Requesting to Land

Nobody knew that for three years I'd been dating the boy I grew up with. He came home for the holidays, and people kept trying to set him up.

My mother glanced over at me, and there was real regret in it. "If only you were a little more impressive.

You just can't reach that high." "I would love to have him for a soninlaw. I really would." I cracked open a pistachio and agreed without any argument. "Mm. A guy in his league?

I couldn't get anywhere near him." My mother never dreamed of any of it.

The day I used a breakup to force him to go public with us, he smiled and took the out I'd handed him. "I've got plenty of better options than you." "Can you find anyone better than me?" My mother heard me give up on myself like that and shot me a vicious look.

The kind of look that said I could have been so much more if I'd ever bothered to try. She was winding up to lecture me when Miss Bernadette called to ask us over for dinner.

My mother insisted I come along. Which was how I ended up walking straight into Tim. Chapter 1 At the table, Tim sat next to me.

Without a word, he slid the dish of mac and cheese I liked over in front of me. My fork went right past it and speared a bite of the green bean casserole I didn't like.

He lifted an eyebrow and gave a small, silent twist of his mouth.

Off to the side, my mother and Miss Bernadette had seized their chance and were deep in conversation, heads together.

That afternoon a friend of Miss Bernadette's had come by with a niece of her own. Coming by, supposedly. Really it was just that Tim was home for a while.

So she'd brought her niece over for him to meet.

Tim had been home for the holidays all of two weeks, and half the relatives and neighbors in town had already worn a path to his door.

Other years Tim couldn't stand dealing with this kind of thing. He'd always find a reason to disappear. This year, for once, he was going along with it.

My mother started digging for the girl's particulars. Miss Bernadette counted them off on her fingers. "Yale Law. Practicing in New York.

Both her parents are college professors." My mother took Miss Bernadette's phone and studied the picture. "She's a pretty little thing! Good schools, good job, good family.

What's left to be picky about?" Miss Bernadette laughed behind her hand. "Every girl they bring around is a catch.

My eyes are starting to blur." My mother gave her a little shove, envious. "You're a lucky woman!

Tim being what he is, of course they only bring him the good ones." Then she turned to Tim, angling for gossip. "So, Tim, what did you think of the girl today?" I kept my head down and pushed things around my plate.

I didn't say a word. "Rosie." Tim said my name out of nowhere. I lifted my head and looked at him.

He asked me, not quite smiling: "What do you think?" Miss Bernadette pushed the phone at me right away. "Yes, yes, that's right. Rosie, you know Timmy better than anybody.

Help him think it through." I took the phone. My hands felt stiff.

In the photo the girl had long hair down over her shoulders and was wearing her Yale Law graduation gown, holding a bouquet, beaming at the camera.

That confidence, that polish, the kind a comfortable life soaks into a person. I would never get near it in this lifetime. I raised my eyes and met Tim's. He was enjoying this.

The day we broke up came back to me.

He'd been pinching the bridge of his nose, patience running thin. "Does it really matter that much whether people know?" "Are we dating for an audience?" And I lost hold of myself completely. "I'm your girlfriend.

I'm not your side piece!" He shot back, "Would you quit picking a fight? Have I ever had anyone but you?" Three years together, and he wouldn't do matching profile pictures with me.

Chapter 2 When he introduced me to anyone, he always introduced me as his neighbor.

I used to think it was because our families were so close, that he wanted to wait until we were solid. But year after year, I couldn't keep lying to myself.

He had never intended to be out in the open with me. Not from the start. By the end of that fight I was worn all the way down. The words came out on their own. Let's break up.

He blinked. Then he gave a careless little laugh. "Fine.

Let's break up." A second later his words landed, sharp and plain and not softened at all. "I've got plenty of better options than you." "Can you find anyone better than me?" I was stunned.

I cried and threw the worst thing I had back at him. "Fine! Go find them! Go find someone better than me!" I was too worked up then to face certain things.

Now that I'd come down off it, I had to admit them. He hadn't actually been wrong. He'd been valedictorian, the one who gave the speech for the whole school.

Then a PhD from Stanford. His starting package out of school, salary and stock together, came to eight hundred thousand a year. I went to an ordinary state school.

Statecertified elementary school teacher. Fiftytwo thousand a year. My salary for a year couldn't clear what he made in a month. We had never belonged to the same world.

I wouldn't even have cleared the bar to be brought around and introduced to him. I looked at him and felt calmer than I ever had.

I could even force a thin smile out of myself. "She's great. The two of you suit each other." "It's about time you dated someone." His eyes cooled, slowly. "Sure.

I'll go follow her, then." After dinner I went to the bathroom.

On my way back down the hall, I found Tim leaning in his bedroom doorway, waiting for me, in no hurry at all. "Come in. Let's talk." I didn't answer him and I didn't slow down.

Then his hand closed around mine and I was pulled into his room. The door shut, and before I could react he had me against it.

He bent his head and caught my earlobe between his lips, and a shiver went through me. Three years together. He knew every inch of me.

When he set out to flirt with me, he could disarm me without any effort at all. He was smiling, his voice gone slightly rough. "You really want me to follow her?

Could you stand it?" I put a hand on his chest and pushed. "Follow her, don't follow her. What's it to me?

I'm the neighbor." He only smiled, and caught my wrist without any trouble. He brought the phone up in front of my face and held it there until I had to see the screen.

The girl's follow request was on it. He took my index finger, pressed it to the glass, and looked down at me to see what I'd do. "Delete or confirm.

