A Love to Live For (2 page)

“Hello to you, too, Joseph.” I parked my bike, retrieving the bag that contained the fries and shakes from the basket.

“So are you buying flowers this morning?”

“Can’t a customer look around without any pressure to buy anything?” I answered.

“Oh, so you’re just window shopping.”

I grinned. “That could well be. Where’s Bridget?”

“What? I’m not good enough for you?” he teased. “Just kidding, Bridg happened to have some errands to run so I’m manning the store.”

“I see.” I bent down to pick up the scent of a pink rose. “I didn’t know you liked flowers.”

He shrugged. “I don’t particularly like them but they’re okay.” He stopped me as I was about to pluck out a stem of yellow carnation from a bucket, enticed by how beautiful it looked. “I wouldn’t buy yellow carnations if I were you.”

“Why not?” I asked curiously. “I thought carnation meant the flower of God?”

“Well, yes, its name can be translated that way, but different colored carnations have different meanings and yellow carnations just happen to denote disappointment, disdain even.”

“Really?” I gave him an amused look. “And this from someone who doesn’t particularly like flowers?”

He chuckled. “My sister talks about the meaning of flowers all the time. It must have rubbed off on me.”

“You and your sister are so close, I’m almost envious.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t you and your sisters get along?”

“Well…I suppose we do, but that’s just it. We just get along. It’s like we don’t really…mesh, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, at least, you’re there for each other. That’s what matters, doesn’t it?” he said. He paused before continuing. “I appreciate everything Bridget does for me but sometimes, I wish she’d back off for a little bit and remember that I’m not a kid anymore.”

I punched him in the arm playfully. “Oh, come on. She just adores her little brother.”

“But I’m not little anymore,” Joseph reasoned.

I chuckled.

“But you didn’t come here to hear about my complaints about my sister, did you?” he asked.

I paused. Somehow, for the past few minutes, I had forgotten what I had come to do. I had forgotten, in fact, about Joseph’s condition. He seemed perfectly healthy, after all and just the same as I remembered him.

“Well?” he insisted on an answer.

“I…” I handed him the shake and fries. “I…someone from the diner gave me these but I just had breakfast so I decided to give them to you instead.” As soon as I had said the words, I felt like slapping myself.
Really, Rebecca, your dad is going to give you one of his own sermons when he hears that you’ve turned into such a good liar
.

Joseph, however, laughed.

“What?”

“You’re still a bad liar, Rebecca Swinton.”

I felt puzzled. “I’m not…” I stopped in my attempt to defend my honor when I saw his expression, sighing. “And here I thought I was doing such a good job.”

“You should be happy you didn’t,” he said. “It just goes to show that you are an honest person at heart.”

“Will you at least tell me how you found out?”

He shrugged. “You just have this look, plus you always put one hand in your pocket when you’re lying.”

I quickly took out my hand from my pocket. “That’s a little freaky.”

“Hey, it wasn’t like I was stalking you or anything. It’s just been a habit of yours since we were in elementary school.”

“So you’re saying I’ve been lying since elementary school.”

He just laughed.

“Alright, alright. I got these for you.” I pushed the bag against him so that he wouldn’t be able to refuse it. “I thought I’d say ‘thank you’ to you for everything you’ve ever done and been for me, which I think I’ve never done.”

He took the bag but gave me a puzzled look and for a moment, he just silently stared at me.

When the silence was starting to get awkward, I turned. “I think I should…”

He grabbed my arm. “Your father told you, didn’t he?”

“What?” I feigned ignorance.

“Bridget must have told your father and he must have told you,” he said. “About me.”

“What are you talking about? I…” He gave me that expression again, though, and so I decided to tell him the truth. “Alright, my Dad told me but he wasn’t supposed to and he’s really sorry.”

“And how about you?” he asked. “Do you feel sorry for me, too?”

“No, of course not,” I told him. “And my Dad doesn’t, either. He’s just sorry he spilled the news.” I looked at him. “Sure, I feel that it’s unfair…”

“You do?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But I don’t feel pity for you. I just wish I had been a better friend to you. I mean, we’ve known each other for a long time, after all. And because of that, if there’s anything I can do for you…”

“There is something you can do for me,” he interrupted, his hand still on my arm. “Actually, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you about.”

The change in his expression made me feel slightly afraid but I dismissed it and asked anyway, “What is it?”

He paused and I could sense that he was reluctant about telling me about his request, mentally debating whether he should just go on and say what was on his mind or not, and I was about to encourage him when he spoke, slowly and softly.

“Will you go out with me?”

When I was seven, I ran away from home.

