Page 4 of Barefoot Dreams
She was pretty with her long blond hair and very long legs that she always displayed in her short skirts.
Maybe she liked to feel the air on her skin? I could certainly understand that.
They’d been dating for about two years now. You’d think I would give up by this point and in a way, I did. I’d come to terms that Griffin didn’t see me that way, but I couldn’t stop loving him. I just did it in silence, in the comfort of my own thoughts, and hoped that maybe one day our paths may cross.
“What are you doing over here?” Griffin asked, looking puzzled as he gazed into the empty storefront. “Were you talking to someone? I thought it was closed.”
“Oh, it is.” I bobbed my head. “But Iwastalking to Mrs. Lovzel, promising her to bring her magic back one day.”
“Mrs. Lovzel?” Kimmy frowned; her eyeliner-lined eyes trailing over my whole body. “Um, you know she’s dead, right?” she asked, and I could swear I saw a muscle in Griff’s jaw tick.
“She is,” I confirmed. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t still talk to her. I imagine her spirit still lives here and she’s very lonely there by herself, so I try to keep her company whenever I’m around here.”
Kimmy blinked at me a few times before drawing out a long, “Okayyyy.”
“That’s nice of you, little J,” Griffin said, and I smiled again.
“Thank you!”
“Well, we gotta go.” Kimmy pulled on Griffin’s sleeve, and he gave me another closed-lip smile before following her.
My eyes lingered on their retreating forms just another second before I turned away also and slipped into Fifi’s which was right next door. I shouldn’t be looking at him like that now.
Fifi’s Goods sold everything and anything your heart desired, from furniture to clothes to gardening materials, books and fishing hooks while being decorated in happy colors. Miss Fi even had some rather funny unicorns in weird positions painted on the walls. They were riding the rainbows.
I hollered a quick hello to her and made my way over to the gardening section. This was my heaven, a place where I could get lost for days on end, and I gasped when I saw they got new varieties of cosmos seeds. Maybe I’ll add a few more colors to the front of the house as well. These yellow ones looked close enough to the little speckles in Griffin’s eyes.
I grabbed the packet and moved on to the tomatoes I came here for but before I could start browsing those, the front door opened again which was normal for a store, of course, but my body knew exactly who it was. Especially because I’d just seen him and my skin didn’t have the chance to cool off yet.
It was in the moments like this, when I could sense him on another level, I knew I loved Griffin with everything I had. I knew it to my very bone; I just didn’t understand how exactly it worked.
Mom said it was a gift from heavens.
The books I’d read on the subject explained it as a chemical reaction.
The movies I’d seen felt like love was all about kissing and passion but none of these explained how I always knew where he was or how he was feeling. It never explained how comfortable I’d always felt around him.
Maybe it was because he still protected me from my classmates from time to time. Maybe it was because he always found the time to talk to me, when Cal and Luke gave me the usual greeting and were off doing whatever it was they were doing.
I was about to jump out and say hi again when Kimmy’s voice stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Gosh, she’s so weird, I can’t believe Callum is related to her,” she said, and I let out a soft sigh. I knew who she was talking about, I wasn’t completely clueless like so many have thought around here. Kimmy didn’t understand me and that was okay.
I didn’t understand her either, but I didn’t think I’d ever done anything for her to say these things.
I was eavesdropping and that was so bad of me, but I also couldn’t move. I couldn’t. I knew I was waiting for Griffin to punch her—figuratively, of course—like he used to do to Owen and the rest of the bully team but…he didn’t.
He hummed.Hummed.
And suddenly the floor beneath me dropped. My beautiful, fruitful Earth cracked apart and a freezing wind wound around my bare feet that now felt too cold, but I couldn’t move. I wanted to…but couldn’t. Not when he said, “She’s not weird, just a little bizarre and strange at times, but not weird.”
Bizarre? That didn’t sound like a nice word.
“Um, are we talking about the same person?” Kimmy’s voice held an unmistakable hint of bewilderment. “She talks to flowers, trees and pretty much anything that grows from the ground. Oh, and now she also talks to dead people.”
Griffin hummed again and somehow that was far worse than anything he could’ve said, and I felt my chest tighten further as I plastered myself deeper into the little wall. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I felt the cold stone against my back.
“Well, she doesn’t really have any friends, so she made them out of flowers, trees, and all that.”
