As long as there are no flowers exchanged these next couple of days, no sweet words or careless whispers, no promises made and no looking at each other like we hung the moon … we should be fine and both of us should be able to walk away from this completely unscathed, not a single battle wound or commemorative scar.
“How’s that ankle holding up?” he asks, glancing down toward my foot. “Still looks a little swollen. Hope we didn’t make it worse today.”
“I took, like, ten Advil this morning so I can’t feel a thing.”
Except that kiss.
I felt the hell out of that kiss.
He smirks, half-chuckling. “You hungry? You want to go somewhere?”
He’s not ready for our “Saturday” to end just yet.
And truth be told, neither am I.
Ten
Isaiah
* * *
Saturday #6
* * *
I miss a lot of things when I’m overseas, but most of the time I try not to think about them. Out of sight, out of mind is a way of survival when you’re thousands of miles away from the comforts of home.
It’s just easier that way.
But it’s what I signed up for. There are no regrets or self-pitying moments that seep into my mind when I’m tossing and turning on the nights when it’s unbearably hot and sleep is impossible.
But last night, when I took Maritza back to her car after an afternoon of hanging around the city, dropping into coffee shops, people watching on Rodeo Drive, and catching the latest Marvel flick at my insistence, she asked me point blank if I was lonely.
Her question came out of the blue, but given what I know of this woman, randomness is kind of how she rolls.
“Clearly you’re longing for some kind of connection with someone,” she told me as I walked her to her car. “Or you wouldn’t be here, spending a week with some girl you picked up at a café.”
“Excuse me? Last I checked, you picked me up,” I told her. “And it wasn’t in a café. You fucking rear ended my car. And then you—”
“You don’t have any other friends around here?” she cut me off with a question.
“Some.”
“And your family?” she asked.
“We’re not that close these days.”
She looked at me with pity in her eyes and I shook my head, telling her not to feel sorry for me.
“I’m not a sob story,” I tell her. “My life hasn’t been ideal, sure. But you’d be doing me a disservice if you felt sorry for me.”
“Then you’re running away from something,” she said, nibbling her thumbnail as she studied me. It was dark by then, the moon reflecting in her chocolate-brown irises, her creamy complexion glowing. Everything about her was soft and ethereal and I wanted to kiss her again, but I couldn’t.
I’d kissed her enough that day, and for reasons I couldn’t comprehend.
Of course, I swore to her they were just kisses, they meant nothing. But I couldn’t explain why I kept craving them, kept finding every excuse I could to casually touch her, trailing my fingertips down her arms, brushing her dark hair out of her face, leading her by the hand when we’d cross the street.
I pull up outside her grandmother’s house just past sunset and send her a text. Today I’m picking her up—her insistence. Within minutes, the gate swings open and she strides out in a short sundress, her long legs tanned and accented in strappy sandals.
Her mouth is slicked in bright red and when our eyes meet, she smiles as wide as I’ve ever seen her smile. Reaching up, she holds her chestnut curls in place as the breeze blows at her skirt.
“Day six,” she says with a smile while she climbs into my passenger seat, her voice tinged in melancholy.
“Yep.” I shift into reverse, not wanting to dwell on the fact that after tomorrow we’re going our separate ways. “How was work?”
She wasn’t able to switch shifts with anyone today, which worked out because tonight I’m taking her stargazing at the Griffith Observatory. I’m sure she’ll say it’s romantic and I’ll insist that it’s not, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.
There’s something about feeling small that puts things into perspective for me, and no better way to do that than to gaze at billions of stars in an infinite universe.
“I lied to you last night,” I say as we head down her grandmother’s picturesque residential street.
“What?” Her attention whips to me as she adjusts her dress over her legs.
“You asked if I ever miss anything when I’m over there,” I say. “I miss Pringles. And Starbursts. And peanut butter M&Ms.”
Her fist meets my shoulder, though it hardly hurts. “Ass.”
“What?”
“I thought you were being serious.”
I chuckle, coming to a stop at a red light. “I am. I miss those things. You can’t get them over there. Not that easily anyway.”
I know there are other things I should probably miss … like the feel of soft lips, the smell of sweet perfume, the wash of contentedness I get when a beautiful girl looks at me like I’m something special. Soft things. Comforting things. Distracting things.
We don’t have those over there.
But I try not to think about that. And I try not to think about what it might feel like to be thousands of miles away from here, missing Maritza.
If the past has shown me anything, it’s that I’m a shit boyfriend. I’m terrible at communication. I’m bullheaded and rash. And I’m not quite ready to lace up my boots for the last time.
This is why I can’t go deep with her.
I can tell her that I miss candy, but I can’t tell her that I might miss her …
We pull up to the observatory forty minutes later and find a place to park.
“Stargazing, Corporal?” She laughs through her nose, shaking her head as she checks her phone, silences it, and slips it into her purse. “Like that’s not romantic.”
We get out of my car and I meet her by my dented, scratched-up bumper. “I knew you’d read into it.”
She walks beside me, arm grazing mine as the soles of her sandals pad the concrete sidewalk. “Just keep your hands to yourself and we should have ourselves a nice, non-romantic evening.”
We head inside, and I hold the door for Maritza and the couple entering behind us. They’re dressed to the nines in a navy suit and little black dress. Diamonds glint from the woman’s ears and the man presses his hand into her lower back before muttering a quick “thanks.”
We find an available telescope a few minutes later, and I stand back as Maritza crouches slightly, peering into the eyepiece.
“You have to look at the moon,” she says, waving for me to come closer. “That’s so crazy. You can see every little detail.”
I take a look for myself, though it’s exactly what I expected. Growing up, one of my brothers had a telescope. He’d use it to spy on the girls next door when they were outside sunbathing, but I actually put it to good use, checking out stars and neighboring planets as best I could.
The moon was always my favorite though.