Who Loves Her? Read online

  Susan could hear Harris yelling for her down the hall as she walked out of the back of the school. She blew hard at the curl hanging over her eyes and thought in irritation. “Why does he always come running when I want to be alone! If I could get away from him then I could go find some more pictures.”

  “Susan! Hey stop! Hey girl! It’s me, Harris!” Susan kept walking.

  Susan ducked behind the field house as she heard the door to the school swing open. Harris was yelling and yelling as she waited.

  “Surely he will go away if he doesn’t see me!”

  She was still so irritated and grieving about her lost village that she really could not think of a single person she wanted to talk with. She had at least twenty more magazines she could investigate for something else to capture her attention. She began to hum as she planned her afternoon, certain she had ditched Harris and would have peace and quiet on the way home.

  She had taken possibly fifteen steps when she noticed she was being watched. Her heart quickened just a bit as the golden blonde boy with the blue eyes and broad smile waved in her direction.

  “Oh God, “she gasped. “Oh no, did Bob see me ditch Harris? Would he tell anyone what he had seen? How would she explain it?”

  Susan flashed a quick, embarrassed smile before stepping out onto the sidewalk that would lead her to her home.

  Harris was another problem. Okay, well he was not so much a problem as just problematic. In the beginning, she was actually flattered by his attention. She was exuberant, filled with life and beauty who kept her grades at a stellar level while she lived a pretty wild and out-of-control social life. She never did anything bad, so to speak. Her sweet dad used to whisper in her Momma’s ear, “She is just full of life…just like her good-looking momma!”

  Her mother would giggle and push him away before saying, “Yeah! And that is what you should worry about!”

  Whether Harris fell in love with Susan’s natural beauty and charming demeanor, or he was enchanted by the continual stream of stated dreams and flowing ideas, it is hard to say. Something attracted the most popular guy in the school to the most unimpressed girl in the world. Nina told Susan that she was made all the more beautiful by her disregard for Harris’s position. She claimed that Harris was so used to having girls hanging on him that her apparent disregard for his level of popularity intrigued him, and wanted to make him fight for her attention. Sadly for Harris, the more he tried to impress her, the less impressed she was.

  Susan continued to look over her shoulder for Harris. She did feel guilty about ditching him, but she was so upset about her lost village. Those old biddies at school have never been ten feet outside the Alexandria city limits sign. Susan did not want to be stuck here for the rest of her life. There was a big, wide world out there, and she intended to see it. Today she was dodging Harris because of her lost village, but tomorrow she would be using Harris’ money to go discover as many new villages as she could find. Paris, Rome, and Cairo were all real; all she had to do was figure out how to get a passport and she was on her way. Harris would just have to wait on her to finish her dreams.

  Of course, Susan and Harris’ dads never doubted that the young lovers would be together. How many times had she and Harris sat watching the Viking game as Harris’ dad told her dad about the great Viking grandsons they would have one day. Nina would poke her in the side as Susan rolled her eyes.

  “Y’know Nina, I’m not sure why they are so eager to marry me off!” Susan just watched as the stadium exploded in recognition of the magnificence of Harris’s last pass.

  “I really have no desire for marriage or kids or houses in Alexandria. Nina, you know what I really want? I want to graduate and join the Peace Corps!”

  Nina gasped and looked at Susan in disbelief. “Have you lost your mind! If you leave town for three years with the Peace Corps you will come back and your husband will be married to another woman!”

  “Oh don’t be silly, Nina! I don’t have a husband!”

  “Well, how about you tell those two guys up there about that.” Nina pointed at the two dad’s happily picking out names for their Viking football star grandsons.

  It wasn’t like Susan and Harris really had all that much of a choice. Harris’ dad owned Bill’s Chevrolet, just off I-94 and sat on most of the church boards and the chamber of commerce in town. Susan’s dad owned three hotels, and way too many big boy toys for fishing and skiing. He wasn’t as big a hot-shot as Mr. Larsen, but both families ended up together quite often between the St. Olaf’s and city clean-up events. Harris and Susan looked like Alexandria’s perfect couple. Each of them came from successful families who were known by nearly everyone. Harris was tall and handsome. Clearly he would take over the car company as rightful King Chevrolet, and Susan was the perfect quirky, colorful rich girl who would make a typical, but interesting wife. Even before graduation, Harris had already taken over as the solid manly foundation who would protect Susan from her over-emotional female drama-queen antics.

  Susan’s and Harris’s parents were so pleased with the match that Susan never stopped to consider “why,” nor did she accept that Harris was the one with whom she was meant to be. Susan laughed to herself at the thought of “Harris, the man of her future.” Susan enjoyed the things money would buy. Even the fast cars were fun, and pretty clothes had a place in her closet. Most of all, she enjoyed Harris’s bravado. Everything should have been wonderful, but Susan had one problem that she had kept secret. A problem that she kept hidden deep inside her heart until she was alone in her room in the dark each night.

