Chapter 4
That week I took Tina down to the base on her lunch break and got her registered as a dependent. This gave her base privileges and access to the base exchange here and the nearby Air Force Base. There are very few secrets on a small base. Coast Guard Station Port Canaveral has two large cutters and one small one, with a few additional land-based support units. As military bases go, it's pretty tiny. Maybe six or seven hundred people in the whole place. It didn't take too long for it to get back to my ship, that I was seen with an attractive older woman.
I'll admit, I loved the attention I got. I was inundated with questions from my shipmates, in the days following. I told them nothing. I just smiled and said that my social life was no one's business but my own. That only served to fan the flames of rumor even higher because my answer sort of precluded the possibility that Tina was a relative. Suddenly I was the new guy, living with a local cougar. After a few days, I told Tina about it at supper.
"That's very bad of you." She said with a mischievous smile.
I nodded. "Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it."
She waved it away. After a few minutes of eating. she swallowed and looked at me. "So, your friends think I'm a cougar?" she asked quietly.
I looked at her, quite surprised. "I umm ... well yeah, I guess they do." Tina didn't say anything.
***
The next night I got home to find the front door open, with the screen door closed. Through the screen, I could hear Tina's raised voice. I stopped and listened. In a few seconds, I deduced that she was arguing with someone on the phone, and she was upset. Apparently, something about that person being married and not telling her. I turned and went back to the car until I stopped hearing her voice.
Afterward, I walked in, and she was standing in the dining room just looking at the phone in her hand. She frowned when she saw me. "The lousy thing about these cell phones is that you don't get the emotional release of slamming the phone down when you hang up on the bastard." She sighed heavily. "I miss that. If I do that now, I'm out a thousand bucks." Our eyes met. "How much of that did you hear?"
I told her the truth. "I heard enough to make sure you were alone and safe and then I went to my car to wait. I caught a bit of it. Bad date?"
She nodded glumly. She didn't expound upon the situation, and I didn't ask. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she would.
When I started cooking her mood improved. A few days prior, I had purchased a charcoal grill. I began preparing some nice ribeyes. I seasoned the steaks before I took them out to the coals.
I looked at Tina and asked what had been on my mind for two weeks. "Tina. Would you please tell me why my mother ...?"
She finished my question with a raised eyebrow. "Hates my guts?"
I nodded. Tina was quiet for a long time, but she didn't leave. She even followed me outside to the grill. She leaned against the above-ground hot tub under the pergola.
Tina cleared her throat. "I umm ... I screwed her ... senior prom date, on the night of the prom." The shock was evident on my face. She looked down at the patio deck and continued. "Mom says I hated Deanna from the moment she was born because I stopped being the center of attention. And there probably is something to that. I was always jealous of her. She was better at everything. Dancing, school, sports."
Tina scuffed her shoe against a protruding nail in the deck. "The only thing I was better at, was getting boys." She looked me in the eye, with a forlorn look. 'I was a bit um ... promiscuous back then."
She paused for a few seconds and then continued. "For whatever reason, she had told her date to pick her up very early. She made him wait for an hour and a half while she got ready. Even Mom and Dad got bored and went swimming in our pool." She shrugged and looked at me. "I made sure he had a good time."
I flipped the steak on the grill, to get a good sear on both sides. "Well, that explains a lot," I said.
She walked up to me and looked me in the eye. "I'd give anything to take it back. It was an evil thing to do. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am."
The tears in her eyes made me believe her.
***
In the next few weeks, we got to know each other well. After the first revelation, she felt comfortable spilling others, especially after a bottle of wine. She told me about her marriages and how she had ruined them both with her constant need for male attention. A serial cheater she called herself. It wasn't until after the second divorce that she sought out professional help.
"I'm a recovering slut," she said one night, with a giggle. "It makes dating kind of hard. Because my go-to is to fuck their brains out after the first date." She shrugged. "From experience, only the creeps want a second date after that."
"It's also getting harder as I've gotten older," she continued. "I'm forty-eight and most guys my age are someone else's cast-offs just like I am. Or a married guy looking for some strange."
She sighed. "I'm lonely. But I made this bed. I guess I have to lie in it now."
I exhaled. I stood and walked over to her and sat down next to her on the couch. I kissed her on the cheek and pulled her into an embrace. She came willingly and pushed her face into my chest and breathed deeply. I held her for a long while and stroked her dark hair. She cried a little. "It's okay. You've got me," I whispered. And I meant it.
A few days later, I deployed with my cutter. Tina met me at the door as I was walking out with my seabag. She hugged me tightly. "Be safe," she whispered in my ear. Then she reached around my neck, pulled my face down to hers, and kissed me. It wasn't a peck on the cheek, and it wasn't a chaste little kiss on my lips. It was a kiss. A kiss that I thought about constantly for the next six weeks.
***