What I Want Page 17

  I could have whispered a million things.

  We stood there like that for way too long. I thought about asking God to give me the strength to stop, but I didn’t want to.

  Instead, I whispered, “I love you.”

  I barely said it. My voice was so soft that I wasn’t certain I actually had until she whispered back, “We can’t do this.”

  But even as she said it, I felt her grip on me tighten, and I moved closer.

  “I know.”

  “I have to go,” she said. She was still whispering. Her breath was still warm against my neck.

  “I know,” I said again, nodding. “Go.”

  She nodded back but didn’t move.

  “Go,” I urged again, this time loosening my hold on her slightly. She moved away, barely a fraction of an inch.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and I shook my head as she stepped further away, her eyes cast down to the floor. She backed into her apartment and glanced up at me before she shut the door. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and then she was gone.

  ~ ~ ~

  I DID NOT want to lose Josette again . . . at that point, I would have done anything to keep her in my life.

  But I didn’t want to lose God again either.

  It had taken me so long to get to where I was with Him. Granted I still had a long way to go, but the thought of starting over again scared me . . . almost as much as the thought of losing Josette.

  A man brought his little boy to Jesus to be healed. He asked Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

  Jesus answered, “‘If you can’? Everything is possible for one who believes.”

  The man responded by saying, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”

  That was me.

  I believed that God works all things to the good of those who love Him, but I didn’t believe that He would work this out good for me.

  I know I’m supposed to pray for Your will, but I’m scared of Your will. I want to want what You want, but not really. Not unless it’s the same thing that I want . . .

  Babbling honesty.

  But once I finally told Him how I was really feeling, God showed me what He really wanted.

  And after that, I wasn’t so scared anymore.

  Another step.

  ~ ~ ~

  I WAS WAITING on Josette’s landing the next day when she arrived home. She stopped climbing the stairs as soon as she saw me.

  “I just want to talk to you for a second,” I said, holding up my hands as if in surrender so that she wouldn’t turn around and head the other way.

  “We can’t do this, Marco,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I just want to talk to you,” I repeated.

  She looked at me doubtfully but finished climbing the steps.

  “Let’s sit down,” I suggested.

  We sat at the top of the stairs and I took a deep breath.

  “I’m really sorry about yesterday,” I began.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said, staring straight ahead. “I knew it wasn’t a good idea for us to try to be friends and I let you talk me into it anyway.”

  “I still think we can be friends,” I said. “I just think we need to set some boundaries.”

  She didn’t answer. I think she’d already made up her mind, but I pressed on anyway.

  “Lily told me we shouldn’t touch each other, but I didn’t listen to her.”

  “Lily?”

  “My sister.”

  “I know who Lily is, but . . .”

  “I . . . I’ve had a really hard time dealing with all this,” I explained. “Lily’s been helping me get through it.”

  Josette lowered her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel bad, but I’ve been really struggling for almost a year and . . .”

  I hesitated.

  “I don’t want to lose you again, Josie,” I said.

  “We can’t be around each other, Marco,” she said emphatically. “We have feelings for each other that we’re not supposed to have and we need to stay away from each other.”

  “I’m going to have feelings for you whether I’m around you or not.”

  She glanced at me again and then sighed, shaking her head as she looked away.

  “I am, Josie,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m just trying to be honest. Keeping away from you isn’t going to change that . . . as a matter of fact, if I don’t see you I’m probably going to think about you even more because I’m going to be worried about you all the time. At least this way I can make sure you’re okay.”

  She sighed again.

  “I’m not saying it’s okay for us to think about each other like . . . we used to,” I said, “but I think it’s okay if we just think about each other as friends.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?”

  “My mom always said that you can’t stop birds from flying over your head, but that doesn’t mean you need to let them build a nest in your hair.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t stop things from coming into your head,” I clarified, “but that doesn’t mean that you need to let them stay there.”

  She looked at me doubtfully, but I knew she was considering what I was saying.

  “I think we can be friends,” I said again, “if we just set some clear boundaries.”

  “Like no touching?” she asked dryly.

  “That’s one of them.” I nodded seriously. “And not letting ourselves think about . . . well, about things we shouldn’t be thinking about.”

  She didn’t respond. I decided to keep going.

  “And you need to start going back to church with me,” I said.

  This made her look at me in surprise.

  “I can’t,” she said instantly, shaking her head. “I can’t go back there and face all those people like this.” She put her hands on her belly.

  “What people?” I asked, almost with a laugh. “All those old people who think the world revolves around you?”

  She bit her lip.

