How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Amanda laughed. "Now that one's tempting, but I still don't believe you would be like that."

"Probably true, but it was worth saying that to make you laugh and smile even a little. Seriously, Amanda, it will get better. You will be happy again."

"I hope you're right. I really hate them both right now. Do you know that Katie had the nerve to ask me for John's engagement ring?"

"She's a bitch. We both know that."

"I just sat there in her kitchen in shock. They both just started blurting out the standard bullshit about not intending to hurt me, and that it just happened, and that you can't control who you fall in love with. I just stood up and walked out. Honestly, I still have no idea how I got home alive. I've been walking around in a daze ever since. I just don't know how I could miss all of this shit right under my nose."

"It's pretty easy to get overwhelmed as a new teacher. All that stuff we have to do during March, April and May, standardized tests, finals, parent-teacher conferences. I know I've gone home most nights absolutely exhausted, and I'm experienced. Even after twelve years, I spend a lot of evenings not wanting to do anything, but relax. And, yet, there's always more papers to grade. So, here you are, with too much to do, and not even close to enough time to do it, and your best friend shows up offering to take some of your burden on her shoulders. Why wouldn't you trust her? She's been watching your back for most of your life. There's no question you're going to trust her."

Amanda listened carefully to what he was saying, and she noticeably calmed down. "I do hear what you're saying, but it still hurts a lot. And I don't think I'll ever forgive them, or even myself, for what happened."

"Please don't blame yourself too much in this. Granted, you didn't really go into this the way you should have. The one little bit of silver lining that I can offer to you, is that it sounds like you never really loved him, you just settled for him. But in everything else, you really were the victim. Accept that and move on."

Amanda stood up. "I think I need a break. And I'm starting to get a little hungry. Why don't you start the grill while I freshen up. Point me to the little girls' room."

"Sounds like a plan. Go through the kitchen, down the hall, second door on the right."

Over the next 45 minutes, they managed to work together to make a very nice dinner. They managed to talk only about work, and even that was fairly light.

He offered to get her another beer, but she declined, insisting that two was definitely her limit. He thought he might like another, but didn't want to drink without her, so they both had a glass of tea with dinner.

After dinner, they picked up and did the dishes together. She washed while he dried. Once or twice she splashed water at him. He waited until she turned away from him, not paying attention, and then he snapped the towel at her butt. She jumped and squealed in shock, but she was also laughing, so he knew they were okay.

When they finished, she took him by the hand, and said, "Let's go into the living room. It's your turn to tell me your story." She felt him tense up when she spoke. "It's okay. Remember, you've got a friend here with a shoulder to cry on as much as you need it. I suddenly have a feeling that you've never let it all out. It's time. Please trust me."

Steve didn't speak. He did stop to get another beer out of the fridge, and then he just nodded his head a little as they walked to the living room. He sat on the couch while she sat in a chair across from him.

"Well, our story starts out at about the same point as yours. Becky and I met at the end of our junior year in college. Luckily, both of us were taking summer classes, and had local apartments and jobs, so we didn't take a break like most people. We were able to keep dating all through the summer and the next school year. By Christmas, I asked her to marry me. And, like you, I had my teaching job lined up for the next year. Becky was a gardener. Officially, she was a landscape designer, but in reality, she just loved to play with plants."

"Your yard is all her designs? It's gorgeous."

"Believe it or not, most of the yards in this neighborhood are her designs. She talked most of the neighbors into letting her practice on them. All they had to do was keep up the maintenance."

"Now it makes sense. When we drove up the street, I noticed how connected and peaceful all the yards looked."

"Becky loved her work. And I deeply loved her. We got married a week after we were done with school. We lived in an apartment for a year, and then we found this place, and we settled into living our dream life."

"After a couple of years, we decided to start trying to have kids. We both thought three would be the perfect number."

Amanda excitedly jumped in, "I feel the same way. Three is perfect."

