Once Burned

by Jennifer Willows

  Paris looked at her closely¸ as if she thought her mother had grown a new appendage or something. “Mom, you look different.”

  Juniper jabbed a forkful of spinach salad. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You would tell us if you were dating someone new right?”

  “Of course. But you don’t have to worry about that.” She had to stop herself from snorting.

  But no sooner than she said it her phone rang. Worried it was one of her residents with an emergency, Juniper answered, even though there was a hard and fast rule about using phones at the dinner table.

  “This is Juniper.”

  “Hello Juniper. It’s Spencer.”

  The first thing she could think of was his mother. “Is everything okay with your mom?”

  “Yes, she is right here as a matter of fact, egging me on.”

  Egging? What for? “Oh, okay then.”

  “I was just wondering if you would like to go to dinner with me.”

  Whoa! That came out of left field.

  Juniper motioned her hand towards her children to let them know she would be back in a moment.

  But of course, Paris wasn’t willing to let the subject go. “Who is that mom?”

  “Just one of the residents and her son, Paris.”

  “Okay. But you know the rule is no phones at dinner.” Paris said smarmily.

  “Yes I know, I instituted that myself.” Smart aleck.

  In the background, Juniper could hear that Spencer had an interloper in the midst of his conversation as well.

  “Did she say yes?” Mrs. Pines’ overly loud whisper was easily heard through her end.

  “No, mom she hasn’t.” Spencer laughed and the sound rang musically through her phone line. “So what do you say?”

  “Um, how about we start with a conversation and go from there?” She wanted to smack herself in the face as soon as she said it.

  He chuckled. “Okay, I can do that.”

  She could hear Paris and Malik arguing in the kitchen even from the hallway. But her children’s version of an argument was much different than most teens. Malik didn’t argue, even as a toddler. His temperament was too even for that. But he would state a simple fact over and over again until his opponent gave up in irritation.

  That was what happened right now.

  “Mom can have a conversation if she wants to.” Malik calmly stated.

  Paris huffed. “No way! I don’t get to use my phone during dinner, why should she?”

  “It’s her house and she can do what she wants to.”

  Juniper knew that Paris was going to snap any second and as their mother she would have to mediate before she ended up with a brawl on her hands.

  Or worse, a food fight.

  Malik’s patience, while vast for someone his age, was nowhere near infinite and eventually Paris would press the right button.

  “Uh, can we chat later? I’m having dinner right now.” Juniper asked.

  “Yeah, I guessed as much. How about nine tonight?”

  “Alright, it’s a date.”

  “Not yet, but hopefully it’ll get to that point.”

  “Maybe.” Juniper hung the phone up and took her seat back at the small table. The bickering pair had grown silent and watchful.

  “Who was that?” Paris asked and Malik’s expression said he wanted to know the answer as well.

  “The new resident has a son and he wanted to give me a call.” Why am I explaining myself to my kids?

  Paris raised a brow, the motion reminded her of her ex. “So are you going on a date with him?”

  “No, I told him he could call me later, Ms. Nosy Pants.”

  “I think you should go out with him. You’ve spent almost every night at home, and I know you haven’t been on a date in at least five years.” Malik piped in with his two cents.

  “How would you know?”

  “I have eyes mom and you never go anywhere. And you haven’t mentioned anyone to us.”

  Malik was right. She hadn’t been on a date in nearly eight years. All of her time was devoted to her children and the extended family formed by the residents of Sunset Villa. But for her son to notice, the situation must be fairly dire.

  “True. But I have too much to do to date.” Juniper watched Malik cock his head to the left and she knew immediately that he was going to call her out on it.

  “Mom, we’re almost grown. And you deserve to have someone in your life. I finish this year and then I go to college. Paris isn’t far behind either. If she would stop being a brat, then she would agree with me.”

  “I’m not being a brat.” Paris stuck her tongue out. “But he’s right mom. I would like for you to do something for yourself for once.”

  Dang, she must be worse off than she thought if Paris even agreed with her brother. Normally the pair never saw eye to eye.

  “It’s just a conversation, nothing more, nothing less. Let’s not count any chickens before they hatch, okay?”

  “Yes, mom.” Paris said glumly, but Malik nodded and smiled around a mouthful of spinach.

  They ate as usual after that, but Juniper couldn’t forget the fact that for the first time in her adult life, she was attracted to a man in more ways than one.

  That night Juniper felt jumpy. Her son and daughter didn’t have a set bedtime, but they normally turned in at nine for the night, left the house silent and quiet until sunrise. Juniper puttered around the house, cleaning this and that.

  But she had to stop washing dishes after she broke not one, but two coffee mugs. Juniper normally liked washing dishes, it felt therapeutic. However, she found that she was jittery, so much so that she was all thumbs and she was left with no choice but to load the dishwasher.

  Why was she so nervous?

  Juniper knew why, but she refused to think of the reason for her tension.

  She took her shower and donned one of her favorite nightgowns. It was a plain affair, more huge t-shirt than anything, but it was oh-so comfortable. She sat down in her bed and turned on the TV, which was unusual for her.

