The Ones That Got Away

When I attended high school in Macon, Georgia I quickly made a new friend. She was bright, vivacious and had a great sense of humor. She had jet black, curly hair, blue eyes lit with mischief and an infectious smile. The best way to describe her was “petite voluptuous”. No matter where we went together, she was the life of the party and people, (especially guys), seemed drawn to her.

If we went to the mall on a Saturday night, she was the one everyone naturally flocked to. Her southern accent was perfect and everything about her was fun. She reminded me a lot of Delta Burke when she was young, only prettier. Somehow though, it was really hard to stay out of trouble when she was around.

My parents and her parents were completely different, and our living dynamic wasn’t similar either. Even so, she was my best friend and I loved her like a sister. We were thick as thieves throughout our junior year.

She’d try to get cute guys to sit next to her when we went out to eat by saying things to them like:

“You can sit here if you want. I won’t bite... unless you want me to.” Then she’d bat those long eye lashes and they’d come sit with us. As far back as I can remember, she was always getting us into things... and I was trying to get us out.

She talked a lot about having a boyfriend, but I didn’t remember ever meeting him at the time. Besides, she was always flirting so I didn’t think he was real for a long time. It turns out I had met him; I just didn’t realize he was her boyfriend at the time.

For me, boyfriends were important. They were the people you relied on to be with you when your friends wouldn’t. They were the people who kind of cared about you like your family did, but without all the pranking. So, it wasn’t nice to cheat on them, in my opinion.

Having said that, I guess if you’re casually dating a couple of guys at the same time, that’s different and they’re likely doing the same thing.

To Sasha, boyfriends were easy to come by, so they all kind of got treated like casual dates whether they liked it or not. Lucas was different, but not as different as he deserved to be.

I remember the first time I saw him, I thought to myself how lucky she was. He had soft brown, feathery hair, which was the style back then, and he was very quiet, almost stoic, it seemed to me. He had soft bluish eyes that, depending on the light, seemed almost grey behind his glasses and he had great skin. Most of the guys I knew had zit problems but he didn’t seem to.

I didn’t get to know him very well, unfortunately, at least not while we were in school.

The way this whole "one that got away" thing started was, my best friend and I wanted to go on a senior trip together.

My parents couldn’t afford to send me on the senior trip when high school ended, so I saved up a little money, (nowhere near enough), and planned to go to Tybee Island, near Savannah, because it was only a couple of hours away and it’s the place I always loved to be as a kid. My friend and I set out together on this trip with the understanding that we were to go in half and half to afford it.

We arrived in Savannah late, and once I had paid for our seedy little room, we walked down to the beach as night was beginning to fall. I suddenly realized I wasn’t feeling very well, but she told me not to worry. We wouldn’t be long. It was our first night as "real adults", and we should at least try to find something fun to do. Not wanting to spoil it, I went with her.

There were a bunch of middle-aged guys on motorcycles sitting on their bikes and walking around in a parking lot overlooking the ocean. They all had beer and were drinking and talking loudly when we walked by.

I found myself too bleary eyed and overtaken by fever to worry much about talking to anyone just then, but when they started whistling at us, Sasha smiled and waved and they asked us to join them. I told her no, but she went anyway. I went with her, hoping to keep her out of trouble, and it wasn’t the first time I had tried to do that in similar situations.

As we approached, one of the guys reached into a cooler and brought out a couple of cans of beer. My friend took hers and handed one to me. I told her “no thanks” and tried to wave it off, but she rolled her eyes at me.

“Your parents won’t know, Roni. We’re grownups now. We can do whatever we want.”

I was still "shooing" the beer away because I didn’t feel well. It sucks to be at the beach on a Friday night right after school’s over for the last time, and to be so sick you can’t even enjoy a beer.

“Okay.” She smiled, handing it back to the handsome guy that handed it to her. “I guess she’s going to be a wet blanket.

Speaking of which, I’m cold.”

The biker, who looked more like a young businessman than a Hell’s Angel or anything, put his arm out and she slipped under it, chugging his beer.

A slightly older guy than the one my friend was snuggling with, someone more clean-cut and “brotherly” to my eyes asked me if I was ok. I nodded then he asked:

“What brings you girls to the beach this late?”

