Waiting in the Rain

I had been an idiot. Utterly and totally.

********

Yes, I had followed my wife to a hotel right next to our Major League Baseball ballpark. Several floors of this hotel were used by the owner and the senior management of the ballclub for their normal offices. On that particular day, my wife's company was being thanked for its help with the immigration paperwork of one of the ballclub's up and coming minor league players, a young lad from Central America. In addition, my wife was being thanked by the law firm for the successful completion of her major (and very profitable) project.

Accordingly the plan for the evening had been for my wife and I, her boss and his wife, and the top dog, old cranky Dylan Robertson to have dinner with the ballclub owner and a few other VIPs. Then Lynn and I would have received a tour of the stadium and a chance to meet all of the players before the game. Then Lynn would be permitted the ceremonial 'first pitch' before we all watched the game from the owner's luxury suite.

A nice plan but it didn't work out that way.

Lynn had waited too long before trying to contact me, and Murphy's Law had taken care of the rest. I had left work early so no one had been able to get in contact with me either at work or at home. There are drawbacks to being one of the last people left on the planet without a cell phone – I've never liked the things and rarely ever get phone calls anyway! Also, upon further reflection, our home answering machine for the phone had always been flakey and often didn't save messages. It hadn't helped that I'd pretty much broken the phone slamming it off of the granite kitchen countertop.

In the end, since no one could contact me in time before the game started, Lynn attended on her own and had brought me a team signed baseball as an early anniversary gift to help make up for the scheduling screwup. Undoubtedly the DVD of the ballgame would show her 'first pitch' and probably a shot or two of her in the owners box sometime later in the game.

The envelope contained some still photographs the club had shot of Lynn's big evening, a sealed official VIP invitation to the game with my name written on it, and another sealed card, apparently from Lynn. A very large part of me didn't want to open and read that last card, but I man'd-up and forced myself to do it. I knew that I'd totally fucked up the situation and I didn't see anyway to make things better. Lynn's note felt much the same way.

It didn't say much, but what it left openly unsaid was blatantly obvious. We'dbothscrewed up things too far to probably save our marriage by now, but neither of us had ever really wanted a divorce.

The note simply said "I'm Sorry. When you were talking I should have listened, and when you were listening I should have talked. Is it too late now?"

I just didn't know.

******

About twenty minutes later, Lynn returned from the restroom and fell into a crumpled heap on the bench. She had tried to reapply her makeup but it was obvious that she had been crying hard.

I stood up and walked over to her and her red tear filled eyes met mine.

"I'm the one that should be sorry." I said. "I left work to meet you early that day and saw you enter a hotel with your boss, looking happy and holding his arm. But instead I was just wrong. We should have talked it over but my anger and hurt pride wouldn't let me. I'm an idiot, and you're well to be rid of me."

"I'm the fool for taking you for granted and never telling you how important you were to my life. I've been just a shell of a person since you left. I've wanted to make everything right but I didn't know how... nor could I even find you to cry at your feet and plead for you to take me back. We still have time to fix this... it's not too late to stop this and fix everything that we broke – and make it all stronger. Will you have me back?"

"Can we do this? Can we make it work?"

"We can try."

Her eyes were still full of tears but now there was a smile on her face and the eyes that met mine were needful and full of hope. I pulled her up into my arms, holding her once again, with tears now in my own eyes and slowly we began to kiss.