about this?” Dolores asked. “The whole argument seems one-sided.”
“Sure. Everything sounds great. He’s socially inept and suffers severe attacks of anxiety. But the negatives aren’t really about him. They’re all about me. I’ve only been single for eight months. I’ve just paid off the debt I incurred from my last marriage. And in that regard, I’m batting zero when it comes to choosing a partner. Add to that, I manage the company he owns. We have a professional business relationship. If I’m romantically involved with him, do I even have a job anymore? I’m not going to give up everything for the idea of love again.”
“Ah, yes. The idea of love. Don’t you think you’ve learned something from that experience? You didn’t give things up for love. You gave them up for the idea of love. For the idea of having a family and becoming your idea of a perfect mother and wife,” Dolores said.
“That paints a rosy picture of it, doesn’t it?” Erin sighed melodramatically. “And accurate. Maybe I’m not capable of that kind of relationship. Maybe if I’d been a better wife, Bruce wouldn’t have strayed. Maybe if I get involved with Jerry, it will just be a precursor to him finding someone else, because I’m not enough for a man. I should just steer clear of relationships.”
“Liar,” Dolores laughed at her. “You don’t believe any of that. First off, Bruce would have strayed no matter who he married. You could have been the matron saint of the marriage bed and he’d still have looked elsewhere. And you don’t believe any of that about Jerry. What are you really afraid of?”
“What am I afraid of?”
Erin poured herself another glass of wine. She’d had a drink at the bar with the shareholders and said goodnight to Jerry. Then she’d come to Dolores to share a bottle of wine, which Dolores barely touched because Saturday was still a work day for her. Erin was feeling the effects of the alcohol, but it was sending her deep into her own thoughts.
“He’s a nice guy. I like him. He’d probably welcome me if I just went back to the apartment tonight. Maybe. He’s a little scary. I mean, am I really capable of being calm if he’s in the middle of a panic attack? Not just the first time, but the fifth and tenth times? It seems like a lot of responsibility. Would I be a stressor? Would having me around make him more prone to attacks? Would I be… good for him? As good as he is for me?”
“Those are serious questions, Erin. And they aren’t about Jerry. You’re the only person who can answer the questions about you.”
“What should I do?” she repeated. “I like him.”
“My opinion, which is worth every penny you’re paying for it, is that you should take it slow and easy, but let it progress naturally. It’s definitely not a good idea to go back to the apartment tonight. Don’t rush things. Even when you feel like rushing. Get to know him better. Think about going out someplace that is neutral territory. Get to know him there.”
“You need to get to bed so you can go to work in the morning,” Erin said, standing. “Thank you for listening. I won’t do anything stupid. At least not tonight. I don’t even need to drive home. I live close enough to walk. Thank you, Dolores.”
“Get home safely, dear.”
Another bottle of wine waited at home for Erin. She shut her cellphone in a kitchen drawer and took the bottle to bed where she watched old sappy movies on the television. At least she wouldn’t be drunk-texting anyone. It only took another glass of wine before she faded off to sleep with the television still playing.
She was not used to the volume of alcohol she’d consumed, and woke up slowly on Saturday. It was a day of nursing a headache and putting herself to work. She cleaned her apartment from top to bottom, even sorting kitchen drawers and reorganizing her closet. She wondered absently how her cellphone ended up in the kitchen junk drawer.
She over-indulged in black coffee to the same extent that she’d imbibed alcohol the night before. As a result, she was shaky by the time she left her apartment to go to a family restaurant at the shopping center for dinner. She ate the commercialized Italian food, and purchased the extra meal they offered at a discount to take home.
She looked at the open bottle of wine from the night before and poured it down the sink. She certainly didn’t need a repeat of that. She made herbal tea and turned on the television, but sat in bed with her laptop and reread all the reports from the previous week.
“Why isn’t there a book called Running a Company for Dummies?” she sighed. Maybe she should write it.
Instead, at about one o’clock, she got out of bed, dressed in her bowling clothes, and went to the bowling alley.
Several lanes were in use at the bowling alley but Erin didn’t really care where she was assigned. She just wanted to throw something heavy at something that made a lot of noise. Frustrations. She picked up her score sheet and shoes, then went to the area where she knew there was a ball that was decent for her to use.
She set the ball in the ball rack and sat to pull on her shoes, then lined up for her first throw. She took a breath and relaxed. Five steps and release. The ball sailed down the lane, nearly in the right gutter but curving directly into the pocket. Strike!
“Wow!” said the bowler in the lane next to her.