Steve smiled a little at her comment, but then his face took on a more serious expression. "About four months later, Becky suffered her first miscarriage. She wasn't far along. We hadn't even visited the doctor yet. She told us that it was more common than most people realized, but she couldn't see any reason why we shouldn't try again. She also gave us some hope by telling us that a lot of women who miscarry get pregnant again almost immediately."

"Well, we did try again, but it wasn't happening immediately. In fact, we didn't seem to have much luck for the next couple of years. Then, Becky had another miscarriage. We were 29 at the time. We'd been married for six years. We just held each other and cried. There was no blame, just sadness. And I really do think it made us love each other more. We were both trying so hard to make the other one feel loved. We carefully decided to focus on each other for a year or two and then we would try again. After all, we weren't even thirty yet. We thought we had plenty of time."

"On our ninth anniversary, we started actively trying again. Becky just simply went off birth control, and we waited to see what would happen. We didn't track her cycles or anything. We were trying to keep it low key, because we were afraid the stress of it was making it worse."

Seven and a half months later, she missed her period. Because of her earlier miscarriages, we didn't do a pregnancy test. We didn't want to get our hopes up too soon, so we thought we would pretend nothing was happening. After she missed her period again the next month, we decided to do the test."

Steve took a big drink of his beer. "Negative."

Amanda wasn't sure she heard him right. "What?"

"It came up negative. We tried again the next day with a different brand of test. Negative again. We waited a couple of days and then tried yet another brand. Still negative. We were starting to get a little scared. We managed to get in to see her doctor that afternoon. She took some blood, and did a pap smear, and said we might have to do some other tests, but that she'd let us know."

He took another big drink of his beer. "Two days later, the nurse called to tell us that Becky was scheduled for some tests at the hospital. We tried asking what was going on, but the nurse wouldn't tell us. She said the doctor would talk to us soon to let us know what she had discovered."

"A couple of days later, we sat down with not one, but three doctors. They told us that Becky had stage IV cancer."

"What kind?"

"That's the thing. It was pretty much all kinds. It had metastasized so much that they couldn't really identify where it began. They found cancer in her cervix, uterus, ovaries, breasts, pancreas, and even her brain."

"Oh, God, Steve, I'm so sorry."

"We were confused about how it could be so widespread, without Becky having any real symptoms. They didn't have an answer for that. The doctor did say that there was no realistic treatment. There was no surgery, radiation, or chemo that could possibly extend her life, and all any of that would really do is make the rest of her life miserable."

"That brought up the next question. How long?" Steve took another drink of his beer, and then took a deep breath before saying, "Three months. Three fucking months."

"The doctor said the only treatment that would preserve any quality of life was palliative care. We would treat any symptoms and pain as they came. I luckily had a lot of sick leave saved up, and told the school I was going to be gone probably for the rest of the school year. Things were pretty much unchanged through April and most of May. Becky's pain was starting to increase, but the medication was keeping it to a minimum. By Memorial Day, she got so bad that she couldn't get out of bed at all. She was given a patient controlled morphine drip to control the pain. We both knew the end was coming soon, so I started spending most of my days by her side in the bed. I got up only for meals, showers, and to go to the bathroom. We were intent on spending as much time together as possible."

He took another drink. "I should tell you a little more about our wedding. Since Becky was a landscape designer, you shouldn't be surprised that she wanted a garden wedding. We got married under a 200-year-old oak tree in the backyard of the house she grew up in. She and her mother worked frantically all spring to make that backyard as beautiful as possible. And because it was a garden wedding during the summer, Becky wanted to do at 8:00 in the morning. Her brother and her best friend both played the trumpet in high school, so Becky convinced them to play a trumpet duet of "Morning has Broken" for our wedding processional. I have to admit, they played it beautifully. If you look over your shoulder, there's a picture on the mantle of us standing with the minister as the sunlight burst through the trees."

"That's a gorgeous scene. Picture perfect."

"It was. We had a magically wedding. And it started a tradition. When the minister said, 'You may kiss the bride,' I took a quick glance at my watch. It was 8:27. So, from that point on, every year on our anniversary, at 8:27, I would give her a kiss. No matter what. So, that morning, two years ago, on our tenth anniversary, we both knew it was going to be our last anniversary together in this life, so we told each other we would love the other forever, and then we kissed. I held her in my arms as we both settled in to nap for a while."

