* * * *
Other than Murray the parts department manager creeping Noel out a little, the job was wicked easy. She bit her tongue every time Maria showed her something and prefaced it with, “Now, this might be confusing at first, because I had a hard time with it when I first started…”
Usually it was very simple procedures involving an Excel spreadsheet.
That Maria wasn’t the brightest bulb on the branch had become glaringly evident before the second hour ended. Noel was doing her best not to show Maria up and make her look like an idiot, but by hour four, Noel had already identified several key areas where procedures could easily be simplified, streamlined, and improved.
And she planned on doing it as soon as she had the reins, so to speak.
When Keith’s head popped around the corner of her doorway, she couldn’t believe how happy she was to see him.
“Want to go get some lunch?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you.” Maria had just returned from her lunch break.
Noel grabbed her purse and hurried out of the office after him, following him back through the marina’s yard to where he’d parked.
“You sick of her yet?” he asked when they were safely inside his truck.
“Oh, holy cow. How the hell has she managed to keep her job this long?”
He smirked. “You didn’t look at her chest, did you?”
“Those damn things nearly poked my eye out more than once when she turned around. Of course I saw them.”
“Question answered.”
“I really do appreciate this, Keith.” She sat with her purse in her lap, her arms around it for something to do, to keep them still.
To keep her from inadvertently reaching across the seat and resting her hand on his thigh, the way she used to always do with Scott.
“I’m glad I could help,” he said. “I’m sorry the circumstances came to this, though. I feel really badly about that.”
“It was bound to happen anyway. Me changing jobs, I mean. Not the way it happened. Maybe it was for the best. I was close to burnout. They were going to be instituting a bunch of new changes to the FCAT tests and core curriculum over the next couple of months. It was going to be a bitch and a half, and then listening to all the other teachers bitch about it, too, on top of the changes.”
“Look, seriously. Don’t be in a hurry to move out or move on, okay? I would prefer we all live together and Scott and I pay the bills so you can go back to school, or do whatever it is you need to do. I owe you that much.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I mean it, Noel. Please? I know I’m not your favorite person in the world, and believe me, I get it. I don’t blame you in the slightest. But I want to make this as right as I can.”
She sensed he was being sincere.
Somehow, that almost made it worse. “You’re not responsible for me or my well-being. What happened, happened. It’s been two years in the making—or longer, depending on how you want to look at it. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else. I just appreciate that you’re not being an asshole about this. Scott’s a lucky guy to have found you. I’m honestly happy for you two.”
* * * *
Her genuine sentiments made Keith feel even worse. Sure, he and Scott got what they wanted, but what about her? She’d gone out a few times with some of her friends, but for the most part she sat at home, usually in her room, when Scott wasn’t with her. Sometimes she sat out on the lanai if it wasn’t too hot, but even when he and Scott made a conscious effort to stay in their room so she could feel more comfortable going to the living room, she wouldn’t.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” He glanced at her. “But I am buying you lunch. This is my treat, and I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Then I guess I won’t argue with you.”
It felt like an uneasy truce on both their parts as they sat out on the dock of a nearby restaurant and ate fish sandwiches in the shade of a patio umbrella. The breeze washing in off the Gulf helped cut the heat of the sunny afternoon.
They fell into silence as they ate, so her quiet question several minutes later startled him.
“You do love him, right?”
He’d just taken a bite of his sandwich and was trying not to choke on it or spit it out. He slowly nodded as he chewed, giving himself time to figure out exactly what and how he wanted to say it.
“I’ve honestly never felt about anyone the way I feel about Scott,” he said. “I feel like I’ve met the missing piece. I mean, I’m a whole and complete person on my own. But it’s like my world was kind of skewed by a few degrees, and adding him to it evened everything out to where it’s supposed to be.”
“You won’t cheat on him, will you?”
“No. I don’t play around. I know there’s this mythos that all gay guys are manwhores, but it’s not any more true than for the het population.”
He watched her face as she stared down at her plate, her sandwich still in her hands. “I can’t promise you there won’t be times I’m a complete bitch to either or both of you over this,” she said in that same quiet, sad, resigned tone. “I’ve promised myself to take the high road and try not to be like that, but I’m only human.”
“I know. I don’t expect you to shut down your emotions. I can’t say I know what you’re going through, because I don’t. I do feel badly that I’m the cause of it.”
“You’re not the cause of it,” she said, setting the sandwich down. “No one’s to blame here. I don’t think he woke up one day and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to choose to be submissive and gay and divorce my wife.’ That’s bullshit. I love him for loving me as many years as he did, and for trying as hard as he did. When we had that conversation two years ago, the night he finally admitted everything to me, he begged me not to leave him. That he wanted to try to see if we could work something out where maybe I could fill that role for him. And I wanted to. I really did. But even then there was this tiny little voice in the back of my head telling me to let him go. To give him his freedom to be who he needed to be.”
She laughed, but it held no humor. “I bitch-slapped that little voice, shoved it away into a mental closet of my own, and locked it in. I was scared. I loved him. I didn’t want to lose him. I was hoping that maybe I could be good enough for him.”
“It’s not that you’re not good enough for him.”
“I know. I didn’t mean it like that.” She still studied her plate, not meeting his gaze. “I guess it’s more I was hoping I could be enough for him. Even though I knew from that night it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. When he asked me a few months ago if he could try dating guys, I knew I had to agree. Not that I thought he’d go behind my back, because I knew he wouldn’t. But it wasn’t fair to him not to let him try it.”
She took a bite of her sandwich, but he didn’t interrupt, sensing she had more to say.
And she did. “I told myself when he asked for permission to go up to St. Pete for the weekend that I needed to let go. Detach. That this wasn’t going away, it wasn’t just some fad. It wasn’t fair to him to try to guilt him into staying just so I didn’t hurt. That would only equal two hurting, unhappy people. I knew if I found Scott and loved him as much as I did, maybe I’d be able to find someone else who’d love me more if I started looking.”
“Have you?”
“I can’t bring myself to even think about that right now. I need to take care of me first. I don’t want to make a mistake and jump into something and realize later it was another bad decision.”
“He really does love you. You didn’t make a bad decision by marrying him. This is tearing him up inside, hurting you like this.”
“I know. That’s another reason I know I have to let him go. Because he’s not being an asshole about this. I know he could have snuck around behind my back, or simply came home one day and announced his news and left without a look back. But he didn’t. I know that means he loves me. He wasn’t just using me, trying to make me his beard or something.”