“Somewhere else?” I finished his thought.
“Yeah.” He nodded behind me. Moving the hair that had blown across my neck aside so he could kiss me there. I shivered and he wrapped me up tighter in his arms, not knowing it wasn’t from cold. He seemed to have a way of making the simplest of kisses feel so intimate. Or maybe it was just because they were from him.
“I remember when I was really little, two I think, I liked to dance around the kitchen. The floors were so much better for spinning.” I smiled thinking about my mom stopping to twirl with me in between chores. “My mom called me her tiny dancer.” When my parents argued, which was often, my mom would tell me, ‘Go on tiny dancer, and go twirl in your room.’ I didn’t see it then, obviously, but she wanted to shield me from the arguing as best she could. She did that a lot when it came to my dad. She spent a lot of years making excuses for him until I was old enough to tell her I didn’t need them anymore. She still made them.
“So, I’d go twirl around in my room and listen to the arguments escalate. Usually to yelling and my dad leaving the house.” He was always a runner, quick to walk away before putting up a fight. “I learned to zone out while I danced in my room. When they argued, I liked to imagine I was a fairy dancing on a petal or a princess dancing at a ball.” August shifted under me, and I moved to sit beside him. He pulled me right back down on his lap.
“Just an itch. Go ahead.” He urged me to continue, so I did.
“I think it was safe place for me to go. Especially as I got older it became a place to go reconnect with myself when I felt overwhelmed with life.” I laughed mirthlessly, “Kind of sad really. Something I love to do began as a way to occupy me while my parents fought.” I had never realized that before. Not even my love of dance was untouched by the pain my dad had caused me. The reminder of his abandon had even seeped its way into my safe place.
“It’s not sad at all. You love to dance because of the way it makes you feel, not because it’s what someone told you to do. Regardless of how your love of dancing started, it’s yours.” He was right. Dancing was mine. I loved it because it gave me strength when I couldn’t find it on my own. It centered me when I felt like I was teetering off an edge. It was mine, and it always caught me before I fell. It was a lot like August.
“What about you?” I asked him, “Why is this your favorite place?”
“It’s pretty.” He said in a falsetto voice making me laugh. “No really though,” he continued, “my granddad lived on a small piece of land in the central valley that Capri and I visited every spring break. We spent hours playing in the wildflowers. My granddad sent us out in the morning with bottles of Kool-Aid and sandwiches because he knew we’d be out there till dark.” He chuckled to himself over his memory. “As we got older and visited less, I could never lose the memory of how I felt out there.” He quieted and we stared at the empty field together.
“We shouldn’t let life take that feeling away.” I said quietly. He hummed agreeing with me. We let the field of wildflowers we ran through as kids, slowly dwindle into nothing more than a couple of stems in a mason jar. I wanted that feeling of possibility and freedom back. “I want wildflowers.” I whispered to myself. No more jars, just fields and fields of wildflowers.
“I think we might have found them.” He whispered back. I think he was right. Suddenly August picked me up off his lap and set me on the bench next to him. He stood up abruptly and did a slow spin with his arms out wide. “But this,” he stopped and pointed out towards the field, “is not even close to those fields. Why do I even come here?” He asked thoroughly confusing me.
“Huh?” I squinted. “You just said to remind yourself of them.”
“But its nothing like them. I think I always wanted this place to feel like that, but it never has. It’s manufactured. People put seeds in the ground. When it doesn’t rain, they water it. When they bloom, people pick them; they sell them, and then it’s empty again. Nothing about this place is natural and free. There’s an undeniable truth in wildflowers, a promise that when it appears nothing can survive, something beautiful spontaneously blooms. There is nothing spontaneous here.”
“So, we don’t like the flower fields anymore?” I asked him cautiously.
“We don’t,” he laughed. “They suck.” Well, this sure did take a drastic turn.
“Maybe we should have just raced through the dirt or something. All this deep talk just crushed your happy place.” I smiled at him as he walked back towards me and sat down on the bench again.
