Baggar Vince

"Thank you. I stopped in to meet Jayden's teacher, and I wanted to wear something a little nicer than shorts and a tee-shirt."

Vince smiled then jokingly said, "Oh, man. And here I was hoping you might have been trying to catch my eye or something."

Maren smiled then kind of coyly said, "Would it have helped?"

Assuming she was just playing along, he told her, "Oh, yeah. Then again, you look pretty great in shorts and a tee-shirt."

Before she could respond, Vince leaned closer then asked, "Is my new job catching your eye?" as he raised his eyebrows up and down.

She laughed a happy laugh then said, "It's not so much that you're now an assistant manager as it is..."

She reached up and touched the hairnet then said, "This...sexy accessory you're wearing."

"It's all the rage this year," Vince told her, making her laugh even more.

"I'm very happy for you," Maren told him sincerely.

"I uh, I kind of have you to thank for it," he told her as he removed the net.

"Oh? How so?"

Vince explained how she'd motivated him to do something rather than sit around staring at his blank resume every night.

"You know, in case that certain woman ever shows up."

Clearly still being playful, Maren put on a fake pout and said, "So you're telling me...that's not...me?"

Vince laughed, but it wasn't much of a laugh. He wasn't sure why he said, and he wasn't even completely aware that he was saying it, but he most definitely did say it.

"Like I told my dad after he said you were a very beautiful woman on our drive back to the store, 'A guy can always dream'."

The look on Maren's face made him regret it as soon as he said it, but the look wasn't due to any feelings of repulsion on her part. It was more due to her realization that were he to ask her out, she would say 'yes', the difference in their ages aside.

She'd never been a flirt, not even with Len, and she wasn't flirting when she replied. Like Vince, the words just kind of came out.

"Sometimes dreams can became reality," she told him, the smile gone and her eyes fixed on his.

Rarely at a loss for words, Vince just stood there staring at this beautiful, older woman until she turned away.

"Oh. I almost forget," she said as she reached for her purse.

She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him.

"Jayden asked me three times to make sure I gave you this."

It was a formal invitation to his 5th birthday party, and Vince promised her he'd be there.

"But please don't feel you need to bring a present, okay? Just showing up will be more than enough."

Vince smiled, but his tone of voice was different as he told her, "I won't make any promises other than that I'll be there, because I may have to bring along a big old spaceship."

Maren was once again fixated on his eyes, but as before she looked away at some point then said, "I...I really should get shopping."

"Right. Sorry. I...I just wanted to say 'hi'," Vince told her.

She finally smiled again then told him, "No. You wanted to show off that hairnet."

She looked over and saw his picture under Mike's on the wall and pointed to it.

"And look! You're even wearing it in your mugshot!"

"Mugshot?" Vince replied. "How...how dare you!"

Maren laughed then said, "I have to admit you're very handsome—even in a woman's hairnet."

Vince leaned over again and said, "You should see me in a dress!"

Maren made a face and said, "Um, no thanks. I'll pass on that, okay?"

"Your loss," Vince replied very seriously before adding, "but you, however, really do look great in one."

Maren realized her heart was pounding in her chest as Vince smiled at her.

"Vince?" she started to say.

"Uh-huh?"

"Would you...I was wondering if you'd..."

"If I...what?"

Suddenly losing her nerve, Maren said, "If you have any...fresh kale?"

Vince gave her a puzzled look, so she told him the kale looked yellow, now grateful she hadn't done what she nearly did.

He walked over with her to the kale and said, "You're right. I'll get right on that."

"Yeah. Yellow kale is...disgusting," she said, hoping that would be it.

There was an awkward moment when neither of them spoke before she told him again she should get a move on.

"Right. Okay. Well, I'll uh, I'll..."

He held up the invitation then said, "See you then."

"Yes. That'll be very nice," she told him, another strange look on her face.

"So until then," she said.

"Right. Until them," Vince told her as she grabbed her cart.

"You sure you don't want to bag my groceries one last time?" Maren asked, her normal smile back.

"I'd love to, but my new boss might not like that."

She looked over at Mike's photo above his and said, "Ah, yes. The old 'chain of command' thing, huh?"

Vince stood up straight, put his hand in his shirt like Napoleon, then said, "One day, all of zeezs shall be mine!" in a reasonably decent French accent.

