by Rob Jones
“Anything that I want?”
“Anything,” Ethan confirmed as he waved his arm to gesture to Roman that nothing was off limits.
“That goes for you as well, Zoe.”
“Well, we appreciate your generosity, but that will not be necessary.” Zoe adjusted her purse strap.
“Trust me, it’s not a problem at all. I want to use my powers for good, you know, to bring a smile to good people’s hearts and make their day a little more delightful, so please don’t rob me, Roman, or yourself of this opportunity.”
Zoe smiled. “You are too much. I bet you always get your way with that deceiving charm of yours.”
“Why yes I do, but like I said, I only use my powers for good.” Ethan returned a smile.
“I have a sneaking suspicion that God may have placed you in my life for a specific reason. Hmm.” She ceased a moment with her head tilted. “Maybe God wants it to be my personal duty to be praying for you and to show you some tough love.”
“It seems as though everyone wants to pray for me these days. Go ahead and do the Lord’s work, angel cake. Heaven and all the angels know that I need all the prayers that I can get.” Ethan pressed his palms together.
“Angel cake? Once again, my name is Zoe. Don’t mistake me for one of your mindless groupies.”
“No offense, angel cake, it’s a term of endearment. I think the name fits you perfectly. You’re incredibly delightful, your beauty is otherworldly, and your personality is just dripping with a glaze of sweetness. Jeez, just looking at you I’m getting a sugar rush as we speak. That name is totally you. Just let it sit with you for a while.” He looked at the time on his cell phone.
“Listen, I will be getting off here shortly, and if you can stick around I would love to take you both out to celebrate Roman’s birthday.”
Zoe’s eyebrows rose, thinking that he would do just about anything and use anyone to try and get what he wanted.
“Roman, have you experienced downtown on Broadway?”
“No, not yet.”
“You would love it, seeing the street musicians, the legendary venues, and a statue of Elvis. I will show you some of Nashville’s best kept secrets and then afterward I will take you to the Hard Rock Café where the misinformed tourists love to go.”
“Nah, we’re good,” Zoe intervened.
“Ah, come on, sis, that would be such a boss birthday present,” Roman pleaded with clasped hands.
“Ah, come on, sis,” Ethan mimicked Roman.
“Roman, you know that Mom and Dad already have made dinner plans for your birthday, so downtown is going to have to wait.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I completely forgot about the dinner.” Roman’s gaze was as grim as a rainy day in October.
“I will take you downtown this weekend, I promise,” Zoe reinforced.
“Well, at least take me up on the discount, guys. I want your special day to be as cool as you are, Roman.” Ethan extended his fist toward Roman to give him a fist bump.
“Awesome. I’m going to go look around for some more cool gear,” Roman said.
“Oh my, there he is!” Three girls that were scantily dressed with salacious eyes walked in the store. “Look at that man candy, girls, mm, mm, mm. I can devour that all night long, he is the flame.”
They studied Ethan slowly, sultry, and intentionally as they walked toward him and Zoe.
“Excuse me, but you look so familiar to me. I believe that we have met before at some campus party. Your name wouldn’t be Blake by any chance, would it?” The leggy, slender blonde with the baby blue eyes, fair skin, and a Cupid’s bow mouth asked with a flirtatious smile.
“Yes, it is, but I’m sure that we have never met before. I could never forget a face that is as hypnotic and mesmerizing as yours.”
“Oh, I am so embarrassed. I’m sorry, I know that we have never met before. I just wanted an excuse to meet you because you are smolderingly hot. I can’t believe that your name is Blake. What are the odds?” Her face became a rose color.
Zoe gripped the strap of her purse, appalled by how the blonde was throwing herself and displaying cheap affection toward Ethan, devaluing and misrepresenting her self-worth. No wonder he had such a god complex and thought that the world revolved around him. Everyone had helped to create that world around him, feeding and catering to his appetites. So pathetic. His charisma was a double-edged sword that she refused to fall victim to. She would not be shackled and seized by the strength of his personality. But she couldn’t help wondering why she was feeling like a jealous girlfriend right now. She became so vexed and agitated by those girls’ behavior, by the attention they were giving him, and even more by the attention that he was showing them, especially that blonde Barbie doll.
If that’s the type of girl that arrogated his attention, he was far shallower than she’d thought. She couldn’t care less about who was interested in him, or how he could go for someone like that. He wasn’t her man and would never be her man, and yet she could feel her heart racing as though it was being chased by foolish anger and pride.
How dare they just barge right in and interrupt the conversation that she and Ethan were having? How could that blonde Barbie doll just verbally push her out of the way as if she wasn’t even there? What did she look like, a freaking mirage? The blonde was nothing but a vacant attention grabber.
“Why didn’t you just ask him for help if you wanted to meet him? That would have been the more adult thing to do.” The words automatically flew out of Zoe’s mouth without warning.
“Oh, I didn’t know that you worked here. That makes total sense, fine as you are. I’m sure that you could get anyone to buy anything from you. Lord knows that I would buy any and everything in this store just to get to you,” the leggy blonde said.
“Jeez.” Zoe pursed her lips.
