Authors: Annie Carroll
He suddenly reaches out and pulls me onto his lap
. I resist, squirming, trying to pull away from him, but he is strong and holds me against his chest.
“No
, Austen. Let go—“
“Don’t fight me Julia.” He tightens his arms around me
; I give in and melt against him. Oh god, it feels so good to have his arms around me again and to feel his body against mine.
“That’s better, babygirl.
Don’t try to get away from me. I told you before: it’s not going to work. This is where you belong—with me. Now do you want to hear about Charlene?”
I nod my head.
“I dated her in high school. After the army when I was back home, we screwed around some. Then I took off for Nashville. I’d been there a month or so when Charlene called and told me she was pregnant, so I went back and married her. It was a quickie wedding. It didn’t take long to find out she wasn’t pregnant. One day not long after that I got in my old red Chevy and started driving west and didn’t stop until I was on the beach in L.A. Matt handled the divorce for me. I haven’t seen her or talked to her since that day I left East Texas.”
“
Then why did she show up there yesterday?”
“Poor Charlene
. She has been trying to make it as a singer with a western band playing in a bar outside of Reno. She didn’t say so but I think she got fired. She’ll never make it; her voice is too nasal, too reedy—it’s an old style country singer’s voice. No one wants to listen to that these days, not even in Nashville or Reno. Now she’s broke. That’s all it was. She’d heard I was going to be here and needed money so she drove down. I gave her a few hundred dollars and sent her on her way. Charlene is nothing to me. Julia, I love you. Only you, my beautiful girl. You’re the one I want to be with—not her.”
Tears begi
n to stream down my face.
“Don’t cry,” he says as he wipes the tears from my cheek. “I love you
, baby, and want to make you happy.”
“I am happy.”
My tears keep flowing. “You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to hear you say that. I’ve never known for sure…and then when Charlene showed up…I love you, too.”
He tightens his arms around me
and holds me against his chest. Oh, he feels so good.
“I’ve never been really sure how you felt, Julia.
I guess neither one of us were sure. I was going to talk about us, about our future, after the show, but then you disappeared. Baby, if something upsets you, talk to me, ask me. Don’t run away again. I love you and want you with me forever. I thought you knew that.”
He
turns my face up to him and gently kisses my lips.
“Promise you’ll talk to me?” He murmurs.
“Yes, I promise.”
“Promise you’ll never run away
again?”
I nod my head. It
feels so good to be in his arms.
“
Marry me, Julia. We can drive over to Nevada and get married tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I
jerk away from him.
He can see the shock on my face and quickly goes on to say:
“If you want a big church wedding with family and everything we can do that. Whatever you want, Julia, I’ll do it. I just don’t want to lose you.”
I
slump. Oh no. Too fast. He’s moving too fast: from not talking about our future at all to getting married tomorrow. How do I answer him? I love him. I don’t want to lose him either. I can’t imagine living without him. But… I reach up and hold his face in my hands and kiss him softly.
“Austen I love you—wildly, madly, mo
re than you can imagine. I want to be with you, but getting married—not yet. Maybe someday, but not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Marriage…it always seems that after that ceremony the wife ends up stuck in a house in the suburbs somewhere, cooking, taking care of the kids—and misses out on everything. I don’t want life to pass me by. I want more than a big house and kids. That’s why I moved to San Francisco. I could have had that big house and kids in Seattle, but I told him ‘no’. I want to have a life that has more to it, that’s more interesting and—“
“Julia, I don’t want you to sit in a house and just wait. Hell, one of the things I love about you is your excitement about new things. Even everyday stuff is more fun with you. You’re playful. You’re smart and beautiful and sexy as sin. I want you to be with me everyday. We can travel and do things together. Stay with me, Julia. Live with me. Just don’t run away.”
“Julia, are you okay?” It’s Ali downstairs. I had forgotten all about her.
“Yes, we’re fine.”
“Say yes, Julia. We’ll work it out together.”
“We need to talk about this, Austen.” I smile. “But no quickie wedding—okay? If we get married, I want it to last.”
“
When
we get married…” he grins. “When—not ‘if’. And I want it to last, too.”
We spend the rest of the weekend at his place in bed, making love and talking about our future
together. I think it is going to be a very good future.
I call my parents to tell them I will be leaving San Francisco. When my Mom learns that I will be living and traveling with Austen, she is horrified.
“Why are you throwing your life away
for a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player? I’ve heard dreadful stories about them. Everything seemed to be going so well for you down there, Julia. You got that promotion—“
“I love him and want to be with him, Mom.
