“I'm sorry, Carole. Some awful stuff happens to all of us at some point, I guess. Life is about what you do afterward, how many pieces you can fish out of the garbage and glue back together.” He knew there were still some big pieces missing in himself. “You have a lot of guts.”
“So do you. For a kid to lose his whole family at the age you were is a crippling blow. You never totally get over it, but you may get brave enough not to hit the door one day. I hope you do,” she said gently.
“I hope you do too,” he said softly as he looked at her, grateful for the honesty they had shared.
“I'd rather put my money on you.” She smiled at him. “I like the way my life is now. It's simple and easy and uncomplicated.”
“And lonely,” he supplied bluntly as she stopped talking. “Don't tell me it's not. You'd be lying and you know it. I'm lonely too. We all are. If you choose to be alone, you may not get hurt by anyone, but you pay a big price for it. It's a big-ticket item, and you know that. So you may not have any obvious bumps and bruises this way, no fresh scars. But when you go home at night, you hear the same thing I do, silence, and the house is dark. No one asks you how you are, and no one gives a damn. Maybe your friends do, but we both know that's not the same thing.”
“No, it's not,” she said honestly. “But the alternative is scarier than shit.”
“Maybe one day the silence will be scarier yet. It gets to me at times.” Particularly lately. And time wasn't on his side. Or even hers for much longer.
“And then what do you do?” She was curious about that.
“I run away. I go out. I travel. See friends. Go to parties. Take women out. There are lots of ways to fill that void, most of them artificial, and wherever you go in the world, you take yourself, and all your ghosts. I've been there too.” He had never been as honest with anyone in his life, other than his therapist, but he was tired of artifice, and pretending that everything was all right. Sometimes it just wasn't.
“Yeah, I know,” she said softly. “I just work till I drop, and tell myself I owe it to my clients. But it's not always about them. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's about me. And if there's anything left when I go home, I swim or play squash or go to the gym.”
“At least it looks good on you.” He smiled at her. “We're a mess, aren't we? Two commitment phobics having dinner and sharing trade secrets.”
“There are worse things.” She looked at him cautiously then, wondering why he had asked her out. She was no longer sure it was entirely about her plans for the center, and she was right about that. “Let's be friends,” she said gently, wanting to make a deal with him, to set the ground rules early on, and the boundaries that she was so good at. He looked at her for a long, hard time before he answered. This time, he wanted to be honest with her. Last time, when he had invited her to dinner, he hadn't been. But he wanted to be before too late.
“I won't make you that promise,” he said as their equally blue eyes met and held. “I don't break promises, and I'm not sure I can keep that one.”
“I won't go out to dinner with you unless I know we're just friends.”
“Then I guess you'll have to start having lunch with me. I'll bring you a banana or we can meet at Sally's and get spareribs all over our faces. I'm not telling you we can't be friends, or that we won't be. But I like you better than that. Even commitment phobics have romances occasionally, or go out on dates.”
“Is that what this was?” She looked at him, startled. It had never occurred to her when he invited her to dinner. She genuinely thought it was foundation business, but she liked him better than that now, enough to want to be friends.
“I don't know,” he said vaguely, not ready to admit that he had lied to her, or used a ruse to get her to have dinner with him. All was fair in sex and fun, as Adam said. Or something along those lines. This had been fun, and interesting even more than fun, but there was no sex yet, and Charlie guessed there wouldn't be for a long time, if ever. “I'm not sure what it was, other than two intelligent people with similar interests getting to know each other. But next time I'd like it to be a date.”
She sat there miserably for a minute, without answering him, wanting to run away, and then she looked at him with anguish on her face. “I don't date.”
“That was yesterday. This is today. You can figure out tomorrow when it happens, and see what you feel like doing then. You don't have to make any big decisions yet. I'm just talking about dinner, not open-heart surgery,” he said simply. He made sense, even to her.
“And which one of us do you think would be out the door first?”
“I'll toss you for it, but I warn you, I'm not in as good shape as I used to be. I don't sprint quite as fast as I once did. You might get there first.”
“Are you using me to prove your abandonment theory, Charlie? That all women leave you sooner or later? I don't want to be used to confirm your neurotic script,” she said, and he smiled as he listened.
“I'll try not to do that, but I can't promise that either. Remember, just dinner. Not a lifetime commitment.” Not yet at least. He warned himself silently to beware of what he wished for. Stranger things had happened. Although he couldn't imagine anything better than spending time with her, for however long it lasted, and whoever hit the door first.
“If you're looking for the 'right woman,' having dinner with a confirmed commitment phobic should not be high on that list.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind. You don't have to be my therapist, Carole. I have one. Just be my friend.”