It's your call." It was the out he was offering me. He was waiting for me to give the first signal that I wanted peace. The way I had countless times before, whenever we fought.

His patience had always been barren ground. He'd coax once, maybe twice. If I still wouldn't come down, he stopped coaxing. Tim was always like that. Never at any loss.

In this relationship he had never once come down off his throne. I frowned. My finger rested on the cold glass. I didn't think about it for even a second. I pressed Confirm.

Tim's face went black. Tim and I went to the same schools from elementary all the way through high school. In middle school my feelings for him turned into something else.

I buried it. I couldn't let anyone know. I watched him grow better looking. Watched his report cards get better and better. Watched the line of girls who liked him never once break.

Feeling small became the required course of my adolescence. And yet for ten years, without fail, he waited at my door to walk to school with me.

I'd take my sweet time coming out and climb onto the rack of his bike. Chapter 3 And I'd take the breakfast he'd brought for me. One, just for me.

I'd hold on to the hem of his shirt and let him carry me forward into the wind.

Sometimes, halfway there, the boy would look back to threaten me. "You're this slow again, I'm not waiting for you." And the next time he waited.

He never knew that I dragged my feet only because I didn't want to be on his bike. I knew he wouldn't be carrying me forever. My boy was in the full bloom of his youth.

One day there would be some other girl on that rack. Back then I didn't dare hope he might like me. And then, of all things, through a chain of accidents, we started something.

The summer after his second year of grad school. We were watching a movie in his living room. It was supposed to be a thriller.

Then out of nowhere there was a long, heated kiss on the screen. I grabbed the remote and shut it off, embarrassed.

He turned his head to look at me and needled me on purpose. "Your mom not let you watch Rrated movies?" I kept my eyes away from his, which had nothing to hide. "I can watch them… just not with you…" He raised an eyebrow. "Who do you want to watch them with?" "My future boyfriend…" He was quiet for two seconds.

Then he leaned in. Warmth covered my mouth. Everything I might have said was sealed under a kiss I hadn't seen coming. My eyes stayed open.

I let him kiss me a while, not understanding any of it.

He pulled back, cleared his throat, and started the movie again. "From now on you only watch them with me." I've never forgotten that line. That was how he and I began.

We were tangled up in each other for three years after that. Sweetness and pain braided together, and by the end there was far more pain than sweetness.

I used to think that since I'd had him, I'd have no regrets. But I held on with everything I had and came away with an armful of emptiness. When had I ever really had him?

Three days later we ran into each other at a high school classmate's wedding. The reception hall was loud with voices and full of light. Same round table.

He had the seat right next to mine. He sat straight, and the wellcut suit made him even harder to miss. Just sitting there, he had people at the other tables turning to look.

One of the bridesmaids worked up the nerve to come over and ask for his number. He glanced at me, then turned her down politely.

A few rounds in, a girl from our class called down the table at Tim. "Come on, Mr. Valedictorian, just tell us what kind of girl you actually like." "The girl next door?

An older one who calls the shots?

Or some delicate thing who needs looking after?" Tim turned it aside with no effort at all and tipped his chin at me. "Ask her." Every eye at the table came to me.

Even Tim propped his chin on his hand and tilted his head, waiting for my answer. I took a sip of my soda and said, evenly: "No idea.

Definitely not the girl next door." Somebody nearby agreed. "Right, no way Mr.

Valedictorian goes for the girl next door." "He and Rosie have known each other all these years and nothing ever came of it." Just then the bride and groom came by to say hello to our table, and just like that, the subject was dropped.

The bride and I were close.

She clinked her glass against mine and gave me a look. "Rosie, last time I asked, didn't you say you were still single?" "There's a groomsman here today who is every woman's dream." "A few of the bridesmaids already asked me to introduce them.

I turned every one of them down. I'm saving him for you." "Get up. I'm taking you over to meet him." Before I could answer, a hand closed over mine where it lay on my knee.

I froze, and turned to look at Tim. Nothing showed on his face. Under the table his left hand had me in a hard grip.

His right hand lifted a glass of iced tea and took an unhurried sip.

Chapter 4 His thumb, rough at the pad, moved across the back of my hand, over and over, as if telling me not to go. It was the second out he offered me.

I made up my mind, brushed his hand off, and stood. "Sure.

Let's go take a look." The bride hooked her arm through mine, and pointed at the groomsmen's table off to our left as we walked. "See him? The bestlooking one.

Delta captain." I had just broken up with Tim. I wasn't in any hurry to find someone. I only wanted an excuse to get out of that chair and breathe.

Sitting through a wedding dinner next to your ex days after the breakup doesn't sit well with anybody. I followed where she was pointing.

The man sat there in a suit, talking and laughing easily. Even across that much room, there was no missing the hard line of him, or the way he carried himself.

The bride elbowed me, delighted with herself. "Well? Is he something or is he something?" "He's a Delta captain.

Domestic routes." "You might have been on one of his flights and never known it." I joked. "He really is something.

What was Quinton thinking, putting him in the wedding party?" "Think about the pictures." "The groom's basic, so his groomsmen can't be basic," she said with a big laugh. "He's got to do something for my girls." By the time the bride had towed me to the groomsmen's table, she called out, loud as anything: "Orson Cabot.

I've got a friend for you to meet." The man turned around at the sound of it. And when those deep, bright dark eyes came into mine, we were both equally startled. This