Truly Madly Royally

by Debbie Rigaud

  “Are you okay?” He watches as I casually pat down one side of my head … yet again.

  “The humidity does things to my hair,” I say.

  “It looks beautiful,” Owen says.

  My breath catches, and I cover my gasp with a soft chuckle.

  It’s sweet of him to say, but the minute I start seeing my hair expand into the sightlines of my peripheral vision, I’ll know it’s time to step out for a breather. A little extra puff is nothing to be afraid of when you have hair as seriously big as mine. But for vanity’s sake, I grab a hair tie from my bag and make a quick topknot.

  “How did you find this place?” I ask Owen.

  “R.J., my neighbor in the graduate dorm, conducts research here,” Owen explains. “He invited me to swing by once, and I’ve been coming back regularly ever since.”

  “Swing by once, huh?” I tease. “Way to take advantage of an invite.” I give Owen a thumbs-up.

  “Indeed. I’m just glad he hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask me to stop coming,” Owen says loud enough for R.J. to hear.

  “Don’t worry, I’m taking as much advantage as he is of me.” R.J. pushes a small wheelbarrow and parks it in the corner near us. “Owen here has a green thumb. Plus, I get to boss around someone with a fancy accent.”

  “You garden, too?” I ask Owen, impressed.

  “I follow step-by-step orders until it leads to something that looks like gardening,” says Owen. Even when he’s being humble, he’s flexing that charming personality of his.

  “Let’s see it,” I say.

  “That’s our next stop. I have a little something started.”

  It’s a bright terra-cotta pot housing a single resident. The sturdy stem reaching from the soil is already budding vibrant-colored leaves. I can’t identify the plant.

  “This is for you, Zora,” Owen says. “Delphinium flowers—the mini-sized variety. They’re known for their protective spirit and are associated with success and an inner light, a lot like you are.”

  I feel my cheeks get hot. “That’s so sweet, Owen, thank you.” I pick up the pot and cradle it in both my hands, marveling over the cobalt-blue and pale pink petals. “Plant selfie?” I ask.

  “Why not?” Owen grabs his phone and positions himself next to me. He leans in closer and extends his arm and snaps our very first selfie. He clicks twice.

  He stays standing close by me as we check out the pictures. In them, our heads are tilted toward each other and practically all our teeth are showing.

  There’s a stark contrast in our skin tones, but we both have the same sun-kissed look going on. The summer sun gives my skin a moisturized glow that brown skin loves, and for Owen, there’s a freckled tan that doesn’t darken his skin but reddens it in the areas most exposed to the sun, like his forehead and his cheekbones.

  “We look good together,” says Owen.

  He’s not wrong. Despite being two people from two different backgrounds, walks of life, and social statuses, our personalities go together near PB&J level. From the moment we started vibing at the library, that was clear. Just like certain talents we’re all born with, it’s difficult to explain why some things require so little effort.

  But I’m not going to admit that to him just yet.

  I shake my head and hide my smile.

  “Shall I keep the plant here until it’s a little further along?” I sit the pot back in its personalized nook on the shelf.

  “Yes, and we can visit it anytime,” he says.

  “It really is so awesome in here,” I say, scanning the shelved area.

  “I’ve got one more thing to show you.” Owen wears his excitement in a much less wide-eyed way than I do. It’s more in his sped-up speech, almost like he’s rapping to a beat.

  We stroll down a path leading to an outdoor garden.

  “I can see why you love this place,” I say. “It’s so private, like a hidden oasis from the outside world.”

  “It’s a special space, but it’s not always this quiet,” says Owen. “R.J. lets me stop in when it’s closed to the research teams and other students. Come this way.”

  We arrive at a grassy nook where a picnic is set up. I touch my cheeks in surprise.

  “Did you do this?” I ask, eyeing the smoothies, the tower of macarons, the blanket.

  “Don’t be too impressed. It’s all store-brought.”

  “I don’t care. I am impressed.”

