Do Not Pass Go Ch. 02

"Don't say anything for a second.

"Theresa, I want this. It doesn't matter whether it works out or it doesn't, but let's try."

"I don't have time for a boyfriend."

"It's just one night. And there's half a continent separating us so it's not like I can get too clingy."

She laughed a little at that. "I can't. If Bruce saw us, he wouldn't let me see Penny again."

"Are you going back to him? Because if you're not this isn't going to go away. He's going to jerk you around and the only way you can get through this is to figure out what you're going to do about it. Go back to him or start living your life and hope that your ex is going to smarten up. Anything in between those and you'll just be a yo-yo that your ex is going to play with until he gets tired of you or you break."

"I'm sorry." She let out a long breath and with that the phone clicked off.

It's pathetic, but for five minutes I just sat there staring at the phone willing it to ring. It took me a long time to wind down enough to try to go to bed, spending the time multi tasking watching infomercials and surfing the internet and occasionally zoning out thinking that I wasn't thinking about Theresa.

Pachelbel's Canon began ringing at 5:00 A.M. and continued with five minute breaks until 5:25 before I picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"I'm sorry." A woman's voice said quietly

"Excuse me?"

"Don't make this any harder that it is. I said I was sorry." My ex-wife's voice said.

"It's 5:25 A.M. and you're calling... God, is that why you were calling me two nights ago? Because you're sorry?" I shook my head and tried to wake up a little, expecting Jess to say something, but she stayed quiet. "It would have been nice to hear this a year ago." Again the silence just kind of sat there again. What did she want for me to forgive her? "Was there anything else?" Jess hung up the phone a couple seconds later.

Maybe it was stupid not to have said something. My best chance of getting the kids back was for Jess to get fed-up with them. But if she was still mad at me, she would keep the kids until they were forty if it meant that she could stick it to me. There's only so much you can do though.

God, what an idiot I was.

What was I doing with my life? Why was I just sitting here like a beggar waiting for life to hand me something? Enough feeling sorry for myself. Enough waiting for Theresa to go out with me or for Jenna to give me back the kids out of the kindness of her heart. I needed to start dating again. The thing with Theresa was nice, but who was I kidding? Getting serious with a girl almost twenty years younger than me that lived a thousand miles away was impossible.

My boss' secretary had been hinting about setting me up with someone. Also there was a woman I had seen in the elevator every couple weeks or so. A blonde, maybe late thirties, no wedding ring. We smiled at each other and said hello each time. The last couple times we had chattered together talking about the weather and how our weekends were spent. She had said nothing about being involved with someone else, one way or the other. And I was just wrapping myself around her name. Pia. She had told me it and I had nodded wanting to ask her about it, but too submerged to do anything.

My niece had been bugging me to use the body she had whipped into shape. She had talked about rock climbing while I was thinking more like hiking. For the first time in fifteen years I had the time, the energy and the endurance to do fun things and all I was doing was sitting around feeling sorry for myself.

Enough of that. Tomorrow I was going to some wilderness store and buy a backpack full of useless crap. I was going to go buy a health club membership to some place that had one of those rock wall things and by the next weekend, my niece, Allie, and I were going to get some snow shoes and start hiking around Afton. Going to that park had been something I had been thinking about for maybe the last three months. Ten days from now, snow or no snow, I was going there.

It was still too early to get up, but tired or not, I couldn't just lie in bed when I was feeling like this. Of course it had to be when I was in the shower when the phone rang again.

"Hello?"

"Is it too late to say yes?" Theresa asked.

My brain just kind of slipped a gasket. Theresa hadn't been part of my new plans. But just because I couldn't wait for life to start handing me out gifts didn't mean I had to refuse them either.

"Peter...?"

"It's not too late, but I might be falling asleep on you during the meal. It should work. Let me talk to my boss this morning. If everything's good, I'll book a flight and call you."

"Sorry for screwing this up. It was so dumb. And you were so considerate that you were going to fly in just to see me. And I screw it up. It's..."

"No, you didn't. Figure out what you're going to wear that looks good with pasta sauce stains and get it ready." I firmed my voice. "I will get tomorrow off and we're going out for dinner tonight. It's a done deal"

******

There will be a part III and part IV.