"Unbeknownst to me, she had figured out a way to jam her morphine pump open to give herself an overdose. I dozed off for a couple of hours, and when I woke up she was gone."

Steve glanced toward Amanda, and saw the tears flowing down her cheeks.

"After she was gone, I found a letter she had tucked under her pillow. She told me that she truly loved me, and that while she regretted going so early, she was glad that she went first, because she knew she would be too weak to go on without me if I had died before her. She also regretted not giving me children because they would have been a true testament of our undying love. Finally, she reminded me that she would be waiting for me. We really ticked off the minister when we got married, because we insisted that he take out the line 'til death do us part.' We insisted that our love was not just this life, but for all eternity. Becky said she would be patient, and for me to take as long as I needed, but she would be at the gates of heaven to greet me, and love me till the end of time."

Both Steve and Amanda were wiping away their tears.

"Steve, I'm afraid to ask this, but I think I need to know. When is your anniversary?"

He finished the last of his beer, set the glass on the table, and said, "Tomorrow morning."

"Oh, my God!" She jumped up and ran to sit beside him on the couch just before he completely burst into tears. They cried together as she held his head against her chest. After a few minutes, they both calmed down enough that they could push back from each other.

Steve was the first to speak. "We're just two seriously broken souls, aren't we? A little fucked up on the 'who said life is fair?' spectrum."

Amanda nodded her head. "So, what do we do now?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and didn't say anything for a few minutes. "Let's go to the lake tomorrow. I don't really like to fish, but we could go for a hike on the trails, and we could spend some time on the beach just relaxing."

Amanda hesitated. "I don't know, Steve. I'm not really ready..."

"No, I'm not asking for a date or anything. Just too friends trying to distract each other from the really shitty parts of their lives."

Amanda still wasn't sure, but she told him she was willing to give it a shot.

"Great. I'll pick you up about nine. Dress for a hike. I'll also pack a picnic for us. We can change there, and spend some time on the beach in the afternoon."

"That's sounds really good. You know, apart from the whole flat tire thing, and the dumping of all of our problems onto the other one, this has been a pretty good day. Thank you, Steve!"

"Surprisingly, I've had a good day, too. Thank you making me talk things out. I guess I just needed to have the right person to listen to me."

He walked her to the door.

**********

Steve showed up at Amanda's apartment perfectly on time.

"I really want to thank you for suggesting this. I love to go on hikes. It's been hard to find the time this year, between all of the stuff I've had to do for the first year of school, and then getting ready for the 'day of hell,' I mean, the wedding."

"Did you hike a lot before?"

"Actually, I started my sophomore year in college. That fall, I had Natural Science, and the professor said we could earn extra credit by exploring, observing, and analyzing nature. Well, I've always been an over-achiever, so extra credit sounded great to me. I went out to buy a good quality pair of hiking boots, and ended up tromping through the woods nearly every weekend. I kept it up after the class because it was so interesting and relaxing. What about you?"

"Me, I've been going since I was a little kid. I did the whole scout thing. I've done hundreds of miles of hikes. I slept in a sleeping bag, mostly feeling uncomfortable on hard dirt and rocks, more than I'd prefer to admit. That's probably why I prefer to do my camping in hotel rooms these days. But I still get out on trails as much as I possibly can. It was really therapeutic after my wife died. I found out that traipsing off by yourself into the woods, where you can scream and kick the trees is very soothing to the soul."

"Really? I hope you didn't permanently damage any trees."

"Don't worry, I never took it quite that far. I love the woods too much, and I would feel horribly guilty if I seriously hurt any of the trees."

When they got to the park, Steve grabbed a small backpack with a couple water bottles for later. "I only have one real pet peeve when it comes to taking a hike. I like to pay attention to what's going on around me, so I prefer that talking be kept to a minimum. It's not that I don't want you around, I just don't want to scare the wildlife."

