Right in Front of You

"Well, I wouldn't wear it," Beverly said. Then quietly she added, "Not anymore, at least."

"So it's okay?" Melanie asked hopefully.

Beverly saw her son staring at this attractive, older woman and told her, "I think it's perfect, Melanie."

She smiled then said, "And I believe someone else does, too."

When Melanie looked at Gregg, he was staring at her bare midriff, and the way he quickly looked away made her laugh as well as cause another 'hit'.

"I may have to pick up a few more-modest kind of things," she said to Beverly while smiling at Gregg.

"I'd say there's no hurry on that," Beverly told her with a friendly smile.

"So what are you two doing tonight?" she asked Melanie and her son.

"I don't know. What are we doin' tonight, Gregg?" Melanie asked with a smile.

"Hanging out?" he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"In my newly-carpeted place?" she said with a smile back at him.

"You have new carpeting?" Beverly asked.

"Wait. Gregg didn't..."

She looked at Gregg then said, "You didn't mention..."

"No," he said quietly.

"Well, I want to see it!" Beverly announced. "Is that okay?"

"Well, sure. But can you walk?" Melanie asked.

"I have a wheelchair for anything more than a few steps."

Gregg helped her get in it then wheeled her down the hall where Melanie opened the lock after explaining why it worked so well. She opened the door and Beverly saw the new, light-colored carpet.

"Oh, my heavens. It's beautiful!" she said.

"I know, right?" Melanie agreed. "Gregg totally surprised me with this."

"It was no big deal," he said. "I got it for practically nothing."

"This is not 'nothin'', Melanie told him, a look of gratitude in her eyes.

"I want this in my place," Beverly said as she continued to admire it.

"Can I get you anything to drink, Beverly?" Melanie asked.

"No, I don't want to intrude," she said.

"You're not. At all," Melanie told her.

The three of them were soon sipping sweet tea when Beverly said, "It feels like we should be playing a board game or something."

"That is a great idea!" Melanie said. "I haven't done that longer than I'd not gone to the movies."

"I'm...game," Gregg said without a smile.

Melanie got it and laughed happily.

"How about Scrabble?"

"I love Scrabble!" Beverly said. "But this one wins every time."

Melanie looked at him and said, "Yeah. He's been winnin' pretty much all day."

They played for a couple of hours as they laughed and talked and got better acquainted. Melanie was even more surprised when she felt like she was somehow a part of their family, and even more so when she realized that sounded very nice.

She and Beverly hugged after Gregg wheeled her back to her own place. Once he knew his mom was okay, he let her know he was going back down to Melanie's. She was standing right there, and that's when Gregg realized she hadn't asked him to.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to presume," he told her.

"You're not," she said sweetly. "I'd love for you to come back over."

There was an uncomfortable silence as they sat in the same places they'd just been in.

"Gregg?" she finally said.

He looked over and waited for her to say what was on her mind.

"I don't have any experience with ni...decent men. I...I'm not quite sure what good girls do when they...really like a...decent guy."

She was ten years older than him, and although Gregg would never ask, and she would never tell, she'd been with more 'bad boys' than she could count whereas he'd been with a grand total of three different girls. But at that moment, she looked and sounded like a young girl hinting around about making love with her first crush for the very first time.

"I'm not sure," Gregg told her. "Does it help that I have no experience with beautiful women?"

"Do you really think I'm beautiful?" she asked in a way that said it mattered that he say 'yes'.

"Very," he told her.

He turned toward her on the couch and said, "I know this is cliché, but it's still true. You really do take my breath away."

"I've never had a man say anything like that to me before," she told him quietly. "Ever."

She saw the way he looked at her then smiled and said, "I know. I've been dating the wrong kind of guys."

She sat there and stared at him and realized he was more than good enough looking. Because of who he was and how he made her feel, he was somehow as handsome to her as anyone she'd ever known, and she wanted him to love her the way guys like him loved girls like she wanted to be.

"Would it freak you out if I told you I want to kiss you more than I've ever wanted anything in my life?" Gregg said with his own kind of childlike innocence.

