by Jenny Rabe
Arthur laughed and leaned over for a cane fist bump.
After introductions, Jancy moved to the front of the group to start the meeting. “I am so glad all of you made it here tonight. Before we start, let’s tell each other one thing about ourselves. Can we begin with you, Jim?”
Jim crossed his arms in front of him and rubbed at his mustache. “Well, let’s see. I used to rope cattle when I was in the 4-H club.”
Cambria studied his rigid jawline, his shallow face. She imagined him chewing on a piece of straw as he talked. His eyes seemed further away from his nose than most faces, but he still had a pleasant smile. He looked exactly as she imagined a cowboy should look.
Jancy’s grin grew. “That explains a lot, Jim. Thank you.” The circle fell into fits of laughter and even Cambria smiled.
Next around the circle was Brian. Cambria discreetly pulled out the pencil from her hair and the sketchbook from her purse. His eyes were rounder than she’d imagined, and she wanted to leave with a perfected shape. Trying not to reveal how obsessed she was, she sketched inside her purse.
“I’m Brian Cook, and before I left . . . home, I used to swim half a dozen miles every day.”
Arthur whistled. “What girl wouldn’t want that? And why are you still single?”
Cambria glanced up from sketching his eye. His gaze shifted from Arthur to Cambria. She jabbed the side of the paper with her pencil, tearing a hole right where she’d sketched his pupil. Dang it! Now I have to start over.
After she moved that paper to the back, she stole another look at Brian’s face. He was still looking at her. Her eyes dropped to her paper, and she tried to sketch from memory. Her cheeks flushed with heat at the thought of his eyes still on her.
Jancy broke the long silence. “Arthur, you’re next.”
“I once climbed Mount Everest.”
“You did not,” Jim said, chuckling. “You’re the biggest storyteller I know.”
Arthur shook his cane toward Jancy. “No one believes me, but I did. Even lost a friend up there.”
Cambria could tell he was telling the truth. His throat bunched up, and his Adam’s apple bobbed a few times as he recounted the experience. It was hard to fake real emotion. She should know.
“I believe you,” she finally said.
Arthur turned to her with glassy eyes. “Thank you, dearie.”
Cambria looked down at her shoes, and the meeting continued. She hadn’t wanted to say much, but she had spoken volumes by standing up for a guy she barely knew.
When it came her turn, she didn’t know what to say. Sharing parts of herself was something that’d come easily to her growing up, but since Shawn’s death, she’d closed herself off completely.
Jancy gave her an encouraging smile, and it was enough to help Cambria get started.
“I like to paint.” She cursed herself silently. Her voice sounded lame, even to her. “I mean, I’m an artist.” She glanced down at her fingers, seeing the flesh-colored paint hiding in the crevices of her fingernails. “I guess most people don’t wear paint-splattered shoes and wear color under their nails, but I find it . . . freeing.”
She glanced up to see all smiles, including Brian’s. His was not as wide, but his eyes did most of the work for him. Crinkles in the corner, just like Mr. Walker, though his lines were much sharper. Cambria swiftly grabbed her pencil again and tried to capture Brian’s latest reveal in her notebook.
Jancy moved on to talking about her love of running, but when Cambria glanced up after adding in more eye detail, Brian’s focus remained on her. Did he recognize her from the baseball field? She twirled the pencil in her hand. Surely it was not normal for someone to be so enraptured that they’d follow someone to their practice. If he knew, the whole gig would be up.
She pushed thoughts of Brian out of her head and tried to focus on Jancy.
“Who would like to share tonight?” Jancy said, so softly that it didn’t seem like a heavy request.
But Cambria was relieved when Arthur spoke up.
He recounted two stories about his sweetheart of forty-seven years who had died of a stroke. Dorothy, his late wife, collected cats and brought new ones home every week. “The other day I was cleaning out the house, finally donating some of the things that she owned, and those darn cats were everywhere, jumping in and out of the boxes. Three years later, I’m raising a kitten farm, and I can only imagine that Dorothy would be smiling down at me.”
