by Angie Pepper
Rory had put flowers in her hair, a few daisies stuffed into a bun. She would have never let either of the sisters touch her hair, much less braid it into a crown and stuff in an unreasonable number of flowers.
The sisters finished with their flower crowns and locked up the store, and all three young women walked out into the crowd on the street.
They shopped for beaded jewelry and tie-dyed clothing at the usual assortment of street vendors that appeared at all open-air festivals. They sampled the many delicious deep-fried foods, including a battered, deep-fried Mars bar.
A few hours in, Rory announced she was tired and anxious about people jostling her in the dark. She went home not long after sunset.
The Gardenia sisters made their way over to the band stage, where they staked out a prime spot for their blanket.
They’d just gotten comfortable when a familiar figure tossed a gray wool blanket next to theirs and took a seat.
It was Luca Lowell, and whether he knew it or not, he was sitting mere feet away from Tina. The sun had set, and his features were only lit by the street lamps, but every cell in Tina’s body knew it was him.
She’d recently stopped hiding in the alley and had ventured back onto the street again, so she had glimpsed Luca around lately, but Tina always turned and went in the opposite direction to avoid him. This was different. They were seated on blankets. He could reach out and touch her, if he wanted to.
Tina turned to Megan, keeping her back to the interloper, and whispered, “Meenie. Don’t look now, but you-know-who is behind me. Move slowly. Roll up the blanket, and let’s go.”
“Just talk to him,” Megan said with a weary sigh, her voice at regular volume. “You can’t avoid Luca forever.”
Tina shushed Megan—not that it would do any good.
“Grow up,” Megan said, then, “I love you.” Megan could be blunt, but she did care.
Tina heard Luca say, “Is that Teenie and Meenie under all those flowers?”
Tina slowly turned around, a fake smile hardening on her face.
“Hi, Luca. It’s us under all these flowers.”
One look into his beautiful eyes, and her breath was taken away. He had become more radiant, more golden, more curly around the hair.
“That really is you,” Luca said. “Nice flowers. Hey, Megan. Nice crown. You look… cute.”
Megan laughed. “Good one, Lukester. Yeah, I look real cute, huh? I’m a flower girl. Get it?”
“I get it,” he said, then he stretched out his long, denim-clad legs in front of himself on his gray blanket.
Tina gave herself a pep talk about how well she’d been doing. And then a stern lecture about not swooning over Luca if he tried anything. She didn’t need him. She was better off without him. He was too big for her life, anyway. He didn’t fit.
Megan said to Luca, “Hey, dude. Did you try the deep-fried Mars bar?”
“You’re joking, right? That’s not a real thing, is it?”
“Oh, it’s real,” Megan replied. “I had to share mine with Teenie because she’s too delicate to order a whole one. Hey man, I’ve got an idea. The concert hasn’t started yet, so how about I go get another deep-fried Mars bar, and you can eat half of it?”
He said, “What if I want a whole one, and I don’t like sharing?”
Megan got to her feet, using Tina’s shoulder to steady herself. “That’s a great idea, Luca! I’d better get two. I’ll be right back.” Megan squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “Teenie, don’t go anywhere. You have to stay here and watch the stuff.”
Megan walked off, leaving Tina alone with Luca.
Tina tried not to look at Luca, but he was right there. By the look of the new beard, he might not have shaved since the last time they’d spoken. His wavy brown hair was much longer, too, showing its curl. She wondered why he’d stopped shaving and getting haircuts. Was he busy at the new garage, or had something happened to him that night, too?
He cleared his throat. After a full minute of silence, he cleared it again and said, “Tina, I don’t know how to be around you.”
She stared straight ahead at the empty band stage.
“Just relax,” Tina said. “Stuff happens. Sometimes things don’t work out, because they were wrong to begin with.”
“Things were wrong to begin with? I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t exactly talk about it.”
“No. We didn’t.”
“Thanks for cheering me up during prom season,” she said. “That part was good timing.”
“That part?”
“I had fun with you, for a while. I’m actually doing a lot better now. Just so you know. I, uh, took down all those old photos. I cleared a space for some new ones. My mom sent me some postcards and some pictures of herself having a great time in Italy. Maybe when I’m older, like her, I’ll go there, too. I don’t know. I’m just taking life one day at a time.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “I’m happy for you.”
“Maybe I’ll get a passport, so I’m ready to go.”
“Tina.” His voice was deep yet quiet.
She finally turned to Luca. His face in reality was so much different than it was in her imagination. He didn’t look flat and disinterested the way he did when she argued with him in her head. He was anything but flat and disinterested.
“I never meant to make you feel bad,” he said.
“You didn’t.”
“I think I did. I don’t know how it happened, but I screwed up.”
“If you want to blame yourself, then fine. But, just so you know, I don’t blame you.” She reached over and patted the top of his shin. Channeling her sister, Tina said, “We’re cool, man.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I shouldn’t have gotten you those flowers, and that card. I thought it would be funny, apologizing for being a jerk. But then I was a jerk, and it wasn’t funny at all.”