“First frame luck,” she laughed, turning to him.
They both stopped and stared.
“Jerry?”
“Maizie?”
“How…?”
“Why…?”
“Do you…?”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay. I mean…”
Both stood and just stared for a moment.
“Um… Hi! Fancy meeting you here,” Erin said.
“I didn’t think I’d see anyone I knew at this hour,” he responded.
“I’m not stalking you. I just couldn’t sleep tonight and needed to hear some pins fall.”
“Sure. I didn’t think you were. I mean… I’m not either. Stalking, I mean.”
“Do you… um… come here often?” she asked.
“No. I’ve never been here. Well, I mean, not since I was in my teens. Not in a long time.”
“How strange that we both show up at one o’clock in the morning,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to run into you, but you’re why I’m here.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, I knew you bowled. I mean, you’ve talked about your league and team. And I thought… Oh, geez!”
“Jerry, what is it? I was inspirational in getting you out for some exercise?”
“Inspiration. Yeah. Um… I wanted to ask you out and I tried to think of something you’d enjoy. So, I thought I’d try bowling to see if I could do it without making a fool of myself so I could ask you out sometime to go bowling,” he explained. He was blushing brightly and went to the bench to sit with his head in his hands.
“Jerry, that’s sweet. In fact, it’s very thoughtful. Thank you. I mean, we’re here and each have a lane with pins set up, we might as well use them. Maybe we can talk between frames. You know?”
“That’s kind of what I thought we might do if we were on a date. I don’t mean to force you into thinking we are on a date. I just… Yeah. I’d like that.”
“How did you first get interested in bowling?” Jerry asked. “It doesn’t seem like the kind of game a high-powered executive up north would be into.”
“I guess that’s true in part. But I went to college in Ohio. I don’t mean to be derogatory, but it was very working class. I think that the enjoyment of simple activities extends through all labor classes. And I’m a little competitive. Having something that I could compete with helped me deal with the stress and frustrations of college,” Maizie said.
“I understand that. When I look down the lane, I can see certain faces on each pin. I don’t care if I get a strike. I just want to hit as many of those people as possible,” Jerry laughed.
“You found me out. That’s why I got up in the middle of the night and came to the alley. I just wanted to hit something with a heavy ball.”
“I hate to ask how many of those pins have my face on them.”
“And I’m not going to tell you!”
They looked at each other and started laughing.
“Can I get you a Coke?” he asked.
“Oh, thanks. I’ll walk up to the concession stand with you.”
They went to the snack bar and Jerry ordered them soft drinks as they continued to chat.
“I forgot how heavy bowling balls are,” he said. “I think I’m going to be sore tomorrow. How do you stand it?”
“I’m using a lighter ball than you are,” she laughed. “I have to say, though, I felt it the first few times I went bowling with the team. If you compare your mass to my mass, I think twenty-five percent less weight is appropriate for me.”
“Twenty-five percent? What does my ball weigh? It’s the same size as yours, right?”
“Same size, different materials. Yours probably weighs sixteen pounds and mine weighs twelve. To be honest, I would probably bowl better with a fourteen-pound ball, but they don’t have one on the racks that I’ve found to fit me. If I were serious about this, I’d order my own ball and shoes instead of using what’s available at the alley.”
Maizie and Jerry rolled again and both left a split on the corners.
“Um… What do you do with this?” he asked.
“I usually roll one right down the middle and miss both of them,” Maizie laughed. “I aim for the inside edge of the left pin and hope it bounces back across the lane to hit the one on the right. That’s one of the disadvantages of using a lighter ball. You don’t get as much pin action as with a heavy ball.”
She rolled for the spare and knocked down only the seven pin. The frame reset. Jerry rolled. The ball went into the left gutter, jumped back onto the lane and rolled down to drop into the right gutter just before it got to the ten pin.
“Wow!” she said. She looked at him and they both sputtered out laughter.
“I don’t suppose I could interest you in a game of basketball, could I? Something I don’t completely suck at?”
“Sometime,” she said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, though. There was a lot of power behind that ball. Try rolling a little easier the next time. The pins are already dead. You don’t have to kill them.”
He did go a little easier the next time and left three pins standing. She rolled and left one.
“I’m going to mark this down as one of the many things I can learn from you,” he said. “What do you suggest to get this?”
They talked for a few minutes before bowling for their spares. She told him about the arrows on the floor and how he held the ball. When he rolled again, he hit all three pins. She missed her single.
“Did I make you do that?” he asked.
