The Lunch Date

I was spending a quiet Saturday afternoon watching college football when Beth called me for the first time in months. The call was a surprise, since I didn’t know if I would ever hear from her again. Beth Olson and I had dated for over a year before my National Guard unit was called to go to Iraq. We tried to make our relationship work for several months, but the stress of being apart and other issues caused us to break up. I’d been home in Baltimore for almost 6 months when I received her call on that October afternoon. The last time Beth called me was to welcome me home and to see that I was doing ok. Before I left for Iraq, I thought Beth was the girl I was going to marry. Deep in my heart, I still believed it even after we broke up, quaint thought that it was. Maybe it was because I had nothing else to hold on to once I returned from the war.

Beth didn’t go into too much detail about what she wanted or how her life was going since we last spoke. She told me that she needed to talk to me and she didn’t want to discuss it on the phone. I suggested that we meet at our old hangout, The Mad River Bar and Grill in downtown Baltimore. I lived only a few blocks away, while she could drive there under 15 minutes. I offered to buy her lunch for old time’s sake. I was still a frequent customer of the bar even after I stopped going there with Beth. It was the one place I could go and things were still the same as before I left for Iraq. When I sat at the bar drinking a beer it was easy for me to pretend I was still working as a computer programmer, still had a nice girlfriend and still had my left arm. Yes, things had changed a lot since I went away.

“Hey Mark, you’re in early today?” asked Kelly the bartender.

“I thought I’d start drinking a little early today. The early bird catches the worm; or drinks it when it comes to tequila.”

“It’s too early for tequila shots. Do you want a Guinness?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a Guinness and a couple menus. I’m meeting a friend for lunch. We used to come in here together before I went away. Her name’s Beth. Do you remember her?”

“Was she that cute blonde you used to date?” Kelly calling any blonde cute was like the pot calling the kettle black. Kelly was a senior at the University of Maryland who bartended on weekends to pay her way through school. With her long legs, short skirt, and plunging cleavage she made enough money to pay for Harvard.

“Yeah, it’s the same girl. She called today and wanted to get together. So we’re going to grab some lunch.”

“It’s too early to be a booty call. Too bad she didn’t call you 12 hours from now. Maybe if you do some tequila shots with her, she’ll still be around then.”

“I don’t know what she wants. I’m not going to get my hopes up or anything. I’ll just see what she wants.”

I told Kelly that I wasn’t getting my hopes up, but they were already sky high. Why else would Beth want to see me? It’s not like we had stayed great friends and frequently spoke to each other. We knew each other romantically and that was it, we never had a ‘friend’ stage. I hated to admit it, but I had been thinking about her lately. I had plenty of time to think at my new job at Best Buy. It doesn’t take much brain power to tell some teenager what video game system has the most power, especially compared to the logarithms I used to write for Lockheed Martin. They had somehow found a loophole in the law that says you couldn’t fire a Guard or Reserve member because of their service on active duty. Of course, when you have several multi-billion dollar defense contracts, the law tends to look the other way. But working at Best Buy wasn’t the end of the world; I had plenty of time to think and plenty of time to drink. I had done much more of the latter during the previous few months. But Beth was in my thoughts when I did think. She didn’t know about my arm or lack thereof. I was still working for Lockheed when I returned from the Middle East. So in her mind, my life was as good as it ever was. I wonder if she would still want me back if she learned the truth.

I didn’t have to wait very long to find out. Beth walked in the door just as I was finishing my beer. She hadn’t changed very much in the 18 months or so since I had seen her. Her blonde hair was still down to her shoulders, with bangs coming down just above her eyes. Her hair may have been a little darker than I remembered. I always teased her that she wasn’t a natural blonde. I stood to give her a hug and her forehead still reached exactly to lip-level. Beneath the brown fleece sweater, I could still feel the curves of her body. The memories of what she felt like lying next to me were about to overwhelm my senses until I caught myself. I snapped back to reality and said hello.

“Hi Mark, how are you? My god, your arm.”

“I guess I should have mentioned this. It happened after we broke up while I was still in Iraq.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea you were hurt that badly. Your mom had just told me you were in an accident. That’s why I called when you got back in town. If I had known…”

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t want her to tell anyone how bad it was until I got back home. I’m more embarrassed about it than anything. I just wish people wouldn’t notice me.”

“Can you tell me how it happened?”

