Leo's Chance Page 12

  She looks shocked for a second. "Actually, no. You’re gonna take me to the zoo?" A beautiful grin spreads across her face.

  I grin back and nod. "Cool. Do you have shoes that’ll work for walking?"

  "Yeah, I brought a pair of sneakers."

  "Okay, good, I’ll take a quick shower and we’ll get going."

  We finish up breakfast and I give her a kiss and head to the shower. I start the water and strip. As I’m turning to get in the shower, I catch a small glimpse of my tattoo in the mirror. If Evie were to come in and I didn’t hear her… I feel a flash of guilt as I do what I have to do. I lock the bathroom door.

  When I re-enter the kitchen, Evie comes to me, putting her arms around my waist and laying her head on my chest. As she lifts her head and smiles up at me, I kiss her on her forehead, whispering, "My Evie. So sweet." My Evie. Mine.

  **********

  Watching Evie at the zoo is one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. I watch her more than I do any of the exhibits, a deep peace settling in my soul at being able to give this to her. I wish more than anything I could go back and erase the ugliness of her past and give her the fun, carefree childhood she deserved. I can’t. But I can give this to her now.

  I watch her though and it occurs to me that maybe it’s for me too. All those years of feeling so damn helpless, so incapable of making her life better, maybe this is healing for me as well. Perhaps, it’s for me most of all. Because she always had a way of finding her own peace. That same pride that always fills me when I think of Evie’s strength overwhelms me now.

  As we’re watching the elephants, Evie keeps her eyes on them as she says quietly, "Elephants grieve like we do. They shed tears and mourn their dead."

  I look over at her. "Yeah? How do you know?"

  "I read a book about them last year."

  "You read a book about elephants?" I raise an eyebrow.

  She looks over at me. "Don’t make fun. I try to learn about different things. You never know when the topic of pachyderms is going to come up. I wanna be able to hold my own should a conversation like that occur in a social situation." She grins teasingly over at me and then turns back to the elephants.

  "Pachyderms?" I smile.

  "Various nonruminant animals… like an elephant, or a rhinoceros, or a hippopotamus…"

  "Nonruminant?"

  "Animals who have single compartment stomachs." She turns to me now, still smiling.

  "Why didn’t you tell me you were a walking animal encyclopedia? I would have had you leading this tour."

  She laughs. "Not ‘animal,’ just ‘elephant.’ I haven’t made it through any more books in the "Living Creatures" section of the library." She grins at me and the beauty of that full smile turned to me hits me square in the heart.

  She shrugs, turning back to watch the big, majestic, apparently sensitive pachyderms as I gaze at her, finding yet another reason why I want to spend a lifetime with this woman. I don’t know anyone else who would check a book out of the library on elephants just to learn something new.

  I move around behind her, and pull her back against my front and wrap my arms around her as we watch the elephants for a few more minutes. "You hungry for lunch?" I finally say.

  She nods, looking back around and up at me, smiling. "Will you buy me a hot dog?" she asks.

  I laugh. "Yeah, Evie, I’ll buy you a hot dog."

  The Cincinnati zoo isn’t as large as the San Diego zoo, but it’s still beautiful with nice walking paths and roaming peacocks. We hold hands as we walk. I can barely contain the smile that wants to stay permanently on my face.

  As we eat lunch, one of the colorful, roaming birds walks past our table and Evie gasps, jumping up and following it around with her phone, trying to snap a picture. She’s dancing around with this wild look on her face and I can’t help laughing as the stupid thing dodges her around tables and chairs and she follows it relentlessly. But suddenly, I swear that damn bird looks right at me, and then saunters over to her, stops right in front of Evie and spreads all his feathers, preening and strutting back and forth. I watch her as she sucks in a breath, a look of pure glee on her face and snaps picture after picture. I’ve completely ceased to exist. It’s like I’ve disappeared. Fucking bird. I wonder if grilled peacock is any good.

