Authors: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
With
any luck, she could catch a bus back to her apartment or beg a ride from a
co-worker.
Once, she could’ve called a
friend, but most of them had moved out of her life.
Working long shifts and scrabbling to keep
afloat financially didn’t leave much time for fun, and most of her pals apparently
craved good times more than good friends.
* * * *
Twelve
long hours later, Gracie shelved books left out by customers at the Barnes and
Noble, bored and tired.
On the weeknights
no more than a few people shopped and most were lookers, not buyers.
One elderly gentleman she recognized as a
frequent customer stood in the mainstream fiction aisle and read a novel.
Two teenage girls sat in the Nook area and
played with the demonstration models.
To
pass the time, Gracie leafed through some art books, ones on painting water
colors, but with less interest than she’d have guessed.
A week seemed like a very long span until
she would see Devlin again and at the thought, she sighed.
Curiosity
drove her to the medical section where she read books about burn victims.
Although she’d known Devlin must have
suffered, everything she found indicated his torment went way beyond the levels
she’d imagined.
As Gracie researched,
details like the intensity of the pain and the way the old skin must be
sloughed away proved to be too much. She put away the books.
Her
shift would end in another couple of hours and she could go home, but she
couldn’t help wishing Devlin might show up.
He
didn’t.
Chapter Three
Gracie
loathed Fridays, hated them with the passion she once used to hate butter beans
and asparagus.
When it seemed as if
every other student on campus anticipated plans with eagerness, nothing
appeared on her radar but work.
To make
enough money to keep her apartment paid and be able to buy the extras her scholarship
didn’t provide, Gracie worked full shifts most Saturdays and Sundays.
It
wasn’t the lengthy hours she didn’t like.
People crowded into the store in throngs.
Hordes of teenagers roamed the aisles like
dog packs, shoulder to shoulder, snapping gum and babbling slang.
Families arrived en masse and turned their
kids loose in the children’s area.
Couples strolled through the store, hand in hand.
Some of them poured over wedding planning
books and advice for couples.
Senior
citizens tottered through with tote bags and shared old stories.
Gracie enjoyed those, but little else.
By
the time the doors were locked, the entire bookstore needed to be put back in
order on Fridays and more than once, she missed the last bus.
Most of the time she could hitch a ride with
someone going within a few blocks of her place, but once she ended up walking
home,
and Gracie feared it could happen again.
By the time she made it, she’d been too
terrified to sleep and every shadow along the way loomed large.
“Go
ahead and zone,” Clarissa, her manager said after locking the front entrance
just after eleven. “It’s going to take a while, I’m afraid.
Gracie, you do the children’s area.
Tyron, take the non-fiction and I’ll catch
fiction.”
She assigned everyone an area but
even so, it was almost midnight when everything had been put right.
Gracie
gathered up her purse and sweater.
She
hurried out to the parking lot, but no one remained.
Clarissa trailed her outside, but she didn’t
ask her boss for a ride.
Clarissa lived in
the wrong direction, out toward Rogersville, and always refused her.
If she had to walk then she did, but she
didn’t have to like it.
As she began
trudging up the edge of Glenstone, Gracie realized how humid it remained.
By the time she reached her place, she’d be
soaked with sweat and worn out.
Long
before she reached the intersection with Sunshine to turn left to head toward
National, her cheap, ill-fitting shoes rubbed against her right heel enough to
hurt.
She’d have a blister, too, and the
irritated skin would bleed.
“Shoot
fire and save matches,” she mumbled as she waited for the signal light to
change so she could cross at the intersection of Sunshine and Glenstone.
The faux oath came straight from her mother’s
mouth, some of the strongest language Gracie uttered under most circumstances.
Two
blocks down Sunshine, limping along, she grew aware of a noise among all the
other traffic sounds.
It took a few
minutes to recognize it, but when she did, Gracie whirled around to find Devlin
trailing her on his cycle.
He gestured
to the next parking lot so she turned in and so did he.
“Need
a ride?” he asked, shouting over the rumble of the motor.
Gracie
wanted to kiss him just for being there. “Sure,” she said. “Were you following
me?”
“Hell
no,” Dev said with a grin. “I always drive a loop between your place and the
damn bookstore on Friday nights, looking for wild women to pick up and take
home.”
Some
of her fatigue peeled away as she laughed at his sarcastic crack.
“I’m glad you do,” Gracie told him. “I’m
tired and I’d even ride with the devil to get home.”
Devlin
laughed aloud. “Then climb on, babe.
I’ve even got a helmet for you this time.”
She
watched as he opened the storage compartment behind the second seat and pulled
out a standard helmet, without horns.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Put
it on.”
Gracie
obeyed.
Once in place, she could’ve
sworn she wore a bowling ball on her head.
It weighed more than she expected and it muffled sound.
Dev’s lips moved, but she strained to hear
him.
After realizing he insisted she
buckle the strap in place, she did and swung her leg over the seat.
This time, she wasn’t as nervous about it,
and he waited until she settled into place, her arms tight around his waist.
“Ready?”
he shouted.
“Yeah,”
she screamed back.
