by Mia Kayla
He nodded his head in slow motion. “Oh, I see. Well, Sam, if you want to come color with my sister and me, we are just at that other table.” He angled his head toward said table.
I laughed and extended my hand. “I’d love to.”
His eyes widened at my outstretched hand, his bravado gone. He blinked a little bit before stuttering out, “Uh…okay.”
Josh pointed two fingers to his eyes and then pointed to Rocky. “I’m watching you, boy. This one here is special. You’d better treat her right. Let her have her choice of crayons.”
Rocky saluted Josh and took my hand. Along with his friend, he escorted me to the table where his little sister was coloring. Her frame was tiny, and she must have been no more than four years old. Her red hair was in disarray, fanning out over her ears and onto her cheeks.
“This is Marty. Marty, Sam.” He nodded at each of us.
When the little girl peered up at me, I noted a scar from her temple to her chin. I blew out a breath, choking back tears. I couldn’t cry in front of these kids. They’d already been through so much. Today was a happy day, a celebration for them.
She looked down again, embarrassed. Unlike her older brother, she was very aware of her scar.
With my fingertips, I tipped up her chin. “Hey, beautiful. You have the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen. Do you know that Disney movie Brave with Princess Merida?”
She smiled, all teeth. “Yeah, it’s my favorite movie in the whole wide world!”
“Has anyone told you that you look just like her?”
She nodded. “Yes. And Marty and Merida both start with an M.”
“That’s right!” I glanced over at the paper she was coloring. I sat down, barely fitting in the pink child-size chair and scooted in. “What are you coloring?”
“A puppy.”
“Can I help?” I asked, picking up a brown crayon.
“It’s a rainbow puppy.”
“Well then, brown is the wrong color.” I winked.
A sense of calm filled my insides as I laughed along with Marty, and we took turns coloring her puppy with an array of different shades. Soon, a crowd of kids formed around me, wanting me to help them turn their penguins, princesses, and hearts into rainbows. I guessed I had major coloring skills because, when Josh found me, my table was full. I even had a kid on my lap.
When I glanced at him, he was watching me with certain awe and other emotions I couldn’t decipher.
“We’re closing up shop now,” he said softly.
“We are?” I glanced around and saw that the room had cleared out, and the only table still occupied was mine.
“Miss Sam, but you said it’s my turn.” A little girl with the greenest eyes stared up at me, sporting her puppy-dog pout.
I touched the tip of her nose. “Of course.” I shrugged up at Josh. “One more?”
A dimple appeared on his cheek. “I’ll just be outside, helping Shannon clean up.”
After coloring the rest of the pages with my team, I hugged each of the kids twice, soaking in their joy. It was then that I realized my problems were nothing, my broken heart was nothing, compared to what some of these kids had endured.
I had to blink back tears again as I watched each of them. They all seemed hopeful, even after whatever they’d been through.
With a new perspective, I cleaned up the crayons and papers as the children dispersed into the foyer where some of the foster parents were picking them up. Shannon was talking with a group of three women while Josh had a broom in his hand, sweeping away.
“Wanna give me a hand, Cinderella?” he asked as I walked toward him.
“Sure. Do you have another one of those?”
In Josh’s goofy way, he hopped on the broom, pretending to fly away on the stick like a witch. He returned with another broom in hand, the black bristles smacking me on the ass.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing the end from his hand.
We tidied up, and once the kids were gone, music blasted in the background from the built-in speakers in the corners of the room. Clappy the Clown took off his wig and started shaking his stuff, garbage bag in hand. Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” echoed against the walls. Now that no kiddos were in sight, the adults were out to play.
My hips shook, my head nodded, my shoulders wiggled, all while I swept the floor. When “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” by Prince played on the speakers, Josh took the edge of his broomstick, using it as a mic, and serenaded me. The volunteers gathered around us, waving their hands in the air, and I couldn’t help but laugh. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t belt out a tune. He didn’t look self-conscious at all. He just sang to me with all that he was and seemed to mean every word, as though it were his own personal concert.
Though my cheeks warmed, I placed one hand on my heart, playing the part.
It was a perfect moment.
But, when the next tune came on, Def Deception’s “Undeniable,” I stilled. Hearing Hawke’s voice brought memories of him into my thoughts.
The smile on Josh’s face disappeared, and for a moment, he looked panicked, his eyes searching the room, on a mission to turn off the radio.
I lifted a hand. “I’m okay,” I insisted. Because I was.
The normal tension in the center of my chest had dimmed to a buzz, no longer an overwhelming ache.
Big people, little problems. Little kids, big problems. That was what today had taught me.
Josh was healing me in ways he probably didn’t even realize.
Finally, when all the toys were put away and the brooms and mops were tucked in the closets, I went to the front where Josh was talking to Shannon.
When they saw me approach, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me in the warmest body-crushing hug. “Thanks for coming today, Sam.” She pulled back and smiled. “I hope you come see us again.”
“I will.”
I definitely would. The whole day had lightened my spirits, and I had enjoyed being surrounded by the kids. I had needed this to help me decompress from work and life.
