Making Faces(39)

Her eyes were a deep, soft brown and a sprinkling of freckles speckled her small nose. Her mouth was slightly disproportionate to the rest of her face. In high school, when she wore braces, her top lip had looked almost comical, like a duck bill stretched over her protruding teeth. Now her mouth was almost sensual, her teeth straight and white, her smile wide and unpretentious. She was quietly lovely, unassumingly pretty, completely unaware that at some point between awkwardness and adulthood she had grown so appealing. And because she was unaware, she became more appealing still.

Ambrose had watched her, night after night, positioning himself where he could gaze at her unobtrusively. And he wondered more than once how he could have so easily dismissed her before. Moments like these made him long for the face that he used to see when he looked in the mirror, a face that he'd taken for granted. A face that had smoothed his way more than once with a pretty girl that caught his eye. It was a face that would surely attract her to him, the way she'd been attracted to him before. But it was a face he would never have again, and he found he was lost without it. So he just watched.

She always had a paperback tucked to the side of the cash register, and she would pull her long curls around her left shoulder, twining them around her fingers as she read, the lateness of the hour making shoppers few and far between, giving her long stretches where she manned her register with little to do but flip pages and twirl her red locks.

Now she was writing him notes using word games and Shakespeare, just like she'd done senior year, posing as Rita. He had been so angry when he'd found out. But then she'd been so sweet and so obviously sorry when she'd offered her apology. It hadn't been difficult to see she had a huge crush on him. It's hard to stay angry with someone who loves you. And now she was at it again. But he didn't think for a minute that she actually liked him. She still liked the old Ambrose. Had she even looked at him? Really looked at him? It had been dark the night she practically ran over him on her bike. She’d gasped when she saw his face. He’d heard her, loud and clear. So what was she up to now? Thinking about it just made him angry all over again. But before the night was out he was back to feeling like a jerk. So he walked to the white board and scribbled the words.





Asshole or Jerk?





He thought his dad might object to the word '*' being written on the bakery whiteboard, but didn't think any other word would do. Shakespeare wasn't going to cut it this time around. Plus, he had no idea if Shakespeare's characters ever begged for forgiveness from pretty redheads with hearts that were too soft for their own good. He went home in a sour mood that soured his stomach and made the maple bars he'd eaten feel like rocks in his gut. When he arrived at work at ten o'clock the following night the board had been wiped clean and no new message had been added. Good. He was relieved. Kind of.





Ambrose sneaked little peeks through the opening that separated the bakery display cases and front counter from the working part of the kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of Fern, wondering if she had finally decided he wasn't worth her time. She had already been gone by the time he arrived at work the last few nights. He had started coming in earlier and earlier so he could see her–even from behind the bakery window–before she left work for the night. He made excuses to Elliott about things that needed to be done at the bakery, but his dad never questioned it. He was probably glad to see Ambrose out of the house and out of his childhood room, although he would never say so. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.

His psychologist, the one the army made sure he had, told Ambrose that he needed to learn to adjust to his “new reality,” to “come to terms with what had happened to him,” to “find new pursuits and associations.” The job was a start. Ambrose hated to admit that it was actually helping, and he’d been running and lifting weights too. Exercise was the only thing that made him feel something besides despair. So he exercised a lot. Ambrose wondered suddenly if spying would qualify as a “new pursuit.”

He felt like a creep, spying on Fern, but he spied anyway. Tonight, Fern was sweeping the floor singing along with “The Wind Beneath my Wings,” using the broom handle as a microphone. He hated the song, but he found himself smiling as he watched her swaying back and forth, singing in a slightly off-key but not-unpleasant soprano. She moved her pile of dirt until she was directly in front of the bakery counter. She saw him standing in full view and stopped, staring back at him as the last words rang through the empty store. She smiled tentatively, as if he hadn't made her cry just a few nights before, and Ambrose felt the newly acquired fight or flight reaction that flooded him anytime someone looked directly at him.

Fern had turned up the music that trickled out of the store's sound system until it felt more like a skating rink than a grocery store. The tunes were a benign mix of soft hits designed to put shoppers in a coma as they perused the aisles for items they could probably do without. Ambrose suddenly longed for a little Def Leppard, complete with full-throated wailing and high-powered choruses.

Suddenly, Fern dropped the broom and ran for the front doors. Ambrose stepped out from the kitchen, rounding the counter, slightly alarmed that something was wrong. Fern was unlocking the sliding doors and pushing one aside to allow Bailey Sheen to roll through in his wheelchair. Then she pulled it back and relocked it, chattering with Bailey as she did.