Chapter 15 – Dallas #2
I chuckle, “No, I do. It's just not on me. It’s at home.”
She sighs, and I hear a faint thump that I assume is her dropping to her knees to search the floor.
After a few minutes of looking, I carefully slide down to join her, making sure not to accidentally sit on wherever she’s perched.
The elevator is small, barely five-by-five, and it quickly becomes clear to both of us that her phone has likely slipped into a crack and won’t be retrieved anytime soon.
“Shit," her voice becomes muffled, and I imagine her hands are now covering her face. "This is just what I didn’t need the day before Thanksgiving. It'll be impossible to get a new one for at least two more days.”
“Might be nice not to be so connected to it for a change,” I offer.
She scoffs, “That's easy for you to say. You’re someone who doesn’t carry a phone on them to go out in public. I need to have my phone at all times for work. It’s basically part of my job.”
"What were you looking at when you walked into the elevator? You seemed distracted? Was it something for your job?"
She sighs, "Nothing. Just a... rumor about me."
I stretch my long legs as far as they can reach in the tight space, thoroughly enjoying the intimacy of my first time talking to Dove without the pressure of her seeing and knowing that it’s me. At least, I assume it’s Dove that I’m trapped in the elevator with.
We’ve never met in person, but after finishing my last tour and returning to the States, I’d given in one lonely night after finding that box of letters from her under my childhood bed at my parent’s house and Googled ‘Paloma’ plus ‘Lonestar Junction, Texas.’
The results returned a single photo of her from when she was eighteen years old posing next to her other high school soccer teammates as part of the Lonestar Junction Highschool Varsity team championship.
Although I knew that she’d look different now, having matured into a woman over the past eight years, it was clear she was stunning even then.
A smatter of darker brown freckles across her nose.
Thick, deep brown with auburn hair full of curls that she’d smoothed into waves, just like she’d described in her first letter to her birth mom.
Long legs that were toned from years of playing soccer.
A wide smile with straight teeth that indicated years of painful orthodontics.
And bright, round brown eyes so perfectly shaped they reminded me of a gentle doe.
It was still difficult to reconcile in my mind that the little Paloma I’d written to as a teenager for her English class was now all grown up and apparently, a popular and beloved rock star who toured the world, cussed like a sailor, and was living her childhood dreams. The same dreams she’d told me about via our letters.
Yesterday, after returning home from dropping off more produce at the co-op to Stevie, I deliberately avoided Googling her name again knowing that I’d be potentially meeting her tonight at the bar.
Instead, I kept myself occupied with my new corn crop, focusing on the harvest rather than succumbing to my curiosity about her voice.
When I had searched for Paloma a few months before, the results hadn't included her music, but now I knew that searching for Dove the sound like the wind chimes on my back porch that were left behind by the previous owner.
When I’d purchased Evergreen Farmstead from the previous owner’s great-nephew, he’d told me that the wind chimes had been a gift to the late owner’s wife on their fiftieth anniversary spent together.
I’d offered to take them down and give them to him so that he could keep them in the family, but he’d insisted they stay at the farm.
Said the sound might bring me joy while living out there in solitude.
Now, with my eyes closed, hearing Dove’s easy laugh fill our unfortunate circumstances, I was certain I’d be enjoying those wind chimes much differently from now on. I can imagine how her voice must soar so effortlessly when she sings the music that she loves.
Damn me for not looking up her songs last night.
“Nope. And I'm relieved that you can't see me right now because I am super claustrophobic and have struggled with anxiety being stuck in tight spaces my whole life. I'm not handling this well. Do you mind if I sit next to you?”
I smile in the darkness. “Come on over.”
Dove.