My younger sister, Abigail, then only three, had torn off two pages of my favorite book, an illustrated book of fairy tales with glossy, gold-trimmed pages and a beautiful, hard cover that I had gotten for my fifth birthday. I got mad at her, of course, making her cry, but when my Mom and Dad learned about it, they reprimanded me, telling me that it was not right for me to make my little sister cry before carrying her out of the room, stroking her hair and whispering words of assurance and affection to her so that I felt as if our roles had been reversed – Abigail being the faultless and me the villain. Just after that, Bethany, my older sister, came down the stairs and figuring out what happened, or thinking she had, marched towards me and told me that God wasn’t going to listen to any of my prayers because I was being a bad girl.

That made me so angry that I just went up to my room, stuffed my favorite clothes and toys into my pink backpack and left the house, tiptoeing across the living room and passing by the back door so no one would try to stop me. I only made it to the playground two blocks away, though, and I started playing that soon I forgot about running away and my parents eventually found me. Still, it felt good that I was able to get away even just for a little while.

Now, I was running away again.

I pedaled quickly, not stopping until I had managed to get several blocks away where I found myself at the small town park. There, I parked my bike, shrugged off my backpack and laid down on a soft patch of grass, closing my eyes as I tried to catch my breath and rest my aching legs. When I had finally caught my breath, I opened my eyes and looked up at the fragments of the cloudless sky through the tree branches and only then did I collect my thoughts.

What on earth had just happened?

One moment I was having a pleasant conversation with Joseph, talking about flowers and his sister, and the next, I was running away.

No, wait, I forgot to mention the most important part, which was the reason why I ran away – the part where Joseph asked me to go out with him.

At first, I thought it was a joke or that I had heard him wrong which was I had managed to grin but when I saw the serious look on his face, the gleam of sincerity in his eyes, my grin vanished and along with it my capacity for coherent thought. Too stunned to speak, to think or even breathe, I simply stared at him for what seemed like an eternity and when his expression still remained, I looked down at my hands, started fidgeting with the hem of my sweater, mumbled some hurried excuse which I could no longer remember – or was it an apology? – and then ran away.

Alright, so I had a tendency to run away. I was more of a flight person than a fight person. Somehow, I always had a suspicion about that, since I would always try to avoid confrontations with other people, especially those close to me, shy away from new things or things that already seem daunting at the onset, and loved escaping away to fictional worlds, preferably while lying on my bed and eating something sweet, or turning to drawing whenever something weighed heavily on my mind, but I supposed the recent incident with Joseph confirmed it.

I was a runaway.

And right now, I felt like a complete fool, far from the mature person I thought age had transformed me into.

Why did I have to be so foolish? As I replayed the scenario over and over in my mind, I could think of a few ways it could have ended better. I could have asked to talk about it some more, I could have asked him why. I could have asked him for more time to think about it. Yes, I could have stayed calm and composed, but I fell apart.

That, however, was already in the past. The question was: What was I going to do now?

Clearly, I had to go talk to him again or I would never be able to face him. I had to go and apologize for how badly I had behaved. More importantly, I had to clarify the situation, which meant I had to give him an answer.

Will you go out with me?

It was such a simple question if you looked at it, and yet it was so difficult to answer. There were only two possible ones, though – yes or no.

It would be simpler to say no, a thought which once more made me realize how much of a runaway and a coward I was. After all, if I did, then nothing would change and we could just stay the way we were, friends who occasionally bumped into each other.

Besides, it would be unfair if I said yes when I didn’t really like him, at least not in a romantic way. I mean, I found him likable as a person. After all, what was there not to like? He was kind. He was polite. He was a hard worker. While he wasn’t a genius, he was far from being stupid, either, and now that I thought about it, he was quite good-looking, too.

No, Joseph wasn’t bad at all. In fact, the more I considered it, the more I thought he would make a good boyfriend.

Not that I knew much about boyfriends. I had never had a boyfriend before. I had never even gone out with a guy before. Nope, not since birth. By the time I became interested, which was a little later than most of my friends, it seemed as if there was no guy interested in me. Yes, they would look my way and chat with me and all, but in the end, none of them asked me the question that Joseph just asked, nor did they give me any reason, though I supposed some of them were intimidated by me, some of them just didn’t like me and the others were just plain stupid or utter jerks.

Like most girls, I pretended not to mind, pretended that the lack of a guy on my arm was no lack, at all. Still, there were rainy afternoons when I stared at the window, at the raindrops trickling down the glass, while listening to sentimental love songs, wishing I had someone to cuddle with, and nights when I couldn’t sleep just wondering why I didn’t have one.

Well, now, finally, someone asked me that question and he turned out to be a good guy, one I could very well learn to like romantically if I tried, but was that enough reason for me to say yes? Wasn’t I just using him?

Then again, he was the one who asked me. He didn’t ask me if I liked him. He didn’t even say he liked me. He just asked me if I could go out with him. At any rate, it was he who asked, so I wouldn’t be using him.