Short Story/Romantic Drama: You Can Go Back..., But Should You? (High School Sweethearts Reunite)

Copyright© by Jaye Denman. All rights reserved.

He wrote: I’ve always heard that you can’t go back in time, but that’s not true. We have gone back, Katy. Last night we turned back the hands of the clock to the time when we were together. I feel like a young man again…young and in love….

* * *

I wasn’t looking for love in all the wrong places at the time, or even looking in the right ones. I was divorced, and my youngest daughter was a university freshman in another state. Now that I was an empty-nester, I worked hard to catch up to the twenty-somethings who were only a few years out of college. Personal relationships were placed on hold as my career took center stage.

All my energy and concentration were focused on getting ahead in business. I wasn’t ready to begin again the awkward dance-step of dating and getting to know someone new. Sure, I was attracted to men. A handsome man with silver hair and the burnished skin tones of Mediterranean heritage caught my eye at a party, and I realized that I was interested. Interested, but not enough to let him know it. Maybe soon , I thought, but right then romance wasn’t a priority for me.

Then something happened that dramatically changed the course of my life—a detour driven almost entirely by nostalgia. It happened without warning, sweeping me along like a flash flood in a rush of remembered feelings.

How strongly certain sounds and smells instantly evoke memories from deep in the past. The crisp scent of a sliced apple takes me back to winter evenings in my childhood, when I sat on the fireplace hearth watching my grandfather peel a mellow Red Delicious in one long continuous strip. In the same way, the first few bars of a song on the golden oldies radio station transports me back to a high school dance floor.

It was a late September evening when I answered my phone and heard a voice that produced such a vivid auditory memory it immediately mesmerized me.

The workday had been long and arduous, and I was tired. Indian summer was fading in Dallas; the evening air had turned cool and brisk. What a welcome relief the cooler temperature was after the stifling heat wave that had lasted for months.

I was curled up on the sofa just a few chapters into a new mystery book when the phone rang. For a moment, I considered letting the answering machine take the call. I didn’t want to tear my attention away from the story. On the third ring, however, my overactive sense of responsibility kicked in. I picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Katy Lee?”

No one in Dallas used or even knew my middle name. I’d never liked the southern custom of using double given names, so I dropped the “Lee” when I left home. Who in the world….?

Suddenly I knew, just as surely as if I could see his face in front of me. Across the divide of thirty-plus years I recognized that distinctive mellow voice as though I had heard it only the day before.

“Katy Lee?” He said it a bit louder, as if I might not have heard him the first time. “Do you know who this is?” He paused and I heard a whoosh as he exhaled.

“I was your first love,” he said.

The words were suspended in the airwaves between southwest Mississippi and Dallas, Texas. They echoed in my head. My heartbeat quickened, and I felt pretty breathless myself, as though I might hyperventilate.

“Robert? Is that really you? How on earth did you find me?”

He didn’t seem to notice the tremor in my voice. He later told me he sat by his phone for an hour before working up the courage to dial. When I said his name, his relief was intense. My tone—incredulous, but welcoming—reassured him he had done the right thing.

“You have any idea how difficult it was to track you down, girl?”

No one had called me ‘girl’—the term a southern idiosyncrasy used with women of all ages—in years upon years.

I’ve been trying to locate you for two months,” Robert said. “Your cousin gave me an address in Irving, but my letter came back stamped “Undeliverable.” I finally got your mother on the phone tonight, and she gave me the right number for you about an hour ago. She said she thought you’d be glad to hear from me. Are you, Katy?”

My mom had known for an hour that Robert Bankston was planning to call me? Why hadn’t she phoned to prepare me for this bombshell?

Of course I am, Robert. It’s just such a…surprise.”

Was it really? Hadn’t I done something that might have paved the way for this call, and could I really say I hadn’t intended this result?

At a family funeral in Mississippi a few months previously, I’d encountered Robert’s father, William. Seeing him naturally made me think of Robert, and I made polite (and I hoped, nonchalant) inquiries about him, only to learn Robert had been widowed the previous year. I murmured condolences, asking William to convey them to his son for me.

On the flight home, Robert crept into my thoughts, and I fantasized a meeting between us after so many years.

He would say to me, “You’re lovelier than ever, Katy. The years have been kind to you.”

I imagined gray streaks in his wavy brown hair…perhaps not as thick as I remembered it. His face in my reverie looked like the young Jeff Bridges, his voice as smooth as melted butter. That voice had captivated me from the first time I heard it.

