When You're Looking for Love and Life Gives You a Bag of Hammers... Look Inside the Bag

How can I get out of this gracefully? Carrie wondered. She and Max sat silently, side by side at the polished oak bar, both of them trying not to look at each other again. So this is how it ends? I was looking for love ... she stole one more secret glance at him in the mirror behind the bar... and life gave me a bag of hammers.

After months of e-mailing, then instant messaging, and eventually long, nightly phone calls, Carrie had finally agreed to meet Max face to face. But she was still not ready to let him know exactly where she lived. Instead, she drove three hours to meet him at a restaurant on the beach in his hometown. And just moments ago, they'd met for the first time.

"Carrie?" Max had asked, uncertainly. As he stared at her, he could not hide his disappointment. Carrie bore little resemblance to the outdated picture she'd sent him, though she had been honest about her age. Based on the photo, he was expecting someone leaner, with fewer lines around her eyes. For a brief second he even wondered if Carrie had sent her mother to meet him.

As for her, she knew this was Max. But he too, had sent a photo that had been collecting dust in a drawer for quite some time. Where was the youthful-sounding man she'd spent hours with on the phone? Who was this guy with the soft jaw, thick torso, and receding hairline? In his picture he looked kind of short, but in reality, he was even shorter, though still taller than Carrie.

If they hadn't been so excited about meeting, maybe their mutual disappointment wouldn't have crashed on them and been so hard to hide. As it was, they couldn't even try. Carrie wasn't much of a drinker, but at that moment, she needed one. She sat there by Max and stared into her drink, and recalled silently how all of this had started.

She was not the type to try meeting someone over the Internet. She was way too smart for that nonsense. After all, she was a professional businesswoman. Then there was that weekend when she'd visited her friend. Just for fun, they'd logged onto a dating website. It was really more for her friend's benefit than hers. It was a real surprise when a profile popped up of a man who had lived all his life in her hometown, a small city on the coast. They'd gone to the same high school, though he graduated before she entered as a freshman. Carrie was intrigued, but when she read the part where he said his best friend was his little dog named Pearl, her eyes shifted immediately to Charles. Charles, as usual, was asleep on his doggy cushion by the computer. Anyone who knew Carrie, knew she was seldom without Charles.

Couldn't hurt to just talk to him. Just over the Internet, though. After all, he doesn't know where I live, and it might be fun to compare notes and talk about Pearl and Charles, and the old high school.

That was her plan. But when he answered her message, they discovered they had a lot more in common than just geography and their love of dogs. Each of them had suffered through a bad marriage, and though they both wanted kids, neither had any. And now the passage of time made that unlikely. They each had close ties to their families and they both cared deeply about politics, fortunately on the same side.

What started as e-mails grew into long phones calls that she eagerly looked forward to at the end of each day. Still, Carrie was protective. What if he wasn't the guy he seemed to be? What if he was a jerk? He said he was a successful businessman who owned a hardware store. He described himself as average height, dark hair, Italian ancestry, forty-nine years old. His picture verified the basic description, though she didn't know then that he'd sent the only decent photo he had, and it was eight years old. There were just too many "ifs." Plus she knew that her mother would have her committed to a mental institution if she ever found out about Max, so she kept her new friendship a secret.

When he'd asked her for a picture, Carrie panicked. She was a confident, independent successful woman. But she hated cameras so she didn't have many pictures. Though she was still attractive, she knew time had taken a toll. In her mid-forties, her waist was a little thicker than it was, and her eyes showed fine lines. Her blonde hair wasn't as lustrous as it once was. The only good photo she had was taken in a studio a few years back, and even that had been retouched. She scanned it into the computer, then regretted it. Her finger hesitated over the SEND button. Is this really a good idea? Isn't it a cliché to send an outdated picture? I mean... who does stuff like that anyway? In the end, she took a deep breath and hit the button to send it.

Now, here they were, sitting at the bar, each of them paying the price for being less than truthful. They both wished they could just go home, yet neither was willing to leave. Finally, Max spoke up.

"Look Carrie, this is silly. Clearly we were both expecting something else. But the fact is, I fell in love with your heart and your soul, not your picture. Let's have dinner. Afterwards, if we both still feel this is too weird, we'll say good-bye and I won't bother you again."

That was their second beginning. A few weeks later, it was Max's turn to make the three-hour drive. So far, the relationship was solid. On that first trip to the coast, Carrie had met Max's dog Pearl, and became instant friends. But before there could be talk of marriage, Max had to meet her family. More important... he had to pass the ultimate test. He had to meet Charles. As it turned out, he need not have worried. Carrie's family knew from the first moment that he was a keeper.

As for Charles, he was so crazy about Max that Carrie actually felt a twinge of jealousy. Which explains why, one autumn day their friends and family gathered at a lovely spot overlooking a lake, as Carrie and Max and Charles and Pearl became one family. When Carrie walked down the aisle to take Max's hand, there was no disappointment on either of their faces. They couldn't even remember now why they'd been disappointed that first night. What they each saw now was the altogether lovely heart of an altogether lovely person... and two quite handsome canines.