Josh and Shannon said their good-byes, and once Josh and I were out the door, the stars twinkled above us against the dark sky. We walked to the corner, hand in hand, and he stopped to raise his hand to hail a cab.
I stepped closer and wrapped my arms around his middle, pressing my head to his chest. “Thank you.” Two words had my whole body relaxing into him.
His lips went to my hair. “For what?” he asked softly. “You helped me out today I should be thanking you.”
I shook my head, my face rustling against his cotton T-shirt. “Just for being you.”
He rubbed my back and his voice softened. “It’s nothing.”
I blew out a breath. He had no clue how much he did for me just by being my friend and being there for me.
It wasn’t nothing.
It was everything.
Chapter 4
Inside Out was playing on my forty-five-inch TV in the living room. I loved this TV, remembering when Chloe and I had gotten it. We’d stayed up late and camped out in front of Walmart for last year’s After Christmas sale.
I sighed in total peace. The sweet scent of brownies in the oven filtered through my nose, and my feet were in Josh’s lap, the same place they’d been for the last few nights.
After Josh had cooked dinner for me and Chloe, she had left to go meet some coworkers at a bar. I had chosen Pixar, brownies, and Josh.
Josh glanced over at me. “If you could pick one Pixar character for me, who would it be?” His face was stone serious. No smile, no dimples.
“What?” I began to laugh.
“I’m serious.” A dimple emerged on his cheek, but he clenched his jaw to prevent any laughter from spilling over. “Which one?”
I sucked in my bottom lip and scrunched my eyebrows, as though I were in deep concentration. I couldn’t picture him as Sadness or Anger or Joy…
Not Woody or Buzz…
Then, it dawne
d on me.
I pointed a finger in his direction. “You are James P. Sullivan.”
“Who?”
“Sulley from Monsters Inc.”
He still had a look of confusion on his face.
I sighed and spread my arms out wide. “The big blue guy with the purple spots?”
Clarity slowly entered his vision. “His name is James P. Sullivan?”
“Don’t ask me how I remember these details. But, yes, you are so Sulley. You look all big and bad with your toned muscles, but—”
“You’ve noticed my muscles?” he cut me off as he quirked an eyebrow, amused.
The tips of my ears warmed, but I kept going. “But that’s just your exterior. Sulley wants to do the right thing—for himself and for that little girl he tries to save, Boo. So, yeah”—I smiled—“you’re Sulley.”
He suggestively wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m still on the fact that you’ve noticed my muscles.”
I tried to focus my stare on the screen again. “Please.”
When Josh pushed up his sleeve and flexed, my attention to what was playing on the television was shot. The tendons on his forearms strained and I couldn’t help but notice. He was built. Milk, working out, and playing ball had done his body good.
He gestured at his muscle. “You can touch it if you want to.”
A smile formed on my face, but I kept my focus on the TV. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
“Are you sure?” He leaned in closer, smirking. “Go ahead. Touch it. I don’t mind.” And then he kissed it for exaggerated effect.
I laughed even though a dizzying current flowed through my veins. “You’re such a goofball, you know that?”
The house phone rang in the background, and I stood and walked to pick it up.
“What? They’re nice, right?” He lifted both of his guns and made his muscles bounce.
What a sexy dork!
I shook my head, flipping around to face him. “I was talking about Sulley’s muscles, not yours, silly.”
“Those weren’t your words,” he contested. He narrowed one eye, pretending to remember, though I was certain he hadn’t forgotten. “I think you said something about my toned muscles.”
Laughter erupted in my throat before I picked up the phone.
“Hello?” I said into the phone, still laughing.
“Hey, Sunshine.” Hawke’s voice was low and gruff. He sounded as though he were sick or maybe had been crying.
My hand shook as I gripped our house phone, my fingers visibly trembling. It wasn’t like I had forgotten him. I hadn’t. I’d done everything possible to avoid anything Hawke.
“You’re hard to get ahold of.”
My eyes fell shut. I should hang up the phone, but I couldn’t. Hearing his voice only verified that he was well, alive. I knew he had made it through with that saving shot, but hearing his voice for myself was a different story.
“Sunshine?”
I couldn’t speak. I pressed a hand to my heart, feeling a slew of emotions bubbling up inside my chest.
Seeing him motionless on his bed had brought up memories of my mother’s death. A death that I’d spent years trying to heal from. A death that I blamed myself for. A death that I didn’t want repeated.
I had a strong awareness of my heart beating loudly in my ears, like a river rushing against the shoreline.
“Princess?”
I turned to face Josh. When our eyes locked, he stood. But I placed one palm toward him and shook my head to stop him from coming closer.
“I saw her, Sunshine.” Hawke’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Immediately, heat formed behind my eyes, and I took the cordless phone into my room, giving Josh an apologetic expression before I shut the door.
“It’s been years, and…I just saw her last week. She’s dying. She’s dying for real,” Hawke spoke in a soft, broken whisper.