“Happy place crusher.” He teased me and poked me in the side making me jump.
“You crushed your own happy place buddy, I’m just a bystander.” I raised my hands in front of me in defense.
“Oh Kensie, you’re anything but a bystander.” He reached his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me to him. “You are the wildflowers.”
The only movement I could summon was the blinking of my lashes. By my definition, he just told me I was freedom, possibility, and hope. I was his new beginning. The thought bewildered me. There was no doubt August was my new dawn. I had no idea I was his, or that he even needed one. I opened my mouth to ask more, but I was stopped when he continued talking.
“You were completely unexpected,” He said still looking out ahead of him. “I always knew you were out there, but I didn’t know I was ready yet to find you.” I held my breath then. “When I met you, I knew I had to have you. Whether I was ready or not didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let you go.”
He turned toward me and reached up to hold my face in his palms. He softly ran his thumbs over my cheeks looking into my eyes in a way that arrested my heart. The longer I looked into his eyes, the more my own vision became blurred. He closed his eyes and leaned towards me gently placing his nose beside mine. With the brushing of his breath on my face, my eyes closed and tears gently rolled down my cheeks. He slowly and tenderly nodded his head up and down brushing his nose against mine. I love you, my heart spoke.
“I love you, Kensie,” he whispered and everything in me melted. I fell into him with the softening of my soul and sniffled. “You don’t have to say it back, but I had to tell you. I know without a doubt I do and I don’t want a day to go by that you don’t know it. I love you.” He said again and hiccupped and giggled all at once. Then he kissed me. It was the sweetest, most honest kiss I had ever had. We kissed slowly and almost lazily. There wasn’t the fire of lust behind this one, but the afterglow of love. Even though I couldn’t tell him yet, I hoped he could feel my heart returning the same love he was giving me.
Chapter 16
This has to be a joke. I poked the button one, last, hopeful time and nothing happened. So then I punched it, a few times. After no sign of life, I brushed my hair out of my face huffing. How could the coffee machine be out of service? I didn’t sleep at all last night. I was too high on August and replayed the moment he told me he loved me over in my head a gazillion times. I kept thinking I should have said it back. I knew I loved him, without a doubt, but for some reason I was terrified to tell him. Even after hearing him tell me, I couldn’t let the words fall.
“Excuse me.” I called into the kitchen.
“Yeah?” One of the cooks popped his head out.
“Is there any coffee?”
“Out of service.” He answered in a bored tone. I guess I wasn’t the only one searching for coffee this morning.
“I saw that, but is there a pot or an old coffee maker that you could brew some in?” I asked innocently. He looked up at me and cocked his eyebrow.
“No.”
“But, I really need it.”
“Me too, kid.” Ugh. “The café on the other side of the campus is open.” He couldn’t really expect me to move my body that far without a jolt of caffeine. The smart thing to do would have been to go crawl back into bed, but I had to go to the library to study for my child development final.
August sent me a text at an ungodly hour and said he had family stuff to
take care of today. I worried at first, but Lennon and Capri were out working on a project so it couldn’t have been an emergency. I remembered him mentioning something about his parents remodeling, so I assumed he was helping out his dad. He told me he’d be out all day and to head to his place when I was done studying to wait for him. I should have gone to his house this morning and studied there all day. He’s a smart man. I bet he had coffee.
* * *
I powered up my laptop in the quiet corner of the library to check my Facebook account. Procrastinating? Maybe, but my child development class was one of the few I actually enjoyed and I wasn’t too concerned about my content knowledge. I probably didn’t really need to study at all, but with August, Lennon, and Capri busy all day, I didn’t have much else to do.
I scrolled through the posts on my profile. I passed up a post from a friend I knew in high school about her dinner last night. Really? Why do people need to post pictures of all of their meals? I didn’t join social networking site to see how your meat and potatoes get along.