"No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't bother me at all," she told him as she watched him looking into her eyes.

When he didn't move right away Melanie said, "It's funny how different I feel after only knowing you for such a short time."

"Yeah? How so?" Gregg asked.

"I've been tryin' to figure that out all day," she replied. "I guess the best way to describe it is to say this is how I always imagined feeling about someone I...I really care about."

She came so close to saying 'someone I love' but was afraid of how it would sound.

"I care about you, too," Gregg told her as he moved closer.

He reached up and gently brushed the hair back on one side and said, "Very much."

He went to kiss her, but she stopped him, causing him to pull back very quickly and apologize.

"No. I...want you to kiss me. It's just that...well, I don't know how to...I'm not sure what's, you know, considered...appropriate. In...in a situation like this."

"I'm not sure, either," he told her as he put his hand on her cheek. "So how about I kiss you and we figure that out together?"

Melanie smiled and said, "Together. I like the sound of that," as she leaned toward him letting him know she did want him to kiss her.

When that first real kiss happened, it unleashed something in Gregg he didn't know was there, while releasing something else—something very different—inside of Melanie.

In Gregg, that something was passion. Pure, unbridled passion. In Melanie, it was a 'switch' being thrown. A switch that had been turned off during her teen years; a switch that allowed her to see something that turning it off had never let her see.

It let her see love. The kind of love that's been there all along right there in front of you. Real, genuine, bonafide love that includes making love but isn't based on that alone. Love that gives as much as it takes. Love that's deep and kind and filled with meaning.

All she knew was that when Gregg made love to her for the first time, whatever it was she was feeling was a feeling she never wanted to end as she found herself able to love him back in a way that had been closed off to her all her life.

While it wasn't as physically exciting as many of the other experiences she'd had, it was by far the most satisfying. And when it was over and as she lay there in his arms, Melanie couldn't stop herself from crying.

"Hey. What's wrong?" Gregg asked as he raised his head up to look at her. "Was I really that bad?"

"No. My goodness, no. You were...wonderful. I...I had no idea what I was missing. All those years spent chasing some kind of...phony high. How could I have been so foolish?" she said, her voice choked with emotion.

"Where is all this coming from?" he asked with gentle concern.

She tried blinking away the tears as she said, "I...I don't know."

"Then why are you crying?"

She forced herself to look into his eyes then said, "Because I...I'm afraid you'll wake up and see me for who I really am and...and when you do...you'll run. And...and I...I won't be able to blame you for it when you do."

Greg sat up as he looked at her.

"I'm seeing the real you, Melanie. This is who you are. What you're afraid of is meeting her for the first time. That's all."

As he spoke, he ran a finger through her hair, and Melanie had never felt more secure or happier in her life.

"How can you only be 25 years old?" she asked as she looked up at him through tear-stained eyes.

He smiled then very seriously said, "Well, if you understand that I was born in 1993 and do the math, it's pretty obvious that I'd have to be..."

Melanie raised up high enough just so she could push him over.

"You make me crazy with that dry sense of humor of yours!" she told him as she pulled herself on top of him.

"You know you love it," he told with a smile.

As she looked down at him she wanted to cry again.

"Yes. Yes, I do," she told him in a way that said she meant something more than just loving his sense of humor.

It was all he could not to tell Melanie he loved her. He knew enough about anatomy and brain chemistry to understand the reasons why he was physically attracted to her. But it was so much more than that, and he didn't care at all about her level of education or how many 'mistakes' she'd made in the past or the way she dressed. He knew he loved her, and even though most people would laugh at him for saying that after only knowing her for such a short time, he didn't care. He didn't care because it didn't matter what anyone else thought. All that mattered was how he felt, and he already knew he was in love with her.

Melanie didn't want him to leave after a second round of lovemaking, but she understood it was probably the 'right' thing to do. So until she learned how to be this new person she was becoming, she'd have to trust the instincts of this amazing, younger man she'd fallen in love with—almost overnight.