“Thank you,” Jancy said. “That was beautiful. Anyone else want to share?”
Chris spoke up next, sharing a story of their child, who had drowned in a pool seven months before. “The other day I was working in the garage and saw our boy’s bicycle. He never got old enough to ride it.” He gave a sorrowful smile and wiped at his face.
Sally put her head down, her hair hiding even more of her face, only allowing her eyes to be seen. They dripped with tears, but no sound ever came out.
Cambria trained her eyes on her sketches, her own eyes watering with the thought of their love for their son. Coping with her grief was foreign to her, and she didn’t know where to start.
“Thank you for sharing, Chris,” Jancy said. “You know, in stages of grief, a person may experience a variety of feelings. Sadness, guilt, despair, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, longing, anger, and frustration will likely run through your mind. None of these feelings are bad or wrong.”
Cambria’s thoughts went directly to Shawn and the many times she had felt guilty for not doing enough to help him.
“These feelings need to be expressed,” Jancy said. “But always remember that they are ‘at this moment.’ This gives you hope and permission to have different feelings at a later time.”
Different feelings later? A small bit of hope entered her heart.
Jancy continued, looking at each of them in turn. “The ‘why’ and ‘what-if’ questions will be asked over and over in your mind. Embrace living without an answer by walking in the dark for a while.”
Cambria watched Brian out of the corner of her eye. He was nodding his agreement. Who had he lost? A wife? A mother?
“To close our meeting, I’d like to give each of you a challenge. One way to deal with your grief is to get outside of yourself and look outward. There are many needs in the community, many areas that need someone’s help. If you would like to stick around, I will happily assign those that are willing to be partners in a service project with each other.”
No one moved. Cambria wanted to, but she also didn’t want to be the one that left. So she remained in her seat, her pencil gripped tightly in her fingers.
“Perfect.” Jancy’s smile widened. “I’m so happy all of you chose to stay. Are you all okay with being assigned a partner?”
Sally spoke up for the first time since her introduction. “Could I be with Chris?”
Chris lowered an arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him.
Cambria’s heart ached watching them. Looking straight ahead, she met Brian’s eyes. He was looking right back at her. Oh no.
She looked back to Jancy and hoped she could read Cambria’s thoughts. Please put me with anyone but Brian.
“Arthur and Jim, I thought you two would be a good team,” Jancy said.
The two of them nodded at each other. Meanwhile, Cambria’s heart had taken on a brand new rhythm. She silently begged Jancy to assign herself to Cambria and Brian could join some other team . . . or be by himself for that matter. She went from wanting to see his face daily to never wanting to see him again.
“That leaves Brian and Cambria.”
Cambria dropped her head.
Jancy didn’t seem to notice Cambria’s disappointment. “Why don’t you and your partners go look at the board right outside the door here. You’ll see help-wanted signs all over it. Come tell me about your project, and by next month, we would love a full report on how everything is going.”
Oh no. When Cambria looked up, Brian’s face looked too eager. A beautiful new
look for her to capture, sure, but not one she wanted to see aimed toward her.
“Ready to go check the board?” he said, holding out his arm in a gentlemanly fashion.
Cambria busied herself with her purse so long he finally dropped his arm. All she had to do was stay platonic. “Yes, I’m ready.”
He flashed a smile, revealing his straight, perfect teeth. She hesitated, a little dazed. The last thing she was interested in was falling in love again.
Chapter Seven
Brian
Brian didn’t know how she did it, but Jancy had read his mind. What a day! He’d told himself he wouldn’t pursue anything with Cambria unless he saw her again, and here she was. What had started as an interesting day had quickly turned to frustrating and now to exciting again.
He followed her to the community board, a little ways behind her.