“You weren’t a jerk,” she said. “You were honest. You told me the truth. I’ve had a lot of people in my life trying to get through to me for a long time, and you said what I needed to hear. I was stuck in the past. I was like a plant in a pot that’s too small. But the thing is, some plants like being root bound. They prefer it. Some plants, you can only re-pot one size up at a time.”
He started to smile. “Tina, are you saying you’re a root-bound houseplant? You need to give yourself a little more credit.”
“It’s a stupid metaphor,” she said. It was a metaphor she’d been thinking about a lot over the last three months, and it hadn’t seemed stupid at all until now, saying the words out loud to Luca.
“It’s a perfect metaphor,” he said. “What kind of plant am I?”
Without hesitation, she said, “You’re an oak tree.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
She felt her cheeks flushing. She had been.
Just then, a woman walked up and flopped down on the blanket next to Luca. She asked him, “What did I miss?”
He turned to her and said, “The band hasn’t started yet. You haven’t missed a thing.”
The woman had straight black hair cut in a bob. She was stunning and petite, with an adorably tiny nose and small ears.
She looked over at Tina. “Hi there. Do you think they’ll keep us waiting for long?”
Tina was almost too stunned to speak. “I dunno,” she said. “They have to play a set before the fireworks, so it shouldn’t be too long.”
The woman with the black bob leaned across Luca and offered Tina her hand. She introduced herself, but Tina’s head was buzzing. She couldn’t hear voices anymore, just the low rumble of movement around her. The night was full of dark shapes all around, and Tina felt the instinctive urge to seek the light, to seek cover.
Tina managed to keep her faculties long enough to shake the woman’s pretty hand and mumble her own name with all the grace of a tranquilized bear.
Tina felt something on her shoulder. M
egan plunked down beside her.
“I got the last two they had.” Megan handed one paper plate with a deep-fried Mars bar to Luca. She asked Tina, “Want another bite of mine?”
Tina lurched to her feet. She felt no sensation in her body. She could barely tell her feet were on the ground.
Everyone was looking at her. Megan. Luca. Luca’s new girlfriend. Strangers on neighboring blankets. Everyone looked mean.
Megan gave her sister a threatening look. It was probably just a mildly annoyed or confused look, but it registered to Tina as hateful.
“Where are you going? I said you could have a bite of mine,” Megan said.
Tina went with the first idea that came to her, and moved both hands to her stomach. “I don’t feel so good,” she said.
“Ew,” Megan said. “They have a dozen porta potties, but I don’t recommend them. Go use the bathroom at the store.”
“No,” Tina said. “I’m going home now to beat the crowd.”
Luca said, “You’ll miss the fireworks.”
Luca’s girlfriend said, “You don’t want to miss the fireworks.”
Tina didn’t care about the fireworks. She threw herself into the gathering crowd, into the darkness, and disappeared.
Chapter 24
The morning after the street party, Tina Gardenia woke up to the sound of her phone ringing.
The call was coming from the local hospital.
Any drowsiness she’d been feeling immediately disappeared.
“Hello?”
“Don’t panic,” said the female voice on the line.
“Megan? Rory?”
“I’m Doreen, and I’m a nurse,” the woman said. “Are you Tina Gardenia?”
“Yes.” Tina held her hand over her chest to keep her heart from leaping out of her chest. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “It’s not an emergency. Someone gave us your name as an emergency contact, which is why I’m calling, but it’s not urgent.”
“Someone? Is it Megan Gardenia? That’s my sister. If it’s not urgent, why are you calling me instead of her? Did she lose her phone? What happened?”
“Ma’am,” the nurse said slowly, “there’s no need for alarm. I’m calling because Mr. Luca Lowell gave us your name and number as his emergency contact.”
Tina was surprised, and her palms were moist from her panic sweat, and her phone slipped out of her hand like a bar of soap. It landed on her pillow, next to her on the pull-out bed. She picked up the phone again.
“Sorry,” Tina said. “I lost you for a minute. What were you saying?”
“Ma’am, do you have a vehicle that’s not a motorbike?”
“Like a scooter?”
The nurse chuckled. “How about a car?”
“I have a car. Why?”
“When would you be able to come and pick up Mr. Luca Lowell?”
“In my car?” Tina struggled to make sense of what was happening. The nurse was patient—she’d likely been through this a thousand times—and waited. “Oh,” Tina said. “Luca’s there, at the hospital, and someone needs to come and pick him up in a car. And you think I should do that.”
“He asked for you,” the nurse said.
“He did?”
In a friendly way, the nurse said, “He sure did. I don’t think he’s going to leave if you don’t come get him.” The nurse gave the address, but Tina knew where the local hospital was.
She pulled on some clothes, grabbed her car keys, and stepped outside. It was dark. She checked the time. It was four o’clock in the morning.
It was four in the morning, and she was driving her car to the hospital to pick up Luca Lowell because he’d asked for her specifically.
When she reached the hospital parking lot, Tina realized she wasn’t exactly dressed for being anywhere public, even if it was four in the morning and a non-urgent emergency. She wore thin cotton pants, the tank top she’d been sleeping in, a zippered hoodie, and no bra. At least she was wearing shoes. They were the hideous old sneakers she used for gardening, and they were caked in cut grass.
