Springtime at Hope Cottage

by Annie Rains

  Jessica looked pale. Ashley looked unhappy. Emily looked scared.

  “C’mon, girls, it’s not going to hurt.”

  “Much,” said Jessica.

  “And it might leave a bruise on my arm. And our dresses are strapless,” Ashley said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Y’all agreed that we would go give blood together in Crystal’s name.”

  “I hate the sight of blood,” Emily whined.

  “I’ll give blood. I feel really sorry for Crystal,” Rocky piped up.

  Sharon squatted down to be on Rocky’s level. “Oh, sweetie, that’s so good of you, but kids can’t give blood. You’ll have to grow up some.”

  “I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  Sharon gave Rocky a big ol’ hug. “Honey, you want to grow up to be your own self. Not anyone else, you hear? And I’m real proud of you for being braver and more generous than the entire Watermelon Court.” She gave her friends the stink eye when she said this.

  Rocky beamed. Jessica, Ashley, and Emily looked guilty.

  “C’mon girls,” Sharon said as she stood up, “the Red Cross is waiting on us. And Andy Jones should be there as well. He promised me he would take a photo of all of us giving blood together. Don’t y’all want to have your pictures in the Times and Democrat?”

  That did the trick. Sharon left Annie in charge of the baked goods and Rocky, then herded her Watermelon Court in the direction of city hall, where the Red Cross had set up the blood drive.

  They had just reached the front steps when Stony caught up to them.

  Boy howdy, he was handsome. He’d grown tall the last few years, and his shoulders had broadened so much that he looked like a man, not a boy. His worn blue jeans hung low across his hips, and his shaggy brown hair drooped across his forehead in a way that made Sharon want to push it back into place. But of all his traits, Sharon loved his eyes most of all. They were the green of the deep woods in summertime. And he had a way of looking at her that made her insides melt and her heart cinch up in her chest.

  She’d felt that spark the very first time she’d gazed into his eyes. She’d been only eight years old. It never ceased to amaze her that she could still feel that tug on her heart whenever he glanced her way.

  “So are you going to give blood?” she asked him. She refused to mention that she’d seen him with Miriam or that his little sister was running around town gossiping. She didn’t want him to think she gave much credence to that sort of nonsense.

  “Uh, well, I need to get back to—”

  “It won’t take a minute. And you promised me, remember? Besides, it would please me if you would come inside for just a minute.”

  He gave her an odd look. Like he had forgotten his promise or maybe that he was just as scared of needles as Emily. “C’mon, Stone, you were the team’s quarterback. Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little blood.”

  “Uh, no, but, um, I need to get back to—”

  She grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, honey, you have time to give blood. Everyone is going to do it, including every member of the Davis High Rebels offensive line. You aren’t going to let the O-line show you up, are you? Especially after they protected your backside for the last two years?”

  She took Stony by the arm and hauled him into city hall with her court following behind. He didn’t resist all that hard. But clearly something was on his mind. Probably what he and Miriam Randall had been talking about. That made Sharon’s stomach slightly queasy—not a good thing right before donating blood.

  They crossed into the air-conditioned lobby, where the Red Cross had set up a couple of cots. Several town employees were already making donations. Andy Jones, the local stringer for the Orangeburg Times and Democrat, was there as well, taking photos. He hurried up to Sharon as she entered the lobby.

  “Well, hello, Sharon. I see you’ve got your court in tow.” He smiled at Ashley, Jessica, and Emily.

  “We’re all going to give blood. And when you write up the story, you’ll be sure to mention that we all feel that it’s our duty as members of the Watermelon Court to help out people in need.”

  Mr. Jones smiled at her. “Yes, ma’am. But that’s not what I really came here to talk about.”

  “No?” she asked.

  “No. I got a call from John Murphy last night. He told me about what you did, and I want to do a story about it. I can’t believe your generosity.”

  Sharon’s face grew hot.

  “What did you do?” Stony asked.

  Before Sharon could answer, Mr. Jones spoke again: “She’s donated the entire one thousand dollars of her Watermelon Queen prize to Crystal’s medical bills.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Ashley said, “you didn’t. What is your mother going to say?”

  “My mother doesn’t know about it. Besides, I don’t need that thousand dollars the way Crystal does. The way I look at it, God has blessed me in so many ways. He had a plan in mind, and I’m sure that’s why I was selected as this year’s Watermelon Queen. I wasn’t the prettiest girl in the competition, not by a long shot.”

  She smiled up at Stony when she finished speaking. The spark in his eyes pulled at her soul. Mother would have a conniption when she learned what Sharon had done. But it didn’t matter, because Sharon could see that Stony was proud of her. And that made her feel warm all over.

  * * *

  Later that evening, Sharon sat in the back row of the Kismet and dashed a tear from her eye. She gave Stony a brief glance. He would laugh at her for getting all teary-eyed. But, darn it, the movie was sad.

  The heroine, Demi Moore, had to let go of her dead boyfriend, Patrick Swayze, and go on with her life. And, boy, Patrick Swayze made one handsome ghost. Sharon would have a lot of trouble letting go of a guy like him. Of course, Stony was just as handsome. But Patrick was a much better dancer.

