Sidewalk Flower

by Carlene Love Flores

  * * * *

  It wasn’t very often that people came to this room at this time. It was a Sunday school room that was mostly only used on Sunday mornings to teach children while the adults remained in the main worship area. This room in particular was reserved for a very special class. One that gave children in the community suspected of being victims of child abuse a safe place to come to and share, if they wanted.

  She had found this place on accident.

  She never participated in the group activities, preferring instead to sit quietly on her own. Everyone at the church seemed understanding of her need and never pressured her otherwise. It was the reason she kept coming back. A few times a week recently.

  But one day, she’d been looking for the restrooms when she happened to pass by this room and saw a little boy, probably about eight or nine years old, who looked like he was scared of his own shadow. She couldn’t help but go to him. She’d asked him why he was standing in the hallway alone and if he was okay. The scared young boy told her he was supposed to be in the room, but it was his first time and he knew that if he went inside, then everyone would know why he was there. Because only the kids who had been abused went to this classroom.

  His candidness surprised her and she felt hopelessly in need of helping him. She’d knelt down to his level and told him she was supposed to go in the room too, but she was also a little worried about what the others would think. She asked if he would be her friend and go with her. He seemed a little leery that a girl as big and tall as her would be afraid of anything but he eventually took her hand. They entered together, a woman and a young boy who shared nice smiles and sad eyes.

  Together they had made their way to the back row. She made sure to be there every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and she’d always sat with little Marshall. After one month, the young boy stopped coming. When she asked the group leader why, she was told that he had been adopted by a family. They lived in a nearby town where they attended their own local church. The news made her happy but sad that she had lost her little companion. After Marshall left, she went back to sitting by herself. Although now, she would wait and only come into this room after the classes had let out.

  She looked down and to her left at the pair of shoes that belonged to whoever had sat down in her row. Not shoes, but boots, western style ones with triangular toes.

  She followed them up, unbelieving.

  Up past the deep indigo blue jeans and to the hand that was outstretched in her direction, lying along the wooden seat. The long, tapered fingers that could have belonged to a musician, but that she knew were those of a woodworker. She couldn’t believe Lucky was there, in her private room.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She echoed back to him.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Did you want me to go? I understand if you do.”

  “No, please stay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” She nodded her head as if they had just agreed upon some very important deal. One where they were both agreeable that he would not leave her right now. Not until they figured out what else to do.

  “You looked like you were in the middle of something when I first came in.”

  “Oh, I was just thinking. You know.”

  “Yeah, I could tell.”

  “I was thinking about friends” she offered.

  In truth, she’d spent the better part of the last two months praying like she had never done before. She had been at such a loss to explain what her life was about that it seemed everyone she’d ever cared about, except for Gramma thankfully, had been taken from her. And she couldn’t figure out on her own why that had happened. She listened to the sermons sometimes and one day something had caught her ear. It was about praying and finding clarity.

  She needed it desperately. So she started praying silently to herself about almost everything.

  She even asked that Vangie would get better somehow. That God would help her to learn to love the right way. That Jaxon would learn to accept love if it should ever show up at his doorstep, that he would find his own peace and that the world would be set right so that they could remain family as they were meant to be. She wanted Maryella to grow up with two loving parents, whether they were able to live together or not, she just wanted the best for the little girl who she loved like her own niece.

  She wanted so many things for so many people. And so she sat and prayed for them all. Sometimes she surprised herself by asking that peace would come to those she thought might not deserve it but she told herself that she wasn’t their judge. She wanted her mother and her father to always rest in peace because they had loved her first. If God existed, she wanted him to bless Gramma with at least another twenty years so that she would have the time necessary to love her and give her thanks for being her savior.

  Lucky, that one was tough. She hoped he would be happy, and be able to forgive her someday. She loved him and felt empty that she hadn’t been able to grow the love in the proper way. She knew he had been the one. And she hadn’t been able to hold onto him. Letting him go had been hard. But she had seen how many times he had been hurt by her and she knew that wasn’t fair.

  And now here he was.

  “Friends,” he said, as he smiled with his eyebrows.

  “Yeah.”

  They both smiled and Lucky reached his hand out further to hers until their fingers met up. “I hope my face came up when you were thinking about those.”

  “It did.” She kept her voice low, not wanting to assume her answer would make him happy.

  “Good.” His fingers lay gently over hers now.

  Nerves almost kept her from asking, but she got over them and put herself on the line. “Would you like to go for a walk with me?”

  “Yes. I would like that.”

  They stood and she led Lucky down the hallway and the center aisle of the church, then to the side door. Before they left, dear Mr. Francis caught Lucky’s eye and smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I feel like we’ve been here before,” she said as she tried to find a way to re-break the ice with her humor. She was rusty, but it slowly rolled off her tongue and did the job of making Lucky smile.

