Page 21 of Love Walked In

It was a lot harder to sprint in jeans and Converse than in shorts and running shoes, but I was giving it my best shot, ducking and weaving through other pedestrians as I ran from Ross breathe, breathe, breathe because you spend too much time sitting and not enough time running.

Colors and shapes on the walls skipped across my vision as I looked for a skinny, five-foot-nine man wearing all black clothes. Finally, on the second floor, I saw him through an entryway, sitting on a bench. My mouth opened to call his name, to apologize, but my words stopped.

He was alone, silent, and I didn’t want to pop whatever creative bubble he was in.

Peace radiated from him as he bent over the sketchbook in his lap. A flat box of colored pencils lay open next to him, and I watched as he slotted a white pencil back in and picked up a green one.

I flexed my fingers, stiff from the cold, and my thumb joint popped like a firecracker. Leo’s head jerked up, his drawing hand opened, and the green pencil dropped to the floor.

“Um, hi. I’m sorry,” I said as I came into the room and crouched down, tried and failed to grab the pencil rolling away on the wood. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He knelt down on the floor next to me. “No, don’t be silly, I… Got it!”

I looked up from the floor and Leo’s face was inches from mine, the pencil clutched in his hand, his mouth soft with surprise. My fingers twitched with the urge to reach out and touch his lower lip, and the shock of that thought made me make a fist instead.

I stood up slowly, my knees crackling. But he stayed kneeling there, fidgeting with the pencil and studying it like it held the secrets of the universe.

Words forced their way through the roadblock of mortification and came out in a babbling stream. “I’m so sorry I was late. I turned off my alarm in my sleep. I’m here now, but you’re busy. I don’t want to bug you.” I gestured helplessly with my thumb behind me.

He shook his head as he stood up. “No, don’t go. I can do this later.”

“It’s cool, I can wait.”

“Why don’t you just sit next to me and look around, and I’ll do what I was doing?”

I hadn’t been a people pleaser in years, but embarrassment made me say, “Are you sure?”

He closed his eyes. “Mari.”

The way he said my name, impatient and commanding, was a shock up my spine. “I’ll be so quiet, you won’t even know I’m here,” I said, the words spilling out of me.

He gestured with the pencil, and the brown leather bench squeaked as we sat down.

For a second I thought he’d stay frozen, too aware of me. But then he took a deep breath, and his pencil began scratching across the paper. Finally I was able to take in the pictures around me, a grin stretching across my face.

Flowers! Dozens of bunches of flowers against black backgrounds.

Walls full of spring, captured in the Netherlands almost four hundred years ago according to the explanation on the wall.

Tulips, red and yellow, solid and striped.

Peonies and roses and irises. I felt gleeful at the wealth of color compared to the gloom outside.

If I could, I would have bathed in the richness.

I took out my phone and carefully snapped a few of the paintings for future tattoo inspiration.

Finally I let myself look at the painting Leo was studying.

The bouquet was mostly blowsy pink and white flowers, peonies and roses, but then suddenly I saw the daffodils tucked into the heart of the arrangement, their trumpets yolk orange and their petals sunshine yellow.

I involuntarily glanced down at the matching blossom on my forearm.

They had been my mom’s favorite flowers—to her they’d represented joy and energy, sunshine and optimism.

Leo seemed to be in a reverie of his own, glancing back and forth between the painting and his sketchbook as he drew one of the daffodils.

I couldn’t help but take in the way he held the pencil in his long fingers.

The way his lower lip ended up between his teeth as he worked to get the line of the petal just so.

I leaned in an inch to get a closer look and got that hint of green and spice on his skin.

And now I could feel his eyes on me. “That’s pretty,” I said quickly.

His pencil paused on the page. “It’s nothing much.”

I blinked at the drawing, which looked like it had been picked from a real garden a second ago. “Nothing much?”

“No, I mean… thank you. I try to practice. Do you draw?”

“Ha. Do stick figures count?” I looked up at the paintings. “Yeah, no, I suck at Pictionary. But I like looking at art. It’s rejuvenating, soaking in beautiful things.”

I glanced at him, and he wasn’t looking at his drawing. He was taking me in, instead. Like he was going to draw me next. “Rejuvenating. I like that.”

After another minute of him drawing and me looking, words bubbled up. “Can I ask you something?”

He put his pencil down and turned to me. “Of course you can.”

I pointed at the page he was working on. “Why are you using green in the petal? It’s yellow, right? Like an orangey-yellow?”

He shook his head. “At first glance, of course. But nothing’s all one color, if you look closely for a long time. It’s got all these different shades. I just… see them all, and put them down on paper.

“Like your hair.” He pivoted a little, his knee nudging against mine, and reached out, using his pencil as a pointer from the top of my head down to my shoulder. “It’s definitely chestnut-colored, but under these lights, and with the green walls, the waves have got lilac and mauve in them.”

