I’ll never do it again is what I told myself. Not that I’ve found a new dream.
But today is about Grammy, not me.
I find the section with the roses.
“A—aaachoo!” My allergies kick into high gear and my eyes water. I blink away the tingling and rub at the right one as they start to burn.
“Bless you!” gets called from inside and the voice floats to me like a melody. It’s almost like she sang the words.
And I almost want to sneeze to hear it again.
“Thanks!” I squat down and start reading the names. “Rosa Carolina. Achoo!”
“Bless you!”
I smile and stick my nose in a beautiful, full blossom, inhaling deeply. My nose instantly stings. Probably should stop doing that. But the smell reminds me so much of Grammy.
I read a few more tags. “Rosa Woodsil, Rosa Virginiana.” I look up and the lighting creates a halo around a woman’s blonde hair making her look almost angelic as she comes closer. “Ro…ro…rosa…,” my brain stutters.
My nose tingles and twitches. “Wow, those are some huge…” I smother my mouth in my elbow. “Aaaaachoo…bloobs.” My words come out all muffled.
Her face drops, her eyebrows shoot up, and she crosses her arms. “What did you just say?”
I review what I said as I stand up. “I said you have some huge…” Then I realize what it might have sounded like and why she’s protecting the two round items on her chest that my eyes seem to wander too indiscriminately.
“I know what the front door says, but thisisn’tthat type of place.” She points toward the door, and I keep my eyes pointed to the canvas ceiling of the atrium, avoiding any chance of impropriety. “You need to go.”
I hold my hands up in surrender but bring my eyes to hers. The blue seems a little harsh—almost sharp like a shard of ice. But in that moment, I see something familiar. She has one eye a deeper blue than the other. I remember that anomaly.
“I…I promise that I didn’t mean what you think I meant. I meant…meant…crap…” My chest bounces with an impending big one.
“Bless you!” she says close to my face, and it stops me in my tracks, the pain radiating from my nasal cavities but there’s no sneeze. A bitter trick to stifle my sneeze, but I probably deserve it.
She turns and walks away. “That’s for telling me I have huge boobs. Like I didn’t know that!”
I follow on her heels. “I promise, that’s not what I said.”
She heads to the front door. “Out!”
“Please, Delia, stop.”
She stills, turning toward me, her hair cuts the air like a circular saw. Her jaw tightens. “So the football captain recognized me. Woo…friggin’…who. Now I’m going to tell you one last time before I call the police…get out!”
I sigh. “I’m not the football anything anymore and you’re Delia Billingsley. I remember that time when we had to pair up for physics class.”
“And I seem to remember that I did all the work, Joel Yager.”
“I seem to remember you wouldn’tletme do anything.”
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and when she re-opens them. “That does sound like me.” An eyebrow peaks. “You really weren’t talking about my—”
“No! I promise.”
She leans back against the wall. “I’m sorry, been a shitty day and I jumped to a conclusion, but in my defense, it did sounds like you said boobs.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to talk while sneezing. It did sound like…well, you know. But I promise it wasn’t. I was saying ‘huge blooms.”
Her lips lift and she starts a giggle. “We do have some huge blooms here.”