  “Don’t even try to tell me you’ve forgotten the last time we were out here.”

  Could it be that he still had the means to flirt with her, after all the mess they had made of their sweet, romantic beginnings here?

  “No, that’s what I mean, this feels eerily the same.”

  Lucky sat with her on Gramma’s back porch, sipping lemonade. The sun had set and the last few birds chirped along their routes to getting settled down for the night in their trees.

  “By my recollection, Miss, that’s a good thing.” Lucky smiled.

  “I don’t know. Since then, you’ve left me, I’ve left you. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.”

  “But here we are. I think I know what it’s telling me.”

  “If you listen closely enough, you’ll probably hear it saying ‘Run Lucky, run far, far away from this crazy woman.’”

  Lucky grinned but became serious as he rubbed the pad of his pointer finger over his bottom lip. “I tried that. It didn’t work.”

  “Lucky, I’d really like to try again. But how do I know, or you for that matter, that one of us isn’t going to freak out and leave the other again?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you just have to have faith in me, in us. Hell, I’d ask you to marry me right here, right now if I didn’t think it’d scare you to death and send you running, screaming into those woods.”

  Silence. She was still sitting there but her vocabulary had apparently high-tailed it.

  She tried to feign a look of shock with wide, deer-like eyes but it wasn’t an act. “Did you just say you’d ask me to marry you?” Did he just ask me that?

  “Would you say yes, if I had?”

  Silence again.

  She thought a
bout it and realized she’d completely underestimated and misunderstood Lucky’s down-home charm and simplicity. She’d worried so much that he wasn’t tough enough to weather the chaos of her life as it had been in California and on the road. That it would have chewed him up and spit him out. When in fact it had done exactly that, but to her. The truth was that neither of them belonged in that world and everything she’d seen as simple and humble about him was exactly where he drew his strength from. Exactly the place she wanted to draw hers from as well.

  She crossed her arms, grabbed hold of her bent elbows and answered honestly. “I think so.”

  “Is that kind of like how you told me once you thought you might love me?” he asked as he buried her with a look so straight on and intense she thought she needed something to hold onto.

  “I’m sorry, Lucky. You see, listen to the little voice. You might still have a chance to escape if you go now.”

  She thought he had reached out for her hand but instead he let his fingers fall over the soft blonde hairs of her forearm, stroking her up and down. He hadn’t changed, hadn’t lost that innate sensuality of his when it came to petting her. She was afraid she might have simmered down too much in their separation and lost hers but no, it was here. Her arm heated under his fingers, pushing her to remember what it had felt like to play in his dusting of chest hair. Did he have any idea of what his touch did to her? Even after all this time? His natural rhythmic motion left her achy and throbbing with a crazy yearning to finally be buried under him, hips to hips, chest to chest. To be that girl who welcomed him inside her so deeply he’d have nowhere else to go. There’d be no escaping because those unforgiving long legs of his would be tangled with hers. She swallowed, trying to moisten her dry throat.

  “Trista, do you think you might ever love me one day? Because, let me tell you, I’m there. And I’m obviously that guy who’s gonna wait for you. I might get a little stir crazy once in a while but my feelings haven’t changed since the first minute I saw you.”

  The song of male cardinals calling after their mates sounded in the nearby trees as she told Lucky the absolute truth she’d learned the past few months. “I think I love you in ways I didn’t even know existed. But my love doesn’t seem to be good for people. I’ve been trying to figure out why. I don’t want to hurt you, ever again.”

  “Darlin’, your love is exactly good for me. You make me think, not take anything for granted. Most of the things you say make me hysterically happy. As a man, you make me want to take you home and keep you safe and protected. I want to always, always be your friend and I want to be your lover, too.”

  His fingers slid down her forearm in search of her hand. Once he found it, he laced his fingers tightly with hers.

  “Lucky, please stop. You’re embarrassing me.” She never blushed but knew her heated cheeks meant exactly that.

  Teasingly, he whispered, “What? You? Embarrassed? By me? I don’t believe it.”

  “I just, there’s no way I can be all those things.”

  “Trust me; you are all of that and so much more.” He gave her hand a squeeze and leaned in closer to her face.

  She thought he might kiss her but he didn’t. “So—would you like to go inside? I’d like to show you my new place,” she asked him.

  Lucky cleared his throat and then said, “I’d love to see it.”

  “Okay, let me just say good night to Gramma.”

  She was so proud that she finally owned something of her own. After all the years she’d spent on costly Southern California rent, it felt nice to know this was hers. And she still had plenty of financial security with the money she’d saved over the years working with Sin Pointe. Not to mention the very generous severance package Jaxon had set up for her through Vance. She’d always be able to take care of herself and Gramma. For that she was proud.

