Lovely (9 page)

One hand opens up the crumpled piece of paper while the other guides the steering wheel … 41 Jamison Street. I turn onto the quiet, tree-lined street and look at the modest houses. There are kids out drawing with chalk on the sidewalk and riding scooters, innocent, happy smiles light their faces. My eyes stop on a little boy trying to balance himself on his two-wheeled bicycle while his dad follows close behind. A smile turns up the corner of my mouth.

Dad held the helmet out to me with hardened eyes and a half-smile. “Ashton, you have to wear that helmet.”

I slammed my bike down on the sidewalk, throwing my helmet to the ground. “But, Dad, I don’t want to wear this stupid helmet … I look like an alien.”

“Well, then they’ll know where to find you when they beam down with their spaceship.”

I peer through the sunroof and up at the clear blue sky.
I miss you, Dad
.

Slowing up on the gas, I keep checking numbers until Cara’s house finally comes into view. It’s a tiny white Cape Cod with pale yellow shutters and peeling paint surrounded by overgrown bushes and a small, unkept garden with yellow sunflowers. A giant weeping willow eats up most of the front yard.

I get out of the car, stretch my legs, and crane my neck from side to side to ease the tension in my shoulders, before I walk up the cracked stone pathway leading to the front door and ring the bell. After about three minutes and no Cara, I’m thinking maybe it doesn’t work, because I see her brown Honda in the driveway. I knock loudly a couple more times and the knob eventually turns. Cara’s standing there brighter than a ball of freaking sunshine … without her glasses. My lips fall open to speak but no words come out. Her eyes are stunning.

“Are you okay?” she asks, a speck of confusion shadowing her face.

I manage to find my voice. “Yes, I’m fine. Um, you’re not wearing your glasses.”

“Correct.” She smiles. “I was just cleaning them.”

I want to say, “Well, I think you should leave them off,” but instead I say nothing.

She invites me in and when my feet enter what appears to be the living room, they’re halted. The room itself is nothing to write home about; it’s fairly plain and filled with older pieces of furniture: there’s a comfortable leather recliner with a tear, an ancient green velvet couch, a couple of side tables, a dated blue carpet, and matching curtains that hide the sun. What catches my attention are the walls—each one is covered in bookshelves from floor to ceiling, with books wedged in every nook and cranny. The only other place I’ve seen this many books is the library. It’s absolutely amazing. I make my way to the shelves and my eyes scan over each title. I see Brontë, Austin, Dickens, Shakespeare, and many others; all of the classics and way too many to count.

I can’t help but ask. “Are these all your books?”

She eyes the shelves with pride. “Yes and no. Most of them are mine, some are my sister’s, and some were my parents’.”

I continue to stare at the books. “I’m seriously impressed. The only place I’ve seen this many books is in the library. So I guess that’s why you work in there.”

“Yes,” she sighs happily, “being around what I love most. So, do you want some lemonade or something?”

“Sure.” I follow her into the kitchen, and again, can’t help but watch her. Everything she does is so deliberate, so effortless. The way she walks, her legs traveling in a lazy stroll along the floor, her dress swaying to and fro with her movement. The way her fingers play with her curls, and even the way she smiles.
Stop torturing yourself. She’s not your type
.

Cara pulls two glasses from the cabinet and sets them down on the kitchen counter, wanders over to the freezer and starts clinking ice cubes. “Ice or no ice?”

“Ice, please.”

She grabs the pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Nah, I’m okay, thanks.”

She fills both glasses, puts the pitcher in the fridge and leans back against the counter. “Okay, so this is the sensory poem, right?”

“Yes. Professor Travinski didn’t give us much direction though. He just said he wants us to write a poem that touches on at least two of the five senses in some way. He doesn’t care about length or style, just that it meets those criteria.”

“Come on.” She takes both of our glasses and brings them into the living room, grabs two coasters and places them down on the coffee table, and plops down on the couch.

Leaning forward, she grabs her glass to take a sip of lemonade and the curve of her breast is exposed. It catches my eye, but I divert my attention elsewhere as casually as I can manage. Somehow it feels very wrong to look at her like that, although I
really
want to.

