Leo's Chance(38)

The Cincinnati zoo isn’t as large as the San Diego zoo, but it’s still beautiful with nice walking paths and roaming peacocks. We hold hands as we walk. I can barely contain the smile that wants to stay permanently on my face.

As we eat lunch, one of the colorful, roaming birds walks past our table and Evie gasps, jumping up and following it around with her phone, trying to snap a picture. She’s dancing around with this wild look on her face and I can’t help laughing as the stupid thing dodges her around tables and chairs and she follows it relentlessly. But suddenly, I swear that damn bird looks right at me, and then saunters over to her, stops right in front of Evie and spreads all his feathers, preening and strutting back and forth. I watch her as she sucks in a breath, a look of pure glee on her face and snaps picture after picture. I’ve completely ceased to exist. It’s like I’ve disappeared. Fucking bird. I wonder if grilled peacock is any good.

She comes bouncing back, squealing, "Look!" and pushing her phone in front of my face so I can look at the dozens of pictures she snapped. I grunt, sick of that stupid bird already and when I look up, she’s staring at me with an incredulous look on her face. "You're jealous of a bird?" she asks.

"What? No!" I snap. I just don’t think I like peacocks very much.

"You're jealous of a bird," she says, a glint of amusement coming into her eyes. She glances back at her phone. "He IS gorgeous. Goddddd, soooo gorgeous," she moans out the words, throwing her head back.

"Hilarious," I say, trying not to smile now at my own ridiculousness. "That bird was trying to move in on my territory. I know a brazen male threat when I see one."

She laughs out loud, and I try my best not to laugh, but in the end, I grin up at her and we both laugh.

"You're ridiculous," she says, still smiling. Yeah. Totally crazy. Totally crazy for you, Evie.

She sits down on my lap and takes my face in her hands, and as we stare into each other’s eyes, she glances down at my mouth and my body reacts, swelling in my pants.

"Jake–" she whispers.

"Evie–" I whisper back.

I lean my face in and plant my lips on hers, sliding my tongue into the sweetness of her ice cream flavored mouth.

When we come up for air, she puts her forehead against mine as we catch our breath and says, "I had a really, really nice day, Jake."

I study her face, so much racing through my mind, so much I want to say to her. I want to tell her that I’ll do anything to make her happy, that anything I have is hers. But I can’t. Not yet. And so instead, I smile and say, "It's not over yet, baby. Let's go see the tigers."

**********

We leave the zoo close to dinnertime. I’m hoping that I can feed her and take her back to my condo. The thought of dropping her off at her apartment does not make me happy. I’ll broach the subject at dinner though. I have to remind myself that she has a life and a job and that I can’t try to completely take over like I’m tempted to. I don’t see her taking kindly to that. Still, I’m going to have to make it clear that she’s in my life now and her telling me she’s mine means that she’s in my bed more often than she’s not. It’s not going to be possible for me to take this overly slow. I hope she agrees.

I take her to Ferrari's, a small, Italian restaurant in Madeira that I’ve been to a couple times.

Once we’re seated at our table, I order a bottle of red and tell her what I’ve had that’s good. She closes her menu and raises her glass, stating, "To hot peacocks!" She’s grinning. I snort. But I relent, and click her glass, grinning back.

Once we’ve ordered, I ask, "What shift do you work tomorrow?" I try to look nonchalant but I need to figure out her week so that I can book her up. I’d like to take her day planner out of her purse and just write JAKE across every single page.

"Ten to seven all week."

What I want to do is tell her to quit her job tomorrow and come live with me. She doesn’t need to be working as a maid anymore. I wonder what she’d do if she had her choice.

"Ever think about doing anything else?" I ask.

Her eyes dart to mine. "You mean do I have ambitions to be more than a maid?"

"Yeah, I mean, you know I don't think there's anything wrong with what you do. You're just so smart, you could do anything. I was just wondering if you think about it."

These are things we never talked about growing up. The day-to-day struggles seemed so overwhelming at the time, just getting out of the system seemed like the main priority. What we’d do afterwards was something we’d think about later. Or at least, that’s where my mind was. No one had ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I’d thought about being a police officer when I was a kid. I thought maybe being part of bringing justice to victims would be satisfying to my personality. Or maybe all little boys want to be police officers and firemen. I don’t know. And then I got adopted and after that, what I wanted out of life went by the wayside. I take a deep breath. It’s just the way it happened. I can’t change it now. I can only move forward. And that’s what I’m doing.

She sighs. "Yeah, I do, actually. I'd love to go to college but that takes money. Money that right now, I don't have. But what I'd really love to do is write. I have this idea for a book… " She trails off, her cheeks flushing. She’d be an amazing writer… God, it’s like she was born to tell stories. She has to know that too.