I waited until Kelly brought a round of drinks over to our table before I started relating my story. It took me almost half an hour to describe that patrol outside Baghdad. I don’t even remember the explosion. One minute we were heading back to the Green Zone in our Humvee, and then I vaguely remember experiencing a big bang and a huge shockwave. My first clear memory was waking up on the side of the road with bullets ricocheting off the street. I looked up to see a medic working on me. He had an IV bottle in one hand and my left arm in the other. I wanted to scream when I saw it, but I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t believe it was actually my arm. The whole scene was too surreal to be actually happening, but every time I looked down, my arm wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The surgery in Germany and my subsequent rehab at Walter Reed hospital in Washington were fairly uneventful and I thought she was growing bored as I related them. Even I got bored when I got to the part about losing my job because they told me one of the job requirements was lifting a 50 pound box over my head. Why the hell would a computer programmer need to do that? I tried to sound upbeat as I got to the end of my tale. I saw traces of concern on Beth’s face as I finished.

“Oh my god, I had no idea. If I had known, I never would have…” she explained.

“Yes, you would have. We would have broken up one way or another. It wasn’t our time to be together. If you had stayed with me because of my arm, it just would have made the inevitable more painful for both of us. But that was a long time ago and we’re both different people now. We’ve gone through a lot of things and we’ve grown. I’m just really glad you called and I’m getting to see you.”

“I’ve missed you and I really need to talk to you. I need a guy’s opinion.”

“A guy’s opinion?”

“I don’t have any other guy friends, except at work, and I can’t talk to them. I did a bad thing.”

“Okay.”

“This guy at work has wanted to go out with me forever. At first I didn’t, because you and I were dating.”

“That’s good.”

“He wanted to date me and he kept asking me out over and over again. Finally, we went out on our first date…”

“Should I really be hearing this?” I pleaded as I could tell where her story was heading.

“Please listen, I really need to hear what you think. I ended up sleeping with him that night.”

“Okay. I really don’t think I’m the right person to give you advice. After all we went through…”

I tried not to seem outwardly crushed once I realized that she wasn’t trying to get back together with me, but was asking for advice about another guy. I couldn’t believe she was even telling me this. I knew we weren’t in a relationship anymore and it’s not like we had any contact recently. But telling me about her one-night stands was a little too much. I didn’t think I was out of line for not really wanting to hear about it.

“Don’t be upset. It’s not like you haven’t had sex since we broke up. I’m sure you’ve been on some dates.”

“Yeah, there are lots of available women in Baghdad. And it’s not like I would tell you about them. I wouldn’t think you would want to hear about my sex life. Wouldn’t that affect you at all?”

Beth became silent and looked upset, but apparently not upset at me. I knew enough about her to know something serious was wrong. I felt bad that she needed me and I couldn’t help, but she had no idea what a shock it was to hear about her escapades. My imagination kept running wild. While I was imagining possibly getting back with her, she was running around with some guy at work. Somewhere inside of me I felt sympathetic to her. If she needed guy advice, I should be able to suck it up and help. She had meant too much for me to not at least try to help her.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I didn’t mean to react that way. I guess it shows I still have feelings for you if I’m affected by hearing your story. Go ahead, I’ll listen and try to give you good advice.”

“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have brought you into this. I just didn’t know who else to talk to. I’ll figure it out.”

“I promise that I want to help. I just didn’t expect to hear about a one night stand. I wasn’t ready for it.”

“That’s not the worst of it. It was a mistake to sleep with him. I just wanted a ‘friend with benefits’ and he wanted a relationship. I was afraid it would be awkward at work. It was at first, but he got over it. What guy doesn’t want just a fuck-buddy?”

“Okay,” was all I could manage to say at this point. All of a sudden the room seemed to shrink and I felt very warm. Luckily, Kelly brought me another beer without me having to ask. How did I end up with Beth and not Kelly? It’s probably because Kelly is out of my league. I did my best to keep from hyperventilating, but as I heard the details of Beth’s ‘relationship’ I just wanted to scream or break something.

“He’d usually come over on Friday night and would leave before I woke up in the morning. It was perfect.”

“Sounds great to me,” I said with as little sarcasm as I could muster.

“Now I’m afraid I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do.”

“Wow, I…I don’t know what to say. Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. I haven’t seen a doctor yet, but when I missed my period I took a test and it came back positive.”