She thinks for a moment, then pops up suddenly and saunters over to the bookshelf. I watch her walking slowly, her eyes rolling over each book, her fingers touching spine after spine, pulling specific ones down. She comes back, kicks off her sandals and plunks herself down on the floor with her legs crossed.

She adjusts her glasses and flips through one of the books, her eyes filled with excitement. “Okay, so when you think about a poem, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”

“The first thing?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, let me first say that I realize I’m a senior in college. Now that I’ve got that out of the way … Dr. Seuss,” I say proudly, bracing myself for her response. “I grew up on Seuss. My mom used to read to Colt and I and she’d use different voices which always made us laugh. I think we still have all his books in the basement somewhere. She’s pretty sentimental.”

Cara sits up straight and clasps her hands in her lap. “‘I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am. Would you eat them in a box? Would you eat them with your socks?’”

I imitate a buzzing noise with my voice. “WRONG.”

“What?” she asks confused, taking a sip of her lemonade.

“‘Would you eat them with your socks?’ And you call yourself a poet?!” I make a tsking sound with my teeth. “I don’t think so. It’s ‘would you eat them with a
fox
?’”

She puts her glass down and raises her hands in defeat. “Okay, okay, you win. I guess you did read a
lot
of Dr. Seuss as a child. So, now that you’re in the right mindset, if I asked you to make a poem up right now, what would it be?”

I sit there in silence, trying to pull something out of my poetry-less brain. “I went to the zoo … and you did too … and now I’m blue.”

She explodes with laughter, clutching her belly and practically rolling on the ground.

I feel my ears heat from sheer embarrassment and scratch the back of my neck. “Are you laughing at me?”

She puts her hand to her mouth and tries to quell the laughter. “No, but you’ve been brainwashed by Dr. Seuss.”

I pick at the blue carpet, realizing this is my one weakness. “Well, poetry’s just not my thing.”

She raises a hand in gesture. “Poetry is just … whatever comes to mind, whatever you feel … so
you
just wrote a poem about the zoo.” She smiles and clinks her glass against mine. “See, everyone is a poet. Dr. Seuss, however unconventional with his made up words, was still a poet.”

I take a sip of lemonade, the tart flavor awakening my taste buds. “What about you? You mentioned you’ve written some poetry. I’m assuming it’s not of the rhyming nature?”

“Poetry doesn’t always need to rhyme,” she continues. “In fact, some of the best poetry doesn’t rhyme at all. You won’t find any rhyming in my poetry either.”

“Okay, well, then let’s hear something.”

“Now?” she asks, her cheeks a soft pink.

“Why not? I bared my soul.”

She places her glass down on a coaster, taking a thread of hair between her fingers. Her knees are now pulled up to her chest, her head resting on them. The light is gone from her face.

“Who knows what’s hidden inside?

What’s trapped beneath the surface of a smile

Scratching and clawing to escape

I scream but no one hears

There is desperation

Yet there is no escape

There is only suffocation”

My eyes are glued to the sudden hardness in the gold flecks of her eyes, the severity in her jaw, and the stiffness in her limbs as the tortured words tumble from her mouth. I’m left speechless, trying to decipher the meaning of words I can only interpret as an overwhelming amount of pain and sadness. My insides suddenly twist and it feels like my organs are being stretched … there’s something about her words that connect with me on some deeper level. I want to reach out for her, to take her in my arms and tell her that I understand.

“Ash?”

I hear her voice call to me, pulling me from my thoughts, shaking off the waywardness of my mind. “Jesus, Cara. I don’t know what to say. When did you write that?”

She comes back from wherever she was, her eyes staring down at the blue shag rug. “A long time ago.”

I want to ask more but suddenly feel it’s not my place. “Well, it’s poetic to say the least. Puts mine to shame.”

She eyes me through those circles of glass and gives me a weak smile. “No, I really liked your poem, and besides, that’s what makes it so great, right? Everyone has something different inside of them to share with the world, you just have to dig deep and find it.”

Somehow with those last words, I want to tell her to heed her own advice. The more time I spend with Cara, the more I realize she has a lot to share with the world. She can’t see it, though, and that makes me sad.