Maren laughed, then as she began pushing the cart said, "Don't quit your new day job, okay?"

Vince promised her he wouldn't then watched her walk away, the little sundress moving with her as she moved.

When he got back to work, Mike said, "She's out of your league, buddy."

Vince took a deep breath then said, "I'm afraid you're right, Mike. But a guy can always dream, right?"

His boss laughed then said, "Then again, maybe you should tell her. Stranger things have happened."

"Tell her...what?" Vince said as though Mike didn't know.

He just shook his head then said, "Come on. We've got a lot to get done if we want to leave on time tonight."

As Vince drove home that evening, he couldn't get Mike's words out of his head or the image of Maren in the sundress out of it, either. So around 7:30, he told his dad he was heading out.

"Hot date?" his father jokingly asked.

"Probably not, but I have to find out," his son said with complete seriousness but not offering any explanation before he left.

Maren, of course, had no idea Vince was headed to her house. She was on the phone with her sister, Millie, who was also her best friend, trying to explain what she was feeling and why.

"Maren, you're the most thoughtful, stable, levelheaded person I know," her sister told her after getting a huge data dump of jumbled thoughts from her sister about this bagger she couldn't stop thinking about.

"Then why am I feeling this way about a guy who's barely out of college and bags groceries for a living?"

"Wait. Didn't you just tell me he manages the produce section of the store?"

"Sorry. Yes. And he's the assistant manager."

"Who wears a hairnet."

Maren finally laughed and felt the tension drain from her body.

"Yes he does. But...he's still very cute, even in a hairnet."

"Well, let's review what you told me then go from there, okay?"

"Sure. Review away."

"He's a college graduate, incredibly kind and helpful, and to use your words...freaking gorgeous...and your son thinks he hung the moon. Oh, and his dad is equally awesome. Is that about right?"

"Yes," Maren replied. "But..."

"But he's really, really young."

Maren sighed loudly.

"That's it."

"Well, it's not like you're desperate to meet men or anything, so is it at least possible this could be something real?" Millie asked her sister.

"Real? What kind of real? A real...disaster?"

Millie laughed then said, "I understand your concern. If you watch the wrong TV shows or read too many articles in 'scandal sheets', you get the impression older women are hooking up with younger men every day."

"They kind of are," Maren reminded her. "But it's mostly just...hooking up."

Millie laughed again and told her sister she had a valid point.

"Marriage can be hard enough when you don't have an issue that big to deal with every day, but then again, who knows ahead of time whether any relationship will last? You've seen the show Married at First Sight where people who've never met get married after saying 'hello', right? Even there, a few of them have worked out quite well."

"But most don't. Most end up in divorce in a few weeks or maybe a few months."

"Again, you have a point. All I can say is that happens in cases where they knew each other for..."

The doorbell rang, and Maren told her sister to hold on.

"You expecting company at this time of night?" Millie asked, now slightly concerned.

"No, but it could be a neighbor. Gimme a sec, okay?" she said as she made her way to the door.

Jayden was in the back bedroom playing with his toys and didn't hear the noise. Maren got to the door then peaked around the edge of a window and gasped.

"What is it? Is everything okay?" Millie demanded to know after hearing the loud sucking sound.

"It's...him."

"Him? Him WHO?"

"Vince. It's Vince," Maren said so quietly Millie barely heard her. "The bagger."

"Oh. OH! I'll uh, I'll let you go then. Just call me back, okay?"

"I will," her sister said as she hung up then opened the door.

"Vince. Hi. Is everything okay? Are you okay?"

He smiled nervously then told her that was debatable.

"Did you want to come in?" she asked rather tentatively.

"I know I should have called, and I know it's late, but..."

Maren laughed then said, "I'm a mom, and it's late for my son, but it's not even eight o'clock yet, Vince. Come on in."

As he walked in, Vince felt more nervous than he could remember being since asking a cheerleader to go to Homecoming with him in high school.

"Can I get you anything?" Maren asked.

"No, thank you. I just wanted to ask you something. Or maybe discuss something with you."

"You sure you're okay?" she asked before inviting him to sit down.

"I'll let you be the judge of that," he told her, another nervous smile appearing then quickly disappearing as he took a seat.

"This is just incredibly coincidental," Maren said, now feeling almost as nervous as Vince.

"Oh? How so?"

"I was on the phone with my sister, Millie, when you rang the doorbell. And well, she and I were..."

