Two Awesome Guys

The handsome man with who answered my neighbor’s door when I rang the chimes surprised me so much I couldn’t get my name out. “I’m—I’m—”

“You’re Angela Dugan, right?” His face broke into a big blue-eyed smile. “From across the street?”

“That’s me.”

“Elementary school teacher?”

“Right again.”

 “I’m Jake Morgan. Dad never stops talking about you.”

“Your dad—how is he?”

“He’s doing fine.” Jake waved me into the house. “Got charcoal lit in the backyard grill. Burgers. Will you join me?”

Over burgers, chips, dip, and lemonade at the backyard picnic table, I explained that Mr. Morgan—Jake’s dad—and I had become good friends in the six weeks since I’d moved into the neighborhood. He raked up the remnants of last fall’s leaves in my yard. Then he cut and trimmed my grass. “Need the exercise,” he said.  So I often dropped off a plate of brownies or a crockpot of stew for him. Last week, though, when I last talked to him, he looked pale, didn’t seem to have any energy but refused to call a doctor.

“Then I spotted a car with out-of-state plates in the drive,” I told Jake now. “And...well, I just had to come over and check.”

“Dad phoned Thursday,” Jake said,  “and admitted to not feeling well. I told him to call his doctor, and I’d drive up to spend a few days with him. Turns out he had a slight stroke—right in the doctor’s office.”

“Oh my! I feel so guilty—I should’ve checked on him. He’s such an awesome guy.”

“I’m the one who feels guilty. I’ve not had much time for Dad.”

While we finished our burgers, Jake told me he grew up in this house in this little town of LeClaire, went to college and snared a great job in Peoria, Illinois, with Caterpillar, the world’s largest heavy-equipment manufacturer.

“But I’ve been on a treadmill since I started,” he said. “No time for Dad”—he glanced at me—“nor anybody else.” He shrugged. “Now they’ve asked me to be an assistant in research and development. I’d travel a lot overseas. Pretty exciting. But...I’m not sure the job’s worth it. I should look for something else. Something with less stress. If less money.”  

Jake and I cleared off the picnic table. I washed our glasses and silverware in the sink, and Jake dumped the paper plates and other trash in the garbage. His handsome features, his easy smile, his blue eyes—he totally blew me away. Get a grip, Angela. He’s only visiting. I decided I should go home before my mind started leapfrogging way out of control. But before I left, Jake and I exchanged cellphone numbers so he could keep me informed about his dad.

Jake spent most of the next day at the hospital with his dad but called and asked if he could pick me up after school to take me to the hospital for a visit.

“Look at you two, Mr. Morgan,” said from his hospital bed, smiling a jaunty smile, despite being laid up. “Quite a pair.”

I blushed. Jake’s feet shuffled.

Turned out, Mr. Morgan would need a bit of home care and rehab because the stroke had weakened his left arm and leg. No more yard work for Mr. Morgan for a while.

After our visit, Jake took me to dinner, and that night at my front door, in the moonlight, he said, “You won’t be seeing me for the next couple of days, Angie. I’ve got some things to do around town. And some things to work out in my mind.”

“I understand—your job, your dad’s health.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Two days passed. I didn’t hear a word from Jake.

The next day when I was leaving school, he sent a text, telling me his dad was home, and the awesome guy was doing great.

At home, I bustled about in my kitchen, baking brownies for Mr. Morgan, when a rap at the kitchen door halted my work. It was Jake. I let him in.

“Busy?” he said, all smiles.

“I’m baking brownies for your dad. He’s really okay?”

“Just fine. He’ll have to take it easy for a while.”

“He should.”

Jake’s smile turned shy, like a little boy trying to be modest. “I have a new job,” he said. Then, “I’m grilling for Dad. Chicken. You’re invited. Dad insists. So do I. I’ll tell you all about the job.”

“I’d love to hear all about it!”

Now his smile turned seriously bright. “I’ll be your new neighbor.”

Our eyes locked. My pulse quickened. “Oh wow!” I said. “I like that.”

His blue eyes sparkled. “Me, too.”

After Jake left and my pulse slowed down, I slid the brownies into the oven and decided that I had just enough time to whip up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. The two awesome guys from across the street rocked my heart.