  The problem was Bob. Bob was the center on Harris’s football team, and even though he was a bruiser on the field, he was just a wallflower when it came down to hanging around in school. Bob lived next door to Susan the whole time she was growing up. Every morning they would wait for the bus together, unless it got too cold, and Auntie would drive them to school on her way to work. He would smile and kind of give her a small shy wave every morning when they parted ways. From seventh grade on, his cheeks would blush red like a gnome on Christmas every time he saw her. Susan couldn’t tell if it was her or the frosty air most of the time. Susan really liked Bob. He was kind and quiet. During his football days he was something to look at too. Most of us girls would admit it in the locker room to each other, but since he never made any moves or went to any parties, nobody could ever boast about what Bob was really like.

  As Susan hung up the phone on Harris, she curled her hair around her pinky finger and worried.

  “What’s wrong?” Nina asked.

  “What?”

  “Nothing?” Susan replied.

  “That big sigh is the universal sign for Susan’s depression. Get her chocolate, a beer, or a man.”

  “Stop it! Someone will hear you!” Susan giggled.

  “Well, spill it, or I’m going to tell Harris about our trip to the University of Minnesota and all of those foreign exchange students you…”

  “Nina! All right. Listen….Harris is a great guy. He’s funny and stable. Our families get along great…”

  “But…”

  “No, buts. It’s just that…”

  “You’ve got your eye on some other hot number.”

  “Nina, just stop it. Just got the jitters. Here comes Jenkins with the quarterlies. He’s going to say he needs them yesterday.”

  “He needs everything yesterday.”

  Susan sighed again. Nina yelled, “I heard that.” Susan told herself she had nothing to complain about. She tried to suppress the nagging ache in her chest for Bob, and bury herself in the rest of her phone calls and emails she had to answer before the end of her shift. When the ache returned on her way home from work, she chalked it up to jitters. Besides Harris really was a great guy and life promised to be all roses between her stepping into managing her dad’s hotels and Harris expanding Bill’s Chevrolet into some more tourist types of rental vehicles. She pictured herself with a white picket fence and summers in the
nicer parts around Lake Carlos with her kids roasting marshmallows, and Harris hunting and fishing in the fall with his buddies.

  The next morning at work, Nina handed Susan her coffee and blurted, “You’ve got to tell him.”

  “Tell who what?

  “Mr. Wonderpants! You have to tell him that you are getting married.”

  “Nina!” When they were in high school and about to get the winning championship for volleyball, Susan had just accidently run around the corner and bumped into Bob in one of those awkward ways where hands go where they shouldn’t, but it was all an accident. Bob about ran to get away, but Susan couldn’t help detailing to the entire group about the “bump and run.” Bob forever after had the nickname Mr. Wonderpants because the whole volleyball team teased Susan about wondering what was in Bob’s pants.

  “You’ve got to tell him.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

  “Wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me. I need a little excitement in my life. Bill is all about boats, lures, and whatever the Vikings are not doing during the football season. Might as well watch you squirm like a worm.”

  “What if Harris found out?”

  “Found out what? That you didn’t have a crush on him? Half the school knew you had a crush on Bob. Somebody should have told Bob since he was clearly too dense to notice it for himself. Nina got a mocking look of disgust on her face before grinning broadly at Susan.

  “Tell him or I will! I’ll give you until next week,” Nina offered advice as she tried to push Susan to acceptance.

  “Oh, and if I have to be the one to tell him Miss Susie Q, I’m also going to tell him you had his name tattooed right across the left cheek of your ass!” Together the two girls fell down laughing at the imaginary sight of one word on a half of a butt: BOB.

  Susan sighed happily as she looked at her friend. “Just do it somewhere public, like the church potluck or something,” said Nina. “Somewhere that he won’t feel cornered, and you won’t feel like a stalker.” Their laughter was renewed, and suddenly the thought of telling Bob felt like the right thing to do.

  Susan considered her options, and decided that Nina was right since if she went through with this marriage without telling Bob, she’d never quite forgive herself. She knew she would have too many eyes watching during church, so she decided to wander down to the hardware store after work. Bob was working on refinishing his boat because it was always out front during the summer months. Mrs. Bergland, from the Fellowship committee at St. Olaf’s reported that you could set your clock by Bob. He would be at Viking Village coffee before work and Ole’s Hardware after work, every day except Friday, when he went to Luigi’s Tavern to meet up with the rest of who he could find from the high school football team.

  Susan was in luck. She pretended she was looking for a lag bolt for the loose step on her porch when Bob waltzed in. Bob stepped into the store as the bell on the door signaled the arrival of the next customer. Susan moved like a cat working her body imperceptibly back behind the metal rack holding the bolts and screws. From her vantage point, she was able to study Bob’s movements without being seen. A smile played across her face as she watched the big guy lean down to pet Dusty, the official owner of Ole’s Hardware. Dusty was one of those beaten up lost kittens that show up magically in the strangest of places. As they look up helplessly, wedged in behind an ice cooler or the bottom of a small pipe, their eyes scream: “Help me human! You are my last hope on earth.” No one really knows how long Dusty has been around. All they know is he will be there at the hardware store to greet every single customer and he will be damned glad to see you once you arrive.

