Furnished

"Oh. Hi. Did I forget something?" he asked when he saw her.

"No. I...I just...I just felt awful. I shouldn't have even mentioned about, you know, losing my husband. I didn't mean to make you feel guilty or anything. I was just being...honest."

Brad thought for a moment and hoped he wasn't digging a bigger hole for himself before he spoke again.

"First of all, you have nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one who's sorry for you. Second, I'm glad you told me that, Rachelle, because I did feel bad. Well, actually I...I felt like a...colossal...ass because the truth is, I was kind of flirting Not directly. I was trying to find a way to tell a married woman I thought she was...very beautiful with flirting, but..."

"Then I...I'm glad you did flirt with me. It was very flattering. So thank you."

When she smiled then laughed, Brad's guilt and embarrassment lifted, and he smiled.

"Since we're being honest, I should probably admit I hadn't even noticed your ring until you were checking me out, but I'd been...checking you out...the entire time you were helping me."

He smiled again then said, "In the nicest, most respectful way possible, of course."

Rachelle laughed agin then told him it was fine.

"Were I younger," she began before switching to, "make that...much younger...and single...I'd probably be hoping you asked for my number, so again, you didn't offend me, and I really did enjoy meeting you, Brad."

"Had I not made such an as...a fool...out of myself, I'd be asking you for your number," he told her.

"If I was younger, right? As in...a lot younger," she said almost playfully.

He looked at her, smiled then told her, "No. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't make any difference to me."

"That's because you don't know how old I actually am," she said with a sweet smile on her pretty face. "If you did, you'd hop in your truck and...fly away as fast as you can."

He tilted his head a little then said very seriously, "No. I can promise you I wouldn't do that."

Rachelle's smile vanished, and once again, she looked down so fast it made Brad wonder if there was something on the ground between them.

She glanced back up, tried to smile, then stuck her hand out and said, "If you say so."

Brad shook it, and just the way her hand felt in his made him shudder. It was so tiny and small and so...feminine and smooth.

"I do. Say so," he replied very quietly just as someone called out, "Rachelle? I'm not paying you to flirt with the customers!"

"The boss?" Brad asked.

Rachelle made a face then said, "Uh-huh. He's a real peach," before waving and promising to be right there.

"Maybe I'll see you again sometime," Brad said as he opened the door.

"Yes. Maybe," she replied with a warm smile before turning to go back inside and face the petty man who was her boss and who started in on her the moment she walked in.

But she wasn't really listening. She was too busy wondering why she wanted to turn around and ask her customer if he'd like her to help him arrange the furniture when it arrived. Rachelle wasn't flirty, and while she still attracted all kinds of attention from men, she hadn't met anyone since losing her husband who made her feel the way she was feeling.

"So if you want to keep this job, DO your job!" she heard just as she came back to reality.

"I'm so sorry, Darren. It won't happen again," Rachelle told him even though she'd done nothing against store policy. The truth was he had a bit of a crush on her but knew he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

The smell of fresh paint hit Brad hard when he got home, and for the first time since leaving the store he thought about something other than Rachelle. She was obviously a beautiful woman. But he'd seen—and been with—many beautiful women. But this was more than beauty, at least in the external sense. It went deeper than just appearance. But how and why it did was a mystery because he knew the beautiful woman had a daughter in college making her way too old for him. All he knew was that this woman was different, and in spite of the age difference, he had the sense he may have just missed out on the most important relationship of his life.

"Yeah, right," he said out loud when he realized her daughter was probably around 21 years old making her...

"What's right?" he heard Tom ask, who was still in his skivvies.

"You out of clean clothes already?" Brad asked with a glance at his roomie's tightie whities.

"What's the big deal?" Tom said as he reached for the coffee pot.

Brad just shook his head as he recalled the downside of living with Tom Fryer before telling him how the shopping trip went and what his share of the cost would be.

Tom took a sip of coffee then asked Brad if the furniture was gold plated with a couple of choice expletives thrown in for good measure.

By 1800, or 6pm, Tom was getting ready to fire up the grill and asked Brad what he wanted.

"Huh?"

"Huh? What do you mean...huh? You deaf?"

"Sorry. Just preoccupied."

"About what? What could possibly be worrying you, O' Golden Boy?"

"I'm not worried. Just...thinking."

Tom was already on his second beer and realized what was going on.