  She comes bouncing back, squealing, "Look!" and pushing her phone in front of my face so I can look at the dozens of pictures she snapped. I grunt, sick of that stupid bird already and when I look up, she’s staring at me with an incredulous look on her face. "You're jealous of a bird?" she asks.

  "What? No!" I snap. I just don’t think I like peacocks very much.

  "You're jealous of a bird," she says, a glint of amusement coming into her eyes. She glances back at her phone. "He IS gorgeous. Goddddd, soooo gorgeous," she moans out the words, throwing her head back.

  "Hilarious," I say, trying not to smile now at my own ridiculousness. "That bird was trying to move in on my territory. I know a brazen male threat when I see one."

  She laughs out loud, and I try my best not to laugh, but in the end, I grin up at her and we both laugh.

  "You're ridiculous," she says, still smiling. Yeah. Totally crazy. Totally crazy for you, Evie.

  She sits down on my lap and takes my face in her hands, and as we stare into each other’s eyes, she glances down at my mouth and my body reacts, swelling in my pants.

  "Jake–" she whispers.

  "Evie–" I whisper back.

  I lean my face in and plant my lips on hers, sliding my tongue into the sweetness of her ice cream flavored mouth.

  When we come up for air, she puts her forehead against mine as we catch our breath and says, "I had a really, really nice day, Jake."

  I study her face, so much racing through my mind, so much I want to say to her. I want to tell her that I’ll do anything to make her happy, that anything I have is hers. But I can’t. Not yet. And so instead, I smile and say, "It's not over yet, baby. Let's go see the tigers."

  **********

  We leave the zoo close to dinnertime. I’m hoping that I can feed her and take her back to my condo. The thought of dropping her off at her apartment does not make me happy. I’ll broach the subject at dinner though. I have to remind myself that she has a life and a job and that I can’t try to completely take over like I’m tempted to. I don’t see her taking kindly to that. Still, I’m going to have to make it clear that she’s in my life now and her telling me she’s mine means that she’s in my bed more often than she’s not. It’s not going to be possible for me to take this overly slow. I hope she agrees.

  I take her to Ferrari's, a small, Italian restaurant in Madeira that I’ve been to a couple times.

  Once we’re seated at our table, I order a bottle of red and tell her what I’ve had that’s good. She closes her menu and raises her glass, stating, "To hot peacocks!" She’s grinning. I snort. But I relent, and click her glass, grinning back.

  Once we’ve ordered, I ask, "What shift do you work tomorrow?" I try to look nonchalant but I need to figure out her week so that I can book her up. I’d like to take her day planner out of her purse and just write JAKE across every single page.

  "Ten to seven all week."

  What I want to do is tell her to quit her job tomorrow and come live with me. She doesn’t need to be working as a maid anymore. I wonder what she’d do if she had her choice.

  "Ever think about doing anything else?" I ask.

  Her eyes dart to mine. "You mean do I have ambitions to be more than a maid?"

  "Yeah, I mean, you know I don't think there's anything wrong with what you do. You're just so smart, you could do anything. I was just wondering if you think about it."

  These are things we never talked about growing up. The day-to-day struggles seemed so overwhelming at the time, just getting out of the system seemed like the main priority. What we’d do afterwards was something we’d think about later. Or at least, that’s where my mind was. No one had ever aske
d me what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I’d thought about being a police officer when I was a kid. I thought maybe being part of bringing justice to victims would be satisfying to my personality. Or maybe all little boys want to be police officers and firemen. I don’t know. And then I got adopted and after that, what I wanted out of life went by the wayside. I take a deep breath. It’s just the way it happened. I can’t change it now. I can only move forward. And that’s what I’m doing.

  She sighs. "Yeah, I do, actually. I'd love to go to college but that takes money. Money that right now, I don't have. But what I'd really love to do is write. I have this idea for a book… " She trails off, her cheeks flushing. She’d be an amazing writer… God, it’s like she was born to tell stories. She has to know that too.