  As Dusty plopped down at the end of the corner to watch the business transaction at hand, Bob looked behind him. Her voice caught in the back of her throat as she realized that Bob must have felt he was on display to some prying eyes. With a touch of shame, she began to dig through the bolts once again, holding her breath, unsure of how to proceed into these uncharted waters.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, Bob!”

  Bob blushed every time. “Um…hey, Susan.”

  She dropped the anonymous bolt back into the plastic bin, her nerves rattling with the metal bolts falling together.

  “I hear your boat’s going to be ready for Fishing Frenzy Fridays this summer.”

  “Um…hope so. Mostly a tourist gig, but it will give me a chance to test her out. Hope to snag some large mouth. Maybe a Walleye or two. What brings you into Ole’s?”

  “Oh….a lag bolt. I’m trying to get the old place ready to sell. Harris said we won’t need two places after the wedding…uhm…did you know we’re getting married?” Susan felt like a mean-spirited clown as Bob attempted interest.

  “Oh, uhm when is the uhm wedding?”

  She spoke with a nonchalant air, but her words seemed hurtful as Bob winced at her last words.”

  Susan answered quietly, “On Valentine’s Day.”

  Bob gave a weak smile and began backing away from her. Susan felt lower than a Smallmouth when the sun comes out. Bob’s cheeks flushed again and he mumbled something about congratulations and needing to see if Ole’s had some two-hundred grit sandpaper. She felt even lower than low when she noticed the confused look in Dusty’s eyes as Bob passed by him without even a scratch on the head. The truth was that Susan knew how he really felt. In many ways, she blamed Bob for their soon-to-be-lost love. It had to be his fault; he was the man. Susan left the store empty handed and blinked back tears as memories of Bob landed heavily in her heart.

  High school wasn’t that far off, and one night at Luigi’s, Bob spilled his guts to Larry Bratvold after one too many Keystones. “Larry, I love her, I really do,” Bob slurred as he racked the next game of pool.

  “You love who?” Larry shot back with a laugh. “Man, you say the damnest things sometimes.” With that, Bob let the question drop, never clarifying his tear-in-my-beer moment to his friend.

  Nina knew everything, anyway. She could not resist forcing her husband Larry to spill the man secrets the guys shared on beer night. Nina kept Susan well informed and up to date on Bob through the secrets Larry shared, in spite of Nina’s promises to take it all to the grave.

  Larry said that Bob got all blubbery one night when he overheard two drunks talking about seeing Susan at the fish place. Bob exploded in a drunken fit of anger, then basically ran them out of Luigi’s in defense of Susan’s honor. “…and this ain’t no fish place either!” Bob screamed at their retreating backs. It was then that Bob made his odd confession. Nina jerked straight up in the bed and looked at Larry with big eyes of concern.

  “Larry!” she exclaimed: “We can’t let this happen! She just can not marry Harris because Bob and Susan are meant to be together!”

  Larry rolled over and grumbled as he pulled the warm blanket around his shoulders, “Look Nina, you best just stay out of everybody’s business. This is none of our concern, and besides this is not just about love. That wedding with Harris is just as much about business as it is family, and you ‘n me ain’t neither!” Nina was frustrated by Larry’s warnings and fell asleep vowing to tell Susan the whole thing.

  As Nina recounted the story to Susan, the two young women laughed. Susan quipped that there must be magic in the spaghetti sauce that made Italian men great romantic lovers. The truth was that Luigi’s was no more Italian than Bob. It was just a name Sven slapped on the place to snag the tourists. Most of the Italian comes from a can, and all the locals know they can get Lutefisk or fish and chips from the bar kitchen.

  Susan felt like crap. She could see in his eyes in Ole’s that her announcement about getting married had bothered him a little--well maybe a lot. They had had a fling, if you could call it that, their freshman year at the Alexandria Technical and Community College. He was studying to be a boat mechanic and Susan was studying to either be a teacher or a business person. They had a couple of laughs at a p
arty and even made out a couple of times, but when it got down to being serious and becoming a couple something just short-circuited. He made her laugh. Truly, even now the memories she had of their time made her warm.

  Bob had always been shy, but somehow at ATCC he’d loosened up a bit. After a couple of rough starts and stops, they finally just drifted apart. It seemed they were really good at starting up, admiring each other from afar; but when it came to settling into a comfortable piece of a two-part couple, they floundered. Eventually, Bob went to work down at the marina to service the boats or sell baits. Susan went on to college and finished her business degree. She seemed to go through the rest of college mapping out plans for how she was gonna get Bob back into her life. How “this” time around would be different, and they would spend the rest of their lives together, laughing, and warm.