She stepped out of the car. Anyone awake at four in the morning had bigger things to worry about than Tina’s dirty shoes.
She walked in and checked in at Emergency. Since the last time she’d been there, a decade ago, they’d changed the flooring and painted the walls a different color. The big mural wall was still the same giant painting of ducks flying over a lake.
A nurse, the same one who’d phoned Tina, came to bring her to Luca. Nurse Doreen kept sneaking peeks over at Tina, pressing her lips tightly, as though to keep from laughing.
They reached a door, and the nurse said, “He’s a lively one.”
Tina asked, “Was anyone else hurt?”
Doreen gave her a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“It was a motorbike accident, right?”
Doreen shook her head. “No. He was at the Baker Street block party, helping to take down the band stand, and there was an accident.”
“What? He didn’t crash his motorbike?”
“I’m afraid that while he was helping with the band stand, someone in a truck backed into him. No one else was hurt.”
Tina stared at the door to the room. Luca was in there. He’d been backed into by a truck. He’d been hurt. She couldn’t go in there and see him like that. Someone else would have to drive him home. Why hadn’t he called his new girlfriend?
The nurse asked, “Don’t I know you?” Her eyebrows went up. “I do know you. You were Jonathan’s girl.”
Tina took another look at Doreen. She was nearing retirement age. Ten years ago, her gray hair had been mostly black, so Tina hadn’t recognized her at first.
“It’s you,” Tina said. “Sorry. With everything going on, I didn’t know it was you.”
The nurse said, “And I’m sorry I called you Jonathan’s girl. You do have a name. It’s just that I remember people through their connection to the patients.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m proud to be Jonathan’s girl. I’ll always be his girl. And he really liked you, Doreen.”
Doreen looked wistfully at the door. “You’re a lucky girl to find love twice. Now get in there and take that guy home before we decide to keep him.”
“He’s not...”
“Go,” Doreen said sternly. “If I were your age, I wouldn’t keep a man like that waiting long.”
Tina remembered Doreen had always been one of the sassier, tell-it-like-it-is nurses. That was why Jonathan had liked her so much.
Doreen opened the door and shoved Tina in.
“Teenie Weenie Beanie!” Luca was sitting up on a bed, holding his arms out for a hug. “Teenie Baneenie!” He looked okay, except for the fresh cast on his left foot. And the fact that he was clearly quite high on painkillers. That explained why he’d had Nurse Doreen contact Tina at four in the morning rather than someone more appropriate.
“It’s me,” Tina said. “They told me I have to give you a ride home.”
He gave her the kind of innocent look that only someone high on painkillers could give. “Where’d you go? You left before the band came on.”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
He nodded gravely. “Bathroom emergency. I totally understand.” He waved one hand. “Porta potties. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Just say no to porta potties.”
“They got you on the good stuff, huh?”
He widened his eyes, staring at her with unmistakably enlarged pupils. “I don’t do drugs,” he said. “Nope, nope, nope. Just coffee.”
He was wearing the same shirt he’d been in when she’d seen him the night before at the street party. The bottom of his jeans had been cut away on the cast side, and his bare knee was exposed.
“Luca, what happened? Did someone hit you with a truck?”
He waved one hand, paw-like. “Just a bump. Didn’t even leave a scratch.”
“But you broke your foot.”
“Pfft,”
he said. “Barely.”
“Is the rest of you okay? No internal injuries?”
His face lit up. “Do you want to check?”
She said nothing.
He patted himself. “I’m okay. Hey, did I say that out loud? Did I ask you to check my internal guts and stuff? I apologize. That was not cool. Not cool at all. I’m sorry I am such a jerk. If you ask me, I don’t like him at all.”
“You don’t like who?”
“Luca,” he said. “That guy’s a real jerk.”
“He sure is, but I’m going to give him a ride home anyway.” Tina walked over to the wheelchair and unfolded it. Time folded up like a road map. A sense memory of unfolding wheelchairs came back to her then quickly receded to where it had been.
Luca, who’d stopped babbling, eased himself off the bed, onto the wheelchair, and grabbed the pair of crutches that had been resting against the wall.
“Ready to roll out,” he said.
As she wheeled him out of the room, she asked, “Where’s your friend?”
“You’re my friend. And your sister is my friend. But you’re my favorite one. We’re going to get married. Did you know that?”
“You are so high right now.”
He turned, craning his neck as he stared up at her. “Don’t tell the nurses,” he whispered.
When they reached Tina’s car, they discovered the hard way that he didn’t easily fit in the front seat. Tina leaned over him to adjust the seat, pushing it as far back as it would go.
Luca patted her on the butt. “I missed this butt,” he said.
She pushed his hands away. “You’re such a jerk.”
“Boo,” he said. “Hiss. We hate Luca.”
Finally, they were on the road.
Luca said, “I can’t go home.”
“Is that where your girlfriend is? She’s probably worried sick about you.”
“I can’t go to my house because there’s too many stairs,” he said. “It’s too big. I need somewhere small. You have to take me to your house, Tina.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I won’t get out of the car if you don’t take me to your teenie weenie beanie house.”
“Fine, you big baby. But just until you sober up.”