“We graduated this morning.” I told him. Everyone cheered, raised their beers, and made a ruckus, which I enjoyed, even though the noise hurt my ears. I could feel the heat in my body beginning to escalate, and my eyes felt hot. My throat suddenly went sore, and I thought I would swoon, when the guy from before put his hand on my back to keep me stable.

“You don’t look to me like you feel well.” He remarked.

“I don’t. I’m freezing.” I said, teeth chattering. “I think I’m gonna go back to the hotel. Hey?” I turned to ask my friend something but she wasn’t there.

“Oh man.” I groaned. “Her mom’s going to kill us!”

“Don’t worry about that.” The guy said. “You don’t need to be walking back to that hotel alone. Let me drive you.”

"No, thank you." I replied meekly. "I think I can walk it from here." I began to faint and he stood me upright.

"Nonsense." He said. "Come on. Let's get you back to the hotel." We bantered a bit, but once I realized there really wasn't any way I was going to make it back on my own, I felt I had no choice but to to accept his help.

He managed to hold onto me long enough that I could climb onto his motorcycle and somehow he figured out how to get on in front of me without knocking me over. The only thing I remember about the ride was trying not to throw up all over him.

Once we reached our destination, he helped me off, threw one of my arms over his shoulder and walked me to the room. Once we managed to get the key into the slot and wiggle the door open, he helped me to the bed, where he turned the covers down, then slowly let me slip out of his arms onto the bedside.

"Listen, you need to lie down and rest. I'm going to run down to the drugstore and get you some medicine."

"No! Don't!" I interjected. "My friend has most of the money on her and I don't enough on me to afford that!"

Winking, he said: "My treat." and with that, he was out the door.

I don't know how long he was gone because I passed out. One flip-flop had fallen off the bed and I'm pretty sure my mouth was open because I had drooled on the pillow by the time he got back. He gently shook my shoulder to wake me.

"Here." He said. "Sit up."

I sat up, and there was a bottle of deep green liquid Formula 44 or something along those lines in front of me. I took a deep sip from the magic little cup in his hand, then laid back on the bed again. I was cold, but too tired to reach down for the covers. The nice man, who I think said his name was Jesse, took off the other flip flop, and covered me up with the covers. I was drifting in and out of consciousness as he stood there swooping the hair from my brow like my mother did when I was unwell, but I will always remember hearing him say that everything would be okay, and that he would stay with me until I was better.

When I woke up the next morning, he was still asleep in the chair next to my bed. He had a short business cut hair style, which was a soft shade of light brown. He was wearing a plain black T-shirt and jeans and had taken off his motorcycle boots. He had a black leather jacket, which he had actually hung up on the hanger that came with the room, and had a very faint, almost non-existent snore. I didn't know why he was helping me, but I was certainly grateful.

My fever had broken, but I was still very sick. My body was rapt with aches and pains, my eyes were still heavy and I didn't want to move. At least the stomach pain was gone and in its place, dwelled a ravenous hunger.

The man stirred in his sleep for a minute, then his eyes slowly began to open. He stretched and yawned, then stood up and asked me how I was feeling. We talked for a few minutes and once he established that I was hungry, he went out to get us some breakfast.

Once again, I was almost instantly asleep, so I have no idea how long he was gone. But, when he returned, he had a bag with McDonald’s breakfast in it. I nibbled, but still couldn’t eat much without it hurting. After a while, I decided to try to talk again, even though my voice was faint and my throat was extremely sore.

“Thank you again. I thought for sure my friend would have come back last night." I squeaked. "I hope she’s ok. I don’t know what I’m going to do if anything happens to her.”

“She looked to me like she knew what she was getting into.” He answered.

“Well anyway, thank you for your help. I don’t have a lot of money, but I can give you what I have to put toward the food and medicine and everything. We should still be able to get home with what she has.”

“Don’t you worry about that now.” He replied standing up and putting the back of his hand on my brow. “Your fever broke, so I’m going to go.”

“Why… were you so nice to me?” I asked, as he was slipping on his boots.

“I have two little girls with my ex-wife, that she won't allow me to see any more." He stood up, smiled and slipped his jacket on. "I’d like to think that someday if they were ever sick or in need of help, and if I couldn’t be there to help them, someone else would do as I have done.” He kissed me on the cheek, told me to get well and was out the door.

I spent the rest of the day in bed, miserable. My friend did make it back the following morning, five minutes before it was time to leave and she had spent what money she brought with her so it’s a good thing that guy didn’t take my offer.