  “They love you, Josie,” I insisted. “They ask about you all the time and they would love to see you and they wouldn’t judge you. And even if they did, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

  She looked down at her feet.

  “What else?” she finally asked.

  I hesitated.

  “God wants us to be praying for Stuart,” I said.

  That really made her look at me in surprise.

  “I know that probably sounds weird coming from me,” I admitted, “but all God wants is for each of us to be closer to Him. You, me . . . even Stuart.”

  Of course I had balked when God told me that He wanted me to pray for Stuart, but He’d kept at me.

  God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

  It really was that simple, and through His grace, God showed me that it was my job to pray that He would work in each of our lives to bring us closer to Him. I wasn’t supposed to worry about how it happened . . .

  I was just supposed to pray that it did.

  “I don’t know how God’s going to bring Stuart closer to Him,” I told her. “It might be through you or it might be some other way. I don’t know.”

  She looked at me earnestly as I continued.

  “But I do know that it’s what He wants, and praying for that to happen is what we’re supposed to do . . . or at least it’s what I’m supposed to do.”

  She continued to stare at me.

  “What do you think?” I asked after a moment. “Are you with me?”

  She thought for another moment, and then she slowly nodded her head.

  ~ ~ ~

  WITH THIS NEW focus – one that was right – things were easier. Josette and I quickly settled into a new routine that was remarkably similar to the one we’d been in
while we were dating (minus all the hugging and kissing).

  Josette came over to my house for dinner almost every evening.

  We watched Chances Are while we ate.

  We only broke our “no touching” rule once.

  It was when Josette was about twenty-eight weeks along.

  We were at my place, sitting quite apart from one another on the couch watching our show, when all of a sudden – right in the middle of a question – Josette let out a cry of surprise and put her hand to her belly. I looked at her curiously.

  “She just really kicked!” she said, glancing at me. We knew she was having a girl . . . Stuart and Josette had decided to name her Sophie.

  I didn’t say anything, but then she said, “There she goes again.”

  I looked at her for a long moment, and she looked at me, and then Josette slowly moved her hand.

  I turned my eyes to her rounded abdomen and moved closer, reaching my own hand out until I touched her belly. Almost immediately I felt a little kick, and then another stronger one.

  I looked back at Josette.

  She just stared at me quietly, not saying a word. I kept looking at her as her baby continued to kick, and then slowly, I lowered my head and I rested it against her pregnant belly. I stared at Josette for another long moment. Then I closed my eyes.

  And I lay there against her like that for a long time, feeling her little girl move beneath me.

  I prayed for her. I prayed to God that Sophie would be a perfect little baby who had all her fingers and all her toes and perfect lips. I prayed for her mommy.

  And I prayed for her daddy.

  Sophie continued to move underneath me, punching her little fists and kicking her little legs. I pressed my head tighter against her while I prayed, and when I was finished I turned my head and gave her a kiss through all of her mother’s clothes and skin.

  It was the most intimate moment I had shared with anyone in my life.

  ~ ~ ~

  PRAYING FOR STUART wound up being a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. It was actually pretty simple.

  How, after all, could I not want someone to grow closer to God?

  Of course sometimes my mind would go where it shouldn’t go . . . sometimes I would worry about exactly how God was going to work it all out. On every level I was still hoping that Josette and Stuart were going to get divorced – it was all I could do to not count down the days. Usually, however, I was able to force myself to get back to praying for the end result and not worry about the means.

  But not always.

  One day, as my mind wandered to thoughts of a future in which Josette and Stuart got back together and I would never see her again, I was surprised to discover that my first concern was not that Josette wouldn’t be in my life anymore, but that I would never get to find out what God did in Stuart’s life . . .

  I’m pretty sure the fact that I worried about that first was another step.

  Josette was due at the end of October, and she hoped that the baby wouldn’t come until after she took her exams. She would then be able to stay home with Sophie until classes started at the end of January before putting her in daycare. Josette was determined not to miss any school: she said that if she quit now, she’d never go back.

  For the most part, her pregnancy progressed uneventfully, but one morning – in early August – my phone woke me before five. I knew before I picked it up that it was Josette and that something was wrong, I turned on the light and started looking for my car keys before I even answered it.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” were the first words out of her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . I’m bleeding a little bit and I haven’t felt her move in a long time.”

  “Did you call the doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wants to meet me at the hospital,” Josette said, “but Stuart isn’t answering his phone and . . .”

  She hesitated.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said again. “But is there any way you could come get me?”

  “I’m already on my way,” I said, and I started the car.

