Chapter Thirteen; I'm Not Telling

I keep my feelings to myself.

Deny them when Naomi starts excavating me with more precision than an archeologist on a dig for an elusive fossil. Tell myself I am just a little infatuated. Stuff my feelings in a hypothetical sock and bury them deep under the mattress of my soul.

In other words even though I know I have fallen in love with Nick I will never admit it. Chinese water torture couldn’t drag this amore’ admission out of me.

I’ve really only felt this way once about one other guy I’ve dated since my divorce. And I dated him for six months and never once considered dropping the “L” bomb on his hockey hair head.

That’s crazy talk.

And two weeks in?

Yeah. That’s putting myself on the straight jacket highway to a padded wall existence. And I’d much rather keep this insanity to my insane, yet safe, self.

“You know, I think you’re in love with him, Audra. I really do.” I am at lunch with my friend Ava and heat seeking emotional missal that she is; she calls my bluff with grace and diplomacy.

I reach across my chicken and cranberry salad, grab my chilly glass of iced diet coke and gulp down two huge swallows before innocently lifting my eyebrows and inquiring, “What makes you say that?”

If Audrey Hepburn had a clone, it would be Ava. She personifies elegance. She teaches the gifted and talented and her passion for her work glows like a halo around her only adding to her regal demeanor. She is as articulate as she insightful, as kind as she is perceptive.

Which basically? Makes me crap my pants.

She’s on to me.

She laughs at my question and repeats it in playful mockery, “What makes me say that? My goodness, you talk about Nick all the time. And your reasons for doing so are full of integrity. You like his soul, you admire his life choices, and you respect him immensely. Call me crazy but that sounds like love to me,” she teasingly yet seriously assesses as she nibbles on her pasta.

I take a gigantic bite of my salad and just say, “Hmmm,” in a pathetic effort to buy some time before being forced to give up the gig.

You see, if anyone can assert that love could be possible this early on in the heart palpitation phase, it is Ava. Her life is a storybook that even Nicholas Sparks would swoon over. Her marriage could possibly have inspired Taylor Swift to sing, “You be the prince and I’ll be the princess.” Her husband, Jim, proposed one month after their meeting. And six brief months later they were married.

And the outcome of that 100 yard dash to the altar? Yep. You got it. Twenty years of happily ever after this summer. And I am not exaggerating on the happily. Their longevity is not a story of toleration and duty but one of genuine love. Trust me, being around them is gag inducing. Two people could not have been a better match had they been born Siamese twins.

So if anyone can look at me across the table and brand my sanity sane, it is Ava. The whirlwind Cinderella herself.

But I just eat more salad.

And plead the fifth with an exaggerated eye roll.

I may have finally let someone into my heart, but I am not going to have a commemorative stamp made up, declare a national holiday or do any tweeting on Twitter. Let alone escalate this to a lunch date confession. Even to Ava.

At least not just yet.

But as for Nick?

He has other ideas.

Because just a few short hours later I am staring at my blackberry screen reading a text message that articulate the very emotion that I have locked securely behind a façade of logical and rational thought processes.

It looks like the truth won’t stay imprisoned for long.

Nick has found the key.