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If he knocks you up and leaves you, I’ll help take care of the baby.
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TALKING TO ED at the magazine’s release party was difficult with so many people around and the DJ playing every eighties rock song he had in his cache. So Ed gave me his card, which I promptly lost. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever see him again. He had such a baby face that I wondered about his age. One of the other top singles who knew his family told me he was twenty-five or twenty-six. Despite his cuteness factor, a fifteen-year age difference seemed a lot to digest. The only other time I’d dated a younger guy was back in high school, and our age difference was about one year.
I didn’t have to wonder “would I or wouldn’t I” for long. That next week Ed e-mailed me through St. Louis Magazine, asking me to my first-ever hockey game.
What the heck? I thought, and quickly accepted. It would give me a chance to find out exactly how old he was and to see if we had anything in common. If we couldn’t carry on a conversation, it wouldn’t matter if he was five years younger or fifteen.
Not only did I take my first ride on the MetroLink that night—and witness more than a few bruising hockey fights—but I learned some vital information: Ed was thirty-one, about to turn thirty-two in a couple of months. Even better, he and I had a lot in common, including our wacky sense of humor. I could tell he was generally a quiet guy, but we managed to find endless things to talk about. Oh yeah, and I realized that hockey arenas are incredibly cold, particularly in November. So much for dressing like a fashionista—I nearly froze my tush off!
I didn’t kiss him when he took me home. As attractive as he was, I wasn’t sure if what I felt was true chemistry or a meeting of like minds, but I was anxious to see where things went. I had a good feeling about him, along the lines of “Even if this doesn’t turn into a great love story, I could hang out with this dude now and then.”
In the meantime, like a diligent mystery author, I Googled Ed’s name and found several facts he’d been too modest to share. First, Ed held his doctorate in computer science, which I knew would thrill my mother. She’d always hoped I’d find a doctor, and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t care if he was a doctor of computers rather than people. I also learned that his father was a well-respected professor at Washington University. And, most fun of all, that Ed was the “parent” to a tiger at the St. Louis Zoo. I figured that meant he liked cats, which was a plus since I had two.
Not long after the hockey game, we had our second date, although technically it wasn’t really a date. Instead, Ed attended a bachelor/bachelorette auction at a downtown bar. Lots of local celebrity types were participating along with a handful of the St. Louis Magazine top singles. We were “sold” to the highest bidders in the name of charity, and Ed showed up after being out of town for a few days, pocketing a roll of cash, ready to pay whatever was necessary to “buy” me. I know, I know. Sweet, huh? And it was a great relief when he outbid a creepy guy in a green shirt.
His payoff: I arranged a night out for us, which involved dinner at my favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant and a movie. Despite our table in the restaurant’s basement (albeit a very nice basement), which led us to joking about being near enough to the laundry room to do the linens, and seeing a movie made from the book of an author friend that wasn’t exactly date-appropriate, we had a great time. As at the hockey game, we talked pretty much nonstop (except during the movie). When he took me home, I let him kiss me, and it was a very good kiss. I also blurted out as he was departing, “You’re a really nice guy, Ed Spitznagel.”
He gave me a funny look, and the next day, I got an e-mail that read: “If you ever call me ‘nice’ again, I’ll have to spank you.”
Ha! I thought that was hilarious! And I let him know that being nice was a good thing in my book. I wasn’t one of those women who lusted after bad boys. Boy Scouts were more my style. Finding a guy who said what he meant and kept his promises felt a little like winning the lottery. That chemistry I had wondered about earlier? Oh, it was there in spades. Being with Ed made me giddy in a way I hadn’t been since college.
To top it off, he composed the most wonderful e-mails, warm and clever and always grammatical. His spelling was impeccable, which I found refreshing after receiving too many notes from guys who clearly didn’t use dictionaries or comprehend how punctuation worked. So when I happily told my mom, “Ed even knows how to use a semicolon!” she was ready to book the church.
Since Ed frequently got carded when we ate out—like, nine out of ten times—occasionally the question about our age difference would rear its ugly head. Did it look to the world like I was his mother? That was my main concern! Otherwise, I didn’t care, and I hoped it didn’t bother him either. Still, he did look awfully young for his age, and no matter how fabulous I felt at forty-one, I clearly was the older one of the pair.
One truly uncomfortable moment came while we were out at an Italian restaurant chain, and our waitress said I reminded her of someone she knew, and was I, perhaps, the mother of her eighteen-year-old friend Sasha. “No,” I told her, although I realized I could have been. “I don’t have kids.” What I really wanted to say was Aw, too bad, sweetie. There went your tip.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ed would assure me, and I would agree. But that didn’t mean we didn’t get ribbed about it fairly often.
