Manic Monday - It's Carnival Time!

Don't forget to visit the Manic Monday carnival, hosted by Janna of The Jannaverse!
Janna will have the links to all of the carnival submissions.

Everyone has submitted their favorite Manic Monday post. I dug into the Wayback Machine and found this one:

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"Faith"

She didn’t like to frequent bars. They weren’t her kind of place. Something drew her to this one, though – a compulsion, one might say. She slid onto a chair at the end of the bar, glancing to either side as she did. No one seemed to notice her.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. He smiled, encouraging her and studying her at the same time.

“Stoli and cranberry, please. No lime.”

She reached for her VISA card, then hesitated. Glancing at the television behind the bartender, she noted that play had suspended for movement of the chains. The game clock read 5:43 until half-time.

“Tab?” she queried.

He nodded and placed her drink in front of her, deliberately, studying her face. She failed to notice his interest in her as she sipped tentatively, glancing at the television screen again.

A niggling feeling tugged at her, compelling her to turn and look toward the door. She held her breath as she studied that face. The eyes, blue as the water in a shallow bay, gazed at her longingly, just as they had twenty years before. His dark hair was now liberally streaked with gray. His face, though lined and gaunt from the pain of loss, reflected relief and joy at the sight of her.

She held his breath as he crossed the room with long strides. Seconds passed, and then he was there, by her side, smiling down at her with love.

It was as if the past twenty years hadn’t happened. It was Monday night again, and there they were, in that same pub, watching Monday Night Football, the Vikings battling the Packers at Lambeau, just as they were this night. That night when he first told her that he loved her; when she told him that she loved him. When both of them were engaged to other people. When he was leaving for a three-year assignment in Europe, an assignment that turned into 17 years globe-trotting from assignment to assignment.

She blinked back tears and turned to the bartender. She gasped as she recognized another face from her past. The face of a man she had loved and lost. The face of a friend who loved her, but not enough to marry her. He smiled at her, nodded at him, and said, “Be happy.”

She turned to her lost love. “But, but…how did you know? How did you know where I was? How did you know I would be here?”

He pulled her into a tender embrace. “Because I told you twenty years ago when I left that one day, when you and I were free to love each other, I would find you. I knew you’d be here. I had faith.”

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