In Broken Places by Michele Phoenix

Author:Michele Phoenix
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / General, FICTION / General
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-04-30T21:00:00+00:00

After an unseasonably warm fall, the weather had turned wintry. The leaves, it seemed, had browned and fallen overnight, and we’d gone from Kool-Aid weather to hot-chocolate weather just as fast. My walks to the Johnsons’ after school were now drives, and though I disliked the cold, I was grateful for the change. It made it less obvious that Scott had stopped performing his Boy Scout routine. We’d crossed in the hallways and on the street several times since the gym fiasco, and he’d always been friendly. I’d tried to keep the zingers down to a minimum—my form of penance—but sometimes they just popped out. He’d become one of Shayla’s favorite people, and she tended to launch herself at him whenever she saw him, which made extricating myself from banal conversations a little complicated. But I did get one thing straight when I ran into him in the doorway of the Lacoste bakery one Saturday morning.

“Where’s Shayla?” he asked, surprised to find my usual sidekick nowhere in sight.

“My daughter is having a playdate with Lizzie Robinson,” I said, putting sufficient emphasis on daughter to make my subliminal message not quite so subliminal.

He looked pleased—happy, actually—and said, “Well, say hello to your daughter from me.” There were three cement blocks and a Humvee stacked on the word daughter when he said it, so I knew my message had gotten across.

I thought that would be the extent of our conversation and slung my bag higher on my shoulder, prepared to leave the bakery, but Scott didn’t move. I was standing inside the door, waiting to go down two steps to the street, and he was standing on the sidewalk, blocking my exit while his mind was engaged in what appeared to be some pretty intense internal dialogue. The baker’s wife finally bellowed that we were keeping the sliding door from shutting, and that spurred him into motion. German women yelling had a tendency to do that. He stepped into the bakery and moved me aside to allow other customers to exit.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked, jutting his chin toward the small dining room just beyond a glass wall.

“Um . . .”

“Please. We don’t have to stay long, but . . . I’ve been unfair to you and I’d like to make up for it.”

“Unfair?”

He pointed to the dining room. “Coffee? Or tea? I’d like to explain myself, but not standing here.”

This was not the usual fearless Scott standing in front of me, the conversational warrior who had submitted me to a hailstorm of questions so many times with zeal and confidence. This was a more guarded man who seemed more deliberate than spontaneous, more considerate than impulsive.

It must have been pity that made me say, “Just a few minutes,” as I pushed through the glass door into the smoky dining room beyond, wondering as I went what had possessed me to accept his invitation. “I’m not really comfortable with this,” I added to make sure he knew I wasn’t used to this kind of thing.

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