Marie Ferrarella - Dating for Two

She looked at him, slightly confused. “What?”

“Back there, when that woman looked like she was more than happy to give you ‘one of everything,’ you stopped her by saying you were only ‘giving voice to a fantasy.’” As he spoke, he distributed the two cups of coffee and then the two turnovers. With the tray empty, he removed it and put it out of the way on the floor behind his chair. “Did you used to dream about pastries?”

He meant it as a joke, in the same vein that he’d asked her about naming inanimate objects. He hadn’t really expected her to answer his question seriously.

“All the time,” Erin told him with a heartfelt sigh.

“You weren’t allowed sweets as a kid?” he asked. The guess arose out of his own childhood, when one of his friends—Billy—had parents who wouldn’t allow him to have any candy, cake or cookies. Billy’s snacks were all painfully healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits and carrots. The second Billy was out of the house, he made up for it, scarfing down as many sweets as he could get his hands on. He’d had a serious weight problem by the time he was twenty.

Erin, on the other hand, looked as if she was in danger of blowing away if she lost as little as five pounds.

“Oh, I was allowed sweets,” she told him. “I just couldn’t keep any of them down.”

He took a sip of his coffee before venturing, “Allergies?”

Erin broke off a piece of the turnover and savored it before answering, “Chemo.”

“Chemo,” Steve repeated, stunned. “As in chemotherapy?”

“That’s the word,” she acknowledged, nodding her head. Even now, more than twenty years later, the very sound of the word brought a chill down her spine. She always had to remind herself that she had conquered the horrible disease, not the other way around.

He felt as if he had opened his mouth as wide as possible and inserted not just one foot but both. “I’m sorry, Erin. I didn’t mean to bring up any painful memories.”

She smiled at him, appreciating his thoughtfulness. “You didn’t. I was the one who brought up the memory—you just asked about it.”

How did he extract himself without sounding clumsy—or callous?

“Are you all...better?” Well, that certainly was neither suave nor warm, he upbraided himself. “I’m sorry. This is none of my business—”

“That’s all right,” she assured him. “I don’t mind answering. Too many people act like you’re some kind of alien creature when you have cancer. They don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything at all—and they just disappear out of your life. As to your question, yes, I’m all better, thanks for asking.

“And it wasn’t all bad,” she confided. “Being that sick made me appreciate everything I had, everything I was able to enjoy after I got out of the hospital. Besides, if it wasn’t for that whole experience, I would have never met Tex.”

“Tex,” Steve repeated, drawing a blank for a second. And then he remembered. “That would be your stuffed dinosaur, right?”

“Hey, who’re you calling stuffed?”

The high-pitched voice caught him off guard and he automatically looked around to see where the voice was coming from before he realized that Erin had projected it.

Erin tried hard not to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes still dancing with amusement. “I just couldn’t resist. Tex has been such an integral part of everything I do, at times I have to admit I almost feel he’s real.”

“That makes two of us,” he told her.

Even so, Steve was only vaguely aware of her apology. What he was far more aware of was that Erin had placed her hand on his wrist while she was talking to him.

The second she’d touched him, he had felt an instant connection with this animated, unique woman.

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