Robert had been my first steady boyfriend. We dated for nearly a year when I was a sophomore and he was a junior in high school. He was very sweet and seemed to adore me. I was crazy about him at first. First real boyfriend. First kiss. First love.

Then I met an older guy, the very image of the smoldering movie screen rebel. I was fascinated, as young girls often are by bad boys. I was also very young and too immature to realize that I was immature.

Robert, by contrast, suddenly seemed tame and boring. I broke up with him, tossing him aside like the previous year’s fad without much finesse. Hurt and angry, the harsh things he yelled during our parting quarrel were his last words to me…until now.

That was thirty-one years ago. I finished high school, dropped out of college for an unwise marriage, reared my children and divorced. Now I was talking with my high school sweetheart...the unforgettable first puppy love, the boy who gave me my first real boy-girl kiss. As we each caught up with the events of the other’s life, the hours flew by; the phone call lasted past midnight. Talking with Robert seemed as natural as breathing.

Little did I realize that an amazing thing was about to happen. Even more astounding would be my impulsive response.

Robert said he never forgot me, though he was very hurt when I dumped him for someone else. Those were his exact words. You dumped me.

I realized how often I had thought of him during the years of my unhappy marriage. What would have happened if we’d stayed together?

“You got away from me once,” he said, “and I’m not going to let you get away again. I believe you’re the only woman in the world for me, Katy, and I know I’m the right man for you. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”

“What are you saying?” I was awestruck by his words. Earlier that evening I had not even known we would be having this conversation, and now….

“It sounds as though you’re suggesting...”

“Yes, Katy, that’s exactly what I mean. I need you here with me, and I need you now. I want to marry you and take care of you for the rest of our lives. We should have spent our whole lives with each other, had kids together. Well, we can’t bring back the years we lost, but we can make the years we have left wonderful.

“Sweetheart, I’ll wake you every morning with coffee in bed. On your tray I’ll put a fresh rose with drops of dew still on the petals. Did I tell you I raise roses?”

What woman—no matter how successful and self-reliant she may be—has ever entirely relinquished her girlhood fantasies of Mr. Right? The perfect man who would sweep her off her feet and carry her away to a life of pampered bliss?

It had been difficult to end my bad marriage, and my independence was hard won. After years of being dominated, I relished my freedom. Now, amazingly, I was ready to give it all up in an instant as Robert’s mellow voice and sweet words tugged at my heartstrings. I felt as though I had been magically transported back to my high school days.

Dazed, I heard myself accepting a proposal of marriage from a man I hadn’t seen in three decades!

“You’ve made me a happy man, Katy Lee. All I want in my life is to take care of you, to cherish you forever. I’ve had a good life, but I never stopped loving you, darlin’.”

When we finally said goodnight to each other, pledging our love the way we did so long ago, we were engaged. This happened in one astonishing, moonstruck evening!

I barely slept that night. I watched the minutes change on my bedside digital clock and finally dozed off about an hour before my alarm jangled, setting every nerve in my body on edge.

I showered and dressed for work in a state of wonder. Did the phone call really happen, or did I dream it? Did I really say I would marry Robert Bankston? Had I taken leave of my senses? I should be stunned and horrified at my actions. Why, then, did I feel euphoric and so…girlish ?

On my office desk, a huge vase of peach-hued roses awaited me. I leaned close to a gorgeous bloom and breathed in its fragrance before I read the card nestled among the long stems.

Forever isn’t long enough to spend with you, darling, but it’s the very best I can promise. I’ll cherish you always and forever. All my love, Robert.

A typist walked into my office, raised her eyebrows and grinned.

“Somebody must think you’re pretty special. What an unusual color those roses are! I wish some man cared that much about me.”

She placed a folder in my desk tray and walked out wearing a wistful expression. I quickly called Robert at the work number he’d given me to thank him for the flowers.

“You remembered that peach is one of my favorite colors. Where on earth did you ever find peach-colored roses on such short notice?”

“It wasn’t easy,” he replied, “but they had to be perfect.”

My schedule was full, so I couldn’t linger on the phone. It was extremely difficult to keep my mind on work that day. I had lunch with my best friend, Sandie, and told her about Robert and the phone call that was going to change my life.

She was incredulous.

“I can’t believe it, Katy. You actually got yourself engaged to a man you haven’t seen since you dated him in high school? This is the sort of thing you hear about on a daytime talk show. Calling Oprah, anyone?”

