“I…you didn’t…uh…thank you.” Her cheeks blaze red. “That was sweet.”
When she smiles, wide and unencumbered by her shyness, I’m once again yanked into her brightness. Before I can consider the repercussions of my actions, I scribble my phone number on her cup.
I hold the cup up to her and her soft fingers brush against mine as she takes it. And much too soon, she’s pulling away.
“I guess I’ll see you Friday,” she murmurs.
I think about my number on her cup. “Or you could call me and we could see each other sooner. I don’t work tomorrow night. I could take you out to dinner or something.”
Before she can open her mouth to respond, Haley is up in our business.
“Oh, Romeo. Does this really work on girls? Women these days will ask a guy out if they want to date them. I swear, society is still so archaic. Why is it the man’s job to initiate—”
“Yes,” Sage blurts out, interrupting Haley’s newest feminist rant this evening. Whatever podcast she’s listening to has her on a roll tonight. I much prefer boring—ignoring me—H—aley rather than feminist Haley. I’d been doing everything I could to ignore it until Sage arrived.
“You’ll go out with me?”
Sage nods and shoots Haley an annoyed look. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Me too,” I say. I can’t help but rub at the place on my chest over my apron that seems to be thumping wildly inside.
Sage’s gaze falls to my hand and she smiles before giving me a small wave. “I have to go. I’ll text you.”
I wave back and then watch her scurry out of the coffee shop. Soon, she’s in the car and gone.
Darkness looms over me like a tidal wave. Higher and higher, threatening to swallow me whole.
Mom was like Sage once: innocent and trusting. She trusted my dad and he messed up. He accidentally gave her me. I tainted their love and destroyed their lives.
Everything assaults my mind at once. My criminal record. My past with drugs. Every single time my dad put his hands on me. The aching, overwhelming weight of despair I’m in, this life sucking everything good and beautiful into my void.
I’m not Mars
I’m a black hole.
I glance over at my sketchbook. My destroyed mother’s face looks back at me. Accusation stares back at me in her dead eyes. I want to rip the page from my book and tear it to shreds.
But the past doesn’t disappear that easily.
The past can’t be undone simply because you don’t want it standing behind you, shadowing every single thing you do.
All I can do is turn the page.
And I do.
I flip the sketchbook to a blank, white page.
Pure and untainted by me.
Yet.
Cringing away those dark thoughts, I think about Sage. She’s like a flower in a field of weeds. I think about last spring when I cleaned out the flowerbeds at our trailer. The weeds had taken over, but right there in the middle grew a pretty pink flower. Bugs buzzed around me, but they all knew the flower was too pure for them. Nothing touched the flower. Nothing but me. I’d reverently run my dirty thumb along the petals, leaving my remnants behind. I had dirtied it up, but it was still pretty. All too happily, I’d plucked the offending weeds from around it and gave it space to grow. I watered that flower and admired it way too long.
The next morning, I came out to look at the pretty thing.
It was gone.
Dad, in his drunkenness, drove his truck into the yard. Smashed the only pretty thing in our trailer park beneath his tire. I can’t help but feel like it was my fault. I touched it and brought with that touch, my luck.
Bad, bad luck.
With soft strokes, I draw that flower. No weeds. No dirt on the petals. Safe from big tires. But then, because I can’t help myself, I draw a dragonfly, too. Not a normal one with thin, opaque wings. I draw one that doesn’t belong here. One with planetary wings fit for Saturn or some other planet in the universe. The dragonfly hovers just close enough it can admire the flower, but doesn’t ruin it.
Maybe she won’t call.
Maybe I can admire her from afar. Just far enough, I don’t ruin her like I ruin everything else.
Nothing will taint her. Nothing will crush her. Nothing will destroy her.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Unknown Number: You like dragonflies.
I stare at her words. It’s her. Sage with the sweet smile and wide green eyes.
Don’t reply.
Don’t do it.
Me: I like flowers more.
I save her name into my phone, allowing myself the simple luxury of seeing who it is that actually wants to talk to me.
Sage: Not me. I like dragonflies. Flowers are stuck rooted to one spot. Dragonflies get to see it all.
I rub at the back of my neck and stare at her text.