  After they’d said goodnight, she led Lucky to the next lot up, one that sat just north of Gramma’s. Her place was perched slightly higher up on the hill and she could see the small town below. The creek was a little out of the way but not impossible to get to. She could still hear it at night if she left all her windows open.

  “Okay, so this is it. I know, it looks pretty much the same as Gramma’s.”

  It had the same two bedroom floor plan. So yes, the layout was an identical match with the master bedroom on the east end and the guest on the west. But whereas Gramma’s house was invigorated with just the right combination of eclectic and nostalgic antiques and trinkets, Trista’s was much simpler. The things that gave her home character were the wood-paneled walls, the fluffy white and black rugs that covered her floors, and the simple wooden window shutters that she, like Gramma, left open even into the night.

  Her most cherished items were the vinyl albums and their covers that adorned the guest room walls. There were no dainty pink flowers rolled out on delicate wall paper. The room looked like a vintage record shop and she loved spending time in there, sewing new dresses and listening to music.

  It was the last room that she showed Lucky.

  He beamed as soon as she flipped on the light. “Wow, this is definitely my favorite room.”

  And you look so good standing in it. Now that she was sure of his feelings for her, the flood of attraction that had practically drowned her of her senses the first night she’d met Lucky came roaring back to life. “Yeah, me too. It’s cool, right?” She thought she might be blushing again as she stood and took in every bit of his cool six feet and two inches, all snuggled up inside his jeans and shirt. She wanted to crawl inside those clothes too.

  Lucky coughed and bit in on his bottom lip. “Very cool. Very Trista.”

  “Thanks,” she said trying to compose herself.

  “So is this the guest room?”

  “Um, yeah technically, it is.”

  “Oh, because I was just wondering where I would stay if I were to have driven, say, two hours to come see you and then stayed so long that…”

  “That you were too tired to drive all the way back home?” She finished for him as she stood there thankful he had finally hinted at wanting to stay with her as badly as she wanted him to.

  “Yeah, something kind of like that.”

  “Well, I mean, you could stay in here if you wanted, but as you can see there’s no bed.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a guy offer to sleep on the floor and actually mean it.”

  Lucky brought the fingertips of his left hand to his brow. “Oh boy, let’s not go there please.”

  “What? I’m just sayin’.”

  “I know.”

  “So hey, it’s still relatively early, did you want me to fix something to eat? Are you hungry?”

  “I’m not starving, but yeah, I’d like to see you in the kitchen. That should be something else.”

  “What? Oh, come on. You are gonna take that back.”

  Lucky followed her from the record room to the kitchen. He sat at her breakfast bar, on a tall stool that his legs still dangled from and watched her get to work. Literally, she felt his eyes bearing down on her yellow eyelet dress.

  * * * *

  Bright, strapless, summery and barefoot. It was all he could do not to pick up right where they’d left off in the best shower he’d ever had in his life and still thought of daily. But he was very interested in seeing her cook, especially dressed like that.

  He wondered what it would be like to have her in his kitchen, cooking for him there. Was she very attached to this new home of hers? Could she leave it if he asked her? If she couldn’t, he would come to her. He was sure of that. If she would have him. He watched, mesmerized on his stool, as she began pulling out ingredients and placing them on her tile counters.

  His attention drifted from the strawberries and unfamiliar green and red mottled skinned fruit she was chopping and tossing into a glass bowl to the way her wayward curls spiraled around her head an
d the way her arms, bent at the elbows, seemed to move in symphony with her task at hand. She was so fluid, not embarrassed in her movements as she had hinted to before. She was comfortable here with him. She had changed. In a good way. Their entire conversation hadn’t centered on her promising him sex, in the way it had the first days of their friendship. The time away had been exactly what she needed. And it was why he tried so hard to be good now.

  “What are you staring at?” she asked while she stirred.

  “Nothing. I mean, you obviously.”

  “So am I passing the test?”

  “Um, yeah. Oh, yeah.”

  “Okay, so what do you think of what I’ve made?”

  He looked around the counter she was perched at. The glass dish was gone and now he had no prop to aid him. So much for his southern gentleman manners. All he could think about was the sweet slow way he wanted to make love to her.

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry; I really have no idea what you were doing—with the food at least.”

  “Hmm.” She let her lashes drop closed to the very tops of her cheeks, which were rosy. So he had been watching her. It reminded her of how passionate he had been the night they first kissed, and the night she’d wanted desperately to make love in the hotel room in Oklahoma, and the night they had spent wrapped up in each other on the beach, the shower.

  So many almosts.

  Could she trust that she was okay? That she would not find some way to ruin what could be for them? The love and the caring was there, it had just gotten lost, the same way she’d been for a while. But having had this time away from all the things that pulled and tugged at her, the things she had hidden behind for so many years, she now felt clearer, more directed.

  “Well, I hope you like it.” She flirted with him.

  “What is it?” he asked as he inched closer to her.