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What do I do?
I handed her my sketchpad.
She frowned but started flipping through the pages. She stopped at a drawing I had done several months ago of flowers that had bloomed in my yard. It was simple, nothing special, but she seemed drawn to it. “You’re really talented,” she said.
“Thanks. I’ve been drawing most of my life. Sketches mostly. Sometimes I use ink. I’m not into paints, I prefer the black and white look,” I explained.
“I had no idea.” She continued to look through the book, stopping now and then on a drawing that caught her eye. She held up one. “I like this.”
I had drawn a quick sketch of a pair of clasped hands starting to show signs of age. A few wrinkles there, an age spot there. “Those are my mother’s hands. She had fallen asleep on the couch. She had been up half the night with my brother Sam. He had been sick with a bad case of food poisoning. He doesn’t handle illness well, so she had to take care of him.” It felt strange telling her these things, but it felt good too.
She watched me while I spoke, her expression hard to read. “Is your brother younger?”
“Sam’s actually older than me.” When she seemed confused, I continued, “He has Down’s Syndrome. He lives in a residential facility most of the time. It allows him some degree of independence. It’s really good for him. He’s learned life skills and he’s surrounded by great people. It’s hard for my mom though. She worries about him and will always worry about him. I guess it’s a mom thing.”
“I wouldn’t know. My mother is nothing like that,” Skylar remarked a little sadly.
“I’m sorry you don’t have a mom like that. Everyone should have someone that loves them. You deserve that,” I told her.
She gave me a quick smile and shrugged. “It is what it is. But tell me more about your brother and your mom. I like hearing about them.”
I shared stories with her of growing up with my brother. I told her about the first time my parents took us to an amusement park and how Sam threw up on the roller coaster. I told her about how the neighbor kids would make fun of my brother and how I beat the crap out of the older one to shut them all up.
I told her about my dad dying and the giant hole it left in the heart of my family.
She put her arm around me, laying her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dad. He sounds like he was a wonderful person.”
“Thank you, Sky. He really was.” We stayed like that for a little while.
“Thank you for telling me about them. It’s nice to get to know you better,” she murmured. The sun was setting, and the soccer game had ended a while ago. Most of the kids had gone home. We were pretty much alone, still beneath the oak tree.
“I’m sorry if I seemed evasive before. It’s hard for me to talk about things with people. I’m so used to compartmentalizing my life, that it’s difficult to try and merge it. There’s this life I have here in Southport, then there’s my mom and brother back home. They don’t overlap. I had to keep it that way.” I opened my mouth to tell her the rest. To tell her about Tiffany, about what I still did to earn extra money. I wanted to defend my choice, to explain that it made me feel good to be able to take care of my family. That now that I had been doing it for so long, it was like an addiction I couldn’t let go of.
Maybe she’d understand.
And maybe she wouldn’t.
It was the fear of the latter that had me closing my mouth.
I took her hand, lacing our fingers together. “I’d really like to go back to spending time together. But maybe we do it differently this time,” I began to say.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I turned to look at her, our noses almost touching. I could smell the mint on her breath. I reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. “I’d like to date you properly. I want to take you out to dinner. I want to see movies together. I want you to get to know me.” She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edge. “How does that sound to you?”
She held my face in her hands. “That sounds pretty great to me.”
Then I kissed her. Kissed her the way I’d been fantasizing about for the past few months. Kissed her the way I always wanted to kiss her.
Like she was everything.
Her lips tasted salty as she parted her mouth, allowing me access. My tongue swept inside as I pulled her closer. She wrapped her arms around me, her fingers going into my hair. My hands pressed into her back, wishing I could meld with her completely. We devoured each other, unable to stop.
