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I know he won’t. He’s too busy saving the world. “I love you, Sam.”
“I love you too, Cor. Tell the ladies to take pictures today, okay?”
Whenever Sam is in town, which is usually only once a year these days, he comes down to the home with me. Everyone loves him, especially Shirley and Doreen.
But it’s not until I’m pushing through the doors of the home a few minutes later that I realize how odd that request was. Why would Shirley and Doreen be taking pictures?
And it’s not until I see Shirley and Diane standing just inside the front entrance in matching mauve pantsuits that I realize something’s going on.
“Cora!” Shirley exclaims. She’s the taller of the two, with hair set in a permanent dyed-red short wave. She wears thick glasses on a jeweled chain, making her eyes look slightly buggy in her lined face.
Doreen, meanwhile, is stout, with smooth brown skin and a speckling of freckles over her nose. Her hair is a close-cropped crown of silver curls and her voice is the loudest I’ve heard from a woman who hardly grazes five feet. “What took you so damn long?”
She also curses like a sailor.
I laugh. “Wow! A welcoming committee today?”
I get a whiff of nearly overpowering matching perfume from Shirley when I hug them, and while I fight back the urge to sneeze, wonder if I got my days mixed up and somehow today is the Thanksgiving Luncheon instead of next week.
But Shirley has her hands clasped beneath her chin, her smile lighting up her whole face. “Honey, we have a new volunteer this week.”
“Sure do,” Doreen says, her smile is mischievous.
I frown. “Oh!” I’m surprised—the volunteer coordinator usually has me read over the volunteer applications as they come in, and as far as I knew we hadn’t gotten anyone new in the past few weeks. “Well, that’s great. Maybe they know how to play this.”
I hold up the board game I bought at the thrift store this week. The residents don’t love change. They’re very attached to their bridge, backgammon, and scrabble. But they tolerate my occasional inclusion of new games, especially if they made them laugh.
“Date night?!” Doreen shrieks. “I don’t believe it.”
I laugh, wondering if she’d played the game with her grandkids.
“Come here, sweetie,” Shirley says. “I think our new friend is going to love it.”
Most of our volunteers are retirees, but occasionally we get one who starts young, like I did.
But nothing prepares me for the person I see when we walk into the lounge area.
There, in the midst of a heated game of backgammon with one of our male residents, is Tristan Galloway.
My stomach does a full-on summersault. If I weren’t holding onto Doreen and Shirley’s elbows, I might have fallen with the way my knees are wobbling.
Tristan looks up and abruptly stands, jostling the card table and the game.
“Hey, watch it!” The resident exclaims. He’s one of our crotchety ones, but even he shuts his mouth when he sees the way Tristan and I are staring at each other.
My heart flutters like a thousand butterflies.
“It’s not possible,” I whisper.
“He says he knows you,” Doreen whispers.
Tristan comes over to me, stopping a few feet away. “I’m here for a few weeks,” he says. “Until the New Year. Then I have to go back for a few months to wrap up the Borneo contract. But after that I can do more assignments stateside. They said they like volunteers over the holidays so—”
“What about everything you said?” I say, my heart in my throat. He looks so handsome. He’s wearing a red and white flannel, like a small-town guy and not a renowned photographer.
“Which part?” he says, coming up and taking my hands. Sparks practically fly up my skin at his touch. “The part about not regretting our kiss?”
“The part about love,” I whisper.