"Oh-ho! You met someone, didn't you?"

"Yeah. I kinda did."

"So do you need me to make myself scarce for a few hours tonight?"

"What? No. It's not like that."

"Then what is it like?" Tom asked before draining half the bottle.

"I don't know."

"That was helpful."

"Sorry, Tom. I...I've never met anyone like her before."

"Girls are girls, dude. Once you get their clothes off, they're all the same, right?"

Brad ignored the crass comment and said, "Not all of them. Especially not when she isn't a girl."

"Whoa! Dude. Not a girl? Did you just say...you're..."

"No. I'm not...gay."

"Whew. Okay, then how is a girl not a girl then? Oh. Oh, no. You...did you meet...a tranny?"

Brad final let his disgust show and said, "Try not to be a raging asshole every now and then, okay?"

"Sheesh. I was just BS-ing. Lighten up already!"

Tom waited for his friend to calm down, even though that was about as far from calm as Brady Kyser ever got, then said, "Tell me about her. This...non-girl...girl."

"Nah. That's okay. You wouldn't understand."

"I promise not be a raging asshole for ten minutes if you decide you want to talk," Tom said, a little stung at being called out and shut out.

"Give me one of those beers," Brad said, causing Tom to smile as he pulled one out of a cooler filled with ice.

Brad took a sip then did his best to explain his experience at Mira Mesa Furniture, and to his credit, Tom listened and didn't make a single snide remark.

"Damn. She sounds hot," he finally said.

"She is. But 'hot' doesn't fit. Not with her. Beautiful is the better word. Or maybe 'classy'. All I know is I'd do pretty much anything to have a chance to get to know her."

"Even though she's like...50?" Tom asked, trying to make sense of this new thing going on in his best friend's life.

"Fifty? She's not...50. She looks 32. Ish. But she's probably around 40."

"Give or take, right?"

"Yeah. I suppose so."

"And going out with a woman old enough to be your aunt doesn't bother you?"

"No. Not with her it wouldn't. Not at all."

"Then go back and ask her out. Get to know her. Bang her. Then..."

"Tom?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut the hell up, would you?" Brad told his longtime friend with a hint of genuine disgust.

"Jeez. Mea culpa, bro. Mea maxima culpa, and fuck you, too!"

Again, Brad ignored the reply and took another drink from the green bottle hoping it would help him forget. At least temporarily.

He rarely drank more than two, but he had three more after that, and the buzz did its job long enough to let him fall asleep without him giving too much more thought to the gorgeous blonde woman with a daughter in college. And even more important to him for the time being, he and Tom got back on the topic of flying for the rest of the night, and as Forest Gump once said, "They was just like peas and carrots again."

As the workweek began, Tom spent his first three days checking in, something the Army called 'in-processing'. By Wednesday, he was ready to go to work and the squadron operations officer scheduled him for his first flight, a short hop he'd fly with the seasoned Marine major who ran the squadron's S-3 or operations and training section.

Brad had nearly forgotten about Rachelle, not because he'd lost interest, but because work had forced him to focus, and that was a good thing, as he couldn't ever remember being this distracted by any woman before her.

But Wednesday evening when his phone rang, he had a surge of adrenaline when he saw Mira Mesa Furniture.

"Hello?"

"Brad? Hi. This is Rachelle. From Mira Mesa Furniture?"

"I didn't forget," he said playfully as he sat up, suddenly very much alive again.

She laughed a little then said, "I just wanted to let you know that we're running a day late, so we moved your delivery to Saturday. We've just been so swamped, and I'm very sorry."

"No. No problem," he told her. "I'm just glad you called."

He paused then said, "As in...you. Not the store."

"Oh. I...see," Rachelle replied nervously, something Brad couldn't...see. But he did hear it.

She thought for a moment, and in spite of knowing this was against store policy, she said, "Listen. I know you're...a bachelor. With a roommate. But I was wondering...would you...could I maybe offer to, you know, kind of help you set up the furniture? I understand if that's not..."

"Yes! I'd like that. I'd like that a lot, Rachelle."

Relieved, but also worried about what she was doing and why, she said, "Oh. Okay. Well, I'm not working on Saturday, but I'll know the time of the delivery on Friday and call you. Based on that, maybe we can decide on when I should stop by?"

"Yes. Definitely," Brad eagerly replied.