The End

The Throw Away

I hadn’t see Jeremy Dalton for over a year after my older sister jilted him, throwing him away, practically leaving him at the altar.

Then one summer day at the County Fair, I spied him sitting alone at a picnic table under the shade of an oak tree, and my heart jumped around in my chest. When he recognized me as I scuffed through the grass to the table, his smile beamed.

“Ellie!” he said. “Where have you been, girl?”

“You’re the one who disappeared.”

He half stood. “Sit!” he said. “Be my guest.”

Music from the rides on the midway floated across the grounds, and hickory smoke drifted in the air from vendors barbecuing chops, ribs, and sausages.

I sat across from him, but I felt awkward. I mean, I was thrilled to see him again but wondered what I should say. Tall, lean, blond, and sinfully handsome, he was a twenty-eight-year-old farmer whom my sister had ditched for a big-city ad executive she met at a newspaper convention in Chicago.

Somehow Jeremy looked older, as if his experience with my sister Cora had aged him. I decided to tell him how I truly felt about Cora’s breaking up with him. But first I said, “What are you doing here alone, sitting under this tree by the animal barns?”

“Cooling off in the breeze. I’m showing lambs at two o’clock, and it’s hot in those barns. You?”

“I’m exhibiting quilts in the 4-H building.”

The breeze blew my unruly hair about. His face broke into a wonderful smile. “I always liked that wild red hair of yours,” he said. “Pinned on the top of your head. But never quite under control like Cora’s. Yours is curlier, I guess.”

I blushed.

But after he mentioned Cora, his smile faded, and I said, “You getting along okay?”

He nodded. “Took awhile. After Cora dumped me, I felt like road kill. But at least she was honest and told me she’d met someone in Chicago.”

“All her life she’s wanted to be a big-city journalist, and you’re a guy who didn’t want to leave the farm. Didn’t you two talk about your differences?”

He tried to smile again, but the smile didn’t quite reach the corners of his mouth or eyes. Cora met him during an interview she wrote for our local newspaper when a tornado ripped through the area and crumbled one of the barns on his family farm but spared the farmhouse. A major miracle.

“Where is she now?” he said.

“Married. Working for the Chicago Tribune. She finally got what she really wanted. Look,” I added, “I think it’s terrible what she did to you—I told her so. We didn’t speak for weeks.”

Calliope music from the Ferris wheel drifted our way on the shifting breeze.

Has he given up on love?I wondered. Perhaps I should have called him. But what would he have thought? I’m chasing the man my sister threw away.

“You!” he said. “We haven’t talked about you.”

“One semester of veterinary school left,” I said, and laughed. “I’ll be a doctor.”

“Wonderful!” he said. “You’ll be running off to the big city, too, I suppose.”

“I’ll be working with Dr. White in town in his clinic. I love living here. I’m not going anywhere. His beautiful blue eyes searched my face a moment, as if he were trying to discover a secret inside me, and my heart jumped in my chest again. What makes this girl tick?Is she for real? Was he asking himself those questions? He glanced at his watch, stood abruptly, and said, “Got to  water the animals.”

Should I ask him if he needed help? But why would he accept the help of a McPherson girl? He was still hurting from his encounter with the first one he met. I stood, too, and we shook hands in the cool shade of the oak tree, his fingers wrapping firmly and warmly around mine. “Nice seeing you again,” I said.

“You, too. Take care.”

He turned and strode toward the animal barns. I wanted to run after him. But I stood motionless under the tree. Finally, I called, “You need help?”

Thirty yards away, he stopped and swiveled my way. He crept ten paces closer and cupped his hands over his eyes so he could see me better in the blinding sun. “Would you like to?” he said. “I could use a good helper.”

Ambling toward him, my blood racing, I said, “I’d love to help.”

“Hard work,” he said.

“Hard work’s never bothered me.”

We turned and strolled toward the barns, our bare arms bumped, and heat rushed though my body. I know he felt the same heat because the man my sister threw away smiled down at me with that beautiful blue-eyed smile and said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Me either,” I said, smiling back. “But it is.”

The End