"Vince! Hi!" a little voice said.

"Dude! What's going on?" Vince asked as Jayden ran to him.

Vince picked him up and set him on his lap and asked him how he was doing.

"Fine," he said before asking, "why are you at my house?"

"Jayden," his mom said, getting ready to correct him.

"It's okay," Vince told her. "It is a little odd. Maybe even a whole lot odd."

"Do you wanna see my room? You can play with my toys! I'll play with the spaceship, and you can..."

"Jayden? Honey? Mommy and Vince need to talk for a little bit. Is that okay?"

"I guess," the boy said, knowing it had to be but not liking it at all.

"Can you give us a few minutes? Please?"

"Then can Vince come and play with me?"

Maren looked at Vince who smiled then said, "I won't leave without saying goodbye."

"Okay! I'll be in my room. My mom can show you where it is!"

The boy slid down and hopped out away.

"He's excited to see you," Maren said, stating the obvious.

"I guess the bigger question is whether or not his mom feels the same way," Vince said, surprising her in no small way.

The expression on his face sent chills through Maren's body.

"Well, I'm...I am glad to see you, Vince. I'm just not sure why you're here."

"And once you do, you'll know why I told you you'll have to judge whether or not I'm really okay."

"Oh. I...I see," she replied while seeing nothing at all.

Vince looked at the floor then right at Maren before speaking.

"I can't remember the last time I was this nervous," he told her having already forgotten about his Homecoming jitters.

Maren's heart was beating fast as she began to realize, or at least thought she realized, why he was there.

"Look, I know we just met. And I'm, well, extremely aware that I'm a little younger than you are, but..."

Vince stopped talking because Maren was sitting there frozen like a statue. She wasn't moving or even blinking, and for a moment Vince wondered if she was breathing.

"Is everything all right?" he asked her.

"Oh. Um...yes. I...think so," she somehow told him in spite of her mouth having gone dry.

"Anyway, the thing is, I..."

He looked at the floor again, looked back up, drew a deep breath, then exhaled loudly.

"I...I really like you, Maren. A lot. And I have no idea why I'm even asking you this, but I was wondering if you might like to, you know, maybe...go out with me sometime."

He hesitated then added, "On a date."

She was back in 'stare mode' and Vince was sure she was trying to find the right words to let him down easily. Several seconds later she spoke.

"You...you want to go out. With...me?" she asked, her eyes open wide in what appeared to be disbelief.

"Maybe I'm not okay," Vince told her, hoping to mitigate the sting of what had to be coming.

"I...I can't believe you would even want to," she said, almost at a loss for what to say.

"What? I can't believe you would say that," Vince told her. "I can understand why you might not want to go out with me, but what guy in his right mind wouldn't want to go out with you?"

"Maybe...maybe you're...not in your right mind," she replied, but without any malice. It was more that she just couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Vince heard her words, but he definitely didn't understand them.

"I guess I knew my chances were slim-to-none, but I had to try. I haven't been able to think about anything else all day, and there were a lot of better ways to do this, and I'm not usually impulsive, and this was really lame, but I was just..."

"Vince?" Maren said, cutting him off.

"Sorry. I'll uh, I'll just go say goodbye to Jayden now, if that's okay."

"No," she replied.

"No? No, I can't say goodbye?"

"No. You can't say goodbye...yet."

"I'm confused."

"You can't say goodbye yet, because I haven't answered your question...yet," she told him, a warm smile replacing the disbelief on her pretty face.

"Oh."

Vince's reply was as lame as his attempt to ask this beautiful, older woman on a date, and he was now ready to sit quietly and listen.

"I told you my sister and I were talking on the phone. What I didn't tell you was we were talking about you," she explained. "And we were talking about you because I told her I had these...crazy, inexplicable feelings for...you."

"Oh," he said again, his mood changing with each word she spoke.

"But you have to understand, I don't come by myself."

"Maren. One of the things I find so appealing about you is the fact that you and Jayden come as a package deal," he told her, his confidence back along with his smile.

"There's one other thing, too," Maren let him know.

"The age difference."

"Yes. Vince, we're...you and I...we're a world apart in that area. Doesn't that concern you?"

"May I speak frankly?" Vince asked.

"Of course. We need a whole of frankness."

"I don't exactly have a hard time meeting women," he began, speaking rather softly.

