One of the rudest assaults on the senses is a phone ringing in the wee hours of the morning. Through the fog of sleep, I was able to catch the phone on the last ring before the call went to voice mail. I looked at the screen briefly as I brought it up to my ear and had to do a double-take. 'Why was she calling me at 1:15 in the morning?' I quickly wondered.
"Hello?" I grunted into the phone, still trying to wake up. I could hear her crying on the other end.
"Kurt! Oh my god!" she sobbed loudly, choking as she spoke. "Thank you for answering!" she immediately started bawling again.
By the time that I got her calmed down enough to talk, Liz was able to tell me that she was driving through my area the next day, and she wanted to see me. I sensed a desperate urgency in the tone of her voice, so we arranged to meet. I knew better than to try to get any real information out of her in the condition she was in, so after getting her to promise to get some sleep I wished her a good night and tried to get back to sleep myself.
Liz and I went back thirty years. We started as friends when her best friend, then and today, Laura, was dating the guitar player in my band. We soon started dating, and then quickly became a couple. We were nearly inseparable as a couple, especially after she gave me her virginity.
We were together for three years, starting with her last couple of years in high school. A couple of years younger than me, we often teased each other about our age difference, with her still a school girl and me a working man.
In what I know is a rare case, we actually did remain friends after we broke up, due in large part to a large common circle of friends. Although the first few months were rough on me, we eventually had a long talk, a platonic kiss, and all was fine between us. My ex-wife, of course, hated all of those friends, and drove them all away. Soon after my divorce was final, I started reconnecting with some of these old friends, eventually finding Liz again.
The first time that I saw her after all those years, about a year after we caught up on line, I was immediately drawn back to her. Even thinner than I remember her being, thanks to her vegan lifestyle and still running almost daily and doing martial arts for her exercise, she looked exactly as I remembered, with her blonde hair now silver.
From our first reunion hug and kiss (a very surprising, to me, mashing of the lips as she hugged me tightly) to almost every hug and kiss after, I found, much to my enjoyment, that she apparently still avoided wearing a bra as often as possible. Being small-breasted, Liz could get away with that.
Over the few years since then, we talked on a regular basis and met for dinner and drinks as often as possible. While we did talk regularly, it was rarely a late-night call and never a sober late night call.
I was waiting for her when she pulled in to the parking lot of the nature preserve around 2:30. I got out of my truck as she parked her Jeep next to me and I waited at the back of my truck. Looking at her in her side-view mirror, I saw her look at me and then take a deep breath. Seconds later her door opened and her short, still lean legs swung out of her Jeep.
She was looking at me as she closed her door, and as soon as she started running the few steps toward me she burst out into tears. I quietly stepped up to her and wrapped my arms around her, holding her tightly.
We continued standing between our vehicles as I held her, her body shaking slightly as she sobbed in to my chest. A couple of minutes later, as she caught her breath, we separated and I gave her a kiss on the forehead.
We were soon walking down a boardwalk covering the wetlands that made up the nature preserve toward some pavilions with picnic tables. We walked side-by-side, our hands and arms occasionally brushing against each other as we walked in silence, taking in the setting.
We finally reached a pavilion and we sat at one of the tables. I wanted to be able to look at her, so I straddled the bench while she sat on it next to me with her back to the table. "This is nice," she said softly, looking around.
"It is," I replied. We sat next to each other in silence for a couple more minutes before I spoke again.
"You don't have to talk if you don't want," I told her softly as I reached out and placed my hand on her arm. "We can just sit here and listen to nature." At that point, a couple of little kids ran down the path, playing and screaming. "Well, they're little kids, so I guess that counts as nature," I added as we looked up to watch the kids.
Liz laughed softly for a second and then fell into my chest and started crying again. "Oh my god, Kurt," she cried. "I'm such an idiot!"
"Liz, you are hardly an idiot," I told her as I wrapped my arms around her. "You are one of the smartest, brightest people that I know."
"Then why did I do something so stupid?" she cried.
"We all do stupid crap," I said. "That doesn't make you stupid."
"No! I'm so stupid!" she cried. I knew better than to try to reason with her so I continued holding her and letting her cry it out.
A few minutes later, she stopped crying and I could feel her hand on my chest. "Why was I so stupid?" she asked quietly.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" I asked her, still holding her closely.
Liz sighed deeply and then started talking. She told me that an old neighborhood friend, who I barely knew and didn't like, had found her on a social media site and they had been talking ever since. They continued talking, and he started paying more attention to her. She had already realized that her relationship at home had been stagnant for the last couple of years, and she had started thinking that she needed a change for her sanity and well-being.
The more that she talked to this guy the deeper she started falling for him. When he came up to the city to visit his family, he spent almost as much time with her. After talking to her current boyfriend about her unhappiness with their relationship, and hearing his indifference to their situation, she decided to go south to see her new guy and to look in to work and living situations down there.
When she got there, it was the age-old story. It turns out that he was living with his girlfriend and their kids, and he had no intention of leaving them. He was drunk when she saw him, and cussed her out for driving all the way down there, even though Liz had confirmed everything with him before she did.
Stunned and heartbroken, Liz went back to her hotel, where she proceeded to spend the next few hours drinking and crying in her room. She drank herself to sleep, and when she woke she then called Laura, after which she called me.
I sat quietly listening to her and offering what words of support I could. "He's an asshole," I told her. "Both of them are. Neither of them deserve a woman like you."
"Thank you," she replied softly, sniffling, her crying done for now.
"I'm serious," I said. "They're both spineless, self-absorbed assholes who care more about themselves than they do anything else, including you."