“What did your ‘friend’ say?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know if I should tell him. I definitely don’t love him. If I didn’t want to even date him, I don’t want to have a kid with him. What do you think he would want to do if I told him? Maybe I should get rid of it and never tell him? If I had it, would I have to get him involved? If you were him, would you want to know? Or would you rather not know and hope I would take care of it myself?”

After a moment’s thought, I said “I mean, I guess it depends on the guy. If he really wanted to be with you, then this would make him want a relationship even more. If he was like you and fucking for the fun of it, he would probably not want to know. It all depends on him. If we were dating and you got pregnant, I would want to at least know. Even if you took care of it on your own, I think that I’d want to know what was going on and hopefully have some input. But a random fling? I don’t know.”

“If I had the baby, I could lose my job? If word got out that 2 teachers were screwing around and one got pregnant, it would get all around that middle school in minutes.”

“I really don’t know how much help I can give then. At least when it comes to whether you should tell him or not. I think he should know, but it could make things worse for you. The only thing I can promise to be able to help with is whatever happens after you decide. This isn’t quite the way I expected us to get back in touch, but now that we are, I’ll be here for you.”

“Mark, thank you so much. I really needed someone that could listen and help. I can’t believe I got into this. I was so stupid.”

Beth got up from her chair and hugged me with tears coming down her eyes. By that time, our lunch arrived at the table and we ate a relatively quiet meal. I kicked back a third beer and had a taste for a shot after all I had experienced during our reunion. The last thing I expected was to turn into her ‘guy friend’ and have to listen to all her problems and pretend that the thought of her with this other guy wasn’t tearing me apart. The restaurant became a little more crowded as a lunch rush came inside. The background noise of the crowd prevented us from experiencing an awkward silence as neither Beth nor I had anything to say. What more could be said? We had each related our most important story to each other. It was a crash course in catching up. She found out about my wounds and I found out about her pregnancy. What a way to reconnect. I don’t think Oprah will be bidding to air our story anytime soon.

I proceeded to eat my lunch, the cheeseburger hit the spot. After all the tension from my conversation with Beth, I needed a good lunch to relax. I had ordered the cheeseburger covered with crab dip. It was incredibly messy, but incredibly delicious. As I swallowed my last bite, I smiled at Beth for the first time since she walked in the bar. I wanted the lunch to end on good terms. As she finished her lunch, we promised to keep in touch. I volunteered to be her next ‘fuck-buddy’ if she ever needed a new one. She faked a laugh the same way she always did when I joked while we were together. She never really got my sense of humor. I went back to the bar to finish my beer as Beth walked out the door. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see her again. I realized it was impossible to go back home again and have things be exactly the same as you remembered. Beth would probably realize that some relationships were only meant to be certain ways. You couldn’t force a square boyfriend into a round friend.

Kelly had witnessed the entire lunch encounter from her perch at the bar. I’m sure that even in between caring for her other customers; she was able to understand the gist of my lunch date.

“So I guess she didn’t want a booty call after all?” she asked.

“Nah, she just wanted to tell me about her other booty calls.”

“Sorry, Mark, that sucks. You guys seemed good together back when you dated. Too bad you had to leave.”

“Yeah, everything changed then. And it’s not like I expected everything to be the same when I got back. But I just thought things would be a certain way. Do you know what I mean? I’m not feeling sorry for myself or anything, but my life shouldn’t have turned out like this. This is America. When guys went off in World War II, they took care of business and then came home to the girls they left behind and had jobs at IBM waiting for them. I came home and both my girl and my job went to the guy who stayed behind. I guess I expected too much.”

“I know you’re sorry you had to go.”

“Actually I’m not. It’s funny that even though I lost my girlfriend, my job, and even my arm, I’m glad I went. I felt so alive over there. And being with those guys, I’ve never felt closer to anyone else in my life. We did everything together. You have no idea what we went through, what we saw, what we had to do. One minute we’d be the toughest badasses you ever saw shooting the shit out of some motherfuckers, and the next minute we’d all have tears in our eyes when we had to pick up the body of the little girl that those assholes blew away. I know we did some good over there. I don’t even know why we were there or really what we were supposed to be doing. You can’t imagine how fucked up things were, but I know they could have been worse. The whole time I kept thinking how great it would be to get home. That’s what kept me going when I just wanted to give up. I knew that things would be fine if I could just make it back. Now I almost wish I was back over there. I had a reason to get up and I had some pride in what I did. Now, I just need to deal with reality and not the past or what I expected would be here.”

Kelly simply smiled, pulled a bottle of tequila out from under the bar, and poured two shots.