I know these are only six random words said in a row. Just words. “I love you and you alone.” Yet they are words that mean everything.

How was I to believe Him? I huddled cold and empty in that trailer and let His words soothe me into believing Him, calm me into understanding that He did love me and me alone.

When we were curled and warm in his bed, He then told me the most horrible thing: He was leaving for a year. That He must. That He’d signed on with the Peace Corps to go to Africa for one full year.

He said that He needed to do this—He understood this about Himself—that He had to try and make a difference in this world and what He’d done that past summer had only hurt people. He begged me to wait. He told me to wait for Him. To just believe and wait.

But how was I to believe Him? First He betrayed me and then when He’d wooed me back to His bed and THEN, He tells me He is leaving again?

How was I to wait?

How was I to believe Him?

Fourteen

Fourteen

Back in Birdie’s guesthouse, I sat in the large chaise longue facing the window that opens to the backyard, offering a view to the bay, and was absorbing Birdie’s story when there was a knock. I stood and rubbed my eyes as I walked toward the door.

Hutch stood on the front porch, scraping mud off his shoes onto the side of the patio wood. “Hey.” He looked up and smiled, embarrassed. “Didn’t think you were here; knocked a couple times.”

“Hey.” I smiled back at him. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Oh,” he said, standing there, his arms swaying back and forth almost as if he had a child he was swinging. Then he clapped his hands together. “I hope it’s okay that I stopped by. Drew and his family had some fund-raiser thing in Mobile and there’s no Braves game on tonight … .”

“Last resort option?” I asked, but smiled. These are the words he’d used with me when he’d left me. I didn’t think I’d remembered this—their saying seemed cruel at the time, and I’d buried the memory—Hutch standing on an apartment walkway, telling me that he was tired of being “the last resort option” when I’d done everything else I wanted to do. I had vehemently disagreed even as his words rang true. I’d said this to him: “That’s not how I feel.” And he’d replied, “Well, that’s how you act.”

Hutch just stared at me now with his smile still present, but no words.

“I was kidding, Hutch. A joke.”

He nodded.

“Wanna come in?” I held the door open.

“No. Probably not. But you want to go get a beer at Crawfish Joe’s?”