Saturday afternoon I went to the country club where my family had a membership so I could swim laps in the pool. Becky’s family also belonged and I’d seen her there several times over the years and as luck would have it she happened to be there that day.
She was with two of her girlfriends, both of whom I’d known in high school, and I did have to admit seeing the three of them in their bikinis had an effect on me. At one point I saw the three of them looking at me while Becky was saying something to them and they were smiling and nodding their heads in the affirmative so naturally I wondered what was being said. I’d never know unless I asked and that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen.
The club dining room had an excellent half pound ground round so I stopped in and ordered one. I was sitting at the table waiting on my order when Sarah Wilcox and Carol Perry came in, saw me and came over and sat down with me. No “May we join you” they just pulled out chairs and sat down. The two were the two I had seen talking to Becky out by the pool. Sarah led off with:
“What’s up Harry? How have you been?”
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen you” Carol said.
I knew right away that something was up. I’d known both since the third grade and while we had always been friendly towards each other they had never just walked up to me and said Hi. Add that to the fact they had been talking to Becky while looking at me and smiling and it all seemed to say “Danger Harry Conners, danger.”
I replied “Been busy with classes and now that summer is here dad has me working full time.”
“You and Pauline still a thing?”
“Haven’t heard from her since she went back east to go to school.”
“Doing anything tonight” Sarah asked.
“Nothing planned. Why?”
“There is a party I want to go to, but I need a date. If I go without a guy I’ll be hit on all night long.”
Again I heard the warning “Danger Harry, Danger.”
I’d never dated Sarah before. I’d asked her out a couple of times, but always got turned down and now here she was asking me? Yes indeed Harry, this is a setup of some sort. I didn’t have anything planned and curiosity had grabbed hold of me so I said:
“I think I’d like that.”
Sarah smiled at Carol and said “You snooze you lose.”
“What does that mean” I asked,
“Carol was going to ask you but I beat her to it.”
That’s when I knew for absolutely certain I was being setup. It wasn’t common knowledge, but I knew that Carol batted for the other team and no way was she going to ask a guy to be her date. We set a time for me to pick Sarah up and the girls got up and left just as my ground round arrived. As I sat there and ate I tried to figure out what was going on, but I couldn’t come up with anything.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I picked Sarah up at seven and she told me the party was at Marlene Cantril’s place. Marlene was another girl I had known since grade school and we had dated a couple of times, but we hadn’t clicked. We’d stayed friends, but not really close friends and I hadn’t seen her in almost a year.
Marlene answered the door when we rang the bell and while she smiled and said “Nice to see you again Harry” I could tell she was quite surprised to see me with Sarah. She welcomed us and walked us through the house and out onto the patio. She pointed out the alcoholic and nonalcoholic punch bowls. She showed us where the beer keg was and the left to answer the doorbell.
We were not the first arrivals and we got our drinks. It was a large patio and all of the patio furniture had been moved out onto the grass so the patio could be used as a dance floor. Several couples were already dancing to the music provided by a portable CD player. Sarah and I set our drinks on one of the tables and joined the people on the dance floor and for the next thirty minutes or so we danced and mingled with the others at the party. We were dancing when I saw Becky come out of the house with Marlene. Becky saw us, said something to Marlene and then headed straight towards me and Sarah. She tapped Sarah on the shoulder and asked:
“Mind if I cut in?”
“Not at all” Sarah said and moved away. Becky took her place, smiled at me and said:
“Hi Harry.”
I think I surprised her when I said “Why?”
She frowned and said “Why what?”
“Why did you get Sarah to try to get me here tonight?”
The frown went away and her facial expression turned serious.
“I didn’t think we were THAT transparent. I needed to get you in a place where we could sit down and talk without any pressure on us and I very much doubted that if I’d asked you straight out you would have agreed to it. I thought if I ‘accidentally’ bumped into you in a social setting I could make it happen.”
“You certainly aroused my curiosity so let’s go sit down and you can have at it.”
“Let me get something to drink first.”
We left the floor and she led me over to the alcoholic punch bowl where she filled up a red Solo cup and then we went over and sat down on a couple of chairs that were out on the grass. Once seated she said:
“After our why don’t you like me talk the other day I started thinking back on our past history. I hadn’t thought on how you had taken my behavior at the time. The truth of the matter is that you scared me.”
“Me? Scaring you? Why in God’s name would you have thought that?”
“Just the way you were always looking at me, always being near whenever I looked around. What I was seeing was what I thought was the behavior of a stalker.”
“Me? A stalker?”
“Let me finish please. I don’t think you ever knew my sister Abby. She is six years older than me and she graduated before we ever started high school. She went off to State to get a degree in Information Technology. There was a guy there who kept asking her for a date and she didn’t like him and kept saying no to him. He did just what I saw you doing. Always looking at her and always being around her. In other words he was stalking her. One night at a party he grabbed her, pulled her into a room, locked the door and was in the process of tearing her clothes off of her. Some people heard her cries and kicked in the door and pulled him off of her. Later, when she told my parents what happened she described what had led up to the attack. That is what was in my mind when you came along.”
“If you would have let me I would have shown you I wasn’t that kind of guy.”
“I couldn’t. When you first asked me out I had a huge crush on Danny Freeman and I was trying to get him to notice me. If I had gone out with anyone else he would have seen it and stayed away from me so the first couple of times I said no to you it wasn’t because I didn’t like you. By the time I was over Danny I knew of what happened with Abby and I saw in your behavior exactly what she described as the behavior of her attacker.
“Looking back I can see that it was unfair to you, but in my defense I was a young inexperienced girl. When I stared going steady with Frank you stopped doing all the things that I thought of as stalking and I realized that I had been wrong about you. I thought about coming to you and apologizing for my behavior, but by then you were going steady with Pauline and I decided to just let it go. I was going to go back east to college and I never expected to see you again, but things didn’t work out and I ended up staying here for school. So here we are.”
“Well I’m happy to know that you no longer think I’m some weirdo and in light of your confession I can relax my stance and start calling you Becky instead of Miss Courtney. If you will excuse me I need to go find my date and see to it that she has a good time.”
I got up and left her there with a shocked expression on her face. I don’t know what she expected after telling me her story, but I doubt that indifference was on the list.
I found Sarah talking to Randy Combs and Rick Moore and I walked up to them. I received a “What are you doing here” look from Sarah and “Get lost” glances from Randy and Rick, but I ignored them and offered my arm to Sarah as I said:
“Our dance was interrupted. Let’s finish it.”