The Billionaire Bum

Gary gave me that overbearing big brother look. Apparently I was not the only one who felt protective of Alissa.

“Good morning,” I said politely. He just kept tossing watermelons. No wonder his arms looked like steel cables. Forget the gym—I should get a job tossing melons.

“What’s it gonna’ be today, Alissa?” he asked.

She placed her order and Gary nodded at her. It was a big order, but he didn’t write anything down. I wondered if he would get it right. She kept walking down the street, so I followed along. We repeated a very similar process with about four other vendors who were selling everything from produce to paper products. The last stop however was the biggest adventure of the morning. Alissa bought her fish literally right out of the ocean.

“Morning, Peter,” she called to a tall lanky man who was dressed in filthy coveralls.

“Morning, Alissa. What’s the special of the day gonna’ be?”

“You tell me. Get anything good last night?” I got the impression that this conversation happened exactly this way every morning. I was so glad I’d come along. Watching her shop was like having a window into the first two hours of her day.

“Ayuh, I’d take the salmon today,” he said, “although we did get some nice tilapia too.” He turned and whistled over his shoulder to another man who was standing about eight feet away pouring buckets of ice over huge tubs of fresh fish. The man nodded and then grabbed a massive fish from one of the tubs and tossed it to Peter. I’d never seen so much food thrown in my life. Amazingly, I hadn’t seen one thing dropped all morning. Peter caught it, using a piece of newspaper like a catcher’s mitt. He pulled the fish open so that Alissa could see the inside. It was a salmon, I knew, from the pink flesh. I had no idea that was what they looked like on the outside. That fish was huge! She ordered both, the salmon and the tilapia.

While they were packing up her order she walked over to the pier and looked out at the ocean. Her hair was taking on a reddish tint in the early morning light and framed against the water she was absolutely stunning.

“So what do you think?” she said to me.

“I think you’re beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes. “I meant about the market.”

“Oh,” I smiled. “It’s pretty cool too.”

Alissa

He is so beautiful and so infuriating. I wish I could figure him out.

We’d been walking around the market together all morning and his facial expressions had ranged from protective, to playful, to absolute awe, and even once, dare I hope, jealous.

It was clear that this was a new experience for him, but it looked like he was really enjoying it. I have to admit I was glad he’d come along. I wasn’t above showing off in front of this man. I found myself hoping that I could somehow be worthy of him.

Disbelief poured through me at the thought of him being a bar tender. The beer smell, time of day, and t-shirt did seem to verify the information, but the way he carried himself, the words he chose, and his other clothes said otherwise. I was convinced that something wasn’t right with what Jackson was telling me. Of course, he wasn’t really telling me much of anything.

Despite several attempts to pry for information, he always managed to turn the conversation back to me.

The more time I spent with him, the less I cared about the details. I just wanted to bask in his presence for a while—my own personal Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent. He could be a homeless bum for all I cared, and he’d still be perfect.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Oh God. A homeless bum.

He had a bruise on his jaw, possibly indicating a fight.

“I’ll take the tomatoes please,” I said.

He was out in the open streets at odd times, in all kinds of weather, with no coat.

“And the asparagus.”

He never changed clothes.

He ate ravenously.

“That should do it.”

It was clear that he didn’t or couldn’t shave regularly.

He jumped at the chance to use my shower.

He didn’t seem to have a car.

He said he was in transition.

It’s not possible is it?

He couldn’t possibly be homeless.

I watched him very closely as I made my way through my normal morning routine.

Sometimes it can be hard to tell with homeless people. I had done some volunteering, cooking at a soup kitchen, and I knew that some of the men and women who came to eat there were dressed like any other person that you would see on the street. Some of them even had jobs, but the cost of living, addictions, or other circumstances made it impossible for them to find a stable home.

It was possible that he was living on the streets or in some kind of program, but I didn’t think he’d been doing it very long, if at all. He had a grace about him that you didn’t usually see in ordinary people and almost never in someone with that kind of life. This must be some transition for him if he was literally living on the streets.

My brain had gone on autopilot. I hoped that whatever I just ordered would make a good lunch special. I knew Peter would have said something if I’d asked for something too outlandish, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall what I had asked for. I was absolutely stunned at my own revelation. It couldn’t be true. Could it?

No. No way.

I was desperate for a change of subject. “So what do you think?” I asked.

“I think you’re beautiful,” he replied.

I rolled my eyes in an attempt to distract him from my blush. “I meant about the market.”

“Oh,” he said. “It’s pretty cool too.”

I sat down on one of the large rocks by the water and looked out at the fishing boats.

Jackson sat down gently beside me.

“It seems like something has you distracted,” he said.

“No,” I said smiling. “I’m just trying to figure out who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I needed to choose my words carefully. “You’re something of an enigma, Jackson. You carry yourself like royalty, but you work in a bar. You will give me no information about yourself. You show up at the oddest times and say the most perfect things. I just wish I could understand where you’re coming from.”

“Who do you think I am?” he asked with his signature smirk. God I loved that smile.

“You don’t want to know,” I hedged. “It sounds really ridiculous, even to me.”

“No, tell me. I want to know what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours.”

“Well,” I said, “I am torn between two theories. Either you’re homeless, or your real name is Peter Parker and you’ve been bitten by a radioactive spider.” He looked at me wide-eyed for a minute, and my heart stopped. Had I gone too far? Shit.

I’d offended him. Then he burst out laughing, and I almost cried with relief. He wasn’t angry.

His laugh was so beautiful it made my chest ache.

“You think I’m a superhero?” he said, still laughing.

“Yes,” I huffed indignantly, “I do. You’re out in the middle of the night, you’re wearing very expensive jeans which you seem to wear all the time like a hidden superhero costume, you inhaled my French toast like you hadn’t eaten for a week, and your split lip makes me think one of the bad guys finally got a solid punch in when you weren’t looking.”

“You are entirely too observant, Miss Alissa,” he said. “But, I’m not a superhero.” I noticed that he didn’t deny being homeless. So maybe that really was the case. I wanted to ask him more about it, but the look in his eyes told me to not ask questions when I wasn’t ready to hear the answers. I decided to let it go for now. When he was ready, he would tell me. I wasn’t about to risk losing him over this; we would work through whatever it was in time.

“Come on. The orders should be ready by now.” I walked back up the row of vendors in the direction of my van. They had already loaded most of the order and were just packing in the last couple of boxes. I turned over my shoulder to continue my conversation with Jackson and was startled to find that he was missing. I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice when he’d wandered away. Where on earth did he go?

I squinted into the sunrise and looked down the row of produce-laden tables. He was walking up the street smiling. One hand was combing through his untamed hair, the other was holding a beautiful, red, gerbera daisy. We had passed the flower stand, but I hadn’t even given it a second thought. Apparently Jackson had noticed.

“For you, my dear,” he said, holding the single stem out to me.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. I was moved. He’d remembered my favorite flower from yesterday’s interrogation.