Chapter 10 - Andrea
Michael's proposal was all I thought about since he gave me his parting kiss at the gate. My pragmatic side kept saying this was such a bad idea. Aside from him, I knew no one in the Bay Area, but our times together would be much more frequent and without all the disruption of taking time away from work. I could fly out to be with family during the holidays, but even these days with my siblings and their families in other parts of the country, those occasions when we all got together in one place at the same were becoming fewer and farther in between. I supposed I could fly out to Charleston, Albuquerque or Louisville just as easily. But where would he be on Valentine's Day or his birthday? With his wife, of course.
But San Francisco could eventually lead to more and more important work than what I was doing in Detroit. It wasn't as if I didn't enjoy the work I was doing, but the internal debate kept running in the back of my mind. The pros and cons came more to the forefront as I turned my phone back on at the end of the shoot I just wrapped up when I saw another text from Robert.
"Are you OK? Haven't heard from you in a while."
I wasn't ready to answer that question either.
Over the next few days, I was jammed with work and Michael kept asking if I thought any more about his idea and if I had time to get away to do some apartment hunting. All I wanted to do at the end of the day was to find my inner peace on the couch with a glass of mead and a good movie.
As was drifting in and out of scenes of "Out of Africa" a few nights after I got back from Chicago, I swore I could hear chords of "I Could Drink a Case of You" being strummed in the hallway outside of my apartment. I thought it was my half-awake mind playing tricks on me until I heard a voice that sounded like Robert's sing: "Just before our love got lost you said/'I am as constant as a northern star/And I said 'Constantly in the darkness/Where's that at?/If you want me I'll be in the bar.'"