“Exactly,” I agreed. “That’s what I said.”
He stepped closer. Oh, my heart. It baffled me how feelings of nearly sixty years could just flood back like this. Maybe that’s just what these were: memories of feelings. But, at my age, maybe memories were enough. “Tell you what. I’ll meet you there early so we can get in a dance or two before the girls arrive.”
“It would be an honor,” he said. “Now, may I escort you home?”
I nodded, following Miles to his Carolina-blue golf cart.
“Did you feel like I do when you lost your wife, Miles?” I asked as I slid in the front seat beside him. “Like enjoying anyone’s company, smiling, having a bright day is wrong? I want to dance with you tonight, and I already feel guilty about that.”
Miles smiled sadly at me. “Oh, Barbara. You were in a loving, committed marriage. Of course it’s going to be hard to take a step forward. But I know that Reid must have been a wonderful man for you to have chosen him over me.” He winked and I laughed, feeling those butterflies again. “I think he would have wanted you to have a second act.”
No one would ever be to me what my Reid was. He was the love of my life, now, then, and forever. But I know he would want me to be happy. “We talked about it every now and then, how we wanted each other to find happiness again if one of us left before the other,” I said, voicing my thoughts. I paused. “But it’s hard when you’re the one left behind.”
Miles took one hand off the wheel and reached over and squeezed my hand. I looked down, expecting to see the same soft, unlined hands I had had when he first held them. Instead, I saw two hands that were wrinkled, with pronounced veins and dark age spots. But they were hands that remembered. Hands that, maybe, could find solace in each other.
“Did you ever think of me over the years?” Miles asked, putting his eyes back on the road. “Not to be too forward, but I always wondered. I’d catch myself in these moments remembering you—your laugh, something you said—and I’d wonder if you ever thought of me too.”
“All these years, Miles, I have always had a soft spot for you.”
At eighty, when one has had and lost her great love, even the thought of a man that makes her come alive again is perhaps more than a woman should hope for. But hadn’t it always been like this with Miles? Isn’t this part of what had scared me about him?
“You still have one of the prettiest forehands I have ever seen,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“And that serve of yours…” he replied.
We both laughed. Miles pulled in front of my house and walked around to my side of the cart to escort me to my door. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said, grinning broadly, making me feel like a kid again.
“I look forward to it.”
He leaned down to kiss my cheek goodbye. “I’m so sweaty!” I protested. But I secretly loved every moment of his affection and attention toward me.
“You’re perfect,” he replied, taking me in. “I’ll see you at six.”
That evening, showered and fresh from the on-site beauty parlor, I hummed as I spritzed my neck with my favorite perfume, smiling at my reflection in the mirror. I mused that age had brought such perspective. In my youth, I would have lamented every line, scrutinized my waist, my legs, any spots I found. Now, sure, my face was wrinkled, my lovely figure long gone. But I was alive. I had lived eighty years on this earth, and even though my knees hurt, my elbow ached, and it took me a little longer to get around, I was still proud and grateful for every day. As I fastened a belt around the waistline of my favorite blue dress, I felt happy for a second chance.
I grabbed my small purse from the dresser after I slipped on my kitten heels, noticing the postcard I had received that morning. Sweet Julia. What grandmother worth her salt wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to go on a trip with her beloved granddaughter? It was silly, but even though I was excited at the prospect of a getaway, part of me couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Miles for what would be at least a weeklong trip, if not two. And it was certainly entirely too soon to ask him to go with me. Wasn’t it?
Although, with Miles and me, hadn’t these feelings always been hidden away like a set of fine china that you only pulled out every now and again? Were we simply making the decision to start using the fine china every day?
I walked into my small garage, opened the door, and backed out my pink golf cart. Yes, pink. When in her life does a woman get to have a pink golf cart? Miles and I had decided—via text—that I would meet him at the clubhouse so as not to raise any eyebrows with my girls about how I’d gotten there should they want to ride back to the town house with me after dinner.
When I pulled up to the clubhouse where the valet took my cart, Miles was waiting for me in a seersucker suit holding a single pink rose, which he handed to me. I smiled. “What a lovely gesture,” I said.
“What a lovely woman,” he replied.
I waved him away, but I couldn’t have felt better.
The band was just cranking up, the dance floor empty, as we entered the building. I had forty minutes until the girls would arrive, and I planned to savor each of them in the arms of the man who made me feel so happy.
The first chords of “The Way You Look Tonight” began, and Miles took my hand, leading me to the dance floor. “But we’ll be the only ones dancing,” I whispered.
“Which is exactly how I want it,” he responded, a glimmer in his eye.
As he led me around the dance floor, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been transported back in time to the camp dance we’d gone to together all those years ago. It was nothing short of a miracle the way we still seemed to fit together.
“Has it really been sixty years since we’ve done this?” I asked in disbelief, as other couples followed our lead and joined us on the floor.
“Don’t age us,” Miles scolded.
We both laughed, and I realized I hadn’t felt this happy in quite some time.
“How can this be?” I asked Miles. “How can it be that I can fall right back into the same feelings?” For the briefest of moments, I felt embarrassed I had said that out loud.
But then Miles said, “I think this is how it works. When you see someone you once had a connection with, you might have aged, but the connection hasn’t. Some people simply belong together. As friends, or mentor and mentee, parent and child.” He paused. “Or great loves.”
I laughed. “Were we, Miles? Were we great loves?”
He smiled sadly. Miles and I had spent only that one summer together. Just three months as camp counselors. And, yes, we had written letters and had phone calls until I got engaged that winter. But I always knew we couldn’t truly be together.
“It nearly broke me that you married Reid,” Miles said after a moment of silence. “I think that’s great love.”
He squeezed my hand, and I sighed. “But marrying Reid was always the plan, Miles. I had dated him for years. I had feelings for you, sure—”
“But they weren’t as strong as your feelings for Reid?”
How to answer his very complicated question. I was so lost in his arms, in the music, in this dance, in the feeling of what used to be between us, that a shocked “Mother! What are you doing?” made me jump.