My butt hit the edge of my mattress. My hands trembled against my comforter. I imagined his hurt, his pain, from the years of turmoil his mother had caused him, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Because you only had one mother. And, now, his was dying.
Shallow breaths escaped him. “I called you after you left. You never picked up your phone.”
I closed my eyes. So, he had called me. I wondered what Alan had told him, what Hawke knew about that night. If he remembered anything.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” was all I could say.
Because, now that he was on the phone with me, now that I had a grip on my emotions, I realized I wasn’t sorry.
I wasn’t sorry that I hadn’t talked to him, and I wasn’t sorry that Chloe had taken out the battery from the phone he had given me.
I was sorry that I couldn’t be there for him, but it wasn’t my place anymore. We weren’t together.
“I need to see you.” Five words that he’d said before, like a record on repeat.
And, each time the words were recited, the same reactions would happen to me internally. The quickness in my breath, the uptick in my heartbeat, and an ache so incredibly strong, it hurt from the inside out.
This time, I understood the cause of my struggle. Above wanting to be with him, I wanted to help him. The weakness inside me was due to the circumstances that had surrounded my mother’s death. Her own upward battle was so similar to Hawke’s.
“I need my Sunshine.”
I sucked in a breath and pulled my knees up close to my chest.
My voice trembled with emotion. “Last time I saw you”—I exhaled deeply—“you were unresponsive, Hawke.” I bit the top of my fist, preventing a whimper from escaping. “I thought you were dead.”
There was a long pause, an intake of breath, and then, “I’m sorry.”
Those two words heated my insides. I jumped up off the bed and started to pace the room, shouting into the phone, “You lied! You said you weren’t using. You lied to my face, Hawke.”
“I didn’t lie,” he promised. “That night you saw me was the first time in a long time that I had taken anything.” Such conviction and sincerity leaked from his tone that confusion racked my brain.
I clenched my teeth so hard, they ached. I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and make loud noises to prevent myself from listening because I didn’t know what was the truth anymore.
“I needed something to help me forget.” His tone begged me to believe him. “Ease my mind. Numb the reality of the truth. I’m sorry. I know what you’ve been through before…with your mom. It was one time, Sunshine. I promise you. One time.”
God, I wanted to trust he was being honest, but when it came to Hawke, my clarity meter was all fogged up.
“Sunshine, I need to see you.”
“Why?”
I heard it again—the vulnerability in his voice, the slight quiver behind the facade of him trying to keep it together.
“Because you’re the only one who’s real.”
And I weakened.
This was what he did to me. I lost all self-control, all reason.
“Was any of it real?” The words spinning in my brain came out of my mouth even though I hadn’t meant to say them aloud.
“What’re you talking about?” His voice heightened, on the verge of desperation. “Of fucking course!”
The tension rose. I could feel it in his breathing, his soft, sad demeanor no longer present.
“Alan told me things. About you. About us.” A shaky breath escaped me. “Were there others?”
Saying it out loud was like a punch in the stomach, so hard it would have made me topple over.
“Fuck Alan,” he grumbled. “Fuck all of them. He’s only ever cared about two things—making sure we keep going and that he keeps getting paid.”
After a beat, he blew out a breath, and then silence filled the space between us.
“Everything I’ve felt for you, everything I feel for you now, is real. I love you, Sunshine. I’ve never lied to you. Ever.”
My fragile state was shot.
His words and his tone weakened me.
I wanted to believe him.
“I need to see you,” he begged.
I wondered if he was going to fall apart again. And, if he did, would he turn to his vices, take something for it?
The question on the tip of my tongue finally slipped out. “When was the last time you took anything?”
Here was the moment of truth, a test to see if he could be honest with me.
“Today,” he admitted, his voice full of shame.
My lips quivered, and the tears threatened to spill over. Here I was again, in the midst of helping someone battle an addiction. I couldn’t save my mom. I most assuredly couldn’t save him, as much as I wanted to. I couldn’t do this.
“You need help.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, his voice cracking, as though he were at a breaking point. “What I need is you. I need you, Sunshine. I need to see you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to stop the feelings coursing through me. “I thought you’d died. I felt it.” I stood, my emotions fully on display for him to hear. “I was pounding on your chest, Hawke! Pounding on your chest and screaming your name.” The same tears I’d shed that night now fell down my face, only harder. “I thought you were gone, and I’d only ever been that afraid once.” Thoughts of my mother flickered in my brain, the pain from the memories was like salt on an open wound. “You need help, Hawke.”
I didn’t want a repeat of my past. I wouldn’t be able to survive it this time around. My mother’s death was still fresh, and it hurt. Even with years of counseling, it didn’t lessen the toll that it’d taken on me.
“If you love me like you say you love me, then you’ll get help.” My breathing accelerated, as though I were running and running with no finish line in sight. “Because I care about you, and I’m scared. I can’t see you yet, not when you’re like this. But, if you get help…if you check yourself into rehab, I’ll see you.”
I inhaled and held it there, waiting to hear what he’d say. He held everything in his one answer.
Seconds ticked by.
One.
Two.
Three.
And then he uttered, “Okay.”