While she studied the board, he studied the back of her head. A pencil stuck out of her hair behind her right hair. Even her carpenter overalls were cute. Now that he knew she was an artist, his interest was even more piqued. His dad had dabbled with chalks until his cancer had even taken that from him.
“How about we agree on not picking up trash?” she said, reminding him he needed to be present. “I feel like it’s one of the overdone things that the city pays people to do. Or should.”
Brian dipped his head and stared at the flier she was referring to. Adopt-a-Highway. Personally, he didn’t have a problem with picking up trash, but right now, he’d agree to almost anything. “Okay, sure.”
She went back to quietly searching each flier.
“You know,” he started, breaking the heavy silence, “I was surprised to see you here. I mean, it’s not every day you find a stalker.”
Her face flushed a lovely shade of pink as she turned to him and stepped away from the board. “Excuse me? I wasn’t—”
“Hey, that was a joke. I just think it’s neat how we keep running into each other.”
“Oh, you’re talking about—”
Brian scrunched up his brows. “Yeah, you know, our meetings in the park. Have we met somewhere else?”
“No, of course not.”
Brian felt like she was hiding something. He knew he should feel more guarded after what had happened with his ex, but Rob had told him a dozen times to throw himself back into the dating ring. Maybe hanging out with her in a non-date setting would be the exact thing he needed to get started.
His eyes skimmed over the fliers mindlessly, enjoying the air around him. She smelled like flowers and a little like the art room from his freshman year at college. He’d tried his hand at creating, hoping a little of his dad’s talent hid inside him, but his stick figures remained stick figures and his blobs remained messy mistakes on his paper.
Her hand lingered on a flier advertising an origami class at the library. “I wonder if they have any art classes. I’d love to teach one to kids.” She spun around. “I mean, I don’t think we should do one together or anything. Too ambitious.”
He decided to contribute to the conversation and pointed to the first project that caught his eye. “Graffiti Removal. You like paint, right?”
Cambria tapped a finger to her temple as if she was debating whether or not she liked painting enough. “Yeah, that could work.”
Brian unpinned the flier. “It says there are four main locations with an obscene amount of graffiti. These areas need to be targeted first. Have you ever worked with . . . graffiti?”
She huffed. “What does that mean?”
He chuckled, a little nervously. “That didn’t come out right. I mean, have you ever removed graffiti before?”
She shook her head. “No.” She glanced back toward the board and back up at him. Her blue eyes pierced his, making him feel like she was trying to read his thoughts. “But I guess it’s our best bet.”
He pointed at one of the addresses. “Maybe we should meet here later this week and look at the damage. I’d love to buy you dinner afterward.”
She looked taken aback, and not in a good way. “Thank you, but I’m not interested in dinner. I’ll see you Friday at 6:30.” She turned and left without another word.
So much for hitting things off. He slapped his forehead. Of course. Flirting with a girl at a grief support meeting wasn’t a good move. He mentally reined in whatever he thought he was doing. He was out of practice and should probably hide his flirting skills around her for the imminent future.
* * *
“Ready to hit some runners?” Brian said to Rob the next day at practice.
“Looks like you didn’t sleep a wink,” Rob said.
Brian guffawed. “You guessed it.”
All night he had laid in bed, reminding himself of all the stupid things he’d said to Cambria. He rehearsed in his mind safe topics he could talk to her about tonight at the graffiti wall, in case his gallant, disastrous side decided to show.
No more flirting. Their project was strictly to give back to the community.
“Did you ask that girl out from the bar?”
Rob threw a ball at the fence where Brian had been standing seconds ago.
“Okay, I got it buddy. You still need a little time.” Brian dropped his things in the dugout and looked around. About a third of his team had shown up. Since his coach never showed on Wednesdays, most opted to “practice” at home in front of their TVs, and Brian found it a really good time to practice his swing.
Rob huffed and threw another ball at the fence. “I should’ve never broken up with Carrie. We could’ve made it work.”
