“Poor Harper,” he said with a slight frown. “You most certainly are not a beggar but I will admit we’ve not any choices,” he playfully winked, sending me into yet another frenzy. “Come on.” He placed his hands on my waist and lifted me off the seat.
“Good gosh, Callum!” I say, lifting my voice to the level of my now boiling blood pressure. His touch is intimidating, making me choke on the sharp inhalation its spark gives to me.
“What?”
I’m flustered. “I just wasn’t expecting you to lift me is all.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I’m acting too familiar with you and I just can’t explain why. I’m usually more polite than this. You just affect me differently than most.”
Don’t read too much into that, Harper.
“Alright,” he says, wrapping a large, thick chain around his bike and the post beside it before attaching the largest lock I’ve ever seen made. “Shall we?” He gestured toward the rows of people.
We walked toward the end of the line and sat in uncomfortable silence, each probably wondering if we knew what we were doing.
Callum
I don't know what I'm doing. I think I might have offended her by grabbing her waist without asking. I don't know why I did it either because the last thing I want is to offend this incredible girl.
"So, tell me, how were you orphaned?" I asked. Shock colors her face. Nice start there, goofball. Really sensitive. "I'm sor...," I start, but before I can even finish, she bursts out laughing.
"I've never actually had anyone ask me that so blatantly before yet it doesn't seem like such an unnatural question, seeming as we share the same plight."
"And what plight is that?" I ask.
"Oh, I don't know. The one where we meet in the lobby of social services after being kicked out of our foster homes for being afflicted with the 'eighteen disease'. Not to mention the part where we're standing in line together at The Hope House, a relief center that can't accommodate the demands being asked of it."
"God, you're plucky," I blurted out.
"You know it, but to answer your question..."
"What question?"
"The one where you asked me how I became an orphan?"
"'Kay."
She took a deep breath, readying herself to spew the prepared speech all us orphans kept at the tip of our tongues. "I'm not truly an orphan. My mother is alive and I’m hoping well somewhere out there but I've never met her. She left me at the hospital she gave birth to me at, slapped the name Harper on me, before peacin' it out and wishing me the best.
“I was adopted almost immediately into a young family who thought they could handle the demands of an infant. When they discovered that they couldn't handle one addicted to drugs, they passed me over. At three, I began the tireless process of being passed around once a year in the foster system. I assume my dad is some deadbeat crackhead, probably doesn't even know I'm alive. Anytime I pass a dude beggin' for change, if he could be my father's age, I slip him a buck or two in hopes he sees something in me he could recognize."
"Has it worked?"
"Nah, but my fingers are crossed," she teased.
"Wow, that is a sad, pathetic story," I prod.
"Tell me about it."
"My story's better than your story, though."
"That so?" Both her brows are raised in challenge.
"Yeah, double the pathetic, quadruple the sad."
"No kidding."
“As I said before, my parents died in a car wreck when I was four. I barely remember either of them. From what I can gather from my limited memories, though, they were loving. I think my father may have been an attorney because he was always on the phone and I remember the words brief, client, and evidence were at the top of his vocabulary.