"I've never given it much thought." I shrugged. "When I eat food with cheese, I only worry about whether or not it tastes good. I do know that parmesan tastes different than cheddar if that makes you feel better."
"Only slightly. What a sheltered life you have lived." He shook his head in exaggerated disappointment.
"It's a good thing we are going to a cheese factory so I can educate myself. I will stay up the whole night tonight studying different types of cheese." I solemnly crossed my heart with a finger.
We took the factory tour that ended with samples of a variety of cheeses. I was proud to be able to tell James that the smoked cheddars and bleu cheese weren't my favorite, but the pepper jack and gouda were high on the likes list.
After hitting the gift shop for a stuffed Tillamook cow for Jeran, James purchased five or six different types of cheese. When I questioned his need for that much cheese, he grinned mischievously and said it was for a quiz later. We got a passerby to snap a picture of us in the orange bus just inside the factory entrance and headed for the beach.
I watched out my window as the scenery changed from houses to fields to green coast. Excitement bubbled up inside in anticipation of that first glimpse of the ocean surrounded by dark rock formations, evergreens, and ferns.
I turned in my seat to study James' profile. Even all the breath-taking beauty out my window couldn't compete with the mind numbing creation in the seat next to me. "If you could live anywhere, where would you live?"
James turned a lazy gaze on me. "Well...I went on a humanitarian mission to South Africa with a youth group from my church. I've told you about the medical missions in South America. And then my residency, of course, in Boston. I am spoiled and love the comforts of the States, so definitely in the US. I really like coastal climates. There's a charming, historical feel to the towns back east. The town we are going to, Oceanside, is like that, but with an unbeatable view of the Pacific. I don't know..." James shrugged.
"I didn't know about South Africa. That's fascinating. I can't imagine all you've seen. I toured Europe with some friends right after high school, but other than a few trips to Houston and the Gulf, I've stayed right around San Antonio and now Oregon. Tell me about the humanitarian mission in Africa." I turned sideways in my seat and pulled my legs up and settled in for a good story.
James grinned and reached a hand out to touch my cheek. "I love that you get so excited about life. Whether it's running by the river, sampling cheese, or listening to my boring stories, you have this infectious childlike enthusiasm about you." He took my hand and kissed the back of it. "It's cute."
"Okay, great." I blushed. "We don’t have much time. Story please."
He laughed and began weaving a tale of poverty and neglect, of hope and true joy. I sat mesmerized by the stories themselves, but also of his ability to capture moments so vividly in his mind that I felt as though I was experiencing them first hand with the retelling.
Suddenly I put up my hand. “Stop,” I commanded loudly, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence. He signaled to pull over while looking wildly around and quickly came to a stop on the side of the road.
“What?” he asked, his eyes moving.
“Do you smell that?”
He paused and cocked his head. “Do I smell what?” he asked, looking at me strangely.
“Do you have a strawberry air freshener or strawberry candy or something? Don’t you smell strawberries?
James started to laugh. He reached over and took my head in both hands, tilted my head down, and kissed the top of my head soundly. “That’s why you scared me to death? Strawberries?”
“Well yeah. Don’t you smell them?” My cheeks flamed red.
“Look out your window.” He gestured around us with his hand. “We are surrounded by strawberry fields. That’s where the strawberry scent is coming from.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I can’t believe I almost got us killed over strawberries. There is never a dull moment with you in it.”
I gazed out my window in wonder at the green fields stretching and covering the ground as far as the eye could see. If I looked closely and squinted a little, I could see bright red fruit scattered amidst the dark green leaves.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly and sank down in my seat. “But that’s so cool. I’ve never experienced anything like this.” I paused to look at the plants out the window once more then I said, “We can go. Geez, what are we still doing here at the side of the road like there’s some emergency?” I peeked up at him through my lashes.
He gave me an exasperated look then signaled and checked over his shoulder. As he pulled back onto the road, he asked, “Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?” He picked up his narrative where he left off and I was quickly caught up in the tales again.
