"It was nice."
"Nice? What does that even mean?"
"It means it...it wasn't bad."
"Bailey? That doesn't tell me anything. Did you have fun? Do you like this guy?"
"Well, it wasn't not fun," her sister said, not sure how to answer the question any better than that.
"Okay. Great! That was so much more helpful," her older sibling said with a strong hint of sarcasm.
"Zoe? Can you just let me do this at my speed?"
"If I let you do that, you'll be single for the rest of your life. And I'm not letting that happen."
"You do know you don't really get a vote in this, right?" her 'baby sister' said as politely as she could.
"Okay. I get it. You don't want me butting in and that's fine. I didn't get dumped on my ass, so I can't really understand how you feel, but if you want to spend the rest of your life without some special in it, that's your business."
Bailey Chandler was 41 years old and been single for nearly three years. Two of them as a divorced woman following a year of legal separation and a divorce. Her sister, Zoe, was 44 and a happily married woman with three wonderful children between the ages of 11 and 15 while Bailey was...alone.
After the initial shock of being told her husband didn't love her anymore wore off, Bailey spent several months doing what she hadn't done since she was in college many years before. She hooked up with a handful of men, all of whom were single and attractive.
It wasn't that she was 'that kind of girl'. It was more a sense of validation. She was 39 years old and needed to feel wanted, and most of all, to have men tell her she was still beautiful. And now, two years later, she believed she was still reasonably attractive, and yet she was lonelier than she'd ever been, to include those first months after her ex-husband moved out.
Bailey Chandler wasn't cut out to sleep around, and yet finding someone she could fall in love with and give herself to completely seemed like...the impossible dream. And lately, she felt like the female version of Don Quixote, with men she found uninteresting or uninspiring, her windmills.
She'd tried again just last night with someone Zoe assured her was an amazing catch. And yet the best she could come up with to describe their dinner date was 'nice'. 'Meh' was an even better word, but Zoe was already frustrated, so her sister let it go knowing her older sibling cared about her deeply.
Zoe Chandler-Miller was and always had been Bailey's best friend. Even now, with a husband and three children, she made time for her sister and that included trying to set her up with decent, eligible bachelors.
Living in Alexandria, Virginia, meant there were tons of single men to choose from, and many of them had good jobs and earned decent money. But Bailey wasn't interested in money. She wasn't rich, but she had enough of it that it held no fascination to her at all. She was interested in love, and love was a very scarce commodity in her world these days.
"I'm sorry, Zo," she said, shortening her sister's name. "I'm not sure what else to say."
"It's okay. Honestly? I had such high hopes. Jim is such a nice guy. And you have to admit he's a very nice looking man."
"He is. On both counts."
The fact that Bailey didn't say anything more told Zoe everything she needed to know. Being 'nice' wasn't good enough, and as much as she wanted her sister to be happy, she knew that settling for 'nice' was acceptable. She was fortunate to still be very much in love with the same man she'd married nearly 20 years ago, and that's what she wanted for Bailey.
Zoe had often previously thought that's what her sister had had, too, but after her ex-husband moved out, Bailey admitted things had never been all that great. Evidently, cheating was in his DNA, and it had began early on in their marriage. But it wasn't until he had an affair with a much-younger woman he fell for that he finally informed his wife of nearly eight years that she wasn't enough for him.
So while she tried not to push the issue too hard, Zoe hurt for her best friend, and she was willing to take some heat for caring too much.
"Okay. Then we'll just keep trying, right?" Zoe said as cheerfully as she could.
"Right. We...will do that," Bailey said with a little bit of an emphasis on 'we' to again remind her sister that this was something she had to do on her own.
Zoe sighed then said, "So...Molly's birthday party. Is everything a 'go' with the cake?"
"Yes. I'm picking it up tomorrow around noon, and I'll bring it straight to the house. Is there anything else I can do?" Bailey both said and asked.
"No. Other than showing up. It wouldn't be much of a sweet-16 party without her favorite aunt in attendance."
"I'm her only aunt," Bailer reminded her older sister.
"Yes, but you're still her favorite."
Now it was Bailey who drew the deep breath before sighing audibly.
"So I'll see you somewhere around one, okay?"
"You better," Zoe told her with a laugh.
"You can count on it. I'm almost as excited about this as you and Molly are, and I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Thanks, Bails. Love you!"
"Love you, too, Zo-Bug!"
As she hung up the phone, Bailey sighed again as she got ready to get on the rowing machine for another hourlong workout. But just before she sat down to get started, she took a look at herself in the mirror and asked, "What's the point?"
She turned left then right, and couldn't see an ounce of fat anywhere. She moved closer to look for the first signs of those hideous wrinkles around the eyes, and yet even when she squinted, she couldn't find any.