  "Do it. Why haven't you?"

  "Well, I need a computer to be able to write. I brought a flash drive back and forth to the library for a while, but it's just too impractical. And when I was feeling inspired, the library was closed… you know. It just didn't work."

  The waiter interrupts us, setting our food down. Evie digs in, closing her eyes and moaning, as she tastes the first bite.

  "Good?" I ask, my mind going somewhere other than dinner.

  "Mmmm," she says, nodding.

  "Will you stay with me again tonight?"

  "I can't, Jake. I need to get ready for the week. I need to go home and get myself organized."

  "Tomorrow night?" Every night for the rest of your life?

  "Can't tomorrow night either. I have a catering job that'll go late. I don't usually do them on Monday nights but it's some sort of art showing at a gallery downtown." She glances up at me, narrowing her eyes. "You won't be there, will you?"

  I laugh. "Wasn't planning on it but maybe now I'll have to see what I can arrange."

  "Don't you dare."

  I’m quiet for a minute, completely disappointed. "I have to travel to my office in San Diego on Tuesday but I'll be back Wednesday evening. Will you stay then?" I’m slightly pissed off that I won’t see her for three more nights.

  But she smiles. "Okay." I smile back.

  We focus on dinner for a few minutes before she asks, "I'm assuming you went to college?"

  "Yeah, I went to UCSD. I was in school and also working with my dad, learning all about the company since the plan was for me to start working there when I graduated. We just had no idea at the time that I'd be running the damn thing. That's when my dad and I finally formed more of a relationship than we'd ever had. I had moved out of our house and that was really the thing that allowed us to start over. It was the first time I was really something close to happy in a long time, being away from my parents, just 'finding myself' to use a clichéd expression."

  I briefly think back to that time and stop myself from grimacing. Once I got out of that house, I had started doing a little better, seeing more clearly that my dad, Phil, was not to blame for what had been happening with Lauren all those years. The problem with letting go of that anger toward him was that I then had to accept the full responsibility of what had happened. The intense guilt I felt sent me into another spiral of depression that I was still in when I landed myself in the hospital.

  She nods, watching me closely. "You're not close to your mother?"

  Her choice of wording makes me almost gag. "Close?" If she only knew how close we really were. I cringe but answer her question in the way she means. "No."

  I force my mind to go back to the conversation we were having before the topic of Phil and Lauren came up. "I want to pay for you to take classes, Evie."

  She blinks, tensing. "What? Why would you do that?" Uh oh, hostile territory here.

  I force myself to tread carefully. Obviously she doesn’t like the idea. I don’t blame her – it would have pissed me off to take charity from someone, too, if I had been offered it at any point in my life. But what I need to make her understand is that things coming from me aren’t charity. I want her to know that I care about her and will do whatever I can do to make her dreams come true, not because I feel sorry for her, but because she’s incredible. "Because I believe in you. Because I think you're smart, and I think you just need a small break to be able to reach for your dreams."

  A memory comes to me suddenly of the Christmas I was eleven, right before I went to foster care. Christmas was like any other fucked up day in our house – no tree or presents or anything, but I knew what day it was and it pissed me off, and so I had left the house and walked around for a while, just to get out of there. I did that as much as possible, as long as I knew Seth was safe for a little bit. When I came back, there was this black garbage bag sitting on my house stairs with a red bow on it. I opened it up, kinda confused, and inside was this stuffed dog wearing a red sweater, and a football. I had no idea who had left it there, but to my eleven year old mind, it was some kind of magic. I knew the football was probably for me and the dog was for Seth, but something in me wanted that dog instead of the football, and so I gave the ball to Seth, even though I knew it made me a fucking pussy to want that stupid stuffed animal. But I knew Seth wouldn’t care either way, and so I took what I wanted. I would have never admitted it to anyone and I kept it hidden from my dad, but I loved that damn dog.

