I am always nervous at weddings. Even more nervous when you are one of the participants. I pull my tux out of the suit bag and start to get changed.

My son Frank sticks his head in the door and asks, “Do you need any help?” He was already in his tux in full best-man mode.

I shake my head.

He says, “Well if you need anything, let me know. You don’t want to make Lisa late.”

I guess we need to start about 4 years ago. My name is Bill Thompson. I am currently 63, but was 59 when Lisa came into my life. I live in a nice 4 bedroom house in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I just sold my accounting business, although I occasionally go back to consult for them to help them out.

My wife Susan had passed away from cancer 14 months earlier. We had just started talking of early retirement and travel when we received her cancer diagnosis. The cancer was an aggressive type and she passed 6 months later. Although I don’t want to minimize how devastating this was, I was relieved that she didn’t have to suffer too long. We were married for 21 years. We had dated for 2 years and then we had a shotgun wedding when she discovered that that she was pregnant.

I have a son Frank who is now 26, but was a 22 year old University of Toronto 4th year Mechanical Engineering student at the time. He could have gone to Waterloo or Laurier, but decided he wanted to live the university life away from home.

It was the dog days of August. The prior weekend, I moved him back to school so he could get an early start on his final year. We went out for dinner the night before the move and he asked for his mothers engagement ring. His mother had told him that he could have it if he found the right woman. He was planning to propose to his girlfriend, Teresa, that fall. We recounted stories of his mother and his hopes with his hopefully future fiancé. We cried and I told him how proud and happy I was for him. Teresa is also in 4th year taking Accounting at U of T.

It was Wednesday, just after lunch. I was reading a book and drinking a coffee on my front porch, when a car slammed to a stop a house down from me. I head screaming and yelling as a young woman jumped out of the car.

“You cheating bastard!”, she yelled at the driver.

The driver got out of the car, “Lisa, it was just one time. It didn’t mean anything.”

Lisa yelled back, “Based on the texts it didn’t look like a ‘one time thing’. How can I trust you when you were fucking my best friend? Give me my bags we are through!”

The guy jumped out of the car and started pulling bags out of the car and throwing them on the side of the road. When he was done, he yelled, “she is a better lay than you anyhow.” Hopped back in the car and drove off.

Lisa, piled her bags on the side of the road, sat on one of the bags and started to cry.

I stepped down off my porch and walked over. I asked, “Are you OK?” I knew she wasn’t, but what else are you supposed to say.

She looked up at me, “I don’t know what to do now.”

I said, “Well, why don’t we bring your bags on my porch. I will get you a drink and after you calm down, we can sit on my porch and talk things through.”

Still crying, she nodded and said, “Thanks, that would be good.”

We brought her bags onto the porch, and I told her that my name was Bill and asked her what she wanted to drink.

She just wanted a glass of water, so I went into the house and got her one. I then told her to tell me what was going on.

She told me that her name was Lisa Grant. She was going into her 2nd year and last year as a Business Finance student at Conestoga college. Her boyfriend, George, was working for a manufacturer in their hometown of Chatham but got a transfer to the Waterloo location so the two of them could live together while she finished her last year. They then hoped that she could then find a job in the Kitchener/Waterloo area, and they could settle down.

They had rented an apartment, but George got lost, you know the “I’m a guy and don’t need a map stereotype”. Lisa’s phone was almost out of charge, so she went to pull up a map on George’s phone. While she was entering the address of the apartment, a text came through from her best friend Jennifer. It was a picture of Jennifer and George naked in bed with the text “So you don’t forget me”. Lisa, in shock, scrolled through the messages and found photos dating back several weeks. That was when she started to scream at him, and the car screeched to a halt.

She then sighed and looked around and said, “I don’t know what I am going to do now. I don’t want to live with that bastard, but now I don’t have a place to stay.”

I said, “Do you have anyone you can call?”

She responded, “Can I plug in my phone so I can call my mother?”

