How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [80]
The Army flew Oscar to San Antonio earlier this week, and it makes me feel better to know Sofia is within a two- or three-hour plane ride again. She called when they arrived, talked to me and to Katie, and everyone seems to be sleeping better over this.
On Thursday afternoon, the tourist traffic has slowed enough that I take a cup of tea and a sandwich out to the front porch to go over some paperwork, while the day clerk cleans the bakery cases and polishes the glass for tomorrow. Katie is somewhere reading, as usual. It pleases me immensely that she loves books so much, and I went to the library with her the last time, finding something I could use to escape, too. At night, I’m reading before sleep again, a habit I’d lost somewhere along the way.
Now I settle on the wide Victorian porch with a cup of lemon-scented tea and a tomato and cheese sandwich on bread sliced from the last loaf of sunflower wheat. The world has taken on that hush that arrives before a thunderstorm, birds silent, traffic muffled. Clouds move ponderously over the sky, hiding the sharp blue of Colorado summer. As I eat my sandwich, I admire the shifting colors—slate and pale blue and eggplant, with the odd, distant thread of white-gold lightning. The clouds make me think of elephants or rhinos plodding over the day.
A flash of broader lightning crackles into a valley, and, as if he’s stepping through a rent in the atmosphere, Jonah comes around the corner. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the evening at his house a couple of weeks ago. Several times I’ve thought about calling or walking by, and each time I stop myself, for a million complicated reasons.
Or, really, for one: I don’t want to be the smitten one, chasing him this time.
Now he is here, wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved ivory Henley. His belly is flat, and he has a loose-limbed confidence I find very appealing. At the gate, he pauses to appreciate the flowers exploding from the earth where there was once a big gash in the landscaping, then looks up and sees me sitting there.
His expression brightens notably enough that my stomach flips—he likes me, he likes me!—before I remember that I don’t need anything in my life that’s volatile or exhilarating or that might turn everything upside down.
“Hello,” he says, standing at the foot of the stairs. “May I join you?”
I take his measure. Shrug as if I don’t care one way or the other. “Sure.”
He climbs the steps and sits in the chair on the other side of the table. “How are you, Ramona?”
He is close enough that I catch a waft of his scent, and it plugs directly into every lust cell in my brain. Limbic memory, I tell myself as awareness prickles to life on my shoulders. Memories from another me. “I’m good. Busy. How ’bout you?”
“Getting used to the new world.”
“Hmmm.” I wait. In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolls.
He’s looking at me now, his eyes touching my throat, my hair. “The light suits you. It makes your hair glitter.”
“Thank you.”
He pauses, as if considering. “There is going to be a string quartet in the park on Sunday evening. I came to see if you might like to go. With me.”
Inclining my head, I say, “I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m getting mixed messages. That’s not very comfortable.”
“Right.” He nods, takes a breath. “If you will come with me, I’ll explain.”
“If you’re involved or finishing something or whatever, I’d rather not get in the middle of that.”
His smile is wry. “Nothing like that, I promise.”
“All right. I would love that,” I say. “To go. With you.”
“Good,” he says, recovering. “I’ll bring a picnic. I’ll come over at around five and we can walk from here.