confusing signals.” He accepted the
cash and stuffed it into a pocket.
“You’re really good at helping,” she pointed out. “Or are you that thorough at everything?” She loaded her voice so that the double meaning was unmistakable.
“You’re determined to challenge my good intentions,” he observed, but played along, “I apply myself. I never quit. And I seldom disappoint.” It sounded like a creed and she wondered how long he’d lived by those principals. “I like to see a job to its finish. I’m totally into results and don’t mind putting in the work when I know the pay off’s going to be phenomenal.” He let his gaze fall to her face. “With us, it’s going to throw the earth off its axis.”
“Confidence,” she replied. He had a lot of it. It was in the way his body moved forward, his shoulders leading into the next moment. It was in the deep, steady timber of his voice. He had enough going on that his words were more than that—they were promises. “You definitely don’t lack that.”
“No,” he agreed. “Not in a long while.” They waited at the crosswalk, as the pedestrian lights began to flash and the cars slowed. “But I wasn’t always so good at helping,” he confided.
“You want to tell me about that?” They may as well start the unveiling of their lives.
“I was a menace to society,” he confessed, but a smile softened his mouth. “I suppose I wasn’t too bad. Some tagging when I was fifteen. Street racing at sixteen. I wrapped my car around a tree and luckily the only person I hurt was myself.” He tugged lightly on her hand and started them across the street. “I was smart enough to know I was spinning out of control and had just enough humility to accept help when it was offered.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he countered.
Her lips twisted as she thought about that. “I have two,” she revealed. “They’re connected so maybe it’s just one big mess.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You going to share?”
“I think you should get to know me better. See that I’ve grown up a little. Matured.”
“You know all about my mistaken youth,” he chided. “Anyway, the more we share the closer we’ll become.” He waggled his eyebrows and his smile was full of his taunt.
“Now you’re playing on my weakness.”
“Is that what I am for you?”
She nodded. “Right now.” The potential for him to become something more—hugely more—was frightening, but persistent.
“You won’t scare me off, Ivy,” he promised. “We’ve learned from our mistakes.”
She had. In a big way.
“My biggest mistake was becoming engaged at sixteen, married at eighteen.”
“Sounds like you were trying to run away from something.”
“Or someone,” Ivy said. “I think I was trying so hard to rise above my circumstances…to not become my mother…to not become stuck in that life…that marriage became my only way out. Or so I thought.” And she’d wanted someone to love her. She’d had Holly, of course, but she’d needed more than that. “I was looking for someone else to make me feel like I had value. That was a big mistake.” And not something that ever worked. “I paid for it and it taught me a lot. I grew up. I went to college. I became my own woman. Somewhere along the way I realized we all have value, just by virtue of being human beings. That we have all hurt and hurt others, that we’re this collective mass moving towards the same thing—to love and be loved—and that our many paths give us individuality but also familiarity. Kinship.” She realized she was speaking of things she never had before. They were the thoughts that kept her going, that improved her understanding of herself and others, that lit her compassion and made her approach life—hers and others—with a gentleness she wasn’t capable of even four years ago. She felt her face heat and she shrugged her discomfort.
“I bet you didn’t know I was a closet philosopher,” she said.
He tugged on her hand to stop them and turned her so that they stood toe to toe on the sidewalk. “You put into words things I’ve been thinking for a long time. Our experiences shape us but are also our connect points.”
He lowered his head and his lips brushed over hers. It was a short kiss. Just a caress really. But it was warm and sparked an electrical current that flowed through her.
“That was one of the first things I thought about you. That