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“Hmm.” She held his gaze. “How about we’ve grown up and matured a little? Not the childish brats we used to be? We’ve had time to reflect on what we did right and wrong in our marriage?”
Nodding, Shep sat back, enjoying her company and the dark, rich Ethiopian coffee. “All of the above.”
“It’s nice to have two days off after the brutal schedule we’ve been keeping,” she admitted. “It’s supposed to be cloudy and cool this weekend. Maybe some rain if we’re lucky. I’d like to show you around Bahir Dar, take you out on a small motor boat so you can see Lake Tana. It’s really beautiful, quiet and peaceful. I think we both need that kind of environment.”
“I love the water and I know you do, too,” Shep said. “Sounds like a good destressor to me.”
“After we come back to shore, we can buy fresh catch from some of the local fisherman. I can make us a delicious fish dinner.”
“That’s a win-win for me,” he said. “If I wasn’t surfing? I was spearfishing in the kelp beds off La Jolla.”
“Yep, no surprises with you, Porter: food always got your attention every time.”
“No,” he murmured, “YOU get all my attention, Willow. Nothing compares to you and never will. Food comes in a very poor second.” He held her startled gaze.
She sat there not lying to herself: she had been aching for alone time with Shep. “Has the last three years mellowed you, Shep?”
“Where you’re concerned, yes,” he said, holding her stare.
Her whole body was flowing with quiet joy over his admittance. Was it possible that they might be able to get together again? Willow didn’t want just sex with Shep. She’d never been the type of woman to have sex for sex’s sake. There always had to have been a deep, ongoing emotional connection with the man first.
“How does that make you feel?” he wondered.
“Scared as hell. How about you?” and she dug into his pondering expression. She knew Shep was not the type of man to tease about serious things. Especially something like this.
“Same here.” He gave her a hopeful look. “Can we be scared as hell together?”
She tucked her lower lip in, staring at him. “You’re not teasing, are you?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I’d never do that to you, Willow. We might have had a lot of rocky ground between us, but I wouldn’t hurt you like that. God knows, I’ve hurt you enough, anyway.”
Willow wouldn’t argue that point, but she wasn’t about to drag up the past any more than she had to. “I guess,” she admitted, “I never saw this coming.”
“What?”
“You. In my life again.”
“But you knew I was on this project. You approved it, Willow.”
“That isn’t what I was talking about.” With all her heart, she wished Shep could understand the gravity and weight of what she meant, but his damned engineer’s mind couldn’t plumb a loaded word like ‘you.’ He was struggling, she could see that, but mostly he was confused by her statement. Maybe they would always have this mess of multi-level communication, each talking but the one not grasping the wholeness of what the other was really trying to say. How she wished that would change, but her gut told her it never would. Shep’s brain was wired differently than hers in that respect. But he wasn’t the kind of person to use it against her, either. He was always asking for clarification on whatever was said, or he’d stumble over a certain word with each of them taking it the wrong way. And that led to massive miscommunication and the verbal battle would begin. But sometimes… sometimes Willow just wished he could mind read her or tap into the emotional intelligence that all humans possessed, to understand what she was saying. She swore men were born without that connection that women automatically had. She’d seen it more or less in every man she’d ever dealt with professionally or personally. What a bummer. It was a loss for both genders.
“Oh,” he said, more in a growl of frustration. “Is this one of those times we had? Where I was supposed to plumb the depths of what you said?”
“Yes,” she sighed, giving him a tired look. She didn’t want to hurt Shep because she could see him laboring with it. “Look, it’s okay,” she said, holding up her hand. “I’ll re-explain what I meant. When I said ‘you’ it was about you. I’m wary of you, Shep. I still care for you. I didn’t think I would, but there it is.”
He moved the empty cup slowly around in his hand, staring at it for a long moment, his brows drawing together. Looking up, he held her gaze. “I guess, if we’re coming clean with one another on this? I’ve never stopped caring about you, Willow. I know I never said it in our sparse emails we traded with one another over the years. Frankly? I thought we were done. You never gave any inkling in your emails that you still cared about me.”
“I know,” she said wearily.
“Well? Then it’s a fact we both still somehow continue to care for one another?”
She heard the hope in his low voice, saw the yearning in his eyes. Feeling trapped, she said, “Just like the engineer you are, Shep. You’re great at looking at all the puzzle pieces and putting them together to make a picture.” She saw him preen a little. Willow knew how hard she’d been on him leading up to her wanting a divorce. His confidence had taken a helluva beating. But if it had? Today? These three years later, he looked even more fit, more in command, and more a natural leader than she’d ever seen him be before.
“Thanks. At least I didn’t completely destroy this conversation between us tonight. That’s a little progress. Right?”
Willow wanted to hold him. Sometimes, she could see the hurt little boy recessed in his eyes when they would have verbal blind canyons with one another. Instinctively, she knew some of these communication issues had something to do with his growing-up years. Maybe that’s one reason why Shep appeared to bumble around and not understand her whenever she tried to communicate with him.
She stood, gathering the bowls and flatware. “I can see you trying, Shep. That’s good enough for me. Okay?” Willow saw such sharp relief in his expression that her heart twisted with sympathy for him. As good as he was at construction, his greatest weakness was not being able to communicate properly with her.