"Okay then. I'll touch base with you on Friday."

"I'm looking forward to it. And to seeing you again, Rachelle."

Her heart was beating faster as she said, "Same here, Brad. Bye."

She ended the call before he could say 'goodbye' back, but after hearing her voice again, he didn't care. What he did care about was that he was going to get a chance to see her again, and this time he was going to find a way to tell her how he felt.

As soon as he figured out what that meant.

Brad had his phone with him every minute of the day on Friday waiting for Rachelle to call. It was 1600, or 4pm, when she did, and he'd just arrived at the Officer's Club for Happy Hour when the phone rang.

He'd been standing around with a handful of other pilots from the squadron, and when his phone rang, he disappeared so fast that one of them asked who was so important.

"Brad's got a honey," Tom told the other captain. "A hot, older woman he met out in town."

"Brad's a Cougar hunter? I didn't know that."

"I don't think he was...hunting," Tom said. "And he's kind of sensitive about it."

The other captain looked at his buddies knowing that Marine aviators cut no one any slack.

"No worries, man. We'll show the proper respect."

But the moment Brad came back, a big smile on his face, the captain who promised to be nice said, "So I hear you've got a new babe."

The look on Tom's face told Brad all he needed to know as he shook his head and said, "Maybe."

"Hey. I was wondering. What you guys do with her walker? You know, when's it time to...get funky?"

A couple of the other guys roared while Tom looked at his roommate to see how pissed off he was gonna be.

Having been on the giving and receiving end of all kinds of good-natured humor from other Marines and midshipmen at Annapolis, Brad knew better than to get defensive. That would only bring more grief, so he played it off rather nicely.

"We leave it outside the bedroom. You know, like you and the high school cheerleader do with her pom poms."

Brad's reply was as juvenile as the original question, but it drew a bunch, "Ohhs!" and other remarks like, "Zing!" as the Marine who asked it was known for liking girls who were barely legal.

Just like that, the zingers were over and everyone was back to flying, something they never got tired of talking about.

Tom had to leave his 'Vette' at the O' Club after having a half dozen beers in the roughly three hours they spent there, and as they drove home, Tom surprised his buddy by apologizing for his big mouth. Or specifically 'for being a raging asshole'.

"It's no big deal," Brad told him, knowing that was as close to an apology as he was ever going to get. "But the gist of it is that she'll be coming over tomorrow around 1400 to help set up the furniture."

"Yeah, because two college graduates couldn't figure out something that complicated."

Tom smiled when he said it, but the truth was they probably couldn't. They could shift stuff around and hope it looked okay, but as far as putting up pictures went, they had no clue.

"And we're still gonna need curtains, right?" Tom asked.

"Yeah, but I'll get out on Sunday and look around. Rachelle said she knows some places, so..."

Brad stopped talking because he realized that was his inroad to seeing her again. She'd mentioned there were quite a few places to buy curtains, so if he could get her to take pity on him and go with him...

"Rachelle, huh?"

"Yeah. Her name is Rachelle."

"So just how old is this...Rachelle?"

"I don't know."

Brad hesitated then decided to share what else he knew.

"She's got a daughter in college, so I'm assuming..."

"Oh, right. Yeah, how quickly we forget. So...she's got a kid in college, and you're Jonesin' on this woman?"

"I'm not...Jonesing," Brad replied a little defensively.

"Sorry. You're 'pining away' for this woman. Is that better?"

"I don't know what to tell you, man. All I can say is..."

He looked over at his roommate and said, "Okay. I'm Jonesin' for her. Bad."

Tom surprised him when he said, "That's cool. If she's as great as you say, I'm happy for you."

Brad looked back at Tom, tilted his head then said, "Who are you, and where's my buddy Tom?"

Tom didn't laugh. He just reiterated what he'd already said.

"No. I'm serious. Just not with women. The thought of getting serious scares the hell out of me."

Brad knew that Tom's parents had been divorced and that his mother had lived with more than a few men from then until he left home for VMI. It made perfect sense that he'd be leery about getting involved, but Brad's parents had been married for 31 years and were still best friends. And as he thought about them, he thought about wanting that for himself. It probably wouldn't be with Rachelle, but he was at a point in his life where that no longer sounded scary but very appealing.

"And I promise not be a raging asshole when she's there."