The
Honda rolled out of the parking lot slowly, but once he hit the street Devlin
ramped up speed.
When they reached
National Avenue, he headed down it, but he passed the side street where she
lived.
Gracie wondered why, but she
doubted he’d forgotten, so she waited to see what he planned.
Dev
wheeled into the Steak ‘N Shake at the corner of National and St. Louis and
parked.
She pulled off the helmet as he
turned around to ask, “Would you want a burger or something? I thought you
might be hungry.”
Somewhere
in the center of her chest a little warm spot grew into a burst of
happiness.
A warm steak burger would be
better than the ramen noodles she’d planned to cook when she got home.
His consideration meant something to her, more
than she wanted to admit.
“I’m
starving. Thanks, Dev.”
“Sure,”
he said as he stowed both helmets, hers in the compartment, his secured to the
bike.
“When’d you eat last?
Lunch?”
Honesty
prompted her to shake her head.
“No, breakfast.
I hardly ever eat when I’m on campus. And, I
just had a couple of peanut butter crackers on my supper break.”
“You’re
lucky I came along then,” he said. “I’m surprised you didn’t faint along the
way.”
Before
she could protest, he offered her his hand and she took it.
He folded his fingers over hers, warm and
snug.
They walked into the restaurant
holding hands as if they’d done it many times and sat at a table near the
back.
When the server arrived with a
pair of menus, Devlin waved them away. “Two double steak burgers with cheese
and fries, two Cokes.”
Gracie
laughed and he frowned. “Did you want something else?”
“No,
it’s fine.
I’m glad you brought me
here.”
He
reached across the table and grasped both her hands in his. “I’m here a lot
because they’re open twenty four hours a day. When I can’t sleep, I come down
here.
I never brought anyone with me,
though.”
Flattered,
she said, “Then I’m glad I’m the first.”
She’d
waited days, hoping to see him again. She was delighted he seemed pleased to
spend time with her.
Gracie wondered
what he’d been doing, and with her new brashness, she asked. “I thought I’d
have to wait until Monday evening to see you,” she said. “What’ve you been
doing?”
“Working,
mostly,” Devlin said. “I thought about looking you up, but I didn’t want to be
a pain in the ass.”
“You
wouldn’t be.”
One
of his eyebrows arched upward.
“Yeah?
Well, that’s
another first.”
She
loathed his self-depreciation, something he did too often, but Gracie ignored
it.
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “Were
you looking for me or something?”
Faint
color touched his cheeks and he nodded. “Yeah, well, I might’ve been checking
up on you.”
Hmm, sounds more like a guardian
angel than a devil.
Under his rough
exterior, he’s a sweetheart.
Gracie sighed, pleased. “Have you done it
every night this week?”
Dev
wore the cutest expression, a hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar look. “Here’s our
food,” he said, changing the subject.
Hunger
trumped her curiosity.
From long habit,
Gracie bowed her head to ask a blessing and Devlin, already munching on a fry,
said, “Oh, Jesus.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t think about praying first.”
“It’s
okay,” she assured him. “You don’t have to.”
“I
will,
no problem.” He grasped her hands again and
pulled up a meal blessing from somewhere. “God is great; God is good, let us
thank Him for our food, amen.”
“Amen,”
Gracie said.
His use of a children’s
grace made her think he didn’t attend church, but she liked it just the same.
He must’ve once, though.
Her limited knowledge of his past irked her,
and she craved to know more.
She wanted
to know his life story and she longed to know what he liked, what he
didn’t.
A hundred or more questions rose
to her tongue, but she squelched them, unwilling to chance being too
nosey.
Instead, she dug into her food.
She
liked Steak ‘N Shake any time, but hunger added to her appreciation for the
burger.
The crispy little fries seemed
perfect and Gracie wouldn’t tell him, but she could probably have eaten a
second sandwich.
Pinching pennies kept
her skinny, and one of her worst habits had to be skipping meals or skimping on
them.
But it saved her hard earned money
for books and other things required for school.
Neither said much while they devoured the meal, but she watched Devlin.
Dark
smudges, faint but present, beneath his eyes indicated his lack of sleep and
his eyes remained troubled.
Gracie saw
fortitude, too.
Caught up in studying
his face, she almost didn’t hear what Dev asked.
“What?”
“I
asked if you work every damn day or what.”
Gracie
swallowed the last delicious bite of her burger and savored the fleeting taste
on her tongue. “I asked to have Mondays off so I could go to the watercolor
class,” she said. “Most of the time I get another day, somewhere.
It depends on the schedule, but I usually
work weekend days to get more hours.”
“What
about tomorrow?”
Saturday.
Memories
of Saturdays as a day for fun and a little leisure surfaced.
Growing up, she wasn’t allowed to watch most
cartoons and spent mornings going to the supermarket with her mom.
They always visited the branch library in
town and headed home for the usual lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches.
In the afternoon, sometimes Gracie helped her
dad in the garden in the warmer season or with other chores.
But after four, she enjoyed free time, a
chance to read or sit outside on the porch swing or walk through the fields
down to the pond.
Since moving to
Springfield to attend the university, Gracie worked almost every Saturday.