Assuming she shows up. Yesterday in the library she was shocked to see me, and then she was happy. She wore a skirt that reached all the way to the ground and a tank top with a feather printed on the front. Her ear was lined with all those shiny earrings, and I wondered again how I’ve been missing her all these years.
Fishing my phone from my pocket, I check the time. Five forty-seven.
She’s not coming.
The realization sinks me, pushing my shoulders down and vaporizing the elated air I came here on. I climb off the rock, trudge back through the sand, and cross the moist forest floor, twigs snapping beneath me.
My phone vibrates in my hand, and for a thoughtless second, I think somehow she got my number. Maybe her detective skills are better than mine.
It’s not her.
My mother wants me to bring home pain reliever. She has a headache. I toss the phone on my passenger seat and rub my own head, as though I’m the one with the headache.
All the way to the drugstore, I replay the first time I met Ember. I go back over the blue of her eyes, with those three brown dots in the left one. Even her eye color is extraordinary.
I want to find her. I want to ask her why she didn’t show.
More than anything, I really want to kiss her.
* * *
Headache medicine in hand,I head up front to the cashier. I’m almost there when I see it.
Red hair, tied in a loose braid. The person it belongs to grabs it from her back and lays it over one shoulder. She’s sitting on her knees so I can only see her back, which is covered in a bright yellow vest. I sneak around into the next aisle and walk its length, coming out and rounding the end. I stop ten feet away from her.
“You either forgot to meet me or you lost track of time.” I hear my arrogance. Blame it on my wounded ego.
Ember’s head flies up from the open box in front of her. Her eyes are wide. Her lips twist, and a small smile breaks through. She stays where she is, and since it’s awkward for me to be standing above her, I walk closer and sink down so we’re eye to eye. Peering into the box, I see random junk. A water gun. Stickers. One of those paddles with the little rubber ball attached to it by a string.
“Neither of those things happened.” She pulls out a handful of toys.
Crap. She no-showed on purpose.
“You said you’d meet me,” I remind her. “I was there. At five.”
She sighs, threading the last of the small children’s toys around the metal rod they hang on. She stands, and I stand with her.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you come?”
I feel like an idiot. Can’t I just take it on the chin and move on? I’m single now. I should be enjoying that. The problem is that I don’t want anyone else. Ember arrived in my life suddenly, splashing and flailing, asking me to dance without music, and now all I want is to get to know her. I want to understand why I felt lighter and happier in the few minutes I spent in her presence. My parents’ insistence that I learn to love the family business, and my stress over playing soccer in college, disappeared.
She opens her mouth, but a large, bearded man comes around the corner and barks her name. I jump when he does it, but Ember doesn't flinch.
“Check-out,” he says, stiffly throwing a thumb behind him.
Ember’s lips tug at the corners as if she wants to laugh. I don’t know why. I want to slug the guy for talking to her like that. She turns and walks to the front of the store. Her braid slides off her shoulder and onto her back. The copper shade looks garish against the yellow vest.
Holding the bottle I came in here for, I join the others in line. When it’s my turn, she rings up the medicine and places it in the plastic bag. She recites the total, and I panic. I can’t leave now. I don’t have her number. I don’t even know her last name.
Quickly I grab a bag of some kind of candy from the display below the counter. I toss it onto the surface, and blurt out the most important thing I have to say to her, because I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to again. “Kelsey and I broke up.”
Her eyes widen a fraction as she scans the barcode and recites my new total.
I need more time.
Without looking, I grab at something else and toss it down. “She was cheating on me.” I don’t want her to think I broke up with Kelsey for her. That might scare her off, and it’s becoming clear she’s not tripping over herself to date me.