  I had taken that dog with me to foster care and kept it hidden under my bed, only taking it out at night to sleep with. A couple months later, I was in the grocery store with my foster mom and I looked at the bulletin board at the front of the store and there was a big call out for volunteers to deliver Christmas gifts to needy kids. When I looked closely, there were pictures of the volunteers from the year before, dropping off black garbage bags tied with red bows on porch steps. Something in me crashed and burned and then shriveled. The shame and deep disappointment that washed over me in that moment was so intense, I almost started crying like a baby. It wasn’t magic. It was charity. The thing was, I had known in the back of my mind that it wasn’t magic, but before that moment, I could pretend I didn’t. Now I had the proof staring at me from that bulletin board. I hated myself for hurting so damn much.

  When I got home, I grabbed that dog and brought it over to Evie’s and started throwing rocks at it in the empty gravel lot next to the house she lived in. When she came out of her house and saw me, she had grabbed my arm and asked me what I was doing, a look of confusion and concern on her face at what she must have seen in mine. I choked out the story, rambling about charity and magic and bullshit, still hucking rocks and then she had stood staring at me quietly for several minutes before bending down and picking up a rock of her own and throwing it at that dog, hitting it square in the head. We had looked at each other and cheered, and then continued throwing rocks until that stupid dog was nothing but a pile of demolished stuffing. Then she had wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed me tightly. She made it better for me that day. She always made it better.

  I snap back to reality as she shakes her head slightly at my offer of paying for her to go to school. "Jake, listen, that's a nice offer, but I've worked really hard to get where I am. I know to you my life probably doesn't look like a raving success story but I do okay, and I'll find a way to go to school at some point… I mean we just started sleeping together and I don't really know how all this works, but maybe we should wait to see where this goes before you start offering me large sums of money."

  I get that it’s hard to take things from other people when you’ve grown up like we did, but her comment about just starting to sleep together pisses me the hell off. "First of all, I thought I already made it clear that, actually, I do consider your life a raving success story, all things considered. And secondly, do I need to remind you what you told me in my bed not twenty-four hours ago, Evie?"

  She blinks. "Um–"

  "You told me you were mine, Evie. This is not some fun fuck. This is not casual to me. I thought I had conveyed that to you."

  "So, what? You're like my boyfriend or something now?"

  Yeah, exactly. "Boyfriend, man, lover,
whatever label you like, you can use it, but what it means is that we take care of each other in and out of the bedroom. And part of me taking care of you means me offering to give you the money it takes to make your dreams come true." Hopefully that cleared things up for her. I realize that I tend to have a take-charge attitude with Evie. I’m not really sure what that dynamic is between us, but it was always there growing up, and something about it always seemed to work for us, it would calm her and calm me. I had a need to be in control, and maybe she had a need to give someone else control. Whatever it was – it worked for us then, and I find myself reverting back to it now, especially when I need her to really hear me.

  "Just think about it okay?"

  She stares at me for several seconds. "Okay."

  "Okay."

  We eat in silence for a few minutes as another thought occurs to me – and while I’m taking charge… "Also, you need to get on birth control. I don't want to use condoms with you."

  She blinks and says quietly, "I'm already on the pill. I have bad periods. It regulates it. I've been on it for years."

  I actually remember that. I remember her going to the school nurse every month, looking as pale as a ghost. "Okay, good. Now finish your dinner."

  She’s quiet for a minute and then, "Um, Jake, if we're not going to use condoms, I should probably ask…"

  "I'm clean. I've always used condoms and I get regular check ups. I can show you paperwork if you want." Thank God I was always good about that. As a kid who grew up in a household where I wasn’t wanted by anyone, I would have never risked an unwanted pregnancy. Ever.

  She’s silent, studying me and I wonder what she’s thinking. "No, I trust you."

  I nod and take her hand across the table, smiling into her beautiful brown eyes.