"Hey, listen. I'm sorry about that. That was...that was a cheap shot."

"No. It was on the money. I'm a dick, and you called me out for it."

Tom sighed then shocked his fellow pilot when he said, "And I gotta get a handle on this drinking shit. It's...it's really gettin' out of hand."

"Whatever I can do to help, just let me know, okay, bro?"

Tom nodded then close his eyes with answering.

Neither of them 'did feelings', so that ended their 'deep' conversation, but it reminded Brad of why he thought so highly of Tom Fryer, his heavy drinking and foibles aside. He was now drinking more—and a lot more—than he had been in Japan, and now that it was out in the open, Brad knew he could try and be there for the closest friend he'd made on active duty.

As Brad got ready to go run early the next morning, he was even more surprised to see Tom in his PT gear than he'd been about the drinking admission.

"You mind me tagging along?"

"No. Not at all," Brad told him, wondering how he could even be up let alone feel like running.

"I'm not any faster than I was in Japan," Tom warned.

"I'd appreciate the company," Brad told him, honestly happy to have someone to run with. And if this was the start of Tom turning over a new leaf, so much the better.

Tom was even slower than he'd been just six months before, but that was due to having only run a handful of times, but mostly due to the amount of beer he'd put away just 12 hours earlier.

They quit at the three-mile mark because Tom was exhausted while Brad was only warming up. But being there for his buddy was more important than logging a couple of extra miles, and as they walked it off, Tom opened up about his drinking.

"So the bottom line is, I gotta knock that shit off," Tom said, summing up five minutes of how two or three had become five or six which had become eight or ten or even twelve in such a short amount of time.

"Like I said, anything I can do...just let me know."

"Thanks, man," Tom told his friend sincerely as he looked right at Brad.

"Come on. We need to shower then clean up the apartment before the furniture rolls in."

"Ten-four, good buddy," Tom replied, feeling good about himself for the first time in months, no small amount of that no doubt due to the support of his best friend.

There really wasn't much to take care of in the 1,100sqft apartment, but they swept, swabbed (mopped to civilians), dusted, and got the dishes done and put away and still had time to grad some lunch before the box-body van pulled up at 1:45.

"Introduce me to your, uh...new girl," Tom said when he saw the truck as a male driver got out followed by another man who'd ridden with him.

Rachelle wasn't with them, but that didn't concern Brad as she said she'd be there around two.

It took about 15 minutes for the two-man crew to bring in two loads of stuff, and Brad just had them set everything down anywhere there was space knowing that Rachelle would take care of placing it.

It was nearly three when Rachelle arrived, and before Brad could even introduce her, she apologized profusely for being late. He met her outside, and as she walked up she said, "My daughter, Megan, called right at two o'clock as I was getting ready to leave. She sounded upset, and we ended up talking for nearly an hour. Anyway, I'm so sorry to be late. That just isn't like me, and..."

"Rachelle? It's okay," Brad told her. "Your daughter comes first."

"Thank you," she said before asking who the other good looking young man was.

"Sorry, there isn't any other good looking guy here. But this is my roommate, Tom Fryer."

"Hi, Tom. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Rachelle. Mosby."

Brad realized he didn't know her last name yet, and was glad he wouldn't have to ask.

"Brad told me you were beautiful, but...wow!" Tom said as he shook the hand Rachelle offered.

"Oh, my goodness! That's so nice of you to say!"

Tom was doing his best to behave and said, "No. I'd say he was right."

"Well, thank you, but we should probably get to work on your furniture. And I brought a hammer, a few nails, and a level for the pictures whenever we get there."

Brad opened the door and let her go inside, and as Tom walked by, he mouthed, "She is SO hot!"

At the store, Rachelle had been wearing a nice dress and looked very good in it. But she was less formally attired and looked even better in a form-fitting, black knit top, a pair of white capri pants, and flat, white sandals. She had her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, and looked even younger than Brad had remembered.

Brad didn't respond in any way, he just shut the door as Rachelle started looking around.

"Let's see," she said when she saw the sofa, chairs, coffee table, and the other items she'd sold to Brad a week ago.

She continued looking around for all of about 3-4 more seconds then said, "Okay. I'd recommend putting the sofa here, and then..."

The 'muscle' moved the charcoal-gray centerpiece to the location she indicated then did the same for every other item, and in maybe three minutes or so everything was in place and made sense.