“I am truly flattered. I will be more than happy to assist you in any way that I can in one moment. I just need a minute with my girlfriend.” Ethan placed his arm around Zoe. Her head shot up at him, and then she offered a smug look toward the girls.
“Oh, okay, but please don’t make us wait too long, hot boy. By the way, my name is Chasity,” she said, flashing an ‘I want to know you better’ smile.
“I don’t recall him asking your name, Chasity.” Zoe’s words were laced with annoyance.
Chasity blew her a kiss with a look of contempt.
“I hope that you didn’t mind me using you as a buffer. This kind of thing happens to me more than I care to talk about, but it’s part of the gig.”
“It was harmless, totally fine.” She liked it a little more than she was willing to admit.
“Besides, it’s only a matter of time before I can call you my girlfriend officially. It’s inevitable.” He licked his lips slowly like he was savoring something sweet.
“Is that so?”
“Affirmative”
“I admire your persistence, but you need to wake up, dream boy. You are seriously delusional and everything that I’m not looking for in a man. You’re arrogant, pretentious, and a womanizer. I also heard that you drink like a fish. You only care about yourself, and you are a womanizer.”
“You already mentioned that.”
“Oh well, it’s true. The bottom line is that I’m in school and I don’t have time to commit to a relationship at this point in my life anyway. Plus you’re just not boyfriend material. Don’t get me wrong, you’re cool, charming, you have moments of being a decent human being, like offering us your discount, which was really cool. Again, thank you for the gesture.”
“You know that I’m not buying that.”
“Seriously, we are thankful for your gesture.”
“No, I mean that you think I’m not what you are looking for in a man. I assure you I am.” Ethan approached Zoe, took her left hand in his and looked earnestly and directly into her eyes as though he was looking right through her.
“I am everything that you are looking for in a man and so much more.
”
Zoe’s eyes dilated, her knees buckled, and her heart began to beat like a hammer. Emotions thundered through her with the electricity that could light up a city.
“Ro, Ro, Roman, we need to go. Have you found what you were looking for?” Zoe stammered, never taking her eyes off Ethan.
“I have to see other customers, I’m going to let my assistant Leslie know that all of your purchases will go on my discount. Oh, by the way, while you are lying in your bed contemplating us, don’t forget to pray for me.” Ethan winked, smiled, and walked away, leaving Zoe red-faced and dazed.
Chapter Seven
Ethan
“I am in such a festive mood. I can’t wait to surprise Nana with the pink lilies and candy I got for her so that she can be in a festive mood as well. I can’t wait to see her face when she lays her eyes on these puppies.”
Ethan loved to surprise Nana with all different kinds of flowers, Lenten roses, irises, purple coneflowers, and Shasta daisies. He loved to see her reactions whenever he came in the house with flowers and candy. She told him that the fragrance of a flower was powerful, that it put her in a good place, a positive place. She thought that each flower had its own way of communicating to an individual. Just like how people talked to flowers and plants and they responded positively, they also talked to people and made them respond in a certain way.
She also believed that people were, unknowingly, having dialogue with them. She was fully convinced that some flowers soothed and helped people relieve stress, some flowers gave a burst of unexpected energy, while others helped people to be creative and innovative. Ethan had his doubts about her theories, but he kept orchids around just in case her creative theory was true.
Ethan walked out to the mall’s parking lot at an eager pace, humming a melody that was running through his thoughts. He noticed an oval-shaped elderly lady who had a face that put him in mind of Cicely Tyson in her later years. She was trying to pick up her keys that she had dropped on the ground.
“Let me get those for you, ma’am.” He bent over to pick up her keys. “There you go, beautiful.”
“Thank you, young man. You are a gentleman and a scholar.” She had a deep, sweet southern drawl that made him think of sitting on the front porch while sipping on some iced tea from a mason jar on a hot sunny day in July.
“I’ve been called many things, but a scholar is not one of them ma’am.”
She responded with a smile.
“Oh my, those are some lovely lilies that you have there. She must be an incredibly special lady.” She fidgeted while trying to put her keys in a little beige worn-out purse. “And a box of candy too. My, my, who said that chivalry is dead? I see it’s alive and well right before my southern brown eyes. Oh, how I remember my sweet Terry used to bring me flowers for just no reason at all. I would ask him what was the occasion, and he would just simply say, ‘They needed sunshine, and since you are my sunshine that always brightens up my day, I reckon that you could do the same for these.’”
She fell silent with a blank stare as her eyes drifted over him as if she had been transported back to that glorious moment. Another smile graced her face.
“Oh my, that was many, many silver moons ago.”
“Terry sounds like a hopeless romantic.”
“Yes, he sure was, young man. How I miss him something awful. Today would have been our forty-seventh anniversary. Forty-seventh anniversary,” she repeated with a wounded voice. She sighed and shook her head slowly as if to try to shake free and extract herself from a web of a painful memory.
“This is also the day that he crossed over the Jordan, into Abraham’s bosom.”
“What? You mean that he died on your anniversary?”
Beep, beep, beep, sounded a car horn. “Ooh wee, I would drink every single ounce of your bath water, you sexy dirty beast, thank you for your service!” Chasity and the girls who approached Ethan at the mall screamed at him as they drove by. His posture slumped with embarrassment. The elderly lady went on as if nothing had happened.