I told her to go ahead and showed her the outlet on the front porch. I went inside to give her some privacy.

While she made some calls, I went to my office to plug away at a few files that my old business sent me to look at. After about 20 minutes, I heard her call out. I came to the porch, and she asked, “Do you know where I could stay for a few days? I talked to my Mom, but really going home isn’t an option since I need to be here for classes. I called some of my friends, but they don’t move in until the weekend.”

I thought about it and knowing that I am alone in a 4-bedroom house, I said, “Well, since it is just until the weekend, I have a guest bedroom that you can stay in for a few days if that would help. I can talk to your mother if you want.”

She looked like I took a load of stress off her and said, “Thank you, you are a godsend. I promise, I won’t cause any problems and will stay out of your way. I will immediately start to look for another place to stay. I will call my mom and you can talk to her so she knows what is going on.”

I talked to her mother on the phone, for some assurance, I referred her to my old companies website where there is still a picture of me with a brief biography showing me as a consultant. At least she had a better idea as to whom her daughter would be staying with for a few days.

I helped Lisa bring her bags into the house. We left some on the main floor and she took what she needed to the guest room. As I had an ensuite bathroom, I showed her to the bathroom that the other rooms shared. I moved some of my son’s toiletries to his room, so she had some space.

When she settled in, I asked her what she was interested in for dinner. Since I wasn’t expecting company, I figured I would order in. We settled on a pizza. She insisted on paying and since I was letting her stay here, I let her.

I apologised for the conditions around the house. I told her a little bit about myself and that I kind of let things go for the last couple of months as the anniversary of my wife’s passing had come and gone, and I wasn’t feeling up to it. My son had helped, but he was also pre-occupied with getting ready to return to school.

Lisa made calls on Thursday and Friday, looking for something in her budget. One of her classmates responded that he was in a house with 3 other guys but have another room if she is interested. Since nothing else was panning out and since she knew he was a good guy, she decided to take it. She had seen the place in first year.

On Saturday, I drove her and her stuff over and helped her move in. It was a typical student house. The place looked way passed its expiry date, but they all seem to look that way, even after just a couple of years housing students. I left her to get settled in, wishing her the best of luck in her last year at college and went home.

I settled in for the night. Had a quiet dinner and went to sleep around 11.

At 2am, my phone started ringing. I was half asleep when I answered.

“Bill, I need help.” Being half asleep, it took me a minute to wake up enough to place the voice.

“Lisa, is that you? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“One of the guys here is drunk and keeps trying to break into my room. He keeps saying that he wants to personally welcome me to the house and keeps commenting about my body.” she exclaimed. “No one else is here. What should I do?”

I said, “I’ll be right there. Give me 20 minutes. If he starts to become more aggressive, call 911.”

“Bill, thanks. Please hurry.”, she said. She sounded relieved that I was coming over.

I quickly got dressed and got into the car. I got there and could here someone yelling inside the house and pounding on a door. The voice was drunk, and I couldn’t make out what was being said. I pounded on the door, and the yelling stopped. Eventually, the door opened, and I saw a very drunk looking college student. His voice was slurring, “What the fuck do you want?”

I said, “I am here for Lisa. Where is she?”

He replied, “Who the hell are you?”

I didn’t want to get into a debate with this drunk, so lied and said, “I am Lisa’s Dad.”

He blinked, and said, “Well, why the hell didn’t you says so...” which made no sense and continued, “ ... welcome on in.”

I made my way to Lisa’s door. “Lisa, it’s Bill.”

Lisa opened the door, “Thank you for coming. I didn’t know what to do, and I was terrified of what he could have done.”

I asked, “What do you want to do? He seems to have calmed; and I think he may have passed out over there. Do you want to stay?”

She said, “I don’t feel safe. My friend went to a party and crashed at his girlfriends. I think this was a bad idea. Could I come back to your place and stay the night until I figure this out?”

Look, I’m not an insensitive asshole. She needed help, so of course I said, “No problem. Are you planning on coming back, or you know that you don’t want to live here?”