My real cougar sister was the first to start calling me a cougar, a term I was only familiar with because of tabloid magazine fodder relating to Hollywood actresses like Cher and Demi Moore. “I’m not a cougar,” I insisted. “I’m just an accidental cougar!” Ed had done the chasing, not me. I’d never been fond of animal prints, had never crashed a frat party to pick up a college boy, and I had no desire to laser or Botox my face (or any other part of my anatomy).
Although being called a cougar did have its merits. My editor would soon ask me to consider writing a novel about forty-something women who date younger men (“so long as it isn’t cheesy,” I insisted, and ended up penning The Cougar Club, released in late January of 2010).
As I’d later learn, Ed’s mother was concerned about my cougar-dom, too. I couldn’t hide my age from her as it was there in black and white in the November 2005 issue of St. Louis Magazine. But I hoped that when she had the chance to meet me, she’d see I was hardly a modern-day Mrs. Robinson.
Despite telling myself to take it slow, Ed and I began spending lots of time together. He showed up at my book signings, including one at Big Sleep Books in early December of 2005, where we flirted and held hands, causing the owner of the store, Helen Simpson, to whisper in my mother’s ear, “They’d make such beautiful babies!” I think Helen was as anxious as my mom that I find a good man.
After more dates, book events, and lots of e-mails, I invited Ed to my folks’ house for Christmas Eve dinner. By then, I knew something special was going on. I could hardly write my next mystery for thinking about him. And when I wasn’t thinking about him, he was over at my place or we were out doing something fun, like freezing our butts off at the St. Louis Zoo to see the Wild Lights display that ran throughout the winter holidays.
When he came to pick me up for the meet-the-folks dinner, he was wearing a neon-green and black striped shirt. In the past I’d been rather picky about how my dates dressed. Which is how my mom knew it was true love even before I did. “His shirt was awful, and you didn’t care,” she said to me the next day. I think my mom and dad fell a little in love with Ed that night as well. They could see he was good for me and sharp enough that I’d never get bored. And it inspired visions of grandkids dancing in my mother’s head. “If he knocks you up and leaves you,” she said, “I’ll help take care of the baby.”
I’m not kidding.
Sometime after the New Year, I had the privilege of meeting Ed’s family to celebrate his thirty-second birthday. I remember sitting across from his dad in a booth at the Cheesecake Factory, and I liked Big Ed right away as he laughed at my jokes.
Of course, I worried what Ed’s mom was thinking, though we did a girls’ bathroom break and I got to chitchat with her for a bit. She seemed so down-to-earth and sweet, and I just hoped I was making a good impression. I really wanted her to see how much I cared for her son and not assume I was some older chick taking advantage of him. (Later, she would confess that Ed had told her he was bringing his “better half” to his birthday dinner, to which she’d replied, “Do you know what you’re saying?”)
In early February, I gave Ed a key to condo-sit when I had to leave for a mystery conference in Birmingham. Even after I returned, he never really left, mostly living at my place with me and my cats, Max and Munch. Within a few more weeks, I knew without a doubt that this was the real deal. We had both said, “I love you” already, and I believed it to be true. I even changed my mind about needing a duplex. I didn’t want to separate myself from him. I loved being with Ed, and he gave me the space I needed without having to lock him out. He allowed me to be me, and I let him be him, although I did slowly but surely encourage him to get rid of that neon-green and black striped shirt (among a few other things).
Being an honest-to-a-fault woman who didn’t want to play fast and loose with her heart, I gave him an ultimatum . . . on Valentine’s Day. (Yep, you read that right.) I needed to hear that I was “the one” for him and that he was in this relationship for the long haul. I couldn’t keep falling deeper in love with him if he didn’t feel the same. He left for work that morning with me on the verge of tears (yeah, Happy V-Day, suckers!). I called my mom once he’d headed out and told her what I’d done.
“That’s it. He’s not coming back,” she said point-blank.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ma.
But she was wrong. After work that night, he came home to the condo with an armful of roses. And more importantly, he said, “You’re the one.”
“You have no doubts?”
“None.” He shook his head.
And I could finally breathe.
Every day we were together was the best day of my life. There were times in the past when I’d imagined I was in love; but until Ed, I’d never experienced unconditional love, the kind that deepens and makes you appreciate all the things in your partner that you are not. I couldn’t imagine my world without him in it.
By June of 2006, we were house hunting. We bought a place—actually, the first house we saw, though we did look at others—and moved in together that July. I got caught up in putting our new digs together, supervising painters and electricians, all the while working on a deadline for two books, my fifth series mystery for Avon called Too Pretty to Die and a nonmystery young adult series book for Random House called The Debs. Every day felt exhausting, and I neglected myself in the process, including doing my monthly breast self-exams because “I didn’t have time.”
I know. Horrible excuse.
So when I went to my doctor for an annual physical, and she told me I had a cyst in my left breast, I wasn’t surprised. I’d had cysts before. Only this one wasn’t like any of the others. It ended up being something else entirely, something that would yank the rug right out from under my feet and put my relationship with Ed to the test.