"It's just a matter of time, though," she told herself as she then took a closer look at her face.
It was still very pretty for a woman of 41. Her skin was taught and smooth, and she'd been blessed with high cheekbones and a pair of soft, full lips which surrounded a beautiful set of very white teeth. Her naturally blonde hair was back to shoulder length after having cut it to just below her ears a few months before the 'big revelation'. Along with her very blue eyes, she knew she wasn't bad—for a woman her age.
The truth was she was 'hot' for a woman her age, and very attractive for a woman of any age. But she was her own worst critic, and couldn't see herself the way other men saw her. Instead, she'd internalized the way her ex-husband saw her, and that meant she had to be flawed. Deeply flawed. Were that not true he wouldn't have felt the need to look elsewhere. Or so she often told herself.
She stepped away from the mirror—for now—and asked herself yet again, 'if she couldn't find someone she could love, what difference did it make how she looked'? So as she turned around to get started, she laughed when she thought about having two huge slices of cake with a double scoop of ice cream at her favorite niece's birthday party. But once the completed the first few strokes of her session, the thought of doing that to herself made her shudder, and she began rowing like a wild woman; a wild woman who wasn't wild at all. Rather, she was just another middle-aged woman who felt like she would never be in love again.
*****
"Okay, girl. You ready to go shopping?"
The yellow Labrador Retriever barked quietly, knowing her human wanted her to speak.
He slid out of the cab of his truck then turned around and said, "Come!" followed by, "Sit!"
He closed the door, turned to his left then said, "Heel!"
The dog walked on his left side without a leash as she'd been trained, and she also checked for cars both ways as they crossed a lane of traffic just before entering the store.
Giant was a well known grocery chain in the area, and it was also close to home, so this is where Leif Elliot did nearly all of his grocery shopping. Because he never went anywhere without Lexi, the service dog who did wonders to keep his PTSD at bay, most of the cashiers who worked there knew them both.
Lexi wore a scarlet and gold vest whenever they left the house. Those were the colors of the U.S. Marine Corps, the organization in which Leif had served for three years before the wounds he suffered in Afghanistan forced him out of the military.
He had a 50% disability rating, but no one just looking at him could tell. The scars were all covered by clothing, but the worst of it resided in the space between his ears where the sounds of mortars exploding and machine gun fire along with the rat-a-tat-tat of AK-47s still tormented him.
Even worse was the sight of his radio operator, a young Marine corporal whose last name was Cooper, who'd been killed by the same mortar round that had severely wounded him. When he turned to him to Cpl Cooper to call in an airstrike during the firefight, he saw something he'd never forget. The corporal's limp body looked like someone who was sitting down with his head slumped between his legs. When Leif reached over to check on him after he didn't respond to his very loud verbal commands, he saw that a large chunk of this young's man face, which had been hidden from view by his shoulder, had been blown off in the attack. The young Marine had been killed instantly, but the radio on his back still worked perfectly well, and somehow Lieutenant Elliot managed to not only use it but accurately read off the nine-line brief to the aircrew that was just two minutes away and loaded for bear.
In spite of the severity of his wounds, he'd been able to go to work within weeks of having completed physical therapy, a long, grueling ordeal that began after his first surgery to repair the badly-damaged leg. He still saw a VA counselor once a week for the PTSD, but Lexi had taken him from feeling mentally disabled to a place that was much more manageable.
As they walked inside, he said, "Good girl!" and wondered where he'd be without her.
"Lexi! How's my girl?" one of the women who worked there said as soon as she saw them. She bent down and petted her even though Leif had politely asked her not to at least twice before.
The dog was working, and petting was a distraction, but Leif couldn't bring himself to make a big deal out of it, especially since this particular woman was so nice. And not just to his dog.
"So. How are you doing, Leif?" she asked with a sunny smile.
"I'm okay. How about you?" he asked, remembering to smile back.
"Not too bad. Better now that I've seen my two favorite friends," she told him, the smile even bigger and warmer.
Her name was Emily, and she was a very pretty young woman who was maybe 22 or 23. Leif was 27, and he could tell she found him to be very attractive, as did most women. Had he not had his brain scrambled so hard, he'd have undoubtedly asked her out by now, but he'd have just gone to bed with her and that was no longer what he needed or even wanted. He was now at a point where he felt like he could possibly handle a real relationship, and much of that was due to Lexi being in his life. That said, he couldn't handle a relationship that would require a lot of maintenance, and Emily screamed 'high maintenance', something that scared the hell out of him.
"You need any help today?" she asked just as perkily.
"No, thanks. We're good, right, girl?" he asked his dog.
Lexi saw the look and heard the tone of voice and quietly barked once. Leif petted her then told Emily they should probably get started.