“I’m kind of hungry.” She pushes herself from the carpet with one hand and lifts her long, smooth legs up off the floor. “I made homemade brownies and they’re still warm; do you want one?”

“Homemade? Uh, yeah, I’m all over them.”

She laughs as she searches the drawer for a knife. “I love to bake. I didn’t grow up in one of those homes where you’d walk in and immediately be hit with an explosion of delicious smells. My mom barely ever cooked or baked, so Nadine and I had to fend for ourselves a lot and baking and I sort of developed a mutual love of one another.”

I glance around the kitchen as I pull out one of the two chairs at the table. It strikes me as odd to have such a small table and my heart suddenly aches for her and Nadine. “I can work some magic in the kitchen, too. I do some baking as well, and I actually make a pretty mean pancake.”

She drops her lashes in a wink. “Make me a pancake sometime; I’ll be the judge of that.”

Our eyes meet briefly. “You’re on. So … how long have you and your sister lived here?”

“We were living in Colorado,” she pauses mid-sentence, “but my sister got a really good nursing job here. I like it much better. This place has a lot more space than our last one and it’s close to the college.”

Cara breaks off a piece of the fudge brownie, melted chocolate dripping onto her finger. My eyes widen as she surrounds it with her lips, sliding her finger in and out of her mouth, licking the chocolate clean off. I suddenly can’t breathe.

She regards me curiously from underneath a pile of thick, long lashes. “Ash? You alright?”

Holy hell
. My mouth is hanging open while I stare longingly at her finger. I hope I’m not drooling.

“Ash?” she says again.

Yeah. I’m fine. Shit, except I’m hard. I shift in my chair. A distraction is definitely a necessity at this point. “So … what kind of nurse is she?”

“She works on the Oncology floor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.”

My face falls instantly. Being with Cara made me forget all about Colt until I heard “Oncology.” I should be home with Colt, not chasing a girl. Guilt suddenly consumes me.

Cara eyes soften as she places the brownies on a plate and wipes her fingers with a napkin. “What’s wrong?”

What’s the matter with me
? For a couple of minutes I actually forgot about my brother. I try and shake it off, picking up a brownie and taking a quick bite. “Nothing.”

She walks around the table and stands in front of me. “What is it? You look really pale all of a sudden.”

“It’s just that …” I hesitate, unsure whether I want to tell her, but then it’s almost as if I feel a hand at my back pushing me to do so. “It’s my brother; he’s been having these headaches and they need to do some tests to make sure it’s nothing serious.”

My head drops and I feel her move closer to me, her hand reaching out to fold over mine. A deep sigh leaves my chest, as if that simple touch helped me release something, the something that’s always trying to be strong for everyone else. I take in our hands touching and my eyes make their way back to hers.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is laden with sincerity, as are her eyes. “It sounds like there’s a good chance, though, that it could be nothing, right? Plus, your brother is young and healthy, yes?”

Here she is comforting me when both her parents are gone.

“Yeah,” I say, feeling a knot in my throat. My father was young and healthy, too, but that didn’t stop God from taking him before we were ready.

She gives my hand a tiny squeeze. “If you want, you could always talk to my sister if you think it would help.”

“Thanks.”

She pulls her hand away and walks over to the sink. Even though her hand’s no longer on mine, I still feel her touch lingering there.

I hear the faucet turn on and look up to watch her scrub the brownie plate, her head lifting over her shoulder.

“If you want to head out,” she says, “I understand.”

I stare directly into the endless stream of brown in her eyes that hypnotize me even from a distance. “No, I … I like being here.”

Her eyelids flutter and she smiles as if my words made her day. “Okay.”

We leave the kitchen and make our way back to the living room, planting ourselves on the rug again.

“So who’s your favorite poet?” I question, wanting to know more about this intriguing girl before me.

“That’s easy. Shakespeare.”

“Why him?” I ask with interest.

“I don’t know really. He just had a way with words and was such a romantic soul.” She pauses and stares at the pale blue curtains, dips of light finally entering the room. “‘Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move his aides, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.’”