  I helped Josette check in at the hospital, but then I stayed in the waiting room after she was taken back to see the doctor. I sat in a plastic chair with my elbows on my knees and my forehead resting against my hands. I’d been sitting there like that for a long time when I heard someone at the check-in window ask for Josette.

  I looked up and saw a man standing at the desk and I knew instantly that it was Stuart. I watched as he was directed down the hall where Josette had been taken and then – when he disappeared from sight – I put my head back in my hands.

  It was more than an hour before Josette and Stuart came back out into the waiting room.

  I was prepared to not make eye contact . . . to look away and act as if I had never seen Josette before in my life if that’s the way she wanted to play it, but she walked right up to me and introduced me to Stuart.

  “Stuart,” she said, “this is Marco. Marco, this is Stuart.”

  I stood up and extended my hand.

  “Hi,” he said as he shook it. He didn’t flinch.

  “Marco used to be my landlord,” Josette explained. “He drove me here this morning.”

  Landlord.

  “Thanks, mate,” Stuart said, shaking my hand again. “My phone was on vibrate and I left it out in the living room. I usually try to keep it next to me at night.”

  I nodded and looked at Josette worriedly.

  “She’s fine,” Josette said, putting a hand on her belly. “They did an ultrasound and she’s great and the bleeding stopped. It wasn’t very much, and they said unless it starts back up again it was probably nothing.”

  “And we’re already at thirty-four weeks,” Stuart added, putting a hand on the small of Josette’s back. “I mean obviously they want her to hang in there a little bit longer than this, but if they need take her now or whatever she’ll be fine.”

  I sighed in relief. Stuart put his other hand on Josette’s belly and patted it in a reassuring way.

  I looked at Josette.

  “Do you . . . uhhh . . . do you need a ride back?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” Stuart said. “I’ve got it.” He reached out to shake my hand one more time. “Thanks for helping out.”

  I nodded at him.

  “Thank you,” Josette echoed softly, and the two of them turned together and headed out the door.

  The next time I saw Stuart was also in a waiting room at the hospital. Brenda called me one morning while I was driving to the university to let me know that Josette was in labor and had asked her to call me. Brenda was there when I arrived, and the two of us sat in relative quiet while we waited for some kind of word from the birthing room. We were there for about two hours before Sophie was born, crying so loud that we could hear her in the waiting room.

  Eventually the crying stopped and soon a nurse wheeled a little bassinet past us. Not too long after that, Stuart came out, headed in the same direction as the bassinet. As he passed by, however, he spotted us and immediately stepped into the room.

  “Hi,” he smiled, walking over to me. He reached out to shake my hand once again. “You’re Marcus, right?”

  “Marco,” I corrected.

  “Right, right,” he said. “Sorry.” He turned to Brenda. “And you must be Brenda?”

  She nodded and congratulated him.

  “Thanks,” he grinned. “You wanna see her? They took her down here to poke and prod her a bit.”

  We followed Stuart down the hall until we came to a viewing area where a nurse was busy making little Sophie very angry.

  Stuart touched the glass and looked at his daughter, talking to us as he smiled. “She’s got a good set of lungs, eh?”

  Brenda and I both agreed that she did.

  He kept his eyes on her for a long time, and then he said quietly, almost to himself, “I can h
ardly believe how much she looks like Jamie.”

  Josette had nurses and doctors and a husband to take care of everything, and she really didn’t need any friends hanging around. Long after Brenda went home, however, I found myself still at the hospital, unable to tear myself away. Sometime in the evening, I went to the cafeteria to get some dinner. I was sitting in a booth by myself, eating, when Stuart happened by carrying his own tray of food.

  “Hi,” he said, giving me a smile when he spotted me. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” he nodded. “Want some company?”

  “Sure.”

  He sat down opposite me and started tearing open packets of ketchup.

  “My mom and dad are flying in tonight,” he went on. “I’ve got to go pick them up at the airport in about an hour.”

  I nodded.

  “Josie’s sleeping,” he added.

  I nodded again.

  “So you were Josie’s landlord?” he asked, dunking a fry into his ketchup.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Before, when she . . .”

  I wasn’t sure how to word it, but Stuart didn’t seem to need any further explanation.

  “We’re friends now,” I finished with a shrug.

  He nodded at me and took a bite of his burger.

  “You wanna see something?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He pulled out his phone and punched away at it for a moment. When he found what he was looking for, he held it up before me.

  “That’s Jamie,” he said. “The day she was born. Doesn’t Sophie look just like her?”

  I had to nod again.

  He shook his head as if he could still hardly believe the resemblance.

  “I think Josie’s kind of having a hard time with it,” he added quietly. “It brings back a lot of memories.”