  Juniper wasn’t a big person for the boob tube. If she had a few prized minutes they were better spent on a good book.

  Well, that or a quick game on her tablet.

  It had taken awhile, but she finally understood the concept of a jelly.

  After Juniper checked her phone for the tenth time in five minutes, she sat the stupid thing down on her dresser and tried to watch the show about hoarders. Watching that made her antsier than she was to begin with and gave her the urge to purge the old items out of the attic.

  And not in the near future, she wanted to clean the sucker from rafters to floorboards right that minute. But before she give in the OCD yearnings to scrub, the phone rang. It surprised her, even though Juniper was expecting the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Juniper. How are you tonight?”

  “I’m doing well, thanks for asking. How about you, Spencer?” Why did it feel so awkward to have this conversation?

  Instead of taking exception to her formality, Spencer chuckled. “Not bad at all.”

  “How is your mom doing?”

  “She’s in her bedroom watching one of those judge shows. I can’t remember which though.”

  “Oh.” But she was really curious about how a man would move in his mother as a bachelor. Most single men wouldn’t have the patience to take on an aging parent and she imagined that most married men likely felt the same.

  After a few moments of silence, Spencer took the initiative. “How about this Ms. Juniper, we got started on the wrong foot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I think you need to understand that I’m not calling you for business. I’m calling a woman that I want to get to know. So if you want to ask anything you should.”

  “Okay then. Umm–” Juniper really wanted to know how he and his mother ended up living together. There were many cultures where that was the norm, but in Western civi
lization? Not so much. “How did you and your mom end up as roommates?”

  “That’s a pretty interesting story as a matter of fact.” Spencer took a deep breath. “My family is close, we always have been. But when my dad died a few years ago, my mom just seemed to crumble. Like the air had been sucked out of her life. She didn’t say anything, but I just noticed how withdrawn from life she seemed. I knew that for many couples married long term, when one dies, the other doesn’t last long. I wanted my mom to be happy, so I found one thing after another to keep her as busy as possible. I had her help me decorate my condo. We went on vacations, just whatever I could come up with.”

  That was adorably sweet. “Wow, you are a good son.”

  “Nah, but I am a loving one.” He quipped.

  “Well either way, you did pretty good taking care of her like that.”

  “I do try.” He laughed. “But really it was more the other way around. It took her six months of reminders to get her to stop ironing my clothes. All of my clothes.” Juniper couldn’t help it, she laughed at the idea of Spencer aghast as his mother laid out freshly ironed clothes down to the underwear. “I finally got you to laugh.”

  “That was the point, huh?”

  “Yes it was. Much easier to get you to agree if you’ve laughed first.”

  Juniper couldn’t help but to play coy. “Depends, what am I supposed to agree to?”

  “A date for starters.”

  “Well, I can safely say that we can discuss that.”

  She heard a triumphant hiss and looked at the phone.

  “So let me ask a question.” He tossed the query into the conversational soup they shared.

  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

  “Why are you happily single?” Oh, why did she have to open that door?

  “That’s a long story.” Juniper didn’t want to sound like a bitter hag when that can of worms was opened wide.

  “I’m fully charged and if it goes beyond my battery life, I’ve got a charger too.”

  “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose.”

  “Just spit it out, you might find it’s not as painful as you think.”

  He was one to talk, how could he know anything about it? “What do you do? Are you a psychiatrist or something?”

  “Stop prevaricating. But yeah, I am a life coach.”

  “That must pay pretty well if you can send your mom to Sunset Villa with a check upfront.” The place was fairly priced for the amenities, but for most people coming out of the downturn with the economy, twenty grand a year was pretty steep for a one bedroom apartment.

  “Yeah, well mom decided she wanted her own place and the house had too many memories. I bought it from her after dad died, but I don’t plan on living in it just yet.”

  “I can understand that.” That would probably feel odd to her too.

  “But that brings me back to my question, the one that you still haven’t answered yet.”

  “Are you always this bossy?” She threw the statement at him in a huff.

  “Are you always this secretive?” He countered just as quickly.

  “Touché.” Juniper laughed, there was no way he was going to get off of the subject. He was worse than a dog with a bone. “Well, it’s a classic story. Boy meets girl in high school. The couple is inseparable. Boy knocks up girl the first time they were together after prom. The girl’s dad picks up a shotgun and a preacher. After a few years, the boy finds that life a professional athlete was more to his liking than that of a being a husband and father.”

  She wasn’t bitter.

  Was she?

  Part of the reason Javier finally got the balls to leave was her father’s passing. He was terrified of her dad, and knew the man would put a gut full of buckshot in his belly if he messed with Juniper. After her dad died, their marriage had changed drastically from lukewarm companionship to the cold shoulder within days.

  Once Eldridge Berry III was buried, he found reason after reason to stay away from home. Then one morning, he left for milk and never came back. But she had no plans to divulge that part. It took her too many years to get past the idea that something was so fundamentally wrong with her that her spouse disappeared like a ship in the Bermuda Triangle, rather than deal with her.

