About a month after Sarah kicked me to the curb I was sitting in a booth at the Denny's at Fourth and Hamilton when Gloria walked up and asked if I was alone and when I said that I was she asked if she could join me.
I told her to take a seat and we talked. I found out that she was home for a week because of a death in her family and when she asked where my girlfriend was I told her that Sarah and I had split. I asked her how her love life was going and she told me that she didn't have a steady boyfriend and then she asked if I still had my apartment. I told her that I did and she said:
"Then why are we sitting here wasting our time talking?"
"I can't think of one good reason for it" I said and we both stood up to go and Gloria followed me home.
It was a Friday night so I didn't have to work the next day and Gloria and I stayed in bed until almost ten and then I got up and fixed us breakfast. Gloria had nothing that she needed to do before returning to school Sunday afternoon so we spent the weekend together. We went to a couple of movies, ate in and screwed like sex crazed rabbits. When she left for school she told me that she would be back the next weekend and to keep it open for her. Unfortunately I had to tell her that it was my Guard weekend.
"Well from now on I want all your weekends that aren't claimed by the Guard."
Why not I thought. I could keep myself busy through the week with school and bowling and it would be nice to have my weekends covered and not have to sweat finding a date. If Gloria did come back every weekend. I hadn't forgotten her previous promises. I'd just have to wait and see.
She did come home and so it was that all my weekends except my Guard weekends were taken up by Gloria. It was inevitable that on some of those weekends Gloria and I would end up some place where Allison also was and I sure that Allison was confused by suddenly seeing me with Gloria instead of Sarah or at least she was until she found out from her mother who would have been told by my mother that Sarah and I had broken up.
I was eating lunch in the employee cafeteria on Friday and Russ came over to my table and sat down with me. He asked how I was doing and how my new job was going and then he asked:
"What happened between you and Sarah? One minute everything was going fine and the next minute it wasn't."
I would have bet my next years wages that neither Sarah or Vangie would have told him the real reason, but I decided that it would be best to keep things as close to the truth as possible so I said:
"Sarah got the idea that I was cheating on her while she was away in school. She told me that she couldn't stand cheaters and she broke up with me."
"Were you?"
"Was I what?"
"Cheating on her."
"No. I did hang around with a group that I went to school with and a couple of them were girls and one of the girls was the one that Sarah accused me of cheating with, but there was nothing going on between us. We just happened to be at the same place at the same time several times and someone must have thought that something was going on between us and told it to Sarah."
"You don't seem too broken up over it."
"I was at first, but after spending a week trying to get Sarah to talk to me with no luck I got to thinking that if she was going to get so warped out of shape over nothing while we were still single what would she be like when we were married? I decided that I didn't need to be tied to someone who could so readily believe that I was cheating when I wasn't."
"Too bad it didn't happen before you changed jobs. If it had I could have kept you in my department."
I shook my head and said, "To be honest about it I would rather not be working for you and still be with Sarah, but I guess part of life is not getting what you want."
"Amen to that. No chance you can work it out?"
"It was her choice and I'm not going to hang around and whine about it. If there were to be any chance it would all have to be up to Sarah and I don't see that in the cards."
Lunch period was over so I got up and went back to work.
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Time slid by. I went back to bowling and took some additional classes so I was going to school Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. My weekends were spent with Gloria or the Guard and suddenly Thanksgiving was upon us.
Gloria had gone with her parents to visit her grandmother so I did Thanksgiving dinner with my parents. I figured that Mr. and Mrs. Ames would be there, but I didn't expect to see Allison. I thought she would be spending the day with her boyfriend's family, but I was wrong. She was there and my mother, meddlesome as ever, made sure that we were seated at the table next to each other. It was awkward to say the least.
Conversation buzzed around the table, but despite efforts to draw me into the conversation I stayed silent and I could see that mom and Mrs. Ames were upset that Allison and I made no attempt to speak to each other. Those two would go to their graves still trying to push Allison and me together.
The ritual at my parent's house was that the women prepared the meal and the men did the cleanup. As I scraped the plates prior to putting them into the dish washer my dad said:
"Would it hurt you to at least throw your mother a bone and try to be friendly with Allison?"
Mr. Ames was right there scrubbing pots in the sink so he heard it when I said:
"Allison wants nothing to do with me and she has made that perfectly clear."
"Nonsense" Mr. Ames said, "She talks about you all the time."
I was tempted to say "Oh sure" and then tell him about the paper bag full of used condoms that she gave me, but I of course kept my mouth shut.
When we were done in the kitchen we moved to the family room where we would have Bailey's Irish Cream and conversation. I would have put a damper on things with my silence so I thanked mom for a great dinner, said my goodbyes and left. When I got to my truck I saw something under the windshield wiper. It was a note. "Please call me" and it was signed by Allison. I read it twice and thought about it and then decided that no good would come of it so I crumpled up the note and dropped it to the ground.
Gloria came back from her visit and we spent the rest of the weekend together and three weeks later we attended my company Christmas party where Sarah and her mother cast nasty looks at Gloria and for what reason I couldn't figure.
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It wasn't until New Year's Eve that Allison and I crossed paths again. We ended up at the same party, me with Gloria and Allison with some guy I'd never seen before. I noticed that every time I chanced to look her way she was looking at me and Gloria. I wondered what she was thinking.
About an hour into the party I headed off to the bathroom to take a whiz and when I came out I found Allison standing there waiting. I thought she was there to use the facilities so I stepped to the side to let her enter, but she moved with me and said:
"You never called me."
"What would be the point?"
"We need to talk Frank."
