Page 9 of Too Old for Love

Her phone pinged with a text message.

I hope your day is starting out good. Looking forward to dinner tomorrow night. Please don’t cancel on me. I really like you.

She stared at it a moment, almost tempted to do exactly that, cancel. He was young, handsome, a great job and obviously skilled with wood-working. What did he see in her?

Not a great day. A story for tomorrow night.

She left the café and walked over to the Shops at Canal, treating herself to some retail therapy. It felt irresponsible at first but then she reminded herself of all the times she’d denied herself the new dress or the new bag. She deserved this. Today of all days she deserved it.

Tomorrow, she’d contemplate returning it all.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tuesday morning she woke with a fleeting thought to jump in the shower and get ready for work. Then it disappeared. She couldn’t tell if she was happy about that or sad. It was just sitting there for her to mull over.

After two full minutes of contemplative thought, she smiled to herself and nodded. Grabbing her coffee, she walked out onto the porch to enjoy the comfortable early morning temperatures.

She waved at her neighbors in the early morning light as they were out to walk their dogs, or simply do their morning walk around the streets in the small community. It was a quiet neighborhood filled with a mix of retirees, young married couples, young families, and a few like her.

Not too old. Not too young. Alone.

She didn’t commiserate about being alone. Not usually, anyway,. She rarely wished for others to be in her home, laughter and the sounds of family filling the empty space. She’d been married once before. Nearly thirty years married. And then one day she wasn’t.

There wasn’t any drama, no one cheating on anyone – at least not openly, no bickering. It was simply that they were no longer the same people. They had nothing in common any longer. For almost ten years they became more separate than together. He spent more time out with friends or golfing and she spent more time alone, finishing DIY household projects or working in the garden. He never asked about her day. She never asked about his day.

One day, after a lot of consideration on the matter, he walked in from a golf day and she looked at him, feeling nothing.

“Are you seeing someone else?” she asked. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t admit anything. But somewhere she knew that he was at least thinking about it.

“I think we should get a divorce,” she said without emotion. “I don’t think we’re the same people any longer.”

She half-expected that he would argue but he said nothing for a few long moments. He put his clubs in the hall closet and took a seat across from her in the living room.

“I think you’re right, Everest. I’ll have the lawyer draw up something fair.”

She only nodded, knowing that there wasn’t a whole lot to split or to worry about. They’d been sleeping in separate bedrooms for almost three years. His choice, not hers. He claimed his back was bad and he needed the space. Apparently it wasn’t bad enough to quit playing golf.

A few months later, she was no longer Mrs. Albion. She was now back to being Ms. Marshall.

With nothing, or no one, to keep her in their small town, she packed up everything she owned, moved to New Orleans for her job, a job that she’d been loyal to for almost two decades, bought a house and now, only a month later, her job was ‘eliminated’.

It was all veiled corporate-speak. There was a lot of bullshit about down-sizing and the need to take the organization in a different direction. She knew the truth. She was over sixty, female, and her face no longer matched the needs of the organization.

Now, she woke early, sat on the porch with her coffee before the blazing heat sucked the life from her, waved at neighbors and smiled, and then when the heat became too much, she would retreat into her small home.

But something this morning felt different. There was an ache in her chest that hadn’t been there before. Not pain. Not anxiety. Not heartburn, a frequent problem at her age. No, this was different.

“Holy shit,” she muttered to herself, identifying the pain.

Loneliness.

She wanted to blame Mike but the truth was, she’d been feeling it coming on for a while. She was a woman alone in a city where it seemed everyone had a partner, a dog, or a million friends.

“Am I lonely?” she whispered.

“Everest?” came the voice. She looked up with shock and surprise as she stared at the face of Colt.

“What are you doing here? How did you find me?” she asked.