“You should just ask him about it, then,” Lola said.
As though that was easily done. How do you do that? Do you say, “I saw you hugging this beautiful girl right on the street and I don’t want to be getting involved with you if you have something else going on?” But she had told him she wasn’t going to get involved, so what was she saying, then? That she was ready to get involved?
Of course she was, but she had intended on keeping that to herself until she was sure. Sure of him, sure of herself.
She mulled over every possibility for another hour, and then she texted Moody and asked if he was free anytime today for a cup of coffee. Moody texted back that he was at the bookstore and would wait for her there. After she finished her shift and clocked out, she went to the bookstore. There was one student at the back table and he had his earbuds in, listening to music while he studied. Moody was in the chair he loved most, a big book of maps spread across his knees. She said hello to Ernie, the store owner, who appeared to be absorbed in some paperwork at the checkout counter.
“What are you involved in there?” she asked Moody.
“Abandoned mines,” he said. “I love abandoned mines. I have dark fantasies of falling into them or digging people out of them. Do you have any idea how many abandoned mines there are in Colorado?”
She leaned a hip against a shelf. “No idea whatsoever.”
“Would twenty-three thousand surprise you?”
She actually stood straighter. “Jeez. I’d better watch my step.”
“You want to talk about something?”
“I want advice on something. I’ve been kind of seeing someone. Nothing serious, but still... I’m a little emotionally involved, I guess. And I don’t want to get hurt or get in the way or...or get in trouble. So here’s the thing...” She tried her best to explain about Conrad, who had become her friend and lately, her kissing friend. It was getting a little warm, she said. Tempting. And then she saw—
“Aw, Jesus, is this a girl problem? A romance problem? I hate these things. I’m no good at this! I’ve been married to Mrs. Moody since I was nine years old, approximately.”
“I have a program,” she said. “You’re my sponsor.”
“Here’s what I know. You shouldn’t start a new relationship for about a year after sobriety—you’re still too green, too fragile. But you’re a year sober, right? Right! Then if you get in one, it has to be a relationship in balance with your program or it’ll end up too rocky. If you get involved with another alcoholic, they might understand your program, and they might have all the same shortcomings and character flaws—it can be supportive or it can be a sinking ship. That’s all I know. I hate romance.”
“Oh great. Lucky Mrs. Moody.”
“She shares your pain,” Moody said. “Just ask him. Honesty and directness usually works when all else fails. And use your instincts.”
“They might be a little faulty,” she said.
“That excuse isn’t going to work much longer,” he admonished. “Your instincts are pretty good, far as I can tell. You got out of that hostel when it turned drunk, you rescued the dog, you’re good friends with Sully, and I don’t know what Conrad has going on but I always liked him and felt like he was a straight shooter. Ask him.”
“What would I say?”
“Say something like, ‘You’ve been kissing me and I saw you hug a girl. Want to explain?’ It would sound something like that. Then you have to judge it. Decide if you believe it.”
“Huh,” she said. “I was looking for something more along the lines of a guarantee.”
“Oh, were you? You came to the wrong place, sister.”
“I knew I needed a woman for a sponsor...”
“That might come yet,” he said. “Walk on across the street to that firehouse and find him. Those boys only work now and then. Most of the time they’re doing firehouse chores—he can break away to talk to you. Then maybe you can settle down and get it off your mind.”
“I’m not exactly upset,” she argued.
“Aren’t you? All I’m saying is—get it out of your gut before it festers.” He looked back at his big book and ran his finger along some lines on the map. “More than twenty abandoned mines right in here...”
“Moody, you are a wealth of wisdom.”
“I know it,” he said.
Even though she wasn’t sure she agreed with his advice, she did walk across the street and found that Connie wasn’t there. But Rafe was there. He said Connie took a little personal time at the end of the day. “He’s probably headed home or out to the Crossing to see you. Doesn’t he come to see you almost every day?”
In fact, he did, she said. She wondered if today might be different for some reason. So she went back to the Crossing. But Connie wasn’t there. She never paid much attention to his comings and goings and now, having seen that embrace on the street, she had herself all screwed up. She vacillated between thinking he’d been just playing her, trying to make a conquest, to thinking, what if something’s wrong and I never even asked for his phone number?
“I have his phone number,” Sully said. “Did he say he was stopping by today?”
“He never says. And I never asked.”
“Call him, then,” Sully said. He went into the little store kitchen and came back with a phone number scrawled on a sticky note. “As much time as Connie spends hanging around here, I don’t reckon he’d mind a phone call from you. In fact, it’ll probably light him up like a Christmas tree. Go ahead, make the boy’s day.”
Her call went directly to voice mail and her visions worsened. His phone was turned off because he was with someone. What did she expect, since she was so reluctant? All baggage aside, he was still a man and he probably wanted to be with a woman sometimes. She used to understand that, but then certain events changed her thinking—the struggle to stay even, sober and level. She had stopped going from high to low, from emotionally dead to emotionally wild. She had begun to worship the lack of chaos.
Her life had been so chaotic back in the drinking days, jumping from one crisis to the next. And at the moment, she was feeling unsteady, as if all that messy uncertainty was creeping back. In the end it was only the need to reclaim order in her mind and her heart that moved her to do what she did.
“Do you know where Conrad lives?”
“Course I do,” Sully said. “Want a little map?”
“I think I’d like to drop in on him, make sure everything is all right, make sure I haven’t done anything to...” To what? Drive him into the arms of another woman?
“I don’t know what’s got you riled up and I don’t think I want to know,” Sully said. He drew her a simple map on the back of a small paper bag. “Go see him and get whatever it is taken care of.”
“Do you think he’d be upset by me just dropping in on him?”