Near Love Stories
by J. B. Hogan

Come Back

He had gone back to the states to finish work on a novel their trip to the Yucatan had interrupted. He was struggling with the book, hoping it would be the one that put him over the top, doubting that it would. To break the dreary hard work of finishing the book, he'd gone to a favorite outdoor restaurant where he could sit in the air under an awning, sip on beer, write, and pretend he was Ernest Hemingway in Paris in the 20s. As he struggled with a particularly difficult passage, someone came up to his table, their shadow blocking the light on his manuscript. A little annoyed, he looked up and it was her.

"Hi," she said, smiling in that hopeful, little girl way he had never been able to resist. "Mind if I join you?"

He laid his pencil on the manuscript and motioned for her to sit down. They looked at each other for a moment, each awkwardly shifting in their seats.

"You look great," he said, wishing he didn't always have to compliment her the minute he saw her.

"So do you," she said. A waiter appeared to take her order but she didn't want anything.

"I thought you were still on tour," he said, not knowing what else to say.

"I am," she said, "we're playing in Santa Fe tomorrow night."

"How's it going?"

"Great. The band misses you."

"I'm sure."

They were quiet again for a while then she asked:

"Are you finally getting a chance to finish your book?"

"How did you find me here?" he asked, trying to break through whatever communication barrier they, or he, had erected between themselves. "I didn't tell anybody where I was."

"I had my agent call your agent," she grinned. "Two can play that game, you know."

He smiled at her reference to his original ploy that brought them together. No matter what had passed between them, he would never regret having made that first connection.

"I miss you so bad," she added softly, reaching her hand across the table.

He placed his hand on top of hers and lightly stroked her smooth skin. God, how I love this girl, he said to himself.

"I don't know what to say," he said out loud, the words catching in his constricting throat.

"Tell me you miss me, too," she prompted.

"I miss you," he said, looking at her lovely, talented hands. Lord, she could play and sing, he thought. If I had one tenth of that talent I could---.

"I brought you a present," she said, reaching down and pulling it out of her bag. She set it on the table between them.

"An answering machine?" he laughed.

"So you can return all those calls I made that you didn't get," she mock chastised him.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, "I had no idea."

"That's why I had to call your agent finally," she explained. "You're a hard man to get hold of."

"I'm glad you did," he told her, all the emotional walls and barricades suddenly tumbling down as if they had never been built in the first place.