I was so enthralled that I blinked and looked around, disoriented, when he stopped the car and announced we were at the beach. That nine or so miles went by lightning fast. I was loathe to leave my peaceful cocoon. I told James as much and he looked at me in disbelief.
“You love the beach. There are some amazing things to see. Way better than any of my riveting tales. When you see what I’m about to show you, you’ll never want to leave,” he promised.
“Okay, but I reserve the right to pick the topic of conversation on the way back. And I pick you and your captivating stories.” I sighed and shoved my door open ready to hit the beach. I paused and took in a deep breath of salty sea air while James grabbed his ball cap and a blanket from the back seat. Excitement for the picturesque scenery took hold and I grabbed his hand and pulled him down the rocky stairs to the beach.
"So this is Oceanside, huh?” I asked in awe, turning in a complete circle. The mountainous rocks jutting up in the middle of the ocean were breathtaking.
“If you think this is cool, wait until we walk a little ways down. There’s a tunnel under one of the cliffs that leads to another beach," he told me. "Three Arch Rocks is only a half mile away. We can go watch the sea lions. Or if you are into lighthouses, Cape Meares is only a couple miles north.”
I stealthily took my phone from my back pocket and whipped it up to snap a picture of him in his ball cap with the cliffs and ocean behind him. "What the..." he made a grab for my phone.
I swatted his hand away and smiled smugly. "Just taking in the local scenery. I didn't even get you in it." Well, at least not from the waist down. He snorted, clearly not believing my explanation. "Come stand by me and I'll get one of us together. We need to capture this moment to fix it in our brains forever." I watched him saunter closer and breathed in his scent as he leaned in, placing his cheek against mine. I fumbled my camera and he put a hand over mine to steady it. I don't know which of us snapped the picture. All I knew in that moment was the slight stubble on his cheek tickling mine and his erratic minty breathing keeping pace with the beat of my flustered heart. He turned his lips to caress my cheek, dropping his hand from my phone to my face. I closed my eyes and felt him shift and stand in front of me. I sucked in a breath, fearing my heart would burst from my chest, as he leaned in and placed a kiss on the corner of my mouth.
Tease. "Uh, uh." I grabbed for his shirt to hold him in place when I felt him start to pull away. He smiled against my lips, pulled me tight against him, and covered my lips with his. I don't know how long we stood there wrapped up in each other, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks behind us and the cry of gulls in the brilliant blue sky, but I felt like all the pieces finally slid into place and I could see clearly for the first time in my life. If he asked, I'd stay. I'd make my life here with him because there was no life without him.
James
As I stood there getting lost in everything Sophie, I felt something shift. In me, in her, I didn't know. It wasn't anything tangible that I could put my finger on, but it terrified me anyway. I pulled back so abruptly that she would have fallen had I not kept my hands at her waist to hold her steady. We were both breathing hard, but she looked up at me i
n confusion. I felt that same confusion roiling inside me. I needed a minute, but didn't want to hurt her feelings. How could I not get close enough one second and then not far enough away to leave the fear behind in the next? I dropped my hands from her waist and bent to pick up the blanket that had fallen to the ground when I needed both hands to pull her ever closer. I reached up and turned my hat forward and looked around.
"I forgot the water.” Even I wanted to hit my forehead. Who breaks off the greatest kiss of all time for water? Nothing to do now but go with it. I shoved the blanket at her. “I'm going to go grab a couple water bottles from the car. Don't stray too far," With that, I turned and hurried away. I quickly made my way to the car, my mind going a million miles a minute. I popped the trunk and rested my hands on either side, dropping my chin to my chest. With my eyes closed, I took a couple deep breaths to calm my racing heart and mind. I thought I could do this. Hoped I could.