  We sit and sip, and this feels like a real date. I force myself to make conversation even though I’m still so wowed by everything.

  “So, what is it like to have a title?” I finally ask between bites of macarons.

  “I don’t know what it’s like not to have one,” Owen says thoughtfully. “I like to tell myself everyone has one. It’s my way of feeling less of a standout, I guess.”

  “You know, you may be right about everyone having a title. Now that I think of it, I had one a few years ago,” I say.

  He looks at me earnestly. “Really? What was it?”

  “For a time, the kids at my middle school nicknamed me Mayo.”

  “I’m sorry, what’s that?” Owen leans in with one ear facing me. “Mayo as in mayonnaise?”

  “Mayo as in little mayor. I know—not exactly clever, but my tormentor made up for that with his genius comedic timing. Extra Mayo, pleeeaze!” I repeat the taunt, and roll my eyes. I throw my head back and let out a breathy, “Ugh, I hated that. I don’t think I was all that extra … most of the time.”

  “Your outrage is understandable.” Owen dips his words in a thick sauce of faux concern.

  “Picture being labeled Mayo just for suggesting that the class take a walking tour of Appleton,” I say.

  “I am in no way massively impressed with that nickname,” he clarifies.

  “It could’ve been worse. I slipped up one day and wore my number ten soccer jersey to lunch. That entire period I braced myself for it, but no one in the cafeteria made the connection.”

  “The 10th Condiment?” guesses Owen.

  “See? You wouldn’t have let that slide,” I say, impressed.

  “Missed opportunity.” Owen shakes his head.

  “Totally.”

  A sudden thought lights up his face. “Oooh, and what if your jersey number were five?”

  “Cinco de Mayo!” we both shout at the same time in a race to beat each other to the punch line.

  Like freshly braided hair, our laughter and the summer sounds of the garden we’re in interweave neatly.

  I try not to smile too hard. “So, what about you? For someone from such an uptight place, you come across more laid-back than I’d imagine.”

  “More than my family imagines, as well.” Owen shrugs. “I guess I can’t seem to shake that tiny inner voice telling me life is short.”

  I think of his late sister and feel pretty sure he’s thinking of her, too.

  “What are you studying at Halstead this summer?” I ask him.

  “Creative writing,” he says. Cool. He wipes away invisible crumbs on his lap. “Much to my mother’s utter chagrin, I chose not to study family favorites like art history or geography.”

  “You gotta make your own path,” I say. “So, what do you like writing about?”

  “Mostly about what motivates people.” He shrugs his shoulders again. “Especially the fascinating, everyday people I meet at home and abroad.”

  “You have a way with getting folks to open up to you, so I’m sure that skill comes in handy for a writer.”

  Owen and I lock eyes, and the memory of our library chat is the inside joke pulling up the corners of our lips. After a few seconds, I’m the first to look away.

  “My life may interest the public, but I personally couldn’t be more in awe of how extraordinary so-called ordinary people are,” he says. “I guess that sounds a bit voyeuristic of me.”

  “No, I get it—we’ve all been guilty of people watching,” I say. “It’s human nature.”

  “Speaking of every
one having a story to tell …” He leans over and lightly shoulder bumps me again. A tingle goes down my arm. “Did the mayor-in-training ever manage to get her middle school to jump on board any of her ideas?”

  “As a matter of fact, the school just celebrated its fifth year of walking tours!” I do a happy dance in my spot on the blanket. “And in a few weeks, at Appleton’s annual Fam Fest, the real mayor will announce the city’s expanded place-based learning program for all schools.” Owen holds out his palm for a high five, and I meet it with mine. “High-fiving, too? Very American of you.”

  “When in Rome and all that,” he says playfully.

  “Just don’t let me catch you line-dancing at a frat party. Then I’ll know we got you.”

  “You are a cheeky one, you are,” he says.

  “What, like a chipmunk?”

  Owen drops his head and grins.

  “Talking of chipmunks, who is that darling little girl in your lock screen photo?” he asks me.

