Page 50 of Jocelyn
How can I regret something
that brought you into my life?
A flush of heat started at my scalp and rapidly spread south until my whole body felt consumed. When he’d said he was going to try and up his flirting game, he hadn’t been kidding! Was this the power a sense of anonymity gave through texts? A faceless emboldening that broke down inhibitions?
Malachi:
Was that too forward?
I’m sorry. I’m really not
very good with words.
The memory of his voice tickled my ears as I read the sentences in the tone of his vulnerable tentativeness I remembered so well. The small crumbs of worry that had sprinkled across my mind at his earlier boldness were swept away.
These weren’t two different faces Malachi was showing me, but the unveiling of one heart. I swallowed past a lump rising in my throat.
Jocelyn:
You’re better with them
than you think you are.
Shuffling noises came from the bed, and I turned to find Mama pushing back the covers.
“Good morning,” I said as I pocketed my phone in my pajama bottoms. “Sleep well?”
“As well as can be expected.” She yawned and stretched. “I appreciate you staying with me last night, but I hope you aren’t considering making this a permanent arrangement.”
I tried to not let that sting. “Don’t worry. Damien made it clear that you’re both adults and don’t need me meddling.”
“He finally tell you his plans then?” She patted her sleeping cap.
“What do you mean finally?”
Her eyes softened and her hands stilled as she looked at me across the room. “Honey, he’s been wanting to join up since he got out of high school.”
That news went down like an oversized pill and stuck in my windpipe. “Why didn’t he say anything sooner?”
“And disappoint you?”
My elbow took my weight on the kitchen counter. “I thought I was helping.” Had I really been holding my brother back all these years? All the sacrifices I’d made to help pave and pay his way in college had been more of a hinderance for him than a get out of jail free card.
My gaze swept across the small apartment. Not the same one I’d grown up in, but the cracks running down the wall and the water stains discoloring the ceiling brought my memories back in technicolor. Not to mention the undertones of pet odors that seemed to have permeated every fiber of the carpet five years past its replacement date.
Growing up in certain neighborhoods had made it seem like our futures were already spelled out for us. We’d been born into a whirlpool that only sucked us down and never shot us up. When I’d been cast a lifeline in the form of a scholarship, I’d held on with everything in me and assumed education and the careful consideration of a career with a certain annual income was the only way out.
Mama came over and sank onto the support of the other stool. She ran her hand over my back like she used to when I was little. “Baby girl, no one’s got a bigger heart than you, and Damien knows that. It’s not that he isn’t appreciative of all you’ve done for him, he just has a different vision of how he wants his life to go. Has his own dreams.”
And enough courage to chase after them.
All other thoughts scattered to the corners of my brain as if a masked bandit had entered and opened fire, taking them all hostage.
Damien had already accused me of taking the easiest path, and when Malachi had asked me if working in finance had always been my dream, I’d run away faster than a jackrabbit being chased by a coyote.
So was that it? Was I a coward? So focused on making life easier that I gave up fighting for the things that would truly make me happy?
“Oh, before I forget.” Mama stood up and walked over to a low shelving unit. She shuffled around some papers as she talked. “I was going through some boxes in storage and came across… Here it is.” She plucked a notebook from a stack and turned, handing the blue spiral-bound pad to me. “Your old sketchbook. I thought you might want it.”