I tried calling my parents for more cash because I had been relying on my friend's half to help me afford the trip home, but they yelled at me and didn’t have the money.

I asked my friend to call her mother and have her wire her some money for gas so we could get home but she refused. There was a big fight, and our friendship didn’t really survive.

But what did survive, was the feeling of being cared for by someone else, in the way I had always wanted to be cared for: someone brave, someone kind, and gallant. Lucas had been like that for my friend, and she had deliberately let all of that go.

My dad moved for his job to Brunswick, Georgia a couple of months later and I found myself an hour south of Savannah, and happy as a lark.

I spent the next two years painting houses to get the money to pay for college, and lived at home with my parents. It was a good life for me. My mom and dad had band practice every weekend and the house was always alive with people and merriment.

I dated like a merry-go-round when I wasn’t hanging out with my friends at the arcade, but then I ran into Lucas again. When we first got together, he asked me a lot of questions about Sasha. I couldn’t answer a lot of them because we hadn’t talked much since that senior trip, and I was still upset with her for flirting all over the place with other boys when she'd had Lucas.

He was tall and strong. He had a manly jaw line and those beautiful eyes. He was always smiling and had tremendous wit, but more importantly, he had loved my friend completely and wanted to take care of her.

Seeing him again brought back a lot of memories, not the least of which was how much he was in love with someone from our past. At first, I kind of kept the idea of dating him out of my mind, but he did finally ask, and I’m so glad I said yes.

Nearly every minute we spent together I felt like he was someone I could spend the rest of my life with. Then something about the old days and his spurned feelings for Sasha would come up, and once again, I felt as though he were just settling for me. I couldn't help enjoying the time we spent together, though. We took long moonlit walks on the beach and talked for hours. We spent countless hours together over the weeks following our first date, and I had begun to look forward to being with him.

Then one night, we were out driving, and my cat was dead on the road. I had been looking for her earlier before we set out and seeing her like that, I went to pieces. Lucas pulled over and after comforting me, got out and opened his trunk. He had some gloves back there, put them on, and very delicately picked my cat up. He wrapped her in a towel he had in his trunk and we took her home. I'd never had anyone other than the guy in that hotel do such a kind thing for me before. It meant the world to me at the time and my heart was so swollen with love for him that night, that words couldn’t even express it.

Here was someone who not only was kind to me when I was hurting, but who handled my dead animal with such care and consideration. Most of the guys I had known wouldn’t have stopped, and most of the ones who might have probably would have heaved her body out of the roadway and that would have been it. There wasn’t anything I could think of that he could ever do wrong from that moment.

I took a “live-in” nanny position for a man who had just moved to Brunswick for his job, with a little boy and a little girl. It was a good fit for me because it got me out of mom and dad’s house and gave me a little freedom. I enjoyed the kids, but more important to me, I got to spend more time with Lucas. The more I saw him, the deeper I fell.

Then somewhere in the middle of all that, things went sideways with my parents, I left the nannying thing, and wound up back at home. Several weeks passed with no call from Lucas and I was heartbroken. I was up early one day thinking I would just call him, but my mom stopped me.

“We don’t call men.” She said. “Remember?”

I thought about how she had said that about “Ox”, and I lost him. But mom assured me that Lucas really cared about me, and she was sure he would call. He never did. A year or so later I was marrying Thing One, and Lucas came to the wedding. I remember thinking he came because my old friend, Sasha, had come, but I was never sure.

Several years later, I connected with Lucas again at a Cracker Barrel where I was meeting my sister and brother and their families for dinner while I was in town. Lucas sat and had his dinner with us, and we all had a great time talking about the old days. Before we left, he pulled me off to the side and wanted to know why I never showed up.

Apparently, I was supposed to meet him out somewhere one night and didn’t show up. I guess I had completely forgotten about it, but he thought I did it to make a point. Believing that I didn’t “like” him anymore, he stopped calling.

Being married to the man I’m with now for so many years, I’m sure that he’s the love of my life, the one I waited for all those years, but sometimes it doesn’t keep you from wondering what might have happened if you just picked up the phone or taken the time to talk.

Lucas and I are friends now, and we chat a lot online when time permits. A certain song comes on now and again and I smile, remembering late night swimming, walks on the forest pier on Jekyll Island, starry beaches and young love full of possibility.

And then… I look at my husband and I am full. I am happy. I am blessed!