After he left, she lay there for several hours reveling in the understanding that she was changing; that it wasn't too late to change or to find true, lasting love. She nearly cried again when she thought of how her life would still be had someone she'd have never given a second look to hadn't been texting as he walked down the hall. The thought of him standing up to someone like Landry also touched her deeply as though he'd been sent to take the pain intended for her. Pain he knowingly and willingly took to keep her from having to take any more of it herself.

The lock and the carpeting were just icing on the proverbial cake. They were evidence that he cared for her. But the proof was in the way he looked her and and the way he loved her. In the way he'd just made love to her.

Melanie's last thought before falling asleep around 4 am was that she might die of happiness, and that if she did, this one day more than made up for a lifetime of bad choices and failed relationships. And yet all she wanted was more days just like this with the man she loved.

Gregg was there for her the next day, and every day after for the rest of her life. After that first day of the rest of her life. He was there at the trial encouraging the woman he loved to be strong and tell the truth, and she'd done so.

He then testified as to what happened, and when asked if there was anything else he'd like to say, Gregg answered, "Yes, Your Honor."

"I'd like to say that men like Landry Sanders have robbed the most amazing woman I've ever known of her life. By inflicting both physical and emotional wounds, they stole some of the best years of her life as they forced the sweet, wonderful woman she is into some place deep inside her where she lived in fear as she ran from one bad relationship to the other. So I hope the court will take that into account during sentencing, because he did far more to her than he did to me that night."

Because the court could only consider what he'd done to Gregg, Landry was found guilty of a Class B misdemeanor and sentenced to six months in jail and fined $2,000, the maximum under Texas law.

When court was adjourned, Melanie was trying not to cry yet again as she hugged Gregg and thanked him for the kind things he'd said.

"They're all true," he told her.

As she let go of him, she said, "I'm still tryin' to figure out this 'good girl' thing, even though I'm not exactly...good."

She smiled then said, "And I know I'm supposed to wait for you to say it first, but I can't wait any longer."

"Then say it," he told her quietly as he put his hand on her hips.

She blinked several times then said, "I love you, Gregg."

"I love you, too, Melanie," he told her back.

"You changed my life," she told him. "You...changed everything about me."

Melanie was wearing a very nice, very appropriate dress that day, and Gregg looked at it and said in his usual deadpan way, "Yeah, you'd have probably worn a tube top or at least a bare-shouldered sundress to court if you hadn't met me."

She tried to feign being angry but couldn't. She laughed a happy laugh and put her arms around him and hugged him again.

"That's true, you know," she said. "I actually did look at a little yellow sundress before choosing this. So you're right. Again."

"Well, you're still young," he said the way a parent would to a child causing her to pull back and actually feign surprise.

"No, that would be you, Doctor Wilkens," she said. "My 26-year old boy doctor."

He'd recently had a birthday so that part was true.

"You mean boy wonder, right?" he said very seriously.

"Hmmm. Maybe," she admitted with a happy smile.

"See?"

"Yeah. Sometimes when I ask myself how I ever fell in love with the likes of you I say, 'Boy, do I wonder'!"

"Oh, you are so in trouble," he told her as he threw her over his shoulder and Melanie shrieked with laughter.

"Uh-huh. Sure I am," she teased loving being able to act this way with him.

As their love grew, Melanie grew more confident that the changes she'd been making were permanent. But her old self reared its ugly head making one last attempt at survival when Gregg asked her to go to a rodeo event with her. Neither of them had ever been, and it sounded like fun. They lucked out and got some really good seats, close enough to see and talk to the cowboys.

One particularly good-looking bronc rider noticed her and walked up to the fence as soon as he saw the guy she was sitting with leave. Gregg went to get them something to drink, and when he did, the cowboy made his move.

"Howdy, ma'am," he said with a smile as he tipped his hat.

"Hey," she said politely as her old self told her to flirt back.

"Just because you came here with someone doesn't mean you gotta leave with him," the very good looking guy told her.

He had a nice coat of dark, heavy stubble, and gorgeous, blue eyes and a to-die-for smile, and it was then and there she told her old self to sit down and shut up.

