It was seven a.m. before Mary Kate awoke. Her only interruption had come at six the night before, when Bobby had called to see if she wanted to get dinner. Sleep was more important than food, she had told him, but they firmed up plans to see each other tonight. She had all day to practice what to say.
Food was a priority now. Too bad she hadn’t thought to shop for breakfast bars or oatmeal before leaving. No milk, no eggs, no bread. The freezer held Popsicles and two pounds of hamburger. Hitting the drive-thru would require getting dressed, something not on her immediate agenda. She scanned the cabinets again, reluctantly settling on a can of fruit cocktail.
Her bags were stacked beside the door, untouched from when she had dropped them. Practically everything she owned was dirty. She began the tedious task of separating things into small piles, and started the first load in her compact washer. It would take all day to get through this, but she had the time.
The urge to talk with Addison was overpowering, even at the risk of waking her, and she pressed the call button on her cell phone. If only she could wake her with a kiss. “How soon can you get here?”
“Mary Kate?”
“Who else would be asking you that?”
“I listened to your message fifty times. I think I broke my phone.”
She could hear the smile in Addison’s voice. “I can leave another one if you want, but I’d rather tell you in person.”
Addison said that she had come home to find a Contract Pending sign in her yard, and a message from her father saying she had sixty days to make the move to London. “I’m not going to do it, Mary Kate. I’m not going to London. It’s time we both took charge of our lives.”
“What about your job?”
“I’d rather wait tables in Homestead. Or hell, in Mooresville, Georgia.”
“You might have some competition for that job. I can’t imagine they’ll let me teach any more once they find out I have a girlfriend.”
“Did you tell Bobby?”
“Not yet. I’ll talk to him tonight. But I talked to my mom a little, and it’s not going to be as bad as I thought. Of course, I haven’t told her about you yet.”
“Just don’t tell her I laughed at you when you fell in the water.”
Mary Kate couldn’t believe how close she had come to throwing this away. “I love you, Addison.”
“I love you too.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I guess I have to find a job somewhere in the States. I had a couple of interesting bites from the stuff I sent out. I need to call them today and set something up.”
“In Miami?”
“I’m not sure. With these big institutions, their openings could be anywhere. I just have to be flexible and remember that anything is better than London. Besides, I like adventure. How about you?”
The way they were talking, Mary Kate was actually starting to believe they could work things out. But there were still obstacles to overcome. “I don’t know if I can get out of my contract this year. It’s awfully late to be giving notice. They might not be able to find somebody else to take my class.”
“We’ll work it out, Mary Kate. We don’t have to be together to build on this, at least not right now. Just knowing how you feel is enough for now.”
“How I feel is that I’m in love with you.”
“That’s all I need.”
Her spirit buoyed by the call, Mary Kate attacked her housework with new vigor. By mid-afternoon, her laundry was done, her apartment aired out and her pantry and refrigerator restocked. Then she took a leisurely bath, talking to the soap dish as if it were Bobby. No matter what his objections, she would heed her mother’s advice and keep her reasons free of anything that might hurt his feelings. If life worked out the way she wanted, he would find out about Addison eventually and put it all together. For now, she would skip those details and lay the blame for their demise squarely on her own shoulders.
After a quick dinner, she drove over to Bobby’s. They hadn’t set a time to meet, but he watched the six o’clock news every night, so she timed her arrival at seven. He met her at the door without a word, leaving her to close it when she stepped inside.
The instant she entered the apartment, she knew something was wrong. The cheerful, accommodating demeanor that sometimes drove her to distraction was nowhere to be found. In its place was a stern formality, much like the one she had seen on those few occasions when he disciplined a student who had misbehaved.
“Is everything okay, Bobby?”
“You wanted to talk. That’s why you’re here.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and rested his hip on the credenza. It was intimidating to see him this way, coiled like a snake set to strike.
Her mind raced to find an explanation for his obvious anger. She had never seen him like this. He had been fine yesterday when she left the house, and again on the phone last night. What could have happened? Had he talked to her mother?
“You know, when you dropped me off at the airport, you asked me to do some thinking while I was gone…thinking about us.” She hated the way her voice shook. “I did, and I think we should break up.”
She waited for his response, but got only a dark stare.
“I haven’t meant to lead you on these last few months. I honestly thought it was all going to work out, but now I realize we don’t really want the same things.”
This was getting ridiculous. He obviously had something to say, but wanted her to drag it out of him. That was a game she didn’t want to play.