“Yes, my dear Terry was in a car accident. He was on his way home from work to pick me up for dinner to celebrate our thirty-first anniversary.” Her voice became shaky. “They said that something was in the middle of the road, probably a deer that made him swerve off the road into a tree.”
A lady passed them by and yelled at her little boy with her arms full of bags. “Luke, you better stop running across this parking lot before I tan that backside!”
“But that’s not what killed my dear Terry, and this is what hurts the most, and still gets me vexed. He was drinking from his favorite flask, which I told him time and time again not to drink and drive, but my dear Terry thought that he was indestructible.” Her eyes enlarged. “The impact from hitting the tree deployed the airbag and caused the flask that he was drinking from to crush his larynx.” She paused, her breath quivering. “And he choked to death. If he didn’t have that flask, my dear Terry would be alive today.”
Ethan, immersed in uncomfortable sympathy and helplessness, placed his arm around her.
“I’m so sorry.” She fiddled with the strap of her purse. “I didn’t mean to burden you with my past. Just seeing those lovely lilies reminded me of my dear Terry.”
“Oh please, no apology is necessary.” He intensified his embrace. “Don’t you dare feel bad about unloading on me. I am humbled and honored that you would confide in me, and share something so personal and dear to you.”
He couldn’t help but to think of his nana, and how she must have experienced moments like this, missing, longing, and aching for her dear Joseph, reminiscing on the life that they shared, feeling the echoes of their first kiss, reverberations of their first embrace, even the rumblings of their first argument, wishing she could have just one more of each of them. She talked about him every now and then, but for the most part she locked him and their memories away deep in her heart, and only retrieved them when an occasion called for them, like an old movie, certain smells, or a passage in the Bible, those meaningful junctures reminding her that she was once loved deeply and completely.
“I know that life can sometimes hand us some cruel moments, having us feeling derelict and lost, but like my nana always says, things are not always as they seem. Behind the dark clouds of a bitter providence lies the shining face of a loving God who will part those clouds and bring us a brighter day than before. She’s always had a positive outlook on the direst situations.”
Ethan placed the lilies in her hands. He clasped his hands around hers to convey his empathy for her. Taken aback by the kind gesture, moisture surfaced in her eyes as she trembled and stuttered.
“You-you, you are so very sweet and I am flattered that you would want to part with these beautiful lilies and give them to an old lady like me, but I just cannot accept these, dear. They are for your lovely girl.”
“Please, please take them. I’m going to pick up some more anyway.” He gestured with his hands up and palms out toward her, as if to say keep them.
“Besides, they need sunshine, and you are definitely my sunshine.
***
Zoe
“Sis, thank you so much for my birthday presents. You are by far the best sister ever. I love you.” Roman and Zoe walked toward the car after leaving the mall. “I’m going to look like a boss in this gear.”
“I love you too, and you are more than welcome, rocker. Oh sugars, I can’t believe that I called you that. That freaking Ethan, ugh, now he has got me talking just like him.” Zoe looked up and sighed while Roman laughed. She retrieved her keys from her purse and clicked the unlock icon on her car remote. They both slid into the car.
“Hey, maybe Ethan can go with us downtown this weekend. That would be fun.” Roman got out his phone to check his messages.
“Yeah, that would be a riot,” she said with an uneven smile.
Looking through her review mirror as she was about to back out of the parking lot, Zoe observed Ethan giving an elderly lad
y flowers and how it elicited a smile of elation on the elderly lady’s face. “What?” She was jarred into a flummox from watching the display of a true, sincere human act of kindness. Was she really witnessing this ego-driven, self-absorbed, and unapologetic presumptuous man being transformed right before her very eyes? She felt a disarming in her heart for Ethan as she saw him giving the elderly lady an intentional and comforting hug. Without her permission she became aware of her defenses growing weaker, growing lifeless, no longer a threat to his formidable attitude. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the cracks began to surface in her delicate armor, but she could not disclose them to him, not now, no matter how difficult it may be.
Long ago she took her heart in hand and promised to never let it experience betrayal or hurt again. She vowed to never let it again be swept away by love’s undercurrents, where she encountered the wreckage of her tattered heart. The next time she surrendered her heart to love, it would be for love, and not for the idea of being in love, and definitely not for fear of never finding love.
Swiftly she turned back around in her seat, stiffened, and gripped the steering wheel. She realized that her softening for Ethan was becoming a real thing, and a real inconvenience.
“No, no, no, Zoe, don’t relinquish, don’t let your heart acquiesce to one act of kindness. You know who he really is. Or do I?” she muttered.
“Are you okay, sis?”
She looked at Roman. “Oh yes, I just thought I saw something that was too good to be true, that’s all.” She drove away in an uncertain manner.
Chapter Eight
Ethan
“Hey, Nana, I got a surprise for you.” Ethan entered the house, grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, hummingbird, you just made my day.” She kissed him on the cheek as she took the box of candy and lilies from him.
“The lilies needed some sunshine, and I thought of you because you are my sunshine, and you always brighten up my day.”