Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“So this isn’t a relationship to you?”

“No. This is great,” I insisted. “This is exactly what I need right now. Spending time with someone who is funny and nice and really good in bed. No strings. No complications. You’re a guy. I thought you’d be thrilled that I don’t want to get all emotionally involved! I thought we had some sort of unspoken agreement.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to swallow my tongue. I sounded just like Mike, seeing the relationship the way I wanted to, damn the other person’s feelings. Taking what I wanted and giving little back.

“How exactly is that not supposed to insult me?” he asked softly. He looked genuinely hurt, which made me want to apologize. But the damage was done. Anything I said now would just sound like I was placating him. Instead, I balled up my fists and concentrated on the pressure of my fingernails digging into my palms. “I haven’t asked anything from you, Lace, because I know you’re not ready to give it. But you can’t just declare that this isn’t real because you don’t want to put a label on it. And you’re only going to be able to use Mike as an excuse for so long. Don’t make me pay for his mistakes.” He shook a handful of the sample newsletters. “Don’t make all of the men in America pay because your husband was a philandering idiot.”

He dropped the papers on my desk and headed for the door.

“Monroe, can’t we just sit down and talk about this?” I asked, gesturing to his chair, his empty plate. “Don’t just walk out.”

“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” he said and slammed the door behind him.

The Harvest Moon Festival was the only truly community-oriented event in which the citizens of Buford participated. There were plenty of summer events for the tourists: the Strawberry Festival, the Fourth of July Jamboree, the Annual Redneck Regatta. But the Harvest Moon party, held on the second Saturday of October, was something the locals did just for themselves. I suspected it was to celebrate the departure of the annoying summer people.

The festival stemmed from an annual effort to help the community’s poor prepare for winter. Only now, instead of hunting deer and turkeys to stock underprivileged pantries, local residents helped charities by funneling them cash through carnival games, rides, and truly unhealthy food.

One silence-filled week after our disastrous dinner, Monroe stuck the flyer for the festival on my screen door as a sort of apology gesture, along with my own little pocket recorder for taking notes while I ran. I know that a crumpled, badly formatted sheet of neon orange paper and an electronic gadget shouldn’t bring a grown woman to tears, but being released from my own personal guilt-hell was so much better than getting flowers or jewelry.

When I speculated that the world wouldn’t end just because someone was mad at me, I was wrong. It did feel like the end of the world knowing that Monroe was angry with me. I was more depressed, more emotional, than I had been after leaving Mike. Food had no taste. Nothing I read, nothing on TV appealed to me. All I could do was write and sleep. I wrote pages and pages about Laurie’s heartbreak, her hope at meeting Mac, the sheriff of the tiny town where she settled. I felt like I had damaged something important, and somehow writing it down would keep me from losing it entirely.

I must have started for my front door a hundred times, holding the knob and trying to find exactly the right words to tell Monroe that I was sorry. But some unlikely combination of shame and pride kept me from opening it. Yes, I felt bad for making Monroe feel unappreciated or cheap. But I couldn’t help but resent the idea that he was practically commanding me not to write the newsletters, even if he thought he had my best interests in mind. I’d fought too hard to start making my own decisions. I wasn’t ready to hand over proxy votes just yet. I was afraid of ending up right back where I started.

That ugly orange flyer was like a pardon from prison. The minute I found it, I practically ran across the yard, even though I had no idea what I was going to say. How exactly did this work? Did I speak first? Did he? How did you apologize for half of an argument? Before I could knock, Monroe opened the door.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

Well, that was easy.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I shouldn’t have -”

“I’ll go first,” Monroe said.

“No, I should go -”

“Lacey, just let me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come down so hard on you. I can’t tell you what to do. I want you to find your voice as a writer and … I guess I took it a little too personally when you started working on something else. I still think the newsletters are a horrible idea and that you could do so much more with your talents. But I could have said so without hurting your feelings -”

“Well, you had a point and sometimes, obviously, I don’t see things unless I’m smacked over the head with them,” I admitted. “I’m going to rethink the whole letter thing. If it’s going to cause problems between us … I think I just got overexcited at the prospect of something I could do well. There aren’t a whole lot of tangible things that I’m good at -”

“I don’t want you to think that way,” Monroe said, interrupting me. “I’m sorry if I’ve been coming off as condescending or overbearing -”

“I’m sorry I called you all those horrible, vile names,” I told him.

His brow furrowed. “You didn’t call me names.”

“Well, you weren’t here for it, but, trust me, I did. And I’m sorry. Right now, besides my brother, you’re the best friend I have.”

“Same for me. If sex is going to complicate that, maybe we can cool down for a while.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I exclaimed, holding my hands up. “Let’s not get crazy.”

A wide grin split Monroe’s face, his relief palpable. “Oh, thank God, because I was totally bluffing.”

We spent most of the evening apologizing. In a baby step toward a more normal relationship, Monroe suggested we go to the festival. He said it combined his two great loves, deep-fried Twinkies and Tilt-A-Whirls.

He was a deep and complex man.

The truth was, I needed to get out of the cabin. Even without the Monroe-based guilt weighing on me, I was spending so much time on the computer, I was starting to get a laptop-shaped burn mark across my thighs. It wasn’t just the manuscript marathons. Despite my assertions that I would rethink the letters, I was still tinkering with Maya’s case studies. She sent me a new batch every few days, each time offering me increasingly attractive salary packages.

The stories made my experience seem like a particularly bland episode of The Brady Bunch. There was a woman named Alice whose husband had moved out of their house one T-shirt at a time for a month until there was almost nothing left of him in their home. He’d moved in with a co-worker who he’d been working on “projects” with for the last six months. Alice had even called her his work wife. What embarrassed Alice the most was that she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. Her husband had removed everything that was important to him out of the house, and she’d missed it. So I wrote a “change of address” announcement for the husband.

Please forward all mail to Carl Finley at his new residence at 3379 Jackson Street, where he will be living with Robin, the woman he’s been sleeping with for the last six months. Most of you will be relieved to know that you don’t have to help Carl move because he slowly but surely moved his stuff out of the house over the last month so his darling wife wouldn’t notice anything was amiss. While Alice was busy calling hospitals to see f her husband had been injured in a car accident, Carl sent his mother to tell Alice that her marriage was over … and that she wanted her heirloom china back.