Kissing the Shy Guy - Stephanie Street Page 0,57

consumed me. Where my life had once been happily filled with my family and my music, Jenna had taken over. None of that other stuff meant anything without her. The fact she’d pushed me away didn’t seem to make a difference to my heart. It had found a home with Jenna. If I could only coax her into accepting it and giving me hers in return.

I parked in front of the ice cream shop but led Jenna across the street instead. We’d get ice cream after she told me what had happened.

She didn’t object as we walked, fingers laced together, to the same table we’d sat at before. I guided her onto the tabletop and stood facing her, remembering the last time we were here. It seemed so long ago, but only yesterday at the same time. Being around her and not being with her had almost killed me over the last few weeks. I wouldn’t survive if she pushed me away now.

“Tell me.”

She pulled her hands from mine, dropping her head into them. “We don’t have to do this. I’m sorry. You were just there and I,” her words were muffled by her hands.

I pulled them away from her face. She lifted her gaze, her eyes red and puffy. Not even that could detract from her beauty, beauty I once thought only skin deep. The last few weeks taught me something different. “No. Don’t do that. You can trust me, Jenna.”

Did she hear the plea in my voice? She must have because after staring into my eyes for what could have been one minute or ten, she began. “That was my mom.”

I nodded because she’d already told me that and sat down on the bench next to her feet. She slid down to sit beside me.

“She does a lot of charity work. Some of it is through organizations, but most of it is her being kind. I swear, she just knows how to find people that need her.” She shrugged.

I listened. I had no idea where she was going with this. I thought from what I’d heard from her end of the conversation that something had happened. But this didn’t make any sense.

“I admire her. I really do. She helps a lot of people.” She smiled. “I remember once, I was about five or six. We were at the grocery store. Melly was still little enough to sit in the front of the grocery cart. Mom always made me hold onto the side and not let go. I hated it.” She chuckled.

I touched her cheek with my fingertips. I couldn’t help myself. She tilted her head into my palm and closed her eyes. Tears I hadn’t noticed spilled onto my fingers. I tucked her into my side with my arm around her waist.

“What happened?” She needed to get this out, and I needed to know, not just for her but for myself. Understanding the way Jenna worked had become an obsession. She was about to hand me a key to the map of her heart, something to help me understand the twisting paths and treacherous pitfalls.

“This lady walked up to us. I’d never seen her before, but she was crying. It scared me. It was so random. But then she started talking. I didn’t understand everything.” She rolled her eyes at herself. “I understood the words, I just didn’t understand what she meant, but then she said thank you. And I remember it so clearly because I’d never heard that kind of gratitude before. She was fervent, you know?”

I nodded, even though I couldn’t think of a personal instance when I’d felt that kind of gratitude or had it expressed toward me.

“Right. Well, the lady walked away, and we finished our shopping. But when we got to the car, I asked my mom \ about the lady. At first, she tried to blow it off, saying it was just someone she knew, and it was no big deal. But it had made such an impression on me, I kept asking about it for days. Mom finally sat me down and asked what my deal was. It worried me, that lady crying. I thought something bad had happened. It made me afraid.” She stopped to take a breath.

“Mom told me that lady was someone who lived in a special place for women, a place where they waited for their babies to be born. I asked her why they couldn’t live in their own house, and she told me it was