I stand at the counter waiting for a rental car. I tap my foot impatiently. Theo stands next to me filling this void of space between us with an eternal longing that I have never felt before.
Women pass us and stare at him and I want to possess him more than I’ve even wanted ownership of anything. The brown-haired girl looks up from her list of papers trying to find my name on the rental list.
“Could you repeat your name?”
“Alison Callahan.”
This is the third time I’ve had to repeat it.
“Could you spell it?”
“A-l-i-s-o-n”
“That’s a strange way to spell it.”
I try not to become infuriated. Theo must know because he tries to calm me down.
“It’s okay if you don’t have her name written down.”
All he has to do is give her a smile and a wink and she miraculously “finds” my name on the list.
“Oh, right here Miss Callahan. Sorry about your wait and thank you for being patient. We have you down for the 2014 silver Mercedes Benz. Is that correct?”
I gawk at her.
“I don’t think that’s right…”
I trail off.
“It’s correct. Someone called it in this morning and I entered it in my system.”
She hands me over the car keys and they dangle before me. I’m too afraid to take them, so Theo grabs them from her without hesitation.
“You’re not even going to question this, are you?” I ask.
“No. I mean…I may, or may not have had some hand in this situation.”
“What did you do?” I ask. He grabs my hand and I try not to blush, but my cheeks burn from the embarrassment of being so close. He leads me forward, and we stop in front of a beautiful, angelic machine.
It glimmers in the hot sun, and reflects a million different colors and patterns back. Theo lets go of my hand and walks around the beautiful Mercedes with a slow-paced walk admiring every line of the vehicle.
“I’m almost afraid to touch it.” I whisper.
“Oh. It’s just a car” he says grinning, as he grabs for the passenger door handle.
“I-I don’t want to drive it.” I stutter.
He laughs, and stares down at me. His nose inches from my forehead; I never realized how tall he was before.
“In your dreams Princess, I’ll be the only one who drives this. I was just being a gentleman and opening the door for you.”
I step in the vehicle hesitantly. The leather material is hot to touch, but the inside smells so wonderful I instantly forget about my legs being on fire from the seat. And before I can blink we are off in what would appear to any onlookers to be a flash of whizzing swiftness as we speed through the endless corn fields of what I had known as my childhood home so long ago.
I want to scream, but somewhere deep inside of me a hunger bursts forth instead. I hadn’t ever really had an adventure before. I hadn’t even kissed a boy… I’d always kept a distance from people because I didn’t want to get hurt. I felt kind of like an outsider in most places. I’d grown up in foster care being shuffled from one family to the next; it was hard to find a place to love or people to love.
We hit a dirt path of stretch that is familiar and wonderful, as the car kicks up dust around us, we move in a steady cloud of stirring earthy colors. I grin from ear to ear.
“You know you look beautiful when you look like that.”
I reposition a stray hair behind my ear and bite my lip. Was I supposed to compliment him or something?
“Er. Thanks.” I say.
We ride silently for the remainder of the trip, other than me telling him where to turn and when to stop. Finally, we arrive at a place that I had at one time loved so dearly. It hadn’t changed from how I remembered it.
The yard was still huge and the weeping willow sat next to the pond where my dad and I used to fish and go kayaking together. The tire swing was blowing in the wind. The bridge that we had painted blue one summer still looked the same as the day we had finished it. I had imagined the house to be overgrown and deteriorated, but it looked the exact same as I had remembered it.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
Theo takes the corner of his shirt and wipes the stray tear away.
“Don’t do that Princess. Don’t cry, even though you still look lovely.”
“I can’t help it.” I sniffle. He grabs me in his arms, and I weep into his chest.
“But why hasn’t it changed? Why is everything still the same? My dad… he died and it’s still all the same.”
“Sometimes, people do things for us even if we can’t see them.” He whispers and kisses my forehead. “You just have to see the good in things.”
“I try. But sometimes life just isn’t wonderful.” I whisper.
“But maybe you just haven’t given it a chance to be good.”
“Would you skip rocks with me? My dad and I used to love skipping rocks, and if I skipped one correctly I could make a wish.” I murmur.
“Okay.”
We walk to the bridge with a handful of rocks that we had picked up around the driveway. I try to muster a smile, but it feels so artificial. We skip rocks in silence, other than the plunking sound of each rock failing to skip across the water.
Finally, I hear the faint plink, plunk, plink of a skipped stone. I managed to skip one across the water. I close my eyes and make a wish.
I wish I could tell my dad that I forgive him.
“We should go inside. It’s getting dark.” Theo says, as he pulls me up to him. The fireflies dance and flicker in the field behind my house and the summer breeze carries them away easily.