"And I'd want to do that why?" she asked with an over-the-top smile.

"Because I'm a cowboy, ma'am," he said with another tip of the hat.

"Oh, so you could...ride me all night long, right?" she said, still fake smiling like a politician's wife.

"Yes, ma'am. Best ride you'll ever have. Guaranteed."

Gregg walked up with two bottles of cold water and asked, "What am I missing?"

"Nothing," Melanie said.

He looked down at the cowboy who looked at Gregg then said to Melanie, "You're with him?"

"I am," she told him.

"That don't make a lick a sense."

Gregg understood what was going on and smiled.

"She's free to make her own decisions," he told the cowboy.

"Then I reckon she'll be goin' home with me," he said as he winked at Melanie.

"Then you'd be reckonin' wrong," she told him as she kind of pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, really. You'd give up all this," he said opening his arms wide to indicate his body, "for that?"

"Uh-huh," she told him. "And it wouldn't even be close."

"When you decide you're ready for a real man, you give me a holler," he told her.

"I wasted far too many years on 'men' like you, but it took a real man like him to show me what I was really missin'," Melanie told him with that same look.

"So his daddy must have a shitload of money then," the cowboy said with a shake of his head.

"I never had the privilege of meeting his late father, but I can assure you he wasn't rich."

"And I'm over a hundred grand debt between student loans and starting my business," Gregg said chimed in saying. "You got anything else under those chaps?"

"You know what? You two deserve each other. Have yourselves a great life," the cowboy said with another shake of his head.

"Oh, we will," Melanie told him. "Now that I know what it means to be happy, my life is wonderful."

The cowboy threw an arm up dismissively and kept walking away.

"That was fun," Gregg said.

"You know, there wasn't one instant where I so much as thought about it," she told him.

"Yeah?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why's that?" Gregg asked with a smile.

"Because I am stone-cold in love with you, mister," she told him with a happy, genuine smile.

"Yeah?" he said again.

"Uh-huh," she replied.

Greg reached into his back pocket and pulled something out then got down on one knee.

"What are you doin'?" Melanie asked as her hands began to shake.

"I was gonna do this later at a nice restaurant, but the truth is, I'm stone-cold in love with you, too. And after that, I'd like to ask you something. Melanie Carver? Would you make me the happiest man alive and be my wife?"

Melanie was shaking and crying and unable to talk, but she was nodding like a bobble-head doll.

Gregg slid the ring on her finger, and saw the cowboy shaking his head in disbelief. When Melanie put her arms around and kissed him for a good ten seconds all he could do was say, "I'll be damned."

Melanie married the only man she'd ever loved, and the only man who'd ever really loved her six months later. She'd never known her father, and she and her mother were estranged. Even so, her mom came to the wedding where Beverly, the best friend she'd ever made served as her Maid of Honor. She was fully recovered and back at work, and surprised the happy new couple with a week-long honeymoon to the Bahamas where she and her husband made love as often as they could.

It was no surprise when two months later she came into the dentist office where he worked to show him something. She waited for him to finish with a patient then said, "Take a look, Daddy."

Inside a plastic bag was a pregnancy test showing positive.

"Oh, my Lord!" he said as his eyes opened wide in disbelief.

"You're not happy?" she asked before she saw the tears in his eyes.

"Happy? Are you kidding? I have never been happier in my life!" he told her before kissing right there in front of everyone.

"I'm gonna be father!" he called out followed by calls of 'congratulations!' from the other dentists, hygienists, and even patients.

The day their baby girl turned one, Melanie was taking videos, and as she saw her amazing husband playing with their daughter, she tried not to cry as she asked herself again how she could have been so blind for so long.

"All that time and there it was. Love was right in front of you, Melanie Wilkens," she said to out loud to herself.

"What's that, honey?" Gregg called out.

"Nothin', sweetheart. Just thankin' the Good Lord for all my blessins'," she told him as she got another 'hit' of her favorite drug and her heart swelled with love.