  “Oh, that’s Anaya from my Walk Me Home program.” I smile, taking out my phone. Owen looks prepared to listen thoughtfully, so I fill him in. “In my city, small kids who live within two miles of school and don’t qualify for school bus rides have to walk home alone. Either their caretakers work long hours and can’t afford aftercare, or they have elderly guardians who aren’t able to pick them up. Anaya is the first student I walked home two years ago, and because of the need, my program grew from there.”

  “That’s fantastic, Zora,” says Owen. “It sounds like you’re quite close to these children.”

  “They crack me up, they’re so fun. The program is all about making them feel heard, seen, and valued. We want them to know they’re special, but in the end, they make me feel like a star.” I shake my head in disbelief.

  “I can relate to the feeling you get from helping the little ones. I did some community work abroad with students around that age, and it changed me.”

  When Owen tells me about his outreach in parts of Europe and Africa, there’s an animated spark in his hazel eyes and he starts talking with his hands. We laugh and nibble on cookies and I love hearing about something Owen is passionate about.

  Thanks to Skye’s own Owen research online (in her attempt to prove to me that not all the news about Owen’s reputation is negative), Skye could testify that he helped build schools, teach English, and plant trees. In one picture she sent me of Owen planting trees, she noted that Owen was looking “ruggedly goodt.”

  After we’re done with the picnic, Owen perks up and says, “All right, one more stop.”

  “Another mystery destination?”

  “If you’re up for it.”

  “I’m game,” I say with a smile.

  He tells me he’ll come back later to clean up the picnic things (royal busboy) and he leads me down a different path through the trees. I didn’t realize quite how big the campus is. He turns to stop in front of me.

  “Important question,” he says. “Fairies or gnomes?”

  I laugh at the randomness of everything. “Fairies all the way, without a doubt.”

  “Perfect. I present to you, this whisper bench.”

  A long, curved bench that looks like it’s made from the same large slab of stone sits at the end of the path. If I’m not exaggerating, it can fit about twenty PATH train seats from one end to the other. The seat back is tall, and at one end of the bench is a carved decorative fairy and at the other end is a gnome.

  “Is this the one where two people sitting at either corner can hear each other whisper?” I ask, remembering what I read about the bench on Halstead’s website when I got into the program.

  “Shall we test it out?” Owen asks, and I nod enthusiastically.

  We sit at each end (I’m on the fairy side), and I wait for him to say something. I get as close to the nook as possible. When I don’t hear anything after a few seconds, I look over to Owen. He shouts directly to me:

  “Are you trying to read my lips?”

  “I can’t hear anything,” I tell him.

  “That’s because I haven’t said anything yet,” he says.

  “Well, hurry up!” I laugh.

  “Be patient,” he says.

  “Fine,” I say more to myself. I go back to tucking my ear into the nook, and I close my eyes to concentrate. And then I hear him speak, his words ricocheting off the cool, smooth stone directly into my ear.

  “I like you.”

  And just like that, the fairies score another magical coup.

  I look over at Owen where he’s seated. He checks me out at the same time. It’s like we’re both trying to figure out how two people on opposite sides of the bench can click so well without even trying. So far apart, yet so connected.

  I face the corner where the bench back meets the side wall and send my words into it.

  “I like you, too,” I say, well above a whisper.

  The slow spread of Owen’s smile tells me the message is received, loud and clear.

  Owen’s gait is confident and charismatic as he walks over to me from his corner of the whisper bench. I sit watching him, replaying the last few seconds of our exchange.

  His “I like you” echoes in my mind.

  What can he say to top that right now?

  “Permission to ‘Hold the Mayo’?” Owen asks the second he reaches me.

  I crack up even though I don’t want to ruin the moment.

  “You had to go there, did you?” I tell him, but still take his extended hand and let him pull me to my feet.

  My arms reach around the back of his neck as he wraps his around the small of my back. We rest our chins on each other’s shoulders.