"No, I don't suppose you do," Maren replied almost as quietly.

"And of all the women I've ever met, I have never before met anyone who makes me feel the way that you do."

"And...how is that?"

Vince smiled then said, "Like I'm 16 again. All...giddy inside. Like I can't think or talk or even breathe when I think about you."

Because she was as nervous as he was, Maren's reply was directly related to what he just said.

"Margaret led me to believe you're 22 or 23."

"I am. Twenty-three."

"Oh, wow," she said as she looked away. "Well, I'm not. Twenty-three. Or even...thirty-three."

"Okay, but I know you're not forty-three," Vince said lightheartedly.

"Vince. Be serious."

He stopped smiling and waited for the big 'but' to drop or the other shoe to come or whatever that saying was.

"I'm...37 years old, Vince. I don't know what you were thinking, but I'm not even close to you in terms of age."

Vince waited until she was done then stood up and walked over to her chair and took her hand. She didn't stop him, and he helped her stand up. Once they were face to face he looked right at her then told her he didn't care.

"Maren? I've never looked forward to seeing a woman the way I do you. And I have no idea if this, whatever this is, will ever work out. All I know is I want to see if it will. I want to spend time with you. And with Jayden. I want to get to know you both, so now I'm asking you, formally, if you'll go out with me."

Her tummy was fluttering, her heart was pounding, and although she found it hard to think, she looked into his eyes and told him, "Yes. I'll go out with you."

"Yeah?" he replied happily.

"Yes. I'd love to go out with you, Vince. But you should probably at least know my last name, don't you think?" she said with a smile.

He laughed and told her he'd never even thought of that but agreed it might be nice to know.

"It's Manning."

"Oh. Like Peyton Manning."

"No. Like...Leonard Manning," she told him in the sweetest way possible.

"Yes. Yes, of course," Vince replied just as politely, knowing she would always love the man who'd been taken from her.

"So...what will we be doing on our first date?" Maren asked in a more cheerful tone of voice.

"I was thinking about a Saturday matinee. There are almost always Disney movies or something kids like playing, and we could all go see something together."

With a beautiful smile on her face, Maren said, "That sounds wonderful."

Vince gently took her hands, smiled back, then, without a word, leaned down and softly kissed her.

"Wow. You move fast, don't you?" she teased when the kiss ended.

"I have to," he told her with a straight face.

"Why is that?" she asked, a puzzled look on her face.

"Well, given your advanced years, there may not be a lot of time left, so..."

"Oh! You did not just go there!" she replied, pretending to be deeply offended.

"I kinda did," he said with a little wince and a raised eyebrow.

Maren dropped the pretense, put her arms around his neck, then kissed him back.

"Just in case I don't make it until tomorrow," she said very sweetly when their lips parted.

"So is now a good time to go say goodbye to Jayden?" he asked after politely laughing at her humor.

"You know what? We could both go see what he's up to before I get his bath ready. And after that you and I could talk for a little while. Unless you need to go, of course."

"No. I not only don't need to go, I don't want to go. So that sounds pretty great."

"You might get roped into reading a bedtime story," she warned him.

"Sign me up!" Vince told her, causing Maren to smile happily.

"Come on. I'll show you where his room is so you don't get lost."

Vince laughed as Maren took his hand and walked him to the back of the ranch-style house.

"Jay-bird?" she called out.

"I'm right here, Mommy!" a little voice called back.

"Someone's here to see you."

Jayden jumped up when Vince walked in and ran to him and hugged his legs. Vince hugged him back then asked to see his toys.

"Come on! I'll show you all of them, and then we can play Star Wars, okay?"

Maren watched Vince sit down with her son, and in spite of her best efforts, she found herself tearing up. Neither of them saw her, so she dried her eyes then asked if girls were allowed to play.

"Yes, girls can play. And you can be Princess Leia, Mommy!" Jayden told her immediately as he handed her a toy before she even sat down.

"Okay, so...how do we play?" she asked.

Jayden jibber-jabbered non-stop until she finally had to get him in the tub. He nearly started crying until his mom told him Vince would still be there when he got out.

"Can Vince read me a story?" he asked, suddenly very happy again.

Maren looked at him, and without waiting, Vince said, "You bet. Any story you want."

The little boy was so happy he threw his arms around the man who was sitting on the floor next to his mother and said, "I love you, Vince!"