Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Travis’s gaze broke from mine, and he looked around. It was as if he’d been looking through a foggy window and the glass had suddenly cleared. When he looked at me again, his eyes were soft. And yes, warm. There were rings of dark green around his golden-brown irises. Extraordinary, those eyes. I’d noticed his brother had very similar eyes, but his appeared about a half shade lighter than Travis’s. “Yeah,” he said after a moment, “I am pretty lucky.” Then he smiled at me, lopsided and boyish as though I’d just offered him a gift he hadn’t been expecting.
“Clarice is going to read our fortunes in a few minutes. Come with us.”
Travis rolled his eyes. “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”
I laughed. “I don’t know to be honest. I’ve never had my fortune told. But I’ll keep an open mind if you will.”
He grinned that boyish grin again and my stomach flipped at its unexpected innocence. So many layers. “Sure.”
Cricket appeared, a tray of beers in her hand, the plastic cups sloshing foam, and handed one to each of us. When Travis hesitated, she said, “Come on, Chief, you’re off duty and Burt here will drive us home.”
I choked on the small sip of beer I’d just taken and Travis’s eyes widened as he glanced at the grinning blind man. Cricket let out a boisterous laugh, whacking the side of her hip with the now empty tray. Travis took a sip. “I guess I don’t have to drive home for several hours.”
Several hours left of heaven. I held up my cup and he met mine with his.
Clarice’s booth was near the other side of the festival so we began walking, Travis and me in the rear of the group. “What part of Los Angeles did you grow up in?” Travis asked.
I stalled, taking a sip of my beer and swallowing. “Are you familiar with LA?”
“Not really, other than the famous parts…Hollywood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Laguna Beach.”
“Not those parts,” I said on a small, humorless laugh. “Picture the opposite of sunny beaches, Louis Vuitton shops, and gated communities, and that’s where I grew up.”
Cricket let out a loud guffaw, and Travis squinted toward where the rest of our group walked. She gave a not-very-surreptitious glance back at Travis and then removed what appeared to be a flask and poured a shot in Burt’s and Betty’s held out cups. “She’s a really bad criminal,” Travis murmured. “No wonder she served time.”
I let out a small laugh.
“So,” he said after a minute, “no blueberry festivals in the opposite of a gated community.”
“No blueberries, period.”
One brow went up and one brow went down and he considered me. “That can’t be true.”
“Trust me, it is. Liquor and convenience stores don’t tend to sell any produce at all, unless it’s a basket of three or four bananas at the front counter that usually go untouched. When my mom did bring home food, she tended to pick up chips, soda, and donuts. It’s the food pyramid of poverty-stricken neighborhoods. That’s true everywhere I assume, although admittedly I haven’t been everywhere.” I shot him what I hoped was an amused smile, but he didn’t smile back. I looked away. Why was I sharing this? At the blueberry festival? The warm, glowy, sun-drenched blueberry festival.
Because today of all days, it feels good to be known. Walking amidst all of these people who are connected to other people, feeling like you are too.
Was it really so wrong to want that, just for one day? In a couple months’ time, I’d never see this man again. Did it really matter?
“Is that why health food is so important to you?” he asked softly.
“I suppose. And I don’t want to give my mom too bad of a rap. She tried, you know, sometimes more than others, but…she was a product of her environment. She brought home food she thought we liked. Food we did like, but that wasn’t good for us.”
“How’d you manage to be different?”
“I stole a cantaloupe.”
“Aha. I knew the first time I saw you, you were criminally inclined.”
“I confess. Once upon a time, that was true. I was eleven, and one day I took an alternate route home from school, which took me past this Korean grocery store. There was a stand of cantaloupes. Well, of course, I’d seen cantaloupes on TV before, but we’d never eaten one. I lingered around that stand. I wanted one.” I recalled that moment of wanting. How it’d been a fierce thing inside that I had no way to explain. Maybe I just wanted to be different, to live a life I hadn’t been given, if only for a brief time. Long enough to eat a cantaloupe. “I wanted to experience a cantaloupe just once,” I said, leaving out the rest.