Chapter 9

“Sara,” I said, “keep your clothes on.”

She looked puzzled.

“What? Why?” she asked, “You’ve never turned me down before.”

“Sara, this is too important, Sareen is too important. This is serious business; it’s not going to be solved between the sheets. Sex was never our problem, at least, not that I know of,” I said. “Yes, you’re as sexy as hell. You know that. I’d love to just take you and go for a ride down memory lane. It would be crazy good, but when it was over, I’d still be pissed at you for walking out on me and you’d still be pissed at me for not just taking it.”

She looked thoughtful, and then started to button up her shirt.

“You’re right, John, I shouldn’t have tried to manipulate you like that; but what are we going to do?”

“You tell me, because I haven’t a fucking clue,” I said.

She sat there, lost in thought for long minutes. I got up and got us both a beer. She leaned back against a boat cushion, looking like a flame-haired angel. God, she was so beautiful she made my soul ache. Her chin was in her hands and she had that same look on her face as that “Thinker” statue. She glanced at me from time to time and then she sat back again.

“The first thing we are going to do is remove Sareen from the equation,” she finally said.

“Remove, what’s that supposed to mean?” I was upset by that statement, more than I could have believed. “You aren’t going to let me see her?”

A look of horror flashed over her features. “No, no, John, it’s not that at all. Never think that. John, What I meant was I’m very sorry that I made her part of you and me. I should never have done that.”

“I understand,” I said. “No, she shouldn’t be a part of anything else other than being loved and given everything that a loving mother and father can give her.”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s what I meant. I didn’t like involving her at all, but I had to do something to get you to talk to me.”

She thought a moment. “There’s something else. I’m not sorry for barging into your place the other day, but I am sorry for… well, acting as if I owned the place. You know, swigging your beer and swiping your pizza. That wasn’t right, but I was just so happy to finally be with you in your house, I was almost giddy with it. Can you understand?”

I did. I opened my arms and beckoned to her. She smiled, wistfully, and came crawling over to sit between my spread legs on the deck. She leaned back against me and I wrapped her in my arms. It felt so right and so good that I wanted to stay like that forever.

“Will you go to the charity event with me?” she asked.

“Well, it isn’t as if my social calendar is packed,” I chuckled. “Sure, Sara, I’d love to go.”

We sat there, talking quietly, and finished our beers. I had forgotten how good it felt to just sit with her and talk. There was something I wanted to ask, and I finally figured out how.

“Sara, you know how every fall, Lucy tells Charlie Brown to run up and kick the football while she holds it for him?”

She laughed and interrupted me. “And every year she pulls it away and he lands on his ass?”

“Yeah, and the next year she tells him why it won’t be like last year, and then it is?” We chuckled together, and then she looked at me seriously.

“You’re wondering if you can trust me not to pull your football away again, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Sara, except it’s a little more important than a football.”

Sara was lost in thought. That was new, I thought. The Sara I remembered would have said the first damn fool thing that popped into her head, and tried to fix it later. She finally spoke.

“Will I leave you again for some stupid reason? The short answer is, I’ve been there, done that, and paid way too much for the t-shirt. I paid four years without you, and Sareen paid three years without her father.

“The true answer is, you won’t know. Just as I won’t know that you won’t up and run away again when I do something stupid. There aren’t any guarantees. I wish there were.

“John, I’m not asking you to live with me, or marry me again. I’m asking for a chance. I’m successful in my career, I have all the rich-people toys, but even with all of that, I think what you and I and Sareen could have together would be the best thing in my life.”

We thought about that a while, then we got caught up a bit on what had been going on in our lives and it was just like two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while. There were awkward silences, but not many, and I think we were both feeling in a better place by the time the sun was setting. She got up and stretched, looking for all the world like a big cat. I got the kinks out of my legs and she hugged me.

“Okay, now that we have that settled, let’s go back; I have a fishing outing to get ready for.”

I untied the boat, Sara started it up and we motored back to the dock.

Sunday, Sara dropped Sareen off, and I took her fishing. She wasn’t up to the sort of fishing I like to do, fly fishing for trout, but I knew of a small stream in the national forest that is chock full of all different kinds of sunfish. I set her up with her fishing gear and she danced with delight every time she reeled in a fat bluegill, rock bass or green sunfish.

When she reeled in the first one, I asked her what she wanted to do with it. It was a tiny long-ear, brilliantly colored in orange and blue. “Can we keep him in a fish bowl?” she asked.

“We could keep him in an aquarium,” I said. “They aren’t very happy there, though.”

“What else could we do?” she asked.

“We could turn him loose,” I told her. “If we catch bigger ones, we could eat them.”

She had to think about that one for a while. “Turn this one loose and eat the big ones,” she finally decided.

That’s what we did. We stopped fishing long enough to build a small fire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows for lunch. She owned my heart by the time we got to the stream. By lunchtime, I was her slave, and by the time we carried a large stringer of pan fish back to my truck, I knew that my life had changed forever. This was what I’d been born for, to be Sareen’s dad. She fell asleep in her little car seat on the way home, and my eyes got moist every time I looked at that sleeping little angel.

When we got back, Tomy was all over us; I don’t know if it was us, or the fishy smell that he was more interested in.