AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hm…” she says, nipping in her lower lip and reaching for the hearing aid case. She turns it in her palm and then holds it out to me. “Things are not always as they seem, are they?”
“Sometimes very far from it.” When I accept the case, our fingertips touch. I remember how she felt in my arms.
“All those years, I thought you were too important and busy to talk to a person like me,” she says.
“A person like you? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Average.”
Here I am, feeling helpless because she’s angelic—and she thinks she’s average?
If she was mediocre, I would not be lingering here at her desk when I have a thousand other things I should be doing.
If she was typical, I would not feel—right this instant—like I can’t tear my eyes away from her.
She’s not mediocre.
She’s not typical.
She’s captivating.
“You think too little of yourself,” I say.
Her lip hitches up at one side. “My grandmother told me that once. She wants me to stay in the castle, in the Queen’s Room, so I know I’m ‘worth all the sweet things in life.’ My grandmother adored sweetness. Not literally, though she did heap so much sugar into her tea. But I mean the actual, real sweet things in life.”
Now I’m not only captivated by her image. I’m captivated by her words.
My phone beeps.
I ignore it. “Like what?”
“Like the things that make life worth living. Not big things. I mean little things. The things that, when you get to your deathbed, and you look back, you remember, and you smile about.”
“Like…?”
“You know… a moment with a laughing child. A really stunning sunset, with red and fuchsia and peach. The smell of rain on a summer lawn. The taste of an apple pie that has just the right amount of cinnamon in it.” She pinches her fingers to show me. “Talking to someone and really understanding them—really getting them. Pink roses, green paths… The moment when you know something, in your heart, for no reason.”
I’m stunned.
The list stirs something in me.
My mother told me that I was rushing around too much.
Have I been so focused on earning money that I’ve let these little moments pass me by?
What will I remember when I’m on my deathbed?
Will I remember yet another Wednesday morning of hammering away on my computer’s keyboard?
Probably not.
I’ve done that version of Wednesday countless times.
As I search my mind, I can’t find even one memorable moment in that mass of hours logged at my desk, hustling for money.
Hustling to get ahead.
What I might remember is that I stood across from a beautiful woman in the Shipping Department. That I wanted to kiss her but failed.
