As for me, I’ve been a knucklehead too many times. I won’t fall into the flash-over-substance trap again. With Everly, I have no fear that I have.
Liar. That’s the real reason you haven’t told her.
Okay…maybe.
What if I choose her because she’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met…and find out later the reciprocal isn’t the reason she choseme?
I snort, pick up the balled wrapper, and launch it for a three-pointer toward the trash can I set in place across the room for this precise purpose. It bounces off the rim. I track its ricochet while Cliff’s knowing look stays stuck on me like high-grade adhesive.
He groans. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He palms the hard hat hanging on his knee.
Talk about grime under the fingernails.
“Come on, man. If you can’t tell the difference between either of those good-for-nothing women and cute little Miss Everly, then I don’t know whether to start praying or go ahead and start heaping dirt on you.”
I scowl. “First, you don’t pray. Second, we got bulldozers and backhoes aplenty out there, dude. You start being nasty like this and I won’t have any trouble throwing dirt on your cold soul.”
His older eyes bug just before he throws his head back and guffaws like he’s on a night out at a comedy club.
Glaring, I tap my pen. “Speaking of ladies, looks like Marlene has worked her magic on you.” I swear Cliff went without smiling for a full year, maybe even two, after Cheryl died. And laughter? Forget about it.
His slow wink is loaded with suggestion. “Magicis the right word. You should give it a try sometime, kid.”
Shoot. Don’t need inuendo to raise my temperature when thinking about Everly. My belief system, particularly my moral compass where women are concerned, is something Cliff accepts but doesn’t comprehend. In moments of doubt, I too wonder sometimes why I put myself through the suffering I do.
“Then again, you been holding out this long. Guess you might as well wait ’til the ring’s on her finger. Marlene says Everly’s the type to go for that kind of thing.”
On the subject of Everly, he’s telling me what I already know. Knew it within minutes of meeting her. Okay, maybe a day or two, since our introduction was about not paying bills and losers like Mike. As for prayer…
I do my best to look deeper than Cliff’s words and the expression on his face, an expression that’s shifted and not entirely familiar despite the many years of our acquaintance. Both the years he’d tell me dumb knock-knock jokes when I visited jobsites as a kid and the years I learned at his side how to do my job.
“You’re off on the praying part, by the way.” He drums his fingers on his jeans.
“Do tell.” The chair squawks as I rock back and cross my booted ankle onto my knee. He looks uncomfortable, but him being on the hotseat is preferable to me burning my backside on it.
Not very altruistic of me, I guess. Especially not when Cliff is scratching around the edges of faith. I’ve prayed for him for years. “What’s up, man?”
It’s his turn to stare blankly at the good for nothing window. He shrugs. “Been a rough couple a years, you know?”
I do. Cheryl was his person. With a faith foundation thrown in, theirs was the kind of marriage I aspire to.
“With her gone, things got pretty dark for a while. Didn’t really want to keep going.”
I sensed that for a time and prayed all the harder. “But you didn’t do anything about it…”
He slowly shakes his head. “I was ready to check out one night, but instead…” he tugs his gaze from the window and looks at me, “I prayed.”
The desk chair creaks with my forward motion. I clasp my hands on the desk. “You’ve never mentioned this.”
Cliff snorts. “Wasn’t any of your business.”
I chuckle. True enough.
He strokes his hand over the silvery strands of his beard. “I mentioned kind of offhand to Marlene I’d thought about trying a church some, and you know what that crazy woman said?”
“What’s that?”
“‘Let’s go’. Said she’d been thinking the same thing for a while. The lady’s been done wrong by more than one loser.”
