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She laughed at me. Amid her laughter a knock came on the door, and I practically jumped out of my skin. I flew into the seat where my grungy bag was, and, of course, I sat on it like an idiot. I was probably going to have to buy a new cell phone after this, and my keys were poking my butt.
Then Jonah appeared. We locked eyes immediately. His green jewels were as bright as I remembered them, his smile just as warm. Maybe his teeth were a tad whiter. Someone had obviously been using some teeth whitening strips or maybe he’d visited his dentist parents recently, but all the same, it was beautiful. He was beautiful. He wasn’t necessarily the most physically attractive man ever, though he was handsome. It was his aura.
His eyes were assessing me. I tucked some of my hair behind my ear. Grandma had made me wear it down and styled. Which meant I spritzed some curling spray in it.
He looked well in his khakis and dark blue button-up, accented with a stethoscope. I smiled at the stethoscope, thinking about how many times he had listened to my heart with the one he owned long ago. He used to say, “I’ve never heard anything more beautiful than the sound of your heart.” Then he would put his stethoscope aside and rest his head on my chest. I would stroke his hair until he fell asleep to the sound of my heart beating loudly for him.
“Ariana,” he said as if he was catching his breath.
“Hi,” I managed to say.
He shut the door and focused on Grandma. “Mrs. Kramer, it’s good to see you.”
Why didn’t he say that to me? Maybe he didn’t really want to see me. Maybe Grandma lied about this too. Or perhaps he still hated me for refusing him.
“Call me Kay. It’s good to see you too,” Grandma responded.
He approached. “Kay, tell me what brings you in today,” he stuttered.
Grandma narrowed her eyes at him, annoyed. “Wouldn’t you like to catch up with Ariana before we get to business?” Her tone said not to cross her and to stick with whatever plan they had hatched up.
“No . . . I mean, yes . . . I mean…” His ears burned bright. He took a deep breath in and exhaled loudly. “Wow.” He ran a hand over his thick sandy hair that feathered back neatly and turned toward me. “I’m sorry. You still get to me. I wasn’t expecting to feel like a schoolboy around you, not knowing what to say.”
I’d always loved how honest he was. I loved that I still got to him. I offered him a smile. “How are you?”
“Better now.”
What did that mean? Better now that he’d seen me? Better now that his ears weren’t red anymore? Or was he referring to his divorce? I hoped it hadn’t been overly painful for him. But if he was still the Jonah I knew, I would imagine it had been hard on him. Family meant everything to him. He had talked often of wanting a wife and children.
“I’m glad,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure what I was referring to. But that didn’t matter, I was glad he was better.
“How are you?” he responded in kind.
“I’m not really sure.” I was always more truthful with him than I wanted to be. There was something about him that brought that out.
He stepped closer. His clean scent tickled my nose and made my pulse tick up. “Anything I can help with?” he asked.
Oh, how I wished he could. I bit my lip and shook my head. “Just make sure my grandma is all right.”
He said nothing for a moment. His attention had been drawn to my lips. Did he ache as much as me to feel our lips tangled together? Did he replay the memory of our first kiss over and over in his head as much as I did? It felt like yesterday we were in his car after Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents’ house. Several years before, I had started a tradition of playing hide-and-go-seek with cars. That year, Jonah convinced me we should be a team. We had been flirting a lot, dancing on the edge of our attraction. That night, though, he acted on his feelings while we were hiding behind the grocery store. He’d been staring at me for minutes before he said, “I want to kiss you.”
It wasn’t a good idea, even though I wanted to kiss him. I knew if we kissed my world would never be the same. I tried to deter him, to keep from deepening the connection I’d already felt with him. “You can kiss me if you strip down to your underwear and make a snow angel in the parking lot,” I’d teased him, never thinking he would actually do it. But he hopped out of the car like it was on fire.