“No. I’m just not focusing very well. Besides, I’m not that great a bowler. I just like to see the pins fall down.”
“Tell me what has you frustrated enough that you wanted to come to the bowling alley in the middle of the night and throw a heavy ball at inanimate objects,” Jerry said.
Maizie sighed and sat beside him at the scorer’s table. She took a deep breath and decided to plunge ahead.
“Something I haven’t had a problem with since high school,” she said. “Boy trouble.”
Preston was taken aback a moment. He’d never considered that Maizie—or Erin—might have a relationship with someone else since her divorce.
“Uh… Wow! I mean… that’s really… um…”
“You see,” she said, uncharacteristically not allowing him to regain his composure and finish the sentence, “there’s this guy at work that I kind of like. And I think he kind of likes me, too. But I’m worried that if I got involved with him, it would ruin our working relationship. And friendship. Because I think we are friends, you know?”
Preston recaptured his composure. She had to be referring to him. Right? He wished he was better at talking about personal things with a woman. For all he’d grown comfortable with Erin since she came to work with him, he really didn’t understand women that well.
“He um… probably worries about the same thing. Intraoffice romance can be tricky.”
“I suppose I could just do nothing, but that could harm things, too. We’d constantly be feeling like we were hiding something from each other. At least, I would. But there’s all the problems of office gossip and people misunderstanding. I mean, we work really closely together.”
“I suppose the first thing would be to keep the romance out of the office,” he said. He was beginning to get the picture. Erin had all the same problems with an office romance that he had.
“That’s true. But you know, if I was going to date someone, I wouldn’t want to sneak around about it. Not like I’d need to send out an office wide email announcing it—or even put it on social media. I just wouldn’t want to be embarrassed to be seen in public with him.”
“I know if I was in that relationship, I’d want to do things other than meet in secret. Like, I’d love to cook her a meal, but I wouldn’t want to feel like my place was the only place we could go or meet. I really like concerts and theatre,” he said.
“Oh, I do, too. And bowling. I could even get into traveling a little to see a professional ball game of some sort. I just wouldn’t want to spend every Sunday afternoon in front of a television watching one.”
“There are lots of things to do that could get people out of the house. I like to go for a hike, or boat, or fish. One of the things I like about going down to Cloudhaven so much is just walking around the property and imagining what will be there in a few years.”
“I really enjoyed the one time I went down to walk the property. After looking at the 3D map in the office, I felt like I already knew the territory, but feeling it, smelling it, walking on it—those all made it much more real to me.”
“I can’t believe I was upset because you went there with Duval,” Jerry sighed.
“I was so thankful when your grandfather came by in his truck. I was dreading getting back in Duval’s car with him.”
“You know, we have a school for the arts here in town and they often have plays, exhibitions, and concerts. I played basketball when I was in high school here and I’d still like to go to a game there occasionally,” Jerry said.
“Did you ever think about taking a class just to learn something new?” she asked. “I read about a nature class that was just focused on learning to identify local trees and flowers.”
“I thought about taking an art class once. Not to learn to be an artist, but to appreciate art more. I know there are cooking classes. And there’s a brew pub in town that sometimes has a comedian or a musician entertaining.” Jerry was getting excited about the kind of things they could do together.
“I think the most important thing about it, though, is not to hide it. If we saw someone from the office or that we knew from school or bowling, we wouldn’t be embarrassed about it and try to pretend we weren’t together.”
“We wouldn’t pretend to not be together at the office, either,” he said. “We just wouldn’t make an issue out of it. We’d have to be careful of PDAs in the presence of other employees, but if someone in the office knew we were seeing each other, we wouldn’t get embarrassed or try to hide it.”
They grinned at each other and realized they’d been sitting at the scorer’s table for some time without having actually bowled. They laughed a little and got up to bowl another frame. Both, by some miracle, rolled strikes. They slapped hands in a high five and held them together as they looked into each other’s eyes.
“We were… talking about us… weren’t we?” she asked a little uncertainly.
“I was. I… I hope you were.”
“Yeah.”
“Not to rush things, but would you like to go for a walk by the river tomorrow? The leaves have begun to turn.”
“That sounds like fun. Maybe two o’clock? I think I’d better go home now and get some sleep.”
“Yeah, me too. I think I have a date tomorrow afternoon. I’ll stop and pick you up at two.”
They pulled their score sheets and changed shoes, taking them back to the cashier. It had been an inexpensive night out. They walked out together with hands lightly brushing against each other. At her car, she paused to look at him and met his lips with hers. They both grinned and went their separate ways.
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