All the things that drew me to Sophie were the same things that forced me to push her away-- out of fear. But I was tired of being alone. I teased my dad about going home to Andy, but going home to just anyone wasn't actually coming home. I didn't need someone there just to fill space. I wanted the kind of home I'd caught a glimpse of when Sophie was in my arms. The home where she ran her fingers through my hair as we drove in the car somewhere or nowhere. The home where I constantly laughed at her zaniness. The home where everything in life seemed brighter and more manageable because I knew I'd be seeing her in a couple hours. The same home I'd tried but failed to achieve with Nicole.
And that right there was the problem.
Nicole showed me that it's not possible for my heart to find a home. It's better to keep it boarded up than to let someone take up occupancy only to tear through it with a sledge hammer, destroying every room. The pain would bulldoze over the top of me and leave me demolished.
And Sophie wasn’t staying.
This wasn’t her home.
I couldn't do it again.
"Hey."
I jumped at her soft touch on my shoulder and the sound of her voice. I straightened quickly and barely missed hitting my head on the inside of the trunk.
"Are you okay?" She peered closely at me, the blanket dangling from her hand at her side.
"What? Oh, yeah. I'm good. But I'm actually not feeling the greatest. Do you care if we head back to my parents?" Her eyebrows rose in surprise and then furrowed in concern.
"No. Sure. Let's go. I'm sorry. I didn't know you weren't feeling well. You should have said something sooner." She quickly folded the blanket and set it in the trunk. I grabbed two water bottles and shut the trunk. "Are you okay to drive," she asked over the top of the car as we walked around to our separate doors.
"Yeah. It was probably too much cheese. Apparently, it doesn't just plug you up when you eat too much."
She made an attempt to laugh at my lameness, but it fell flat. We both knew it wasn't the cheese. She sat silently with her hands folded in her lap the twenty minutes to my parents’ house. I wanted to say something to rid the car of the awkwardness that smothered us like a thick fog blanketing the ocean before an early morning sun rise, but I didn't know what I could say that wouldn't hurt her or reveal too much of the fear that had nearly paralyzed me back there.
She was out of the car with a 'Thanks, James' thrown over her shoulder the second we pulled to a stop in the driveway. A humorless laugh escaped me, but she wasn't around to hear it.
"Sure. Anytime I can rip myself from your lips with no explanation and follow it up with a bunch of lies to get as far away from you as possible, you just let me know." Water. Hah.
I bypassed the house for my dad's shop in the back. I didn't care one way or the other if he was in the shop. I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone either way.
Chapter 23
James
The utter silence that met me at the shop door filled me with relief. I guess I did care if he was in there. I flipped on the light and breathed in the soothing scent of sawdust that covered every surface like a thin blanket. I made my way over to one of the many work benches against the far wall and pulled down a box, whose original job was to hold Christmas oranges, from a shelf above the bench. The orange box now housed years of discarded potential masked as pieces of wood. It had to be in here somewhere. Near the bottom of the box, my fingers touched on its smooth surface and I pulled it from the box. I lifted it to the light and blew off remnants of the other wood it slept with over the years.
I was ten years old again standing in this very spot holding a large rectangular block of wood. "Make a boat out of this?" I questioned my father in disbelief. "I told you I want to build a real boat." I slapped the block of wood down roughly on the workbench.
"And I told you that if you finished a boat out of this block of wood, I will help you build your real boat." My dad turned back to his scroll saw and turned it on, high-pitched metal noise filling the small shop.
I sat and stared at that block for what seemed like hours that cold winter day. I could picture the finished product, but had no idea the hours it would take to get to that point. For weeks, I sanded and shaped that block of wood. Slowly, it began to take shape and I was thrilled one day when I went out to work on it again how much it had actually started resembling the boat I had pictured in my mind all those long weeks before. But as weeks turned into months and winter turned to spring and then summer, baseball and basketball, skateboards and trips to the ocean took me away from the boat and it moved from the bench to the orange box on the shelf. Oh, I'd come out to the shop every so often and dig the nearly completed boat from among the useless pieces of wood when a friend was out of town or I had ticked mom off and was looking for a place to lay low for a while, but I never went back and finished that boat. My father knew something my ten, eleven, and twelve year old mind didn't. Shaping and crafting things in life takes time, effort, and dedication. The real things that matter don't just happen overnight. My father had gained wisdom from life's experiences that told him to start me out with the small block of wood before I took on a life-sized boat. He knew I would be biting off more than I could chew at any age, but especially at the age of ten.