He’s the most important thing in my life.”
She sighs. “Well, it’s your life, I guess, and I hope this decision doesn’t ruin it forever. You know you can always come back home and start a
gain back here if it doesn’t work out.”
‘Never’, I say to myself, but to her I say: “Thank you, Mom.”
I can hear my step-father in the background asking what is going on. He does not get on the phone with me, but I hear him say: “It’s her life. She can live it any way she wants. She’s an adult now.” He has always supported whatever decisions I make.
A
half hour later my little sister Joanie calls back and asks if I will send her their new album with Tommy’s autograph on it.
“Of course.”
She adds as an afterthought: “And Austen’s autograph, too. All my friends are going to be so jealous of me.”
“I’ll have it autographed by all of them.”
* * *
“Hey. Julia, I
have big news.” It is mid-morning on Monday and Mark leans into my office, eyes twinkling, the biggest smile ever on his face. “I just got hired for a job in New York and I’m leaving this next week. I’m going to be on the editorial staff—“
I spin around in my chair
, glaring at him. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me that Charlene was Austen’s wife? She’s not. And you knew it.”
Mark looks surprised. Then he smiles, sheepishly. “Hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying. You are one cute little honey—wasted on that rocker. He’ll drag you down, Julia.
A year from now—“
I shake my head. “No
. He. Won’t. He’s the best thing that has ever happened in my life. Ever. Goodbye, Mark.” I turn back to the stack of press releases about upcoming events, pick one up and begin to read it.
“Bye, Julia.” I hear him walking away down the hall.
Then it occurs to me: what did he write about Austen for that profile? Oh god, what if it is a hatchet job? What if he took his feelings about me out on Austen? Or has he even written it yet? If he hasn’t, I may have just made things much, much worse by calling him a liar and snarling at him, although he deserved it.
30 seconds later I am in
Tim’s office.
“Did Mark turn in the profile of Austen yet?”
“He just did. Did he tell you he’s going to New York?”
“Yes.
May I see the profile?”
“Sure.”
Tim opens the top folder on a stack of beige folders and hands me two sheets of paper. As I read through it I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Mark’s profile is accurate, even flattering. He wrote about Austen’s mother being a teacher and his high school English teacher’s influence and his attempt to find Jean Paul Sartre in Paris. The profile reveals that the
Lady in the Mist
is one of his most personal songs and is about a woman Austen thought he had lost. No mention of who that lady is—thank goodness. And no mention of a wife or ex-wife.
I look up at
Tim and hand the pages back to him. “It’s really good.”
“Mark
has always been a real professional. He seems to be dedicated to journalism, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Maybe he’ll mellow out now that he’s going to be on staff—although everyone in New York publishing is so intense and uptight. He will probably fit right in.”
“
I’m sure he’ll do great there.”
I almost dance down the hall back to my office
and call Austen.
“You’re going to love the profile. I just read it and it
is really good.”
“Good to hear that.
Did you give your notice this morning?”
“Yes.
Steve wasn’t happy about it. He asked if I knew anyone who could take over and I suggested Cathy. I explained how she got forced out of
Voices
and he said he might call her.”
“It’s his problem
now, Julia, not yours.”
“I know.” Then I add: “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Julia.”
Julia and I talked by phone when Jack Kerouac died in October. By then the band was on tour and playing in the New York area. She was there with Austen and said the tour was turning out to be crazy and fun.
Then l
ast week I received a postcard from France with an Eiffel Tower on it. Julia and Austen were married in Paris in a civil ceremony on Valentine’s Day. I knew he would convince her to marry him sooner or later. She wrote that it is cold and wet in Paris and they are going to travel south to visit the wine regions. Then on to Italy. No mention of when they plan to be back. I miss her.
Since she left
I have had two new roommates: the first one lasted for less than three months and disappeared one day while I was at work. She took most of the food in the house with her. The new one, Lauren, moved in last month. I think back to that employment agency woman we met right after we arrived here and her comments about people coming and going in San Francisco these days. She was right.
It has been a little over a year since Julia and I decided to leave Seattle for San Francisco.
What a year it has been.
You can definitely make my day!
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About the author
Carol Lightwood is a Southern California writer who has lived in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle and Budapest. She sometimes writes as Annie Carroll, the name she uses on Twitter and Facebook. She is the author of these novels:
New Vampire Online
– Book
Two of the New Vampire series
New Vampire in Town
– Book One of the New Vampire series
Playing for Julia
– a sexy romance set in San Francisco in the 1960s
.