Second Chance November 29

The story starts here.

“How so?” Troy asked.

“Well, how do you know when you’ve met the right person? How do you know when it’s the one?”

“My dad always said that you’ll know because you won’t have to ask that question anymore.” Karin pondered this piece of advice as she sipped the warm coffee. It had always been hard for her to relax, but here, in this house, where she’d shared coffee with her friend so many times before, there was a calm she couldn’t explain, a peacefulness that for her existed nowhere else.

The beep of the dryer interrupted their conversation.

“Your clothes should be dry now.” Troy said.

“Thank you,” Karin said as he handed her a pair of warm sweats, stained with paint from months of work days, but clean and dry and cozy. She changed and returned his bathrobe.

When Karin got home, there were several messages on her machine. Three from Jay, one from the Piermont Group thanking her for her proposal, but they were going to contract with a company with greater resources, one from Lutheran Life Villages thanking her for choosing them to care for her mother, and the rest from potential renters looking for apartments.

She listened to the messages from Jay, over and over again. The sound of his voice, the smell of his chest, the way he smiled and ran his fingers through his hair; everything about him made her heart skip a beat. But, his life was all mixed up, and he would always be just beyond her reach. He wanted her to trust him, but he had too many secrets.

When she thought of Troy Bennett, and the cozy little house on the lake, it felt like home. She wasn’t driven into his arms by a relationship of old, or by a flame of passion, but all of her wanted to go to him.

“I know he’s older than me, but his life is simple.” Karin told Michelle when they talked the next morning. 

“And, we have so much in common.”

“Did he cook for you and show you a sun rise?” Michelle asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t do anything planned or showy or especially romantic. He just…” Karin tried to put words to what it was that Troy had done that had made her feel so good. “He just took care of me.”

“I think you take good care of yourself just fine. You don’t need a man to take care of you, do you?”

“It’s not that I need to be taken care of, but maybe I do. Maybe that’s exactly what I need, exactly what I’ve needed all along.” Karin said, and she thought for a moment, then added. “You know, I’ve been taking care of my mother for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been taking care of the needs of all the people who rent from me and fixing things for my clients and now that I think about it, I’ve been taking care of other people most of my life.”

“That’s true. You do deserve to have someone treat you right.” Michelle said, sympathetically.

“Jay is so good-looking and charming and I’ve thought for years that he was the standard that I’ve been trying to make every other man live up to. But, I’ll always feel like he’s hiding something, or like there’s another secret about to be revealed. I can’t live on edge like that.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call him and accept his invitation for a date, and we’ll see where it goes.” Karin said.

Read the last page here.