Heavens to Betsy (31 page)

“Look, Betz, we don’t have to do this—”

“Yes, we do,” I interject before he can give me the out I’m scared enough to take. “We have to talk about this.” I sound more like I’m trying to convince myself than him.

For a long moment neither of us says anything. And I wish desperately that it had never happened. That he’d never accidentally brushed my leg that night at the movies. That I’d chosen a different seminary in the first place. But you can’t go backward. Only forward. I’m beginning to learn that, and I’m hoping to live it.

At that moment there’s a sharp crack beneath the trapdoor.

“What was that?” David asks.

“Um… nothing.”

“Betz?”

“Okay, it was LaRonda locking us in the steeple.”

David rubs his closed eyelids with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, like my freshman English teacher used to do when I tried to diagram a compound-complex sentence. “Why is LaRonda locking us in the steeple?”

“Hey, David!” LaRonda calls from beneath our feet.

“Hey, LaRonda,” he answers, but without the merriment she has in her voice. “Are you planning on coming back anytime soon?”

“About half an hour,” her muffled voice replies. “Unless you want me to wait longer.”

David looks at his watch. “No. I have to meet with the building committee at six.”

“Okay,” LaRonda says, and then I hear her climbing back down
the ladder. It’s quiet in the steeple except for the gentle sounds of the birds perched in the rafters above our heads.

David looks me squarely in the eye. “You have something to tell me?”

He’s clenching and unclenching his fists again. I hope that means he’s anxious, not angry. I hope he wants to hear the words I’m about to say, because if he doesn’t, I may forgo the ladder and jump to my ignominious death.

“You were right.” That’s a good beginning, because men always like it when women admit they’re wrong. “I shouldn’t have run away on Saturday night, but…” I lose my nerve for a moment. Even with my newfound resolve, I still find it difficult to overcome eight years of not telling David how I feel.

David takes a step toward me. “I didn’t handle it very well myself.”

“Look, David, the thing is—”

“The thing is what?”

“Give me a second, will ya? Sheesh.” I wipe my damp palms on my delicate pink slip-dress before I can stop myself. I look longingly at the trapdoor. David’s eyes follow my gaze.

“No more outs, Betz.”

I sigh. “Yeah. I know.”

David moves another step closer, which does not help my nerves in the least.

“Look,” he says, “if this is all about some early midlife crisis, just say so. I know you think I’m ‘safe,’ and maybe you just needed the nearest available guy for whatever dramas got you in its throes. I can’t figure out whether it’s the job or the makeover or what, but you have to deal, Betz.”

“Then what in heavens name would you call it?”

Okay, now I’m angry. He thinks this is all some hormonally-induced drama?

“There is no drama,” I screech, which kind of undercuts the point I’m trying to make. “You want to know what’s going on? Okay, Mr. Smarty-Pants, here’s what’s going on. I love you, okay? I’ve loved you from the moment I tripped over your humongous feet at divinity-school orientation. I’ve loved you while you were engaged to Ms. Too-Good-To-Be-True What’s-Her-Name. I’ve loved you for the past five years when we haven’t even been in the same town. And now I still love you, and I kissed you, and everything is ruined.”

I undermine the dramatic effect of this passionate declaration by bursting into loud sobs.

Now, this is the point at which he’s supposed to sweep me into his arms, wipe away my tears, and declare his undying love for me.

Only, he’s not doing any declaring. Or any sweeping, for that matter. Instead, he’s looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

“And you were planning on telling me this information when? After we’d moved into adjoining garden homes in the retirement center?”

I realize that David is not flattered by my declaration. Believe it or not, he looks angry.

Okay, that’s not what I was expecting.

“You’re mad at me?” My question comes out with a fair amount of incredulity and frustration.

David puts both hands on his hips like a den mother about to scold a troop of Cub Scouts. “You’ve felt this way for eight years and never said anything?”

“You were humiliated to have feelings for me?”

Honestly, sometimes men can be as thick as planks. “No, David. I wasn’t embarrassed to have feelings for you. I’m just not a glutton for public humiliation.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, I couldn’t very well put the moves on you when you were engaged, now, could I?”

“But you sat there, all those times in the student pub, and told me how to fix my relationship with what’s-her-name.”

No single woman would blame me for removing one of my shoes and stabbing him through the heart with the three-inch spike heel. But since I only paid fifteen dollars for them, I doubt they’d penetrate the chest cavity.

“I tried to be your friend,” I say.

“But you didn’t tell me you wanted anything more.”

“I think you’re being a little unfair.”