In the days and weeks to come, I found myself thinking of the situation as my “Oprah story.” Surprisingly, my friends, although amazed when I related the account of my spontaneous engagement, got caught up in the romance of it all. Most declared it “… simply fantastic!”

Robert called me every evening. Each night we lingered on the phone for hours. We had so much lost time to cover.

“I couldn’t sleep that first night we talked,” he told me. “It was a wonderful sleeplessness, though, and I didn’t mind it for a minute. I was thinking of you. I can hardly wait to see you. May I come and visit you this weekend?”

I was planning to suggest that we should see each other soon, so I happily agreed.

“I wrote you a letter and sent it by express mail from the office this morning. You’ll get it tomorrow,” I said. “I tucked in a few photos so you’ll know what to expect.”

He laughed. “I wrote a letter to you, too, and sent it by overnight mail. I feel so impatient. I don’t have many recent pictures of myself, but sent you a couple. I just hope the ravages of time haven’t changed me too much. If you don’t like the way I look, it’s too late for you to back out. You promised, and I won’t give you up twice.”

“I won’t be disappointed, Robert. As long as you resemble the man in my heart’s memory, I’ll know and love you. Besides, it isn’t outward appearance that counts.”

His letter wasn’t as long as mine, but was much more of a love letter than the six-page biographical sketch I’d penned. While I’d been intent on telling him what the mature Katy was like (so there wouldn’t be any surprises), he filled his letter with phrases of love and happiness. It began: To my first and last love: I cannot believe my good fortune. I have found the treasure I lost so many years ago, and now I can hold you close to my heart. I’ve been given a chance to win back your love, and I feel like the luckiest man alive.

My darling Katy, you are worth more to me than the sun, the moon and the stars. There is no other woman in this world for me, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I am yours forever. All my love, Robert.

Our next evening talk was filled with his delight at seeing my photographs.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Katy Lee. The green-eyed girl I knew just got better over the years. I miss the dark brown hair a bit, but I’ll get used to your being a blonde because it suits you so well. I can hardly take my eyes off these pictures except to read and re-read your letter.”

“I’m afraid my letter wasn’t romantic like yours, Robert, but give me another chance. Now that I’ve got the background stuff out of the way, I’ll write what’s in my heart.”

Our first face-to-face meeting since high school came two days later. Robert disliked flying, so he drove ten hours to Dallas after work and arrived at my home late Friday night. I stood in the doorway and waited, scarcely daring to breathe while he stepped from his car and walked toward me.

I was amazed his face was so familiar, though his forehead was creased and his hair almost completely gray. Those external things didn’t matter to me. The blue eyes were just as blue as they had been when he gazed into mine so many years ago. The smile was the same.

Before he reached the door, I stepped into his embrace. As he held me tightly to his chest, I felt the dampness of his tears on my neck and was touched that I could produce such strong feeling in him after all this time apart. It was a heady sensation for a middle-aged woman. I felt young and desirable.

Ah, how blinded are the eyes of the enchanted. Little red flags popped up all around me that weekend, but, lost in a dreamy haze of young love reclaimed, I ignored every one of them.

Robert wanted to meet my friends and they were eager to check him out. I made arrangements for a group to meet us for dinner in a private room of a nice restaurant.

When Robert’s face was in repose, his lips had a natural downturn that made him appear to be frowning. Yet, when he smiled—and his smile was a broad one, really a grin—his whole countenance was transformed. He immediately appeared younger.

He seemed delighted with the world and everyone in it. When he smiled, I saw the young Robert.

He was exceptionally charming that evening. He charmed me, and he charmed my friends. They thought he was a terrific man, and the unease anyone may have felt about the abruptness of our engagement evaporated in the warmth of Robert’s dazzling smile and amiable behavior.

For the next six months I flew to Mississippi every other weekend, and Robert endured flying once to meet me for a three-day weekend in Key West. That was all the time we spent together during that period: brief visits devoted to preserving our idealistic romantic dream. That’s what it was, of course. We were living in a dream world fueled by recollections from our youth. With Robert’s constant urging that we set a date for the wedding, I was already thinking ahead, jotting down notes to myself in preparation for a wedding. Such was his charisma when he wanted something.

During one of our late-night phone conversations, Robert referred to the tune that was “our song” during our teen courtship. He told me he kept the single record disc for two years after our breakup before he accepted the finality, finally smashing the celluloid in a symbolic gesture after he met the girl he would later marry.