I kept going and read a quick post from Kate who lived on my floor, “Worst night ever.” That was it. She was notorious for posting cryptic messages, and Lennon was as notorious for commenting on them. Under the post Lennon wrote, “Let us know what episode of Sex Sent Me to the ER you’ll be on.” I love that girl.
I saw a post with a picture attachment from my stepsister just under Kate’s. The photo of a smiling Bethany, Parker, Jodie, and my dad in in front of a mountain covered in snow had the comment “Great family weekend in Big Bear.” Burn. I pursed my lips and bit back the singe. As much as I tried to feign nonchalance, and as much as I tried to move past it, it hurt to see my dad in a family I wasn’t a part of.
Call me a glutton for punishment, but I continued to scroll through her pictures from the weekend. The next few were more of the four of them, but then there was one of dad with my grandpa by a large fireplace. My grandpa.
The next photo had Parker playing chess with my grandpa. It looked like they were in a living room and I could see a kitchen in the distance full of people. I clicked on the picture to enlarge it and zoomed in on the kitchen. Bethany sat at a kitchen counter with a girl donning a head of brown curls piled on top of her head. It couldn’t be. They wouldn’t do this without me there.
I zoomed to the right of Bethany, and there behind the counter stood a painfully familiar woman. I tried to swallow, but my throat caved in. The fuzzy enlargement of my aunt standing at the counter talking to Bethany and my cousin Shaylee emphasized my exclusion from the family reunion.
I clicked up to the top of Bethany’s page and quickly unfriended her. I couldn’t control what they did without me, but I could control whether I had to see it or not. I chose to not witness my own father’s abandonment through someone else’s happy memories with him. Memories that should have been mine to share.
Trying to ignore the pain in my chest I continued to scroll through my newsfeed when a new friend request popped up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Bethany already realizing we weren’t friends anymore.
I clicked on the icon and a name popped up that I hadn’t expected to see. Chelsea Baker, my best friend from high school. I hovered over her name contemplating whether I wanted to accept her request or not. Our friendship wasn’t strengthening to me back in high school, so why would I need it now? People change though, and Facebook doesn’t even make us friends anyway. We’d be two people who were once close, now getting to spy on each other’s lives now. What the hell. I clicked accept.
I immediately went to her page to initiate my stalking. The first thing I noticed was that she had a beautiful baby boy. I smiled, proud of my former friend for becoming a mother. We may have had a toxic friendship, but I didn’t doubt she was a wonderful mother.
I scrolled through a few of the photos that proved me right. She was a great mom with a happy child. I proceeded to click quickly through the photos, one of his first birthday, one of a camping trip, and one of Christmas with his dad I assume. Wait. I went back to the Christmas photo and stared blankly at the page with my heart pounding up into my neck.
There, sitting with Chelsea’s baby on his knee was Nolan. I had no idea they kept in touch all these years. Though, why would I since I all but disappeared from that life. Still, he must be really close with her family to have spent Christmas with them. Something told me to stalk further.
I went to Chelsea’s posts and scrolled through looking for anything Nolan related, then I slammed my computer screen shut. What was I doing this for? It didn’t matter how close Nolan was to Chelsea’s family. I shouldn’t bother me in the least that they even still know each other. I tapped my fingers on the top of my computer and chewed on my cheek.
Then, I popped it back open and continued scrolling. That’s when I found it, the one post that rocked me where I sat. Chelsea was engaged to Nolan. Not only were they engaged, she posted a loving comment about how happy she was to be engaged to her high school sweetheart. The one she shared a beautiful boy with. The one she first “hooked up with” at Tawnie’s party.
The last sentence had my stomach rolling. Tawnie’s party had taken place the week Nolan pulled away from me. I distinctly remember mulling over what had gone wrong that night to cause such an abrupt change in our relationship. Well, now I knew. My boyfriend had cheated on me with my best friend.