  Stony gave her a little squeeze. He draped his arm over her shoulders during the scene where Demi and Patrick made a clay bowl. Who knew pottery could be so… well, she didn’t know what, but she practically combusted during that scene, especially when Stony moved his hand down to her breast. She was leaning into him so hard her ribs came up against the metal armrest between them. Her insides melted when his thumb brushed over her nipple.

  Once they got in Stony’s truck, there wouldn’t be any barriers.

  Sharon was looking forward to it. Mother would be shocked to know that Sharon liked it when Stony touched her breast, or all the other things Sharon had fun doing in Stony’s truck. She especially enjoyed touching him. It was pretty exciting when he lost control.

  The house lights came up. “Well, that was a different kind of ghost story,” he said as they stood up. “I was expecting something scary.”

  “I liked it. It was sweet.”

  “It was girly.” He took her hand and pulled her up the aisle. The crowd was pretty sparse, it being a Wednesday night. It was a wonder Mr. Brooks managed to keep the Kismet going, especially since he was always a few weeks behind other theaters in showing the newest movies. Ghost had been playing up in Orangeburg for weeks. Annie had seen it up there and raved about it.

  Five minutes later, they were riding in Stony’s old truck, heading out to Bluff Road. George Strait was singing about love without end on the radio. Stony didn’t say much as he drove, which wasn’t all that unusual. But tonight Sharon got the feeling he might be brooding on something. Maybe he wasn’t so proud of her for giving up her prize money.

  She studied her boyfriend as he drove, his wrist over the steering wheel. He looked so competent behind the wheel. And the dash lights seemed to highlight the hard angles of his face. He might be a quiet boy, but she would much rather be with Stony than with the other boys and their constant chatter.

  There was something really solid about Stony. She had once overheard Miz Randall telling Miz Polk that Stony was the kind of boy who would grow up to be a man a woman could depend on. Kind of like Daddy had been.

  Stony stopped the
truck at the end of Bluff Road. He set the brake and turned down Garth Brooks, who was singing about friends in low places. She slid across the bench seat and ran her hands up through his hair, repositioning the lock that always wanted to curl down over his forehead. It had been a while since he’d been to the barber. The long, silky strands slipped softly through her fingertips. “When we get to Carolina, we should take a pottery course,” she whispered into his ear. “We could re-create that scene in the movie.” She licked his ear, then linked a trail of kisses across his hard jaw to his soft mouth.

  “Honey,” he said when she tried to interest him in a kiss, “we need to talk about that.”

  “What’s wrong?” She pulled away and searched his face in the pale green dashboard lights. What the heck? He had never responded like that when she’d kissed his ear before. Usually a kiss on the ear turned him into jelly. Well… not all of him, of course. And Stony was not the kind of boy who would stop fooling around to talk. About anything. He really liked fooling around. His lack of reaction was like a flashing danger sign.

  He turned his gaze toward the dark pine woods that grew at the end of the road. “Um, look,” he said. “I care about you, Sharon. I… well, I can’t imagine being with any other girl. But, the thing is, I can’t go to Carolina with you.” When he turned back, his green eyes were filled with emotion.

  “What are you talking about? We’ve been planning this for a year. We were both accepted.” She slid to the far edge of the bench seat.

  “I can’t afford college. And I can’t ask my folks to pay for it. Momma and Daddy aren’t rich, and I have two little brothers and a sister. I’ve seen Momma sitting up late at night sometimes doing her bookkeeping. She worries all the time about making ends meet.”

  So this was about the scholarship he hadn’t gotten. Her heartbeat steadied a little as relief washed through her. He could get a job. He could apply for work-study. He could take out a loan. “Stony, come on, we can find solutions to this problem. Money should never be an obstacle to education. You could—”

  “No, I can’t. It’s more than the money.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you upset about what I did with my prize money?”

  Muscles bunched along his jaw. “No, Sharon, I love what you did with your prize money. That’s not it. It’s something else. See, well, I’ve joined the marines.”

  She laughed. “Okay, you can quit with the joke. I know you didn’t join the marines. You’re just trying to get a rise out of me.”

  “But I did. I have to report to Parris Island on August sixteenth.”

  Sharon’s stomach heaved, and for an instant, she thought she might be sick right there in his front seat. “You’re leaving in two weeks? You aren’t coming to Columbia with me?” Pain swept through her like a raging river. She couldn’t breathe. Stony was abandoning her.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he said in answer to her shock. “I know you made plans for the two of us. But I don’t want to go to college.”

  “But we’ve been over this a million times. Mother is never going to accept you until you finish school.”

  “Right.” He sounded angry.

  “But you know how she is.”

  “I do. But I don’t care about your mother. I care about you.”

  “But we made plans and—”

  “We can still be together. I mean, you’ll be at college, and I’ll be at boot camp. But we could still be… you know…”

  “What? What could we be?” She was angry now. She had planned it all out in her head. They were supposed to be living in the same co-ed dorm. She had her packing list all done, and Stony’s, too. They would be together and see each other every day. They would share this time in their lives like they had shared everything since they were eight. And, most important, they could find some privacy.