  He smells like he bathed in the ocean. Not the ocean of fishermen battling punishing waves, but the ocean of tropical paradises that inspire body lotions and candles. There’s a windswept wonderfulness to him.

  Romantic hugs are so underrated. The friendly, congratulatory ones get all of the shine, but romantic hugs don’t go viral. I could write a TED Talk about how nice it is being wrapped up in Owen’s arms.

  “I promise I’ll let you go,” he says. “On the count of three—one … two … three.”

  He lifts my feet off the ground, and I let out a happy shriek.

  We both hear a laugh from down the pathway, and Owen sets my feet back on the ground. We look toward the sound, both of us clearly remembering that even though we feel like we’re in our own little world, we’re still outdoors and likely to be seen by someone.

  As slowed-down as those intimate moments felt, time is speeding up again. We need to leave this sanctuary.

  Just as we arrived, we walk out through campus in tandem, with a respectable distance apart. Not touching. But in my mind, we are still in that embrace. And from the look on Owen’s face, I can tell the same is true for him.

  OWEN CALLS me the next morning.

  “What time are you catching the train in?” he asks.

  I’m in a bathrobe carrying an armful of hair products in bottles, jars, and various other containers. I’ve just come from the shower. “I’ll probably leave here in about a half hour,” I say.

  “I can have you picked up if you’d like,” he offers.

  “Tempting,” I say. “But, no thanks.”

  Skye would do a double take if she heard me say that, but that’s just me. I don’t want to set those kinds of expectations. I do, however, agree to meet Owen after my last class.

  “There’s something else I’d like to show you,” he tells me before we hang up.

  “You think it’s the queen’s collection of tiaras this time?” Skye asks me twenty minutes later. I’m holding the phone between my shoulder and my ear while I try to zip up my crowded bag. When it won’t close, I dig in and pull out the bulky bag of unused hair products I’ve accumulated, coily hair product enthusiast that I am. No choice but to carry this bag separately.

  “Tiaras?” I ask Skye.

  “He probably wants to ask you to his brother’s weddi
ng!” She sounds exasperated by my ignorance.

  “And why would I need a tiara when I’m not the bride?”

  “You’re confusing me!” she shouts like a whiny toddler, and we both crack up at our inside joke. We never let each other forget the chatty six-year-old girl in the Walk Me Home program who just had to be right about everything. Any time her flawed information was proven false, she would shout, “You’re confusing me!”

  “It’s too early in the morning for all that cackling,” Zach says from the hallway as I step out of my room. He’s half-asleep, walking to the stairs like a zombie with only one eye open.

  “I’m surprised you’re even up,” I tell him. “Didn’t you work the late shift?”

  “Is that Zach?” Skye’s voice sounds like she’s twirling her hair. I ignore her.

  “I’m trying to go to bed an hour earlier each day,” he says while managing to climb down each step slowly. I follow him, my bag of products swishing and clanking along the way. “Starting next week, my shift will be switching to mornings.”

  “Listen to him modifying his behavior and thinking ahead,” Skye says to me. “Zach planning for success is messing me up in a major way, and I can’t.”

  “Who’s that on the phone? Ma?” Zach wants to know.

  “No, it’s Skye,” I tell him.

  Skye seems to hold her breath. It’s so quiet on her end, I can almost hear her false eyelashes batting.

  And then Zach does the strangest thing. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, he asks to speak to her.

  “Hey, Skye, quick question for you,” Zach says with Skye on speaker.

  Silence.

  “You there?” Zach looks at me like, What’s up with your girl?

  “I’m here.” Skye’s voice is echoey, like she’s backed away a few yards from the phone.

  She better not be taking off her headscarf and poking herself in the eye again. Zach clearly cannot see her, plus it’s hard to gauge whether he would even notice the difference between a glammed-out Skye and Skye with a rolled-out-of-bed look. He does not deserve the effort that Skye puts into all her relationships, romantic or not. Maybe the responsible thing would be to start steering her away from this Zach crush.