“I don’t feel safe knowing what he tried to do. I want out of here.”, she said.

“OK, I’m sure you haven’t unpacked everything. Do you want to gather it up now and move you out, or come back tomorrow?” She looked around. It took 30 minutes and we had everything back in her bags and put it all back in the car and 40 minutes later she was unpacking again in my guest room.

I was beat, so headed to bed. She ran up and gave me a hug and said, “Thank you” and headed back to the guest room.

Lisa’s friend refunded her the deposit on the place and apologised for his roommate. He knew his roommate was a bit of an asshole but thought, after he talked to him prior to her moving in, that he knew to behave. Of course, he didn’t.

For the next week, she called around looking for another place to stay, but wasn’t having luck with anything that she could afford. Her mother offered help so she had more money for rent, but she still couldn’t find a place that could work for her.

By the end of that week, she approached me as I was eating dinner. “Bill, I have been looking, but as my budget was depending on living with my ex, I can’t find any other place that I can afford. Could I stay here? I can pay you and then do some chores around the house?”

I had already talked to my son about the situation. I wanted him to know that someone was staying here. We had talked through this scenario. He actually had brought her staying long term up, thinking that maybe if someone was around, I wouldn’t be so lonely and maybe would start taking better care of myself.

I told her, “OK, but under a few conditions.” Then we discussed how this would work. She would pay me the rent amount that she had budgeted and would help me with the chores. I told her that we could put a lock on her door if she wanted.

I also said that if she wanted to have people over that I needed advanced warning. I could setup the basement if she wanted to have friends over. I said that if she wanted to have someone stay overnight, we would need to have a discussion before hand, and I would need to meet that person before that could happen.

We got into a routine after that. We pretty much lived out our own lives and due to classes timing, some days we didn’t even see much of each other.

About a month in, I went to visit my son and his girlfriend for dinner in Toronto. I brought a few things that Frank forgot and we had a great dinner. Frank kidded me about how things were going with my “girlfriend” Lisa. Teresa thinking that maybe more was going on than she thought started to quiz me, but I put that all to rest and assured her that nothing untoward was going on.

As we finished up dinner, Teresa went to the washroom and Frank leaned over to me that “it” was happening this week. I grinned at him and wished him luck and again told him that I was proud of him.

I got the phone call a few days later from Frank and Teresa that they were now engaged. Being an accounting student, Teresa had attended a seminar on depreciation. The presenter was a friend of one of Frank’s engineering professors, and Frank had asked if they could do him a favour. At the end of the presentation, the presenter had asked if there was someone named Teresa was in the room. Teresa raised her hand. The presenter asked her to come to the front of the room. The presenter said to her, “I know that we have been talking about depreciation, but I have a question for you about another subject. What do you know about appreciation?”. The presenter then clicked on the next slide and a diamond ring was displayed. Frank then appeared on the stage and went down on one knee.

Frank then said on the phone that he had this long speech planned before popping the question, but between her classmates cheering and Teresa jumping on him and the two of them falling onto the floor together, he never had the chance to say it. She grabbed the ring, placed it on her own finger and started kissing him...

“So basically, she really hasn’t actually said ‘yes’ yet, now that I think of it?”, and Teresa then giggled and said, “I guess if you need it, then ‘Yes!’”

She also thanked me for allowing her to receive Susan’s ring. I said that Susan would be more than happy that she was wearing it.

I congratulated them and welcomed Teresa to the family. They said that they had lots of time to figure out when they were getting married. I told them there is no hurry, just concentrate on graduating and then they would have the rest of their lives ahead of them to figure things out.

Lisa and I had been getting along. She was in the routine of her classes, and I was still doing some consulting work for my old firm. The house was looking in much better shape with Lisa’s help and her nagging me whenever she thought I could do something to keep the house in better shape. I think when she leaves at the end of the school year, I will be in better shape to look after the house by myself.