  “I thought we were going to be together.”

  “But we will be. Like we’ve always been.”

  “With you God knows where and me in Columbia? That’s not together, Stony.”

  “Well, I know, but we’d still be going steady.”

  “That’s a heck of an assumption,” she said in anger.

  He stared at her for a long moment. “Sharon, come on, don’t you even care about how I feel?”

  “I do, but why didn’t you say something before I made plans? I have whole pages of plans.”

  He stared at the dashboard, as if gathering his arguments. “I know. I never saw a person make lists the way you do. And I feel bad about it. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you and my mother how I feel, but you never give me a chance to explain. Y’all are always talking and planning. It’s hard to get a word in edgeways. I don’t think I’d be that good in college.” He finally turned back toward her, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Why do you always sell yourself short? You’re smart. You could be anything you want to be.”

  “Except a marine? Do you think being a marine is selling myself short?”

  “Stop twisting my words like that.”

  His gaze finally met hers, and she could tell he was angry. “I didn’t twist them, honey. That’s the way they sounded when they came out of your mouth.” He paused for a moment, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “Just listen for one second. Miriam Randall tackled me at the post office today and told me I should be looking for a crusader—you know, someone who wants to change the world. And I thought about you the minute I heard that. I admire you so much. And I always thought you admired me. I thought we were, you know, like a pair, no matter where we are.”

  Sharon’s head felt like it was about to explode. “What are you saying? Are you saying you want to get married just because Miriam Randall gave you some lame forecast? And then you want to go off and join the marines while I go to college all by myself?”

  A truly stunned look crossed Stony’s face. “No. We’re too young to get married. But I guess I thought, what with Miriam saying what she said and you always talking about us being together in Columbia, well, I thought maybe we could move things up a little bit. Maybe we could go to the Peach Blossom Motor Court or something before I ship out. I don’t want to get to boot camp and still be a virgin.”

  “Take me home,” she said.

  “But Sharon, I—”

  “I’m not sleeping with you at the Peach Blossom Motor Court so you can cross that off your to-do list. And I don’t want to marry you.” She took Stony’s high school ring off the chain she wore around her neck, turned in her seat, and hurled it at him. It hit him in the face, and she was glad. He’d wrecked her carefully laid plans. Everything she had been dreaming about was undone. She was going to be in Columbia all on her own. And he wanted to take her to some seedy motel instead of finding a nice, private place where they could actually sleep together. She could almost hear her Mother saying, “I told you so.”

  “Damn, Sharon,” he said, touching his cheek. “That hurt.”

  “Good, because you joining the marines without telling me hurt, too. And I don’t even want to talk about the suggestion you just made about that seedy hotel.”

  “Ah crap, are we breaking up?”

  “I guess so.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next day, Sharon had to help at the church paint-a-thon. She wasn’t feeling very charitable that morning as she dipped a roller in the pan of paint and vented her emotions on one of the plaster walls in the fellowship hall.

  “Hey, quit rolling so hard. You’re getting speckles all over the floor,” Annie Roberts said. “You’re mad at Stone, not the wall.”

  “I am not angry,” Sharon said, dropping the roller into the pan. She grabbed a clean rag and began to blot up the paint speckles. As she worked, the tears she’d been holding back began to leak from the corners of her eyes.

  Her world was unraveling at the seams, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  In a few weeks, she’d be going off to college in Columbia. Annie would be leaving for Ann Arbor and th
e University of Michigan. Nick, Annie’s boyfriend, had joined the army and was already gone for basic training. Everyone was leaving.

  A knot lodged in Sharon’s throat, and she swallowed it back. She’d known Annie and Nick and Stony practically all her life. The four of them had been a tight-knit group since middle school. It had been easy to let go of Annie and Nick, knowing that Stony would be coming to Columbia with her. But now he was going off to Parris Island, and his suggestion about that no-tell motel made her so angry every time she thought about it.

  “Aw, honey, don’t cry.” Annie dropped to the floor and put her arm around Sharon. “Stone still loves you, you know. It’s not like he broke up with you. You broke up with him.”

  “He went off and made a life-changing decision and didn’t even consult me. Then he made a rude suggestion that really hurt. Nick did the same thing to you.” She paused for a moment, searching her best friend’s face. “Didn’t you feel like your world was unraveling when Nick tried to get you to sleep with him and then left for basic training?”

  Annie smiled, her eyes full of empathy. “Nick and I were a habit. And I left him panting at the Peach Blossom on prom night. But you and Stone—that’s a whole different story.”

  “How? He sabotaged me and everything I had planned.”

  “Well, that was pretty crappy of him.”

  “It was. And the worst thing about it is that we’ve been discussing things all summer. You know, about how things are going to be when we get up to Carolina. I’ve been holding off sleeping with him until we get up there and can have a little more privacy. I didn’t want to go with him to that nasty motel.”

  Annie gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Are you sure he was listening?”

  “Who knows. But I had already told him dozens of times that I was never, ever going to the Peach Blossom Motor Court with him. So you can imagine how angry I was when he suggested it. And to use Miriam Randall as an excuse for moving his plans up. That really hurt.”