Moody's Jewelry
He didn’t look nervous.
They had taken a quiet lunch at their usual spot and were on the way back to drop her off at the diner where she worked four days and one night a week. She was surprised when he said, let’s take a shortcut, and they had ended up here. The doorbell had echoed like a giant gong in her ears when they entered the store.
There was still much she didn’t know about him, although it had been several months. He had come in for coffee one morning and the ritual had developed from there. She’d slowly become aware that he was almost always there now, whether it was patiently tolerating her sometimes flighty and flustered friends, or working on her car when it started to sputter indignantly, or chasing down beers with his friends most Sundays at Del’s Watering Hole. Her mother had passed long ago and her stepfather was a distant presence two towns over.
He had been discharged, honorably, from the service and had gone to work at the garage, coaxing life and health back into wounded pieces of metal. Sometimes, when they went out after his shift, she could smell faded cigarette smoke lingering in the collar of his jean jacket as he slung his arm around her. He had a couple of close friends. They were watchful, as he was, and their words were carefully chosen in conversation.
She still wasn’t sure how he really felt, and she felt only one way most days. Some nights she would wake up suddenly in a kind of terror, turn and see the dark head of hair on the pillow next to her and think, oh, all right, with a kind of relief. It wasn’t that she wanted a sign, or a resolution; she was just...waiting. Waiting and weighing the consequences...of what? She wasn’t sure, exactly. But she was happy, she thought. Wasn’t this happiness?
They approached the counter. Her hands betrayed only the faintest tremor.
Moody's Jewelry
He didn’t look nervous.
They had taken a quiet lunch at their usual spot and were on the way back to drop her off at the diner where she worked four days and one night a week. She was surprised when he said, let’s take a shortcut, and they had ended up here. The doorbell had echoed like a giant gong in her ears when they entered the store.
There was still much she didn’t know about him, although it had been several months. He had come in for coffee one morning and the ritual had developed from there. She’d slowly become aware that he was almost always there now, whether it was patiently tolerating her sometimes flighty and flustered friends, or working on her car when it started to sputter indignantly, or chasing down beers with his friends most Sundays at Del’s Watering Hole. Her mother had passed long ago and her stepfather was a distant presence two towns over.
He had been discharged, honorably, from the service and had gone to work at the garage, coaxing life and health back into wounded pieces of metal. Sometimes, when they went out after his shift, she could smell faded cigarette smoke lingering in the collar of his jean jacket as he slung his arm around her. He had a couple of close friends. They were watchful, as he was, and their words were carefully chosen in conversation.
She still wasn’t sure how he really felt, and she felt only one way most days. Some nights she would wake up suddenly in a kind of terror, turn and see the dark head of hair on the pillow next to her and think, oh, all right, with a kind of relief. It wasn’t that she wanted a sign, or a resolution; she was just...waiting. Waiting and weighing the consequences...of what? She wasn’t sure, exactly. But she was happy, she thought. Wasn’t this happiness?
They approached the counter. Her hands betrayed only the faintest tremor.