“What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t look like it’? You look fine to me.”
Wanda actually snorted her laugh. “Come on, you have to admit that I’m a little curvy. Before I had my kidney transplant, I was as small as Fern. But themedication caused me to gain weight. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to lose it.”
“But it keeps you alive, right?”
“Not actually alive per se, but it helps my body not to reject the donor's kidney.”
“So what? You have to take that medication for the rest of your life?”
“Yes. But at least it keeps me alive, as you said.”
“Well, I think you look great.”
Wanda snorted a laugh again and covered her face with her napkin as she laughed. “I Googled you, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He frowned at her.
“I saw pictures of you with several different women. All of them looked like runway models. Most of the pictures I saw are you with a tall, long-legged blonde with green eyes.”
“Amber, my ex-fiancée. And believe you me, she wasn’t any prize.”
“So, why did you ask her to marry you?”
He looked embarrassed, but she kept silent until he sighed and looked at her. “She looked good on paper.”
“Excuse me?” Wanda laughed. “Oh, let me guess. You did a list of pros and cons.”
“Yes,” he answered tersely.
“So how did that work for you?”
“Not very good. The day we went to apply for our marriage license, I found out about us, and she threw her ring back at me and told me not to come home that night. I went back to the office and my partner, business partner.” He grinned when he clarified. “Sean asked what was wrong. I told him the engagement wasoff and he asked if she finally came clean about the affair she’d been having. I never had the chance to say that it was my fault that I was already married. He showed me a file he had on Amber with pictures with different men.
“I immediately went to my house, the one she told me not to return to and kicked her out. Her parents were there, and they tried to have me removed, but when I showed her father the pictures, he only looked at her and said he thought she’d broken it off with one of the guys. He apologized to me and helped his daughter pack. The next day I left and went to my parents, asked them about our marriage license and the rest is history.
“Now I’m back here because the courts asked us to be there.”
“Have you seen her since you went back?”
“No. I’ve been working like fourteen to sixteen hours a day. My business has really taken off. Sean and I are thinking of hiring a couple more people to help. It’s over between Amber and me. I’ll tell you what I told her father, when I found out she cheated on me before we were married, what’s to stop her after the wedding? She broke my trust, and once that’s gone, there’s no way to get it back. At least that’s how I think. I’d never be able to trust her again, I’d always be looking into what she said to see if it was lies, or the truth.” He shook his head as he looked directly at Wanda. “Another thought I had, was if she cheated now, how could I ever trust her if we started a family. I would always wonder whether it was mine or not.” He shrugged when he saw her expression.
“Wow.” Wanda didn’t know what else to say.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I’ve seen your work in your shop. Do you have anyone helping you?”
“Not with the actual pottery, I make that all myself. I have an assistant, but I’ve never met her.” She held up her hand to ward him off. “I’m a private person. It’s not that I don’t like people, but I’m not a people person if that makes any sense.”
“Not really,” Christopher said, and he told her to hold that thought when he went up to get another plate of food. When he came back, he grinned. “Continue.”
“Remember when we both lived in California?” She paused until he nodded. “It seemed like I was a very personable person back then. Then I got sick, and the only friends I had were other sick kids in the hospital. After I got better and went into remission, when we moved to Oregon, we lived in the country, and there weren’t very many neighbors close by. Not like when we lived in California.” She paused and took several bites of her salad and several sips of her drink. Then she continued.
“When I got sick again, I was in the hospital again, surrounded by sick kids. Because I was only thirteen when I was admitted, I still had to go to the Ped’s ward. Again, I was surrounded by sick kids that didn’t make it or went home. My fifteenth birthday was spent in the OR for eighteen hours getting a new kidney. By the time I went back to school all the friends I’d had didn’t know how to act around me. Not only had I been gone for over a year, but I had had a major operation and kids that age didn’t know how to react. Was it cool that I had the operation, or was it horrifying that I had anoperation. There was no in-between with these kids. Also, I’d gained sixty pounds.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