Looking at her with obvious contempt, he reached inside the top drawer of the credenza. She felt the blood drain from her face as she saw what was in his hand—her camera.
“Who is she, Mary Kate?”
“Give me that. You had no right to look at my pictures.” She lunged to grab it, but he pulled it out of her reach.
“I should have listened to Corey when he told me what people said about you. Now I understand completely why you didn’t want me to come to Africa. You two were planning a little rendezvous.”
“That’s not true. She was one of the people in our group. I didn’t even know her until—”
“Ninety-five pictures, Mary Kate. Ninety-five out of a hundred and twelve. If I hadn’t seen some zebras in the background, I wouldn’t even know you’d been to Africa.”
In her mind, she inventoried all of the photos she had taken. Most of them were inside the safari vehicle, either candid shots of Addison watching the scenery, or staged as she mugged with silly faces. None were risqué or suggested more than a friendship. As calmly as she could, she explained herself. “Addison had a better camera than mine. We took all the pictures with her camera and she promised to send them to me. I took those of her just playing around.”
His face reddened and he stood up as if to approach her, an apology already on his lips.
“The tour company paired us up for the safari.” She swallowed hard. “And we fell in love with each other.”
He stopped in his tracks.
“I wasn’t going to tell you, because she didn’t have anything to do with you and me. I made up my mind on the way over there that I was going to break up with you when I got back. I even sent Deb an e-mail as soon as I got there. You can ask her if you want.”
Clearly anguished, he ran his hands through his hair and turned away, slumping into a chair in the living room.
“I didn’t know, Bobby. I thought I was…I just thought it was something I could choose.”
“Of course you can choose,” he said tersely. “You chose to have relations with me, didn’t you?”
“I thought I wanted a husband and kids like everyone else, but I don’t. I’ve had these feelings all my life, wanting more from my girlfriends, but afraid to even think about it.”
“You should have been,” he muttered. “It’s perverted.”
She bit her tongue to keep from snapping back. Bobby wasn’t spouting things just to hurt her. He believed what he was saying, and nothing she could say would change his mind. “I don’t expect you to understand. But under the circumstances, I’d like you to see if you can get me out of my contract for this year, or at least get me a transfer over to Oak Hill.”
“You’ll be lucky to keep your job at all, Mary Kate. This is going to be a big mess, and I don’t really care.”
“Would you like that, Bobby? Would you like to tell everybody so they’ll all think I’m trash?”
His jaw twitched with anger.
“Look, I don’t expect you to feel good about anything right now. But think about what’s best for everybody. This is nobody else’s business. You don’t need to hurt my mom and dad, or Carol Lee. They’ve always been nice to you, and they’re going to have a hard enough time as it is.”
Appealing to his sense of kindness toward others seemed to be having the desired effect. He finally sighed in resignation. “I just don’t understand it, Mary Kate. I thought we were good together.”
“I thought we were too, most of the time. But there was always something missing for me, and I didn’t know what it was. That’s why I wouldn’t take the ring. I kept waiting for it to fix itself, and it never did.” She could almost hear her mother sitting on her shoulder and whispering what she ought to say next. “I should have figured it out sooner. Something had to be wrong if I couldn’t make it with a guy as good as you.”
He looked at her with new interest.
“Seriously, Bobby. I knew how lucky I was to have you for a boyfriend. Everybody said so. You’re smart, you’re as sweet as they come and you’re the handsomest guy in Hurston County.” She definitely had his attention now. “There’s only one thing that could have kept me from falling in love with you forever, and that was not being attracted to men. If a woman doesn’t like a porterhouse steak like you, don’t bother trying to give her a plain old sirloin.” She couldn’t believe she had actually said that.
Bobby, though, seemed to grasp the analogy. “I really don’t want anybody to know about this, Mary Kate.”
“I don’t plan on taking out an ad in the paper.” Nor did she plan to sneak around. “People will probably figure it out eventually, but you’ll be married with nine kids by then.”
“I don’t know if I can get another special ed teacher. We don’t get many of those applications.”
Mary Kate sat on the ottoman and leaned forward on her knees. “I’ll honor my contract if you need me to. But I hope we can find a way to be friends through this. If we’re not, it’s going to make all the other teachers uncomfortable.”
“Fine.”
She patted his knee and stood. “I’m really sorry.”
Getting no more response, she collected her camera and headed for home.