As it happened, a bit over a week later Maddie did call me again. Just as she promised.
That didn’t surprise me in the slightest – I didn’t for even a single moment believe that she would not call me when she said she would call me.
“In a week or so…” she said.
The important part of this for me wasn’t even that she called, but that she made a promise and had kept that promise. I was so used to being lied to, led on, even cheated on – that I was starting to think that there were no truly honest people in the world.
Maddie laid down the promise and kept it. She was always honest with me, and kicked me in the butt when I needed to be kicked in the butt.
We actually ended up chatting about once a week for a few months, almost to the end of the year. It felt so foreign to have someone not only do what they said they would, but also treat me with love, respect, and support.
Sometimes she would call me, sometimes I would call her. She was always interested in what I had to say, about how I was doing. She had said “I’ll always be here for you…”
And she was. My Maddie was the one rooting for me and pulling me through the quagmire that my head had been over the previous few months.
Honest and pure.
I don’t know that I was falling in love with her again, but the closeness, the affection and the support she was giving to me certainly started my head down that path.
I was convinced she was single.
I certainly was single, but almost certainly not ready to “go again” with anyone – but Maddie is different. By now she had come to represent so many things in my life that were matches for my own personal values – well, that I was probably risking my heart if I let the feeling roll too far.
I wasn’t sure it was time to ask the question, but with five years having passed since our conversation in the library at school, I was probably frustrated more than anything that we had never finished that talk off.
She never told me how she really felt.
I invited her for coffee a few days later at a little café in the main street of town, so we could sit out the front and chat face to face – not over the phone.
Maddie had done so much for me the previous few months that my heart was wavering for her again, but for so long neither of us had brought it up.
At a little street café one December morning we finally talked about it, and it would bring a moment that would prove to be just another crossroad in my life.