An Unexpected Gift (Insta-Spark)

“I-I like to sketch. Paint with watercolors.” She shrugged. “I’m not very good, but I like doing it.”

“You’re probably amazing.”

“Why would you say that?”

It was my turn to shrug. “No idea—a feeling, I suppose. I think you’d be amazing at anything you did.”

Her gaze skittered away and I knew I was right. No one asked, and she never talked about it. It was something private. But she had told me.

“What do you sketch?”

“I take walks and sketch animals in the woods. Sometimes the sunsets. I just enjoy it.”

“You’d love it where I live. There is so much beauty, you’d be sketching all the time.”

She offered me a small smile, her gaze unfocused as she looked past my shoulder into the night. I wasn’t sure why I’d said that, but for some reason, I wanted her to know about the beauty of the place I called home.

"Do you have, um, a girlfriend?" she asked, looking at me bashfully from under her eyelashes. Then as if she realized what the answer to that question might be, she started to withdraw her hands from mine.

"No," I hastened to assure her, holding on to her fingers. "I'm, ah, not so good with…girls. Um, women. I mean, I've had them. Girlfriends, I mean. A few. But, yeah, um. No. No girlfriend." I huffed out a sigh. "The shyness I suffered from in my youth has never completely gone away. I have trouble talking at times."

God, I was lame.

"Seems to me you do okay. You're talking to me."

"You're different, somehow," I murmured. "You make it easy to talk to you."

The blush I found so charming appeared again. "Thank you."

I squeezed her hand.

“Tell me more about your home,” she asked.

“I live in a log cabin. A family had bought it as a holiday place, then grew tired of it. I saw it one day when I was traveling and fell in love with it. I bought it and spent a year adding on to it, building my workshop and making it my own.”

“You were traveling?”

I stared out the window, lost in thought. “I knew my life was never going to satisfy my parents. After I left school, I knew I didn’t want a nine-to-five job. I had secretly been taking woodworking courses, and I knew that was what I wanted to do. I left home and traveled, learning more and more about antiques and restoration. I was in Nova Scotia when I saw the house.” I shrugged. “Walking up the driveway felt like coming home to me, and I stayed.”

“That’s amazing.”

"My favorite time of day is spent sitting on my porch watching the sun set over the water," I offered quietly. "It's so peaceful. I love living there."

"Sounds pretty good to me."

I snorted. "According to my father, it's a waste."

She lifted one shoulder dismissively. "It's not his life. He lives his life how he likes. You're entitled to live yours. You don’t owe them anything. You only owe your life to yourself."

Her words hit me.

Unassuming. Direct.

My life.

Not his.

I stared at her in shock at the simple clarity of her statement.