“It’s gonna be okay,” he said, trying to make it sound reassuring. “Will he know that you’re here?”
“No,” she replied with a choked up voice. “I just told him that you were in town. I’m sure he knows you’re staying at a motel or something, but he doesn’t know which one.”
“How far away do you live?” he asked.
“Walking distance,” she replied. “There’s only one car, and he took it when he went to work this morning.”
“Well if you live that close to here, then I think it’s a good idea to go to another motel somewhere not as close. Now I insist.”
Linda looked at John for a moment, taking in his obvious concern for her and feeling guilty for again noticing how handsome and attractive a man he was. Then she nodded her approval.
———————————————-
Linda and John found a Hilton and obtained a room with two double beds. This new room featured more amenities than the previous since it was a suite as opposed to an ordinary motel room. They hurriedly unpacked their things and headed downstairs for breakfast in the dining area.
They discussed her marital situation at length as they ate, and she admitted to him that her marriage had been one of the worst mistakes she had ever made. Had it not been for her husband’s exceptionally well-paying job and the health benefits it offered, she might have left him much earlier. But being a homemaker with no skills and no realistic plan to make it on her own, she had stuck things out in the vain hope that the situation would eventually improve. It never did.
John had also been married once before, and he gave her the details of the wife he had met on the internet in a chat room. The experience of sending and receiving romantic words and phrases to another person who was both unseen and unheard had swept him away, and before they had even met in person, he had proposed marriage. She had accepted his proposal after warning him that she might not be the most attractive woman he had met.
Admitting to John that she had not been the most attractive of women eventually turned out to be the understatment of the year. Upon meeting her for the first time, he couldn’t help hearing in his mind the words ‘My God, she’s ugly as sin!’ Butt ugly in every way was this obese woman with several missing teeth and a face that couldn’t have drooped more if someone cut her skin open around the jaw and inserted an extra fifty pounds of fat into her face.
Unfortunately for John, he had been more concerned with protecting this horrid-looking woman from a massive broken heart than he was with running away from her as fast as his legs would carry him. They married the next day, and within a month he had left her, unable to bear the sight of her any longer. And so she had ended up with a broken heart anyway.
Linda found John’s story amusing, and they laughed about it when he was finished. But he could tell that her own situation was still weighing heavily on her mind, and realizing that he hadn’t yet given her the gift he had bought, he decided to do that as soon as they had finished.