“You could have said something after Jennifer and I broke up.”

“It was graduation week. All of our parents were in town, and then before I knew it, we’d moved to different cities.”

“We both had phones.” David’s not cutting me any slack.

“I don’t think it’s something you confess over the phone.”

“You were afraid.”

“Of course I was afraid!”

“Of me?”

“Of rejection.”

“Yeah, I can tell you have a high opinion of my ability to handle women.”

Heavens to
me
, it’s the truth. It wasn’t about David at all. All along it was about me.

“Then I’m confused,” he says. “What’s going on now? Is this what Saturday night was about? Some sort of revenge for my not reading your mind all these years?”

Okay, I’m not taking all the blame for this mess. Plus, he’s sounding surprisingly defensive. “What about you, David?” I ask, turning the tables on him. “How do you feel about me?”

“Right now?”

“Right now in general. Not the right-now-because-I’ve-locked-you-in-the-steeple.”

And then for a long moment he’s quiet. Aha! So it’s not so easy when the shoe is on the other foot, is it, big boy?

“Right now, in general, I pretty much adore you, they way I’ve adored you since the first day I met you. I just didn’t realize it until that night at the movies.”

I look at him long and hard because I don’t know how to define
adore
here. Not enough context clues.

“Adore as in cute-little-fluffy-bunny kind of adore, or adore as in worship-like-a-goddess?”

His cheeks go bright red, and mine do too.

“The second thing,” he growls.

“The second thing?” I stomp over to him, heedless of the pain my cheap shoes cause, and stab him in the chest with my finger. “What do you mean ‘the second thing’? How long has it been ‘the second
thing’? Are you kidding me? Because I swear, David Swenson, if you are kidding—”

I can’t finish the sentence because David covers my lips with his.

And I was right. He doesn’t need the lip balm.

“Adore and worship? That’s a bit cliché, isn’t it?” I can’t resist the urge to twist the knife a little bit. He deserves it, the rat, if he’s had feelings for me and never said a word. And then made me feel like a coward for not spilling my own guts.

A pained expression crosses his face. “I’m never going to hear the end of this, am I?”

“No.” But I may let him off the hook for now, since I’m feeling quite at home in his arms, and I’m not ready to stand on my own two feet again just yet.

Actually, I’m still a little miffed that David left me to swing in the wind by myself. “So all this railing at my cowardice was projection?”

“Pretty much.” He looks past my shoulder and around the steeple platform. “Isn’t there anyplace to sit down up here?”

“Not that isn’t covered in dirt or bird droppings.”

Over my shoulder, David looks at his watch. “We have eight minutes until LaRonda comes back.”

I smile with what I hope is a hint of seduction. “We could practice our sermons on each other.”

My brilliant plan for LaRonda to lock us in the steeple has worked very well. There’s only one hitch. LaRonda forgets to come back.

As David and I watch the sun set over Nashville, he fumes and I freeze. He’s already missed the building-committee meeting. What’s worse, he’s in danger of missing
The West Wing.

He’s been holding my hand, but at some point, as the sun sinks farther below the horizon, his fingers fall from mine. The outdoor lights on the steeple provide us with enough light to see by.

“We’re going to have to find a way out of here,” he mutters, as if I didn’t know.

“Well, if you’d remember to charge your cell phone, we could call for help.” I say this with minimal inflection, but he bristles and shoots me a look that isn’t hard to interpret.

“If you hadn’t arranged for us to be locked in here, we wouldn’t need my cell phone.”

A classic chicken-or-the-egg situation all around.

“At least being locked in here made us open up,” I offer helpfully.

His expression softens, his eyes going gooey chocolate, and he takes my hand again. “Yeah. That’s worth missing a building-committee meeting.”

I snort. “A root canal is worth missing a building-committee meeting for. Is it worth missing
The West Wing?
”

“Hey!” he protests, but he’s smiling. “Guess I should remember to set my VCR if you’re going to be locking me up in steeples.”

“It’s sad that I’m the one bringing organizational ability to this relationship.”

“Yeah, well, I still get to handle all the power tools.” He might as well flex his biceps to prove his point.

“No problem.” I have better things to do with my time than roam the aisles of Home Depot. Like pull my hair out by the roots.

David gives me a sidelong look. “I hope this part doesn’t change.”

“Which part?”

“The mutual torment and disrespect.”

I smile. “No way. That’s the fun part.”

David leans toward me. “I thought this was the fun part,” and he kisses me again.

Okay, I enjoy it for a moment, but then I shove him away. “We need a plan.”

He moves toward me again. “I like this plan—”