AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sang: “I promise.”
Luke: “Pinkie swear?”
Sang: “How can I pinkie swear if I’m not there to shake your pinkie?”
It was two minutes before I got another message. This time it was a picture message. There was a male hand in the shot, the pinkie lifted up, partially curled.
I thought it was funny. It took me a minute to figure out how the camera worked and to take a photo but I returned one of my pinkie in the same position.
Luke: “Your hands are small.”
Sang: “How can you tell?”
Luke: “There’s a book in the shot. It’s that Grimm’s Fairy Tales?”
I hadn’t even looked at what I put nearby. It was a Grimm book.
Sang: “Yes.”
Luke: “Which one’s your favorite?”
My mind had gone blank. I flipped through the pages to look for a title that I recognized.
Sang: “I like The Princess in Disguise. So what’s your big news?”
Luke: “We’re buying the church on your block.”
Sang: “What? Why?”
Before I got a text back, I heard a rattling at my door. I dropped the phone behind the trunk against the wall and picked up the book. I heard it clunk and I stressed, worried I might have broken it. What would Victor think if I broke the brand new phone he bought for me?
The door swung wide open. My older sister Marie poked her head in. Her dark eyes narrowed in on me.
“Mom wants you to come down for din-nur,” she cooed.
“Ugh,” I said. “What is it?”
“Beef stew.”
We’d had canned beef stew three times that week. Most of the time my mother didn't care if we showed up but when she was in a particularly annoyed mood, she tried giving us orders on when to eat, when to sleep and so on. “I don’t really want any,” my voice cracking as I spoke.
“She’ll just yell for you in a minute, anyway.”
I grumbled. She was right. “Hang on, let me close this window.” It was still open, and I was grateful. It gave me an excuse to stay there for a few minutes. Marie disappeared, not bothering to shut the door. I heard her thud down the stairs.
I did close the window but I checked the phone quickly before tucking it away in the attic.
Luke: “We’re opening a diner.”
That night, I was still awake at midnight when I got the last text from Victor.
Victor: “I’ll let you go to sleep.”
I was grateful for it. My thumbs tingled. Luke had told me about his uncle who wanted to open up a restaurant, so they were going to do a diner and use the church building. He sounded excited about it but soon had to go to eat dinner, too. Gabriel wanted to talk about what I was going to wear to registration and was telling me about the school building being a drab box with windows. Victor asked when my birthday was.
Sang: “October.”
Victor: “Mine’s in January.”
The next morning, I was out the door the moment my dad took off to go to work. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, but I was grateful since there weren’t any nightmares. I stole down to the garage, taking the plug for the phone. I charged it from the inside of the shed where I was shielded from view. It took only fifteen minutes. When it was filled, I hid the plug and pocketed the phone, heading for the woods again.
I should have been tired since I hadn’t slept but the air was so fresh and I felt really good. I was only wearing some sandals this time, with a short green cotton skirt and a thin yellow hoodie with three quarter sleeves and a front pocket. I had my hair brushed out, pulling up my hair in a neater twist with my clip but left two locks on either side of my face tucked behind my ears. I thought it framed my face better. I giggled at myself that morning in the bathroom for being concerned with my looks now. I always thought other girls at school were silly to spend so much time fixing their hair and makeup for school classes. A week ago, I wouldn’t have cared how I looked.
I tested my voice as I walked. Since I was able to rest it, I could speak softly but it started to crack if I talked at a normal level. I was hopeful by the time Silas came around it would be even better. I didn’t want him wondering what happened.
I had the phone tucked into my pocket as I walked. I fiddled with it in my hands as I took the shortcut through the woods. When Luke talked about his plans to turn the church into a diner, I wanted to check it out before it all changed.
If it wasn’t for the large cross over the door, the building might have looked like any old of utility building. The windows were maybe a couple of feet long and narrow along the side. The large white double front doors were plain, clean cut. The metal siding was a bland beige. Still, the building looked clean. There was a large blue kid jungle gym and a swing set nearby. The grass around it was a little high. I climbed onto the landing of the gym set, sitting on it and swinging my feet off of the edge as I tried to picture the place as a diner. The parking lot was gravel but still very usable. The small attempt at a border garden around the front had a few stick trees and dead bushes. It would take a lot of work to make it look attractive.
I felt the phone in my pocket vibrating and it tickled. Who was up this early?
Luke: “What’s your favorite breakfast?”
I smiled to myself, thinking about the answer. It was silly but it wasn’t embarrassing. Would he think I was childish?
Sang: “Chocolate chip pancakes.”
“With syrup?” a voice asked behind me.
Startled, I twisted myself, nearing falling off the ledge and I reached out to the pole support to hold myself up. On the ground behind me was a guy with blond hair so long it almost touched his shoulders. Most of it was pulled back into a loose ponytail behind his head. Several locks hung around his ears and in his face. He was wearing dark blue Levi jeans, black flip flops and a white button up shirt with the collar looking rumpled. The top three buttons were undone so I could see halfway down his chest in the opening. The bottom button was undone as well. I wondered why he bothered with the shirt at all. His skin was only a smidgen darker than my own pale skin. His eyes were brown, striking against his light hair and features. He had high cheekbones and he had a strong chin. With all the guys I had met so far, if I had to pick out which one would be the most popular with girls, he would have beaten them all by miles. I could easily imagine him being a model.
I knew my mouth was hanging open and I quickly closed it, trying to process his question. Did I hear him right? I swallowed to make sure my voice would work. “Luke?”
He put his hand to his waist and made the smallest of bows, a wide smile on his face. “In the flesh.” He stood up and reached for a rung on the monkey bars, picking up his feet to hang from it. I could see his belly button when he did it and the defined muscles of his abdomen. He wasn’t as cut as Nathan but he was clearly strong. “What do you think? Can you see it as a diner?” he asked.
I looked toward the church, tilting my head. “I think it depends on what the inside looks like.”
“Not judging the book by the cover, huh?” he smiled and then crossed the monkey bars, swinging his body as he did, until he could put his feet on the platform I was sitting on. “We have to get rid of the gym set though,” he said. “Insurance would kill us if we kept it.”
“That’s a shame,” I said. “Would have been a good way to bring in parents with kids.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s going on fall now but I thought about setting up a patio up front. Improving the size of the garden a little maybe?”
The yard of the church was at least an acre. It sat right on the corner where the highway met the neighborhood road. The neighborhood homes were tucked behind a row of evergreen trees so there was some separation and the neighbors probably wouldn’t notice or hear the traffic to the diner. The would-be diner had easy access to a fairly busy road and no competition within miles. “What made you guys want to start a diner?”
“It’s what my uncle wants to do,” he sa
id. He leaned back against a pole, looking at me with those dark eyes. They were playful, like he wanted to laugh, and he was just waiting for the joke. “He was working with a partner and the partner is kicking him out. So he’s starting his own place.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. He looked confused. “I mean it’s too bad that his partner wanted to split up. Were they friends?”
“I think when they started,” he said. He moved away from the post and leaned toward me. “So you want to see it?”
I tilted my head at him, an eyebrow going up.
“The inside?”
I smiled. Exploring? Of course. “Yes.”
He jumped down from the platform. The scent of something sweet came from him as he passed me. He moved around in front of me and held up his arms until his hands were on the outside of my thighs. From the angle I was sitting, I could see the muscle tone in his arm flexing. His eyes focused directly into mine.
“Let’s go.”