I was often amazed at the capacity of Robert’s recollection. He forgot nothing, no matter how trivial. A lifetime of old addresses and phone numbers—everything was neatly catalogued in his mind. Old feelings and remembered slights were stored there, as well.

One night he related, in minute detail, every word I said to him when I ended our youthful relationship. As he described the pain he felt at eighteen, I relived our long-ago quarrel, ashamed that I had hurt him more than I realized at the time. His anger had made him harsh that night, and the same emotion—anger—tinged his voice now as he spoke of it.

“Robert,” I asked, “Are you still harboring a grudge against me for the foolish things I said and did when I was an immature teenager?” I was astonished that it might be true.

He hesitated. When he spoke his voice was neutral, “I spent that entire summer fishing at the lake with my uncle. I avoided everyone my age. During my last year of high school, I didn’t even go to my senior prom because you were with someone else. I was numb half the time, trying to shut off my feelings and push you out of my mind. You don’t forget a hurt that goes that deep.”

“Robert, we were only kids then...both of us. I realize now that I was naïve and selfish, but I didn’t know it then. I’m sorry I inflicted such hurt, but it should have healed long ago. We aren’t the same people we were more than thirty years ago. Teenagers grow up. They become adults, mature and change.”

As I said the words I knew they were true. At least, they were true for me. I wasn’t the girl who was apparently frozen in Robert’s memory. He was stuck in the past, lost in another decade, dwelling on old hurts as though they existed in the present and must be exorcised. The way he spoke of them, perhaps they did exist for him.

This single evening had taken us all the way from sweet love promises to the probing of a festered emotional injury. What could I expect after this revelation? Would the next step in this dance of memory be revenge?

Did Robert want to marry me so he could remind me for the rest of my life how badly I’d once treated him? Did he want a long opportunity to be cruel to me in return? Was retribution the prize he was after, instead of happiness and commitment? Could the feeling he had for me actually be resentment, even old anger, rather than love? What was that phrase about revenge being a dish better served cold? I suddenly shivered.

“You’re still my same Katy,” he said, “and you belong to me now.”

The mellow tone of his voice had returned, but there was a faint undertone of something other than devotion. Was it a tinge of bitterness? Resolve to get even? Whatever it was, it must have also been there months ago. I’d been too caught up in reminiscing to hear anything other than Robert’s words, his promises to cherish me.

As he murmured into the phone, I stopped listening with my heart and listened instead with my intellect, the experience of an unhappy marriage behind me. Perhaps it was fanciful of me to think that Robert might actually be planning to marry me so he could settle a thirty-one-year-old score. What he had in store for me, I couldn’t imagine. I simply had a gut feeling that what awaited me once that ring was on my finger was not the bliss he’d been describing for months. I trusted my intuition.

“Hurt me once, shame on you,” he was saying. “Hurt me twice, shame on me.”

The words of the little schoolyard ditty were harmless enough, but they sounded surreal when spoken by a man nearing fifty. I said I was tired and needed to say good night, but before I hung up the phone, he reminded me to call him the following evening.

I knew I wouldn’t call him the next night, or the one after that. If he called me at work, and I couldn’t avoid talking to him, I would use the first of a litany of excuses: extra work assignments, a sudden business trip, a lingering bad cold. Then I would take two weeks of my vacation and go someplace warm and sunny, changing my cell phone number before I left. I’d turn off my answering machine and, when I returned, I’d screen all calls with Caller ID. I would have to warn my mother and friends what to expect, but I’d gotten myself into this situation. The extrication wouldn’t be pleasant, but it was better than saying “I do” only to discover that I’d made a grave mistake.

It shouldn’t take long for Robert to realize the reprise he had in mind would not happen. There would be no marriage, no joining of our lives for whatever purpose. The contact between us would abruptly end. I’d make certain of that. There would definitely be no quarrel or retribution. I did not intend to grant Robert any more angry words to add to the storehouse of offenses lodged in his memory, real or imagined.

There would only be silence from my end. I wouldn’t allow him to play on my emotions again. No more listening to that mellow voice that could change so quickly to anger. The feelings I experienced now would fade away like the peal of a distant bell while I reminded myself I’d had a very close call.

How would my change of mind affect Robert? I could imagine his reaction, but would push thoughts of it out of my mind. I really didn’t want to know.

THE END

I wrote this short story years ago, and had the ending fixed in my mind from the first word.

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