Lone eagle

“I don't know, Joe,” she said, sighing. She was tired. And he was so familiar. It was so comfortable talking to him, it made her want to turn back the clock. It suddenly made her think of the two years of agony when everyone thought he'd been killed, and seeing him on the ship for the first time when he came back from Germany. There were so many threads left from those days, dangling off her heart, but it wasn't enough to hang on to. “There's been a lot of water under the bridge since I left New Jersey.”

“That's my point.

I want you to see what the dam looks like. It's a beauty.”

“You're hopeless,” she laughed at him. But she was feeling more comfortable with him."

"“Am I? Why can't we be friends, Kate?” Because I still love you, she wanted to answer. Or did she? Maybe it was just the memory of love that looked like the real thing. Maybe all it had ever been was an illusion. What she had with Andy was real love. She was sure of it. Joe was something else, an illusion, a dream, a hope that refused to die, a childish fairy tale that she always wanted a happy ending for and couldn't have.

Joe was a disaster waiting to happen, and she knew it. They both did. “Have lunch with me … please… I'll behave. I promise.”

“I'm sure we both would,” she said firmly, “but why put ourselves through it?”

“Because we enjoy each other's company, we always did. What are you worried about anyway? You're married, you have a baby, a life. All I have are airplanes.” He tried to sound pathetic and she laughed at him.

“Don't give me that, Joe Allbright! That's all you ever wanted. More than you wanted me, in fact. That's why I left you.”

“We could have had both,” he said sadly, and this time he sounded as though he meant it. She hated him for saying it now. It was much, much too late.

“I tried telling you that, you wouldn't listen,” she said sadly.

“I was incredibly stupid and scared of getting tied down. I'm smarter now, and braver. I'm older. And I know what I lost when you left me. I was too proud to admit to you or myself then what you meant to me.

My life has been meaningless without you, Kate.” Joe sounded just as he had when she loved him most and it was everything she had always wanted to hear from him. It was a cruel trick of fate to hear it now. Too late.

“I'm married, Joe,” she said softly.

“I know. I'm not asking you to change that. I understand that you've made a life for yourself. I just want lunch. A sandwich, an hour. You can spare me that.