  “You have children?” The question was matter of fact, not greasy like the few men that asked her out. Just because she was a single mother didn’t mean she was starved for sex, nor did it mean she sought an instant father for her children.

  Juniper wanted the right guy for her if she bothered with bringing another person in her life.

  She took a breath and released it. “Yes. Two, in fact. A seventeen and fifteen year old.”

  “Wow. I would have never imagined that.” He did sound surprised, but not appalled.

  That wasn’t a surprise, men without kids likely didn’t think much about the condition of parenthood with the exception of the abstract on occasion. “What? That I would have children, or that you would be attracted to a woman with them?”

  “Neither. I never thought they would be teens. I saw the pictures at your desk, but those are of younger children, maybe eight or so.”

  “That is right. I have one of the three of us on my desk that’s more recent, but that picture faces me.”

  “Ah.” The simple syllable gnawed at her already frayed sensibilities.

  Juniper wondered if the idea of a ready-made family disturbed him. It was better that she know now, rather than later. “Does it bother you?”

  His answer was too quickly given to be anything but honesty. “No. I come from a good sized family, so I am very comfortable with children of all ages.”

  Hmm. “What’s a good sized family?”

  “Well, I’m an only child. But I have twenty eight cousins on my mom’s side and fifteen on my dad’s.”

  “That’s a lotta kiddos running around.”

  “Yeah. My parents both wanted just one as they didn’t like having to share so much as kids themselves.”

  “How many brothers and sisters do they have?”

  “Dad had eight. Mom has six.”

  “Oh. That sounds like a big fight about bathrooms and personal space.”

  “Based on their descriptions, it was. I didn’t completely get it, but when we all get together? It’s pandemonium.”

  Juniper chuckled at the idea of having to share with nearly forty cousins and fourteen aunts and uncles. That would have to be…

  Cluttered.

  Maybe not cluttered, maybe like a nest, overly cozy and loving.

  They chatted for hour after hour, and true to his word, Spencer plugged up the charger by the end of the night. When her phone was ready to die, Juniper finally took note of the time.

  It was after one, and she felt like she could talk to Spencer for the rest of the night.

  But her body was accustomed to bed at ten or so, Juniper’s life was much too busy for her to not get adequate rest. She delayed the good nights as long as she was able, but after she yawned for what seemed like the fiftieth time or so, it could no longer be ignored.

  “So have I talked you to death yet?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just an old lady who likes her beauty rest.”

  “Far from old. But you must get a nice bit of that rest, you’re too beautiful not to.”

  “Thanks Spencer.”

  With that, she hung up the phone and rolled over.

  Sleep however, was long in coming.

  It was as if her body was willing to shut down, but her mind still raced with excitement at the possibilities around her.

  Chapter 3: All Work No Play

  Several hours later, she awoke short of her much needed forty winks.

  Despite the fact that she was bone tired, there was an energy that she couldn’t describe zipping through her.

  Juniper dropped Malik and Paris off at school. Unlike the day before, she got dressed for the day before they left. So she had no reason t
o go home and dozens to go to work early. Usually, she was the first of the daytime staff to show as the night nurses worked twelve hour rotation with three days on and three off. But today, she saw Ebony’s car as the sole vehicle in the admin side of the lot.

  I hope Ebony is okay.

  But when she walked inside of the building, Ebony sat in the middle of the office floor amid a sea of paperwork. The woman’s hair was bigger than normal today, and Juniper wondered if the fro was taking a life of its own.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I lost my tax bill for my car. I swear I had the thing at my desk to pay it and now I can’t find it anywhere!” Ebony rubbed her hands over her face and sighed.

  “It’s going to be okay, calm down.”

  Ebony dug in the pile even more frantically. “It’s my last day to pay it before I have to do the stupid penalty!”

  Juniper raised a brow. “But it’s the fifteenth.”

  “I know, I was due for my stickers last month. The fifteen days are the grace period.”

  Juniper wanted so badly to give the lecture that hung on the tip of her tongue. But it wouldn’t do to scold the other woman, as Ebony was a bit hard headed. So Juniper knelt in the floor and dug through the foot thick pile of scrap papers in the floor.

  An hour later, she had dug through every item in the pile and a few others she’d dug from the woman’s desk to no avail. The slip was missing in action.

  “Where do you last remember having it?”

  “At the computer, but it’s not there.”

  Juniper stood up and rolled the kinks out of her back from the stooped posture she had adopted for the search. All it took was one quick look at Ebony’s desk to know that the area was topsy turvy, but it was worth a shot. When she looked into the trash can under the desk, there it was, a crumpled tax statement from North Carolina DMV.

  “You owe me lunch.”

  Ebony peeked over and beamed. “I sure do, and you can have anything you want from the dollar menu at Mickey D’s.”

  No way, Jose. “You know I don’t eat that stuff.”

  Ebony laughed. “Well, you’re my boss and you know exactly what I make. So maybe you should give me a raise, then I could afford better.”

  But before she could respond, Juniper heard the shuffle of shoes on the wooden floor.