I slammed my computer shut again and shoved it into my bag. I had to get some air. I rose from my chair and mindlessly headed for the stairs. My legs stumbled and collided against themselves and all that was in their path. Movement had become a foreign concept to my body. With the exit doors in sight I skipped and tripped over the last few stairs on leading to the bottom floor zeroed in on the porthole of freedom ahead.
I exploded through the doors leaving my purgatory to replay on the third floor. A cleansing burst of fresh air stopped me in my tracks on the step. Still numb, my arms flopped to my sides sending my backpack falling off my shoulder onto the concrete next to me. The faint smell of sea air loosened the tightly wound fibers within me, and flopped down onto the step. I rested my head between my knees and practiced the slow steady breathing my high school counselor had taught me years ago.
How could I not have noticed my best friend was sleeping with my boyfriend behind my back? Too enchanted back then, and too hopeful for a fairytale, I’d left myself blind to truth. I’d foolishly embraced my personal love story, until he started to pull away. He wanted to go out more often, and I wanted to stay in. He wanted to drink more, and I was afraid too. Chelsea was everything he wanted me to become. Now I clearly saw Nolan’s retreat from us coinciding with the time they spent working on their biology project together.
I sat against the stucco wall of the library and stared up to the tops of the palm trees. They were so tall, so out of sight. If you didn’t stop to look up you’d miss the quiet ruffle of the tips of the leaves in the ocean breeze. I squinted my eyes and watched the pointy tips wave stiffly thinking about how far I’d come since high school. As much as it hurt to find out now, I’m glad I didn’t know then. It would have torn me apart to lose my boyfriend, and what I thought was my best friend at the same time. With the shock receding, I thought clearly.
My heart broke for the girl I was then. She had so much abandonment in her life. Nolan and Chelsea had gone on to live their lives together, and from what it looked like, happily. My dad moved on and took an entire half of my family with him to a new one. While all the people who had left me moved forward, I had been stuck in place, trying to move on from the hollowness left in their wake. Now what? I suppose you keep moving. The words echoed in my tired mind, and suddenly there was only one place I needed to be. Moving forward with August, and leaving it all in the past.
* * *
I could have sworn he said it would be under the rock by the front door. Yet, here I stood with the rock in my hand staring down at the empty spot in the planter without a key. Once I had calmed myself down in front
of the library, I came immediately to August’s. I’d hoped he’d be home, but when I arrived his truck was gone. After the afternoon I had I just really needed to see him. He grounded me. I needed to be pulled back down to what mattered more than anything at that moment, but August wasn’t home and the damn house key was missing.
When I first showed up I saw Wes’ classic Chevy in the driveway. I knocked on the door for a few minutes without an answer before I decided to hunt the spare key down. It wasn’t until I’d checked under a dozen rocks and scratched myself searching through the bushes that I realized Wes probably had used it to let himself in.
I sat on the front stoop with my head in my hands and cursed this awful day. I reached over to the flowerbed and picked up one of the rocks. I gripped it in my hand and sent my frustrations through my arm and into my white knuckles clutching the stone. Then, I chucked it, hard and fast into the grass with a grunt and watched it bounce springing about dirt. It felt good.
I stood up and reached down picking up another rock repeating the same action sending it pummeling into the sod. I continued to throw rock after rock grunting and cursing. When I’d thrown the final rock and stood satisfied and heaving with my hands on my hips. I blew a piece of hair from my face and crossed my arms over my chest looking at August’s grass littered with angry rocks. I may need to consider kick-boxing. It’s probably a more appropriate form of anger management than rock chucking.
I leaned over to search out my bottle of water in my bag. Anger is exhausting. I took a few gulps and pulled out my pack of mints. I opened the case to find they were all gone. Ugh. What the hell. I chucked the metal container into the grass.
The clicking of the door sounded behind me. I turned around to Wes finally opening the door. I was beginning to wonder if I needed to call emergency services to make sure he was alive in there.
Truth In Wildflowers Page 17