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“Hey, darlin’,” she greeted with a big smile.
“Hey. What are you doing here?”
For as confused as I was, she looked calm and casual as could be. “Laeth called me earlier, asked if I wouldn’t mind keepin’ an eye on this little cutie for a bit. I told him it would be no problem. So here I am,” she finished, raising her arms out to her sides.
“But . . .why? Why didn’t he ask me?”
She shrugged, but I got the sense from the gleam in her eye that she knew more than she was letting on. “Don’t know, sweetie. You should go ask him. He’s outside.”
I moved woodenly toward the door and pulled it open.
Laeth was standing next to his car, tossing his keys in the air. “Took you long enough. Let’s get moving while there’s still sunlight.”
I closed the distance between us. “Uh... get movingwhere, exactly?”
He tossed the keys at me, and I barely managed to snap out of it fast enough to catch them. “This is your first driving lesson, Bambi.” He jerked his chin to the driver’s seat. “Hop in.”
“Good.That’s good. Now ease down on the brake—”
I accidentally slammed on the brake pedal, causing both of us to jolt forward a bit too far back from the stop sign.
I pulled my lips into a wince as I glanced in his direction. That had been the fourth time in the past half hour that I’d nearly given both of us whiplash. “Sorry.”
To his credit, Laeth had been nothing but patient the entire time we’d been at this driving lesson, calmly giving me instructions and guiding me out of his little neighborhood. “That’s okay,” Laeth had assured me. “Using just the right amount of pressure takes a little practice. But you’re doing great. Now make sure to look both ways, remember what I taught you.” I did as he’d instructed at the last intersection, waiting for the other car that had gotten there before me to go first. Then I was clear to go. “That’s it.Easedown on the gas.”
I beamed through the windshield as I lifted my foot off the brake and tried to control how hard I pressed on the gas. We didn’t go lurching forward this time, so I took that as I win.
“Better. There you go. You’re getting the hang of it. Just keep going straight on this road here.”
I did as instructed, feeling a sense of independence I’d never felt before, even when I was standing in my old bedroom with Myra, prepared to pack my things to leave that old life behind.
This felt like a crucial step in truly starting over. It felt like if I could learn to drive, the whole world would open up for me. I could goanywhere. I could do anything. With my hands on the wheel, I was experiencing the truest form of freedom.
And it was all because of Laeth.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, emotion making my throat feel tight. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this for me.”
“Don’t mention it, Bambi.”
I came to another stop sign, and this time, I managed to slow to a complete stop without risk of dislocating something. “What is that?” I asked, turning to face him in the passenger seat.
“What’s what?”
“Bambi. You’ve called me Bambi several times. What is that? Or who?”
He gave me a curious look. “You’ve never seenBambi?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what it is, so I don’t know if I’ve seen one before or not.”
Laeth smiled then, and the breath froze solid in my lungs at the sight of it. I’d seen him grin, these barely-there tilts of the corners of his mouth, but I’d never witnessed him smile like he was just then. Perfectly straight, white teeth stood out against full lips and the dark stubble that coated his square jaw. The skin around his eyes creased as his lips stretched wider than I’d ever seen them before. The storm clouds that resided in his eyes broke, a bit of light shining through.
He looked... happy, radiated with it, and it was the best look I’d ever seen on him. Which was really saying something, because the man looked good ineverything.
“It’s a kid’s movie,” he clarified, his voice pulling me out of the stupor his smile had put me in. “About a deer. And you’ve got those big, expressive doe eyes, so... Bambi.” He shrugged like what he’d just said made all the sense in the world.
I eased off the brake and started accelerating again. “Has Cash seenBambi?”
“Not yet. I love my kid, but I’m not big on cartoons. I’m still trying to find my footing with this whole parenting gig.”