Now as I held that boat up and studied it, a new meaning flowed into the crevices of my brain and anger swelled deep in my chest. Besides med school, had there ever been anything I had seen through to completion in my life? Was this unfinished boat a metaphor for my incomplete, unraveling life?
"Agggh," I cried out and cocked my arm back to throw that piece of wood at the shop wall as hard as I could.
"Son," my father's voice reached me through the angry haze.
I dropped my arm to my side, the boat falling to the floor, and fell to my knees, sobbing over what never was and what never would be. I was broken inside and didn’t see how I could be made whole now. Too much time had passed. Too much fear had been allowed to fester and had taken control of my heart.
I felt my father's strong arms around me as we knelt in a broken pile on the shop floor. "It will be okay, son. We'll work through this."
For a list of cities and states where sleeping in Walmart parking lots is frowned upon visit: http://www.allstays.com/c/walmart-locations-noparking.htm
Works cited
Book of Mormon-Another Testament of Jesus Christ, 1989, 422-429 & 440-441
Where did all that trivia come from?
http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/or/oregon-health-and-science-university-6920570http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/96/2/550.full
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/CongenitalHeartDefects/SymptomsDiagnosisofCongenitalHeartDefects/Detection-of-a-Heart-Defect-in-the-Fetus_UCM_315673_Article.jsp
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/CongenitalHeartDefects/AboutCongenitalHeartDefects/Ventricular-Septal-Defect-VSD_UCM_307041_Article.jsp#.ViB8wf2FOP8
http://www.nursingschools.net/blog/2010/12/20-incredible-facts-about-breast-milk/
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/b
logs/36-random-animal-facts-that-may-surprise-you
http://www.thefactsite.com/2010/09/300-random-animal-facts.html
http://www.whowhatwear.com/fun-facts-shoes/slide13
http://www.movoto.com/guide/or/oregon-facts/
Songs mentioned, but not cited in the story:
Real Men Love Jesus-Michael Ray, 2015
If You Wanna Be Happy-Jimmy Soul, 1963
Anything But Mine-Kenny Chesney, 2004
Roller Coaster-Luke Bryan, 2013
Surfer Joe-The Surfaris, 1963
Surfin’ Safari-The Beach Boys, 1962
Surfer Girl-The Beach Boys, 1963
Surfin’ USA-The Beach Boys, 1963
Soundtrack for the book:
You Can-David Archuleta, 2008
In Case You Didn’t Know-Brett Young, 2017
Making Memories Of Us-Keith Urban, 2004
Nobody In His Right Mind-George Strait, 1986
Give Your Heart A Break-Demi Lovato, 2011
Falling Stars-David Archuleta, 2010
Demons-Imagine Dragons, 2012
Nobody Knows-Tony Rich, 1996
Life After You-Daughtry, 2009
Ask Me How I Know-Garth Brooks, 2017
A sneak peak into The Heart of the Matter
James
"Where are we going?" Sophie asked and looked at me in confusion when I pointed the car
west toward the coast instead of to Portland.
"I promised you a trip to the beach if you behaved. You lived up to your end of the bargain, so I'm living up to mine." It’s the least I can do, I admitted to myself.
"We don't have to do this, James," she told me tiredly. "Let's just get home."
"No, Sophie. A promise is a promise."
"We went there yesterday." Had it only been a day ago? "It didn't go so well," Sophie reminded me. I cringed at the pain in her voice.
"Well, today is going to be different. We can't leave the beach on a sour note. It's against the rules."
Matters of the Heart Page 21