Brian shrugged and pulled out a package of new gum. He ripped it open with his teeth. His mouth watered, smelling the sweet, albeit fake, watermelon flavoring. Still, anything was better than grape. Sticking a handful of gum into his mouth, he grabbed his lucky bat and headed to home plate.
He had tried to convince Rob of that same thing right before he dropped the axe, but Rob had been convinced long-distance relationships didn’t work.
“I’ll ask the other woman out tonight,” Rob grumbled. “It’s time to move on. What about you? Have you asked a girl out yet?”
He stepped up to the plate and did a few practice swings. “Struck out, if you must know. I asked out a girl at a grief meeting.”
“Your ex really messed you up, man. I doubt another girl will expose you in newspapers across the U.S. when you break things off with her.”
He grimaced. Sometimes he hated that Rob knew his history. “Well, if she hadn’t loved my money more than she loved me. By the way, thanks for the reminder.”
There wasn’t a day that Brian didn’t think of how things could’ve gone differently with Violet. Keeping his money a secret would’ve just prolonged the inevitable. But if there was one thing he’d learned in the previous two years, he couldn’t change the past.
“You know, if you never meet anyone, that girl behind you might be interested. Looks like she came back.”
Brian whipped around. It was the same person, a girl for sure. A small bit of brown hair had fallen out from under her hat and her frame was way too small for a man. Same camouflage hat, same parka coat, and a pair of binoculars on the seat next to her. She looked away as Brian continued to glare at her. What was her deal?
“Is she someone’s girlfriend or sister?” Brian asked the guys near the dugout, just arriving for practice. A few turned around and shrugged, but no one seemed to know her.
Brian turned back to Rob and raised his voice. “Let’s talk about something other than girls for once. How about this, you throw the ball, and if I hit the back gate, you pay for dinner.”
Rob shook his head. “That’s too easy. You go to the outfield, and I’ll send some balls your way. If I hit one and you catch it, then I’ll pay for your dinner.”
“Fine. But if you don’t hit a ball anywhere close to where I am in the outfield, you also have to buy me dinner for wasting my batting practice time.”
Rob threw his glove from hand to hand. “How did
this turn around on me? I’m either going to have to buy you dinner tonight, or I’ll get very lucky.”
He shrugged. “You could just let me hit a few home runs.”
Rob shook his head and threw his mitt toward the dugout. “Nope. Get ready.”
“I want steak tonight, then.” As Brian went to the dugout to switch out his bat for his glove, the girl in the stands watched his every move. It unnerved him. Even when he ran out to left field where he knew Rob struggled to hit, her eyes followed him.
After this practice, if she was still there, it was time to confront her before this got any worse. Who dressed in winter clothes in the dead of summer? Something wasn’t right and Brian didn’t need another snooper in his life. He’d escaped the media’s attention for months now, and he’d pay off anyone to keep them out of his life permanently.
Old Joe, the relief pitcher, stepped up to the plate and threw to Rob. Strike after strike, his friend ruined his chances of keeping his money in his pocket. Occasionally, when batters were switched out, Brian checked to make sure the girl was still there. She was. Anger bubbled in him, adding to the heat he already felt from the sun. He was looking forward to a confrontation. It would give him a good chance to blow off steam.
But by the time Rob had given up on trying to throw a ball in his direction, the bleachers were empty and the girl was gone.
Chapter Eight
Cambria
The week passed quickly and even though Cambria painted late into the night each day, she popped bright eyed out of bed the next morning. Now it was Friday, the day she’d be meeting Brian at the graffiti wall. When she wasn’t nervous about their meetup, she was curious.
Since their grief meeting, she’d finished two more paintings and gone back to her other finished portrait, adding crinkles in the eyes of the faces. It put a realistic touch in each of the images.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Shawn smile with crinkles in his eye. Maybe their wedding day. By the time Shawn had taken his own life, Cambria was relieved his battle was over. The guilt of that thought rested on her shoulders every minute.