Amanda smiled at him. "You don't have to worry about me. I feel exactly the same way. If I hear you interrupting my communing with nature, I'm liable to kick you."

"Fair enough. Ready to head out? Would you prefer the two-mile trail or the five?"

"I'm game for the five."

"My kind of girl." He stiffened when he realized what he said. "Um... well..."

She smiled again, "It's okay, friend, I know what you mean. And for the record, I think you're my kind of guy, too."

Steve just stared as she passed him and started down the trail. He shook his head, and quickly followed behind her.

They were about a mile into their hike when Amanda suddenly stopped walking. Steve came up behind her quietly. He didn't think she was hurt, but he knew something was up. She felt him come up behind her shoulder, and she turned her head slightly to smile. Then she pointed up the trail a little where he could see several chipmunks dashing across the path and into the trees.

It was an impulse move, but he wrapped his arms around her, and set his chin on her shoulder, their heads side by side.

Amanda grabbed his arms and held them tight around her torso, turned her head a little, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and whispered, "I like this."

Steve realized what he was doing, and quickly pulled back a little, blushing as he did. Amanda smiled and giggled, and then took off down the path again.

Steve quickly caught up, and they continued their silent hike.

They got a couple more miles down the trail, seeing lots of birds, squirrels, and a few more chipmunks. Then Steve tapped Amanda on the shoulder to get her to pause. He pointed off to the side, where she saw a small group of deer on the edge of a field. As they stood and watched, they could see a half dozen does and two young fawn.

This time, it was Amanda that backed up to the front of Steve, grabbed his arms and pulled them around her. They watched for a couple of minutes, then she stepped away. At the last second, she grabbed his hand and held it.

Steve pointed to a couple of large rocks where they could sit and watch the deer. As quietly as he could he pulled some snacks out of his backpack. They ate in silence, watching as the deer cautiously ate in the field. After a few minutes, the deer moved back into the shadows of the trees, and were gone. Amanda and Steve packed up the remains of their snacks, and started down the trail again. But this time, they walked hand in hand.

When they emerged from the end of the trail, they were still smiling. Amanda was the first to talk. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you with the kiss."

Steve hesitated for a few seconds, not really knowing what to say.

Amanda sensed his hesitation, and started to panic. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not sorry I did it. It felt right. I'm just sorry about making you feel uncomfortable."

"Amanda, you didn't make me uncomfortable or embarrassed or anything like that. Trust me, I think it felt right, too. What I blushed about, is that I probably liked it too much, and particularly with our age difference, I was starting to feel some things I probably shouldn't be feeling."

"Oh."

They walked in silence toward the visitor center. Steve offered, "Should we have a bite to eat? Then we can spend a little time on the beach relaxing by the lake."

"That sounds nice."

They found a picnic table with a decent view of the water, and sat down to enjoy their meal. After a few minutes, Amanda pointed off toward their town. "Looks like a storm is starting to roll in."

Steve pulled out his phone, and opened up his weather app. I think we'll be okay here. It looks it's going to pass about 10 miles north of here. It's going to hit the northern suburbs pretty hard, but we're far enough south, we should be okay. I mean, look, we've still got lots of sun among the broken clouds."

Amanda's face turned into a wicked grin. "Northern suburbs, huh? HA! Serves the bitch and the bastard right."

"What are you talking about?"

"Katie's dream wedding was always going to be at Washington Park up north of town. She and John are supposed to be married there in less than an hour."

Steve now understood the grin. "According to the radar, that park is currently being hammered by the storm."

"Karma's a bitch, ain't it?" She still had her grim look. She started to take a bite of her sandwich, but then set it down, put her head in her hands, and burst into tears. "Oh, God, how could they do this to me? She was my best friend. I loved her. I would do anything for her. Why?"

Steve immediately pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms tight around her. "Oh, Sweetheart, it's okay. Just let it out. I know it hurts. Just let it go."

She continued to talk, but with the tears, it was impossible for Steve to understand what Amanda was saying. But he continued to hold her and comfort her. After a good 20 minutes, her tears began to subside. She had stopped mumbling several minutes earlier.