Page 56 of At First Smile
“Stupid men.” The woman chuckles, pulling me back to the video. “If you wait too long to make a move on a woman that makes you look like that at her, you’ll lose her.”
After a moment of shuffled footsteps, an older woman appears on screen beside the old man with the leashed puppy.
“I don’t deserve her…no matter how much I want her,” Rowan says before the video ends with the older couple walking away with the puppy and me, wearing his hat, facing him to ask if he’s ready to grab food. “Yep,” he answers and the video ends.
Staring at my phone, I place my hand on my chest where a sharp fullness pulses.
“Pen? Any luck?” Devon bellows.
“Um”—I swallow thickly and flip to the requested business card pictures— “yep. Sending now.”
Several more emails,two initial calls with potential volunteers for our crafty kids program, and one annoyed huff from Devon after Nelson asked him to rearrange his meetings for Monday around a dental appointment he forgot about, it’s time for me to wrap up. Boarding the bus outside the hospital, I huff out a long breath. In just four stops, I’ll be three blocks from my house.
Most Fridays I hit happy hour with JoJo at Harkey’s Hideaway, our favorite cocktail bar along Seal Beach’s waterfront, but she’s on aunty duty. As she’s the youngest of three sisters, two of whom are married with kids, JoJo often is the go-to babysitter, a role she adores.
As much as a cocktail or four sounds delightful at this moment, I’m not-so-secretly relieved to have the night alone. The bus’s gentle jostle unspools the thoughts I’d tucked back inside after hearing Rowan’s unguarded confession.
I don’t deserve her.Those words prick in my chest. I close my eyes. The sensation of Rowan’s arms folded around me as he confessed his fear of always disappointing the people he cares about washes over me.
“Ugh,” I mutter and press my head against the bus’s window. The more the thoughts uncoil, the more I am confused. Rowan’s words and actions have me upside down and right-side up all at the same time.
Throughout the remainder of the ride and slow walk to my house, my heart and brain wage a war against eachother. My brain cautions that I’ve been fooled by pretty words and promises before. My heart counters that promises never breached Rowan’s lips and neither did sugary sweet words.
Reaching my house, I unlatch the front gate. My home is comfortable. A simple, lavender, cottage-style house, one in a row of homes across the street from the beach. A white picket fence encircles the neatly manicured yard with white flowers bursting from bright green bushes. A rocking chair, made from driftwood, where Aunt Bea once sat with her laptop balanced on her lap, sits on the tiny front porch.
It’s all she ever wanted, a purple house by the sea. A place where the beach’s scent and the mesmerizing melody of ocean waves filter in through open windows. And it’s now mine.
Cane Austen and I take the two steps onto the porch. My steps cease and pulse ticks up when I discover a vase filled with long stem red roses sitting on the sandcastle-shaped welcome mat. Lines crease my brow as I bend and pluck up the card propped against the glass vase.
Leaning Cane Austen against the door, I pull up the magnification program on my phone to read the card. “Please, don’t be…” I open the card.
Pen,
Congratulations, sweetheart. I hope you’ll let me take you out to celebrate.
~Your Alex
I crumple the card. “Aargh!”
It’s been at least two months since Alex flowers had appeared on my porch. When JoJo had cut off the heads of the last dozen he’d sent and had her Marine brother-in-law drop it off at his house, it seemed Alex got the message. The flowers. The pop-overs to the house. They all stopped. JoJo even recruited Devon to play guard dog.
Hoisting the flowers into my arms, I take the stairs and stride down the cobblestone walkway that loops around to the back of the house. Midway, I stop, open the trash, and look at the flowers. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.”
Sighing, I decide not to toss the flowers. They’re too lovely. Even if they came from Alex, they are somebody’s hard work. Instead, I take them next door and give them to Lenora and Maxine, the retired couple who serve as the street’s unofficial neighborhood watch.
Between the appearanceof Alex’s flowers and my knotted emotions about Rowan, sleep eludes me. Pre-dawn light slips into the room through the open window. Cocooned in my sheets, I let the freshness of the cool, ocean breeze dispel the jitteriness that caused me to turn to the door each time I heard a noise last night. I don’t fear Alex hurting me, but I dread interactions. For four months after we broke up, he’d be everywhere. There’d be sweeping gestures, gifts, and lots and lots of sweet words.
We’re so good together, you know it.
I’m sorry I pushed you too soon, but I just love you so much.
I just want to take care of you. Let me take care of you… Let me love you.
Then there’s Rowan. His words don’t elicit the same surge of fear inside me. They just confuse me. I know he wants me. No matter how much I offer false comfort that there wasn’t something real between us, it’s just me lying to myself.
Despite walking away, he wants me. In my heart, I believe the fact of his belief that he doesn’t deserve me may be what is keeping him away. This all may be true, but I deserve a man whowill push past his fears for me. If Aunt Bea’s battle with cancer taught me anything, it’s that life’s too short. We’re not promised tomorrow with the people we care about, and if they aren’t willing to fight for that limited time to be with us, then they’re not worth exhausting the precious moments on.
Time to move on.I push off the blankets and face the day. Instead of dwelling in the collision of feelings inside me, I do yoga in the backyard, and get ready for breakfast. It’s Saturday, so I’ll head to Bread for my weekly, albeit now solo, breakfast date. Having flown to Buffalo the Saturday before last, I’ve missed two weeks in a row of baklava croissants.