His attention was warm, a lamp burning in the winter dark. Every molecule of my body was alert to how our knees nudged against each other, how the fingertips of my left hand were only a few inches from his right thigh. How his eyes were focused on my blushing cheeks, mouth. How my lips parted.

No, wait. I shouldn’t do this. Not with him. He was too familiar now, too close.

“I wish someone had told me that when I tried to dye my hair purple in high school,” I said to pop the bubble. “The bathroom looked like Barney the Dinosaur spontaneously combusted.”

Leo snorted, shaking his head.

“But seriously, this makes you really happy. And you’re, like, genuinely gifted at it.”

“I’d be better if I’d studied properly.” He looked down at his pad. “But maybe I wouldn’t love it in the same way. This way, it’s just fun.”

I would have believed him if he’d said it with more enthusiasm, but instead all I got was wistfulness. I guessed art school was his road not taken. “But you could still study, right? Adult education is a thing here?”

“It is. But the shop is the priority, which is how it should be.”

I couldn’t argue with that. It was the reason I was here in the first place. And Leo’s hunched shoulders told me I should change the subject. “Does this place have a café? I was so late I didn’t get any caffeine, and I’m starting to get a headache.”

Leo shut his sketchbook, the sound punctuating the end of his fun. “Of course, come on.”

Fifteen minutes later, I hummed happily as I tackled a wedge of coffee-and-walnut cake, which I hadn’t been able to resist ordering with my cappuccino. “How do we not have this cake in the States? It’s delicious. It’s, like, mapley and nutty and rich. So good.”

Leo smirked a little as he sipped his tea. “I suppose the most powerful country in the world can’t have everything. Yes to an enormous nuclear arsenal, no to walnut sponge.”

I snorted. “I’d want the sponge, not the nukes, but that’s just me.” I waved my fork at him. “Also, can we talk about Ribena? And blackcurrant things in general? Graham gave me some British Skittles the other day, and there should be blackcurrant-flavored everything as far as I’m concerned.”

“Even lube?”

My mouth gaped. Leo clapped his hand over his mouth, eyes wide.

The laugh burst out of me like water from a fire hose. “Lube? Lube?! ”

He closed his eyes like he was a small child, pretending the world disappeared when he couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled through his fingers. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“No, no, don’t apologize,” I said through my giggles. “You, Leo Ross, have hidden depths.”

Now his hand covered his whole face. “That was a depth that should probably have stayed hidden.”

I put my fork down, reached out and tugged on his hand, pulled it away so I could see him. “Why? You’re funny.”

He looked down at where I was holding his hand in mine, surprise written across his face. “You’re the only person who’s ever said that.”

“Bashful” wasn’t an adjective I usually applied to myself, but I could feel my cheeks getting pink and an awkward chuckle sneaking out of my mouth. “Well, you are.” I let him go, tried to find the composure that had gone AWOL.

I’d forked up another bite of cake to shut myself up when he blurted, “You should come for Friday-night dinner sometime soon.”

I blinked. “You want me to come for Shabbos?” That felt… intimate. Too intimate? Shabbos was usually for family, and I definitely wasn’t family.

He nodded eagerly. “It’d delight Judith, and you could join my sisters’ little coven. Wait, are you Jewish?”

“I’m not, but you know Suzanne is. She sometimes made a Friday-night dinner when she missed her mom. It made her feel like she was still here.” I smiled a little. “I don’t really get noodle kugel. Cheesy noodles with raisins and cinnamon is such a weird side dish.”

“Mum doesn’t make lokshen pudding, but she loves to cook all sorts of things.” His eyes went wide. “But will you come? Please?”

I looked at his earnest face and the automatic No dissolved in my mouth. I knew from going to Suzanne’s that Friday-night dinner was more than just food. It was ritual, warmth, and light. It sounded tempting in the middle of the London winter.

“Are you sure you want me there?” I still asked.

Leo hesitated, smiled shyly. “I’m not your boss, Mari. You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

That shy smile was a taste of honey, and I wanted more of it. And he was right, he wasn’t in charge of me. I could decide how close we would get. “Yes, I’ll come. Thank you for inviting me.”

He exhaled. “Good. I’m glad. And you’re welcome.” He sat back in his chair. “And I’ll make sure Mum makes something you can eat. She’s cooked salmon before.”

I waved him off. “Oh, I’ve eaten just side dishes plenty of times. I don’t want to be a pain.”

He shook his head hard. “My mum’s big on being hospitable. She’ll be upset if you can’t eat everything.”

I was about to protest at the fuss involved, but then I thought of his hand on my back at Tommy’s, the glass of water, the look of concern. His acts of care hadn’t irritated me. They hadn’t made me want to throw up spikes and sharp edges.

I liked it when he fussed over me. So why not let him do it? It wouldn’t necessarily lead to anything deeper.