H E A T H

Sarah and I must have fallen asleep on the couch because when I stirred awake the next morning, I was in an immense amount of pain. It felt as if I was a senior citizen as I stretched and groaned. It didn't help that Sarah was curled up beside me with her elbow leaning on my stomach. I was as careful as I could be when I stood up, so that I didn't wake her. She stirred a little but settled once she was rested with her head on a cushion and a blanket over her thin frame.

That was one of the hardest parts about this entire thing. The amount of strength she had lost was devastating. Sarah used to love sports. She was on a bunch of teams including lacrosse, softball and when she was really little, she was on the girls soccer team at school. It turned her into a social butterfly. She had more friends than I could keep up with and because of her personality, she was loved. You couldn't help but love her. But we saw less and less of those friends now. Since Sarah left school to do correspondence, we'd all come to realise that she had less and less visitors. She pretended to be unbothered. But it hurt. Of course it hurt.

After I'd showered and dressed into a pair of chino pants and a white t shirt, I tousled my cropped brown hair so that it dried in its usual unkempt state and then I headed out to the living room. Mom's door was closed and I could hear her snore from the other side as I walked down the short corridor. Sarah's bedroom was off the living room for the simple fact that it was the most accessible if she needed to get out of bed during the night. It was also not as far for her to walk from the couch to bed.

She must have heard me walking across the thin carpet because her exhausted voice came across, muffled from the pillow that she would have been drooling on. "Are you going out?"

"Yeah," I whispered, so as not to wake up Mom. "Going to get some breakfast from Charlie's. Want something?"

"A bagel and an OJ."

"Got it."

Mom wouldn't be far off from waking up. So I scrawled a quick note and left it on the kitchen countertop where I knew she would go as soon as she stumbled out of bed. Her quest for coffee could not be interrupted until she had hot caffeine scalding her throat and seeping into her veins. The door clicked shut behind me and the sun was relentless at ten in the morning. Even the car felt like an oven as soon as I pulled the door open. I wound the windows down on the old black Corolla. It was a gift from Mom when I turned eighteen. She'd bought it cheap from a friend at work so that I had a way to and from College. It was hanging in there and it did the job. So I had no complaints.

Charlie's was a small diner about five minutes from home. We'd been frequents for as long as I could remember. The bell above the door chimed, just as it had since I was a kid. Nothing ever changed but it was up kept and the booth seats were still cushioned. The tables didn't wobble. The burnt orange wallpaper hadn't faded and the staff never stopped smiling. I wandered over to the fridges beside the countertop and grabbed a bottle of OJ before I stood in line. Charlie - ironically the owner - was in his seventies but he still worked hard to maintain the quality of his establishment. He wandered around with his apron hugging his large stomach and his white beard trimmed.

"Morning Heath," he gave me an achingly wide smile and wave as he wiped down a table. "How's Sarah?"

"She's not bad thanks Charlie," he wiped his hand on his apron before he shook mine. The line moved forward and I placed the orange juice on the counter as he moved on to his next table.

"Give her a lemon slice," he pointed at the cashier who scanned the OJ. "On me. She loves those lemon slices."

"Thanks Charlie," I laughed and turned back to the cashier. She was slipping a lemon slice from the cabinet into a paper bag. "Can I have two coffee's as well please. One with milk and sugar. One with just milk. And a bagel."

"Sure," she tapped the order into the machine with her long blue nails. The ends were pointed and I winced, imagining being stabbed with one. What did girl's need nails like that for? She must have seen me staring at them because she laughed and wiggled her fingers. "I just wanted to do something new. Suppose they'd make a good weapon if I was cornered in a dark alleyway too though."

I nodded as I handed her my bank card. "That's a good point."

Sometime's I forgot that girls had that going through their minds at almost all hours of the day. It was fucking unfair that it was a constant fear. I'm a dude. I have a dick and hands and all of the same things that other men have. But I sure as hell didn't have the right to touch a girl without her consent and I had to wonder why other men felt that they did have the right. We have the means to protect women. They should feel safe with us. I hated that it wasn't like that. Not that a lot of girls were incapable of taking care of themselves.

The girl with her short black hair tied up and a nose ring let me know that she'd call me when the order was done. So I sat down at the nearest booth seat and leaned against the window pane. It was warm on my back and the sun streamed in, relaxing and crisp to the point that I could have fallen back to sleep. But despite the fact that it was sunday, I still had study to do. I'd lost a few hours while I was at that party last night and I wanted to make it up. Classes didn't start until next week. But I wanted to get a head start on the subject that we'd be working on. I'd learned a lot in three years. But I still had two more worth of learning to do. Not to mention an internship. With medicine, you never really stopped learning.

The chime of the diner door was so familiar at this point that I didn't notice it all that often. But I did glance up and I saw the raven hair girl from last night. The one who'd verbally assaulted me like it was nothing. She was still in last night's dress. But her hair was tied back and she had no shoes on. She wandered straight over to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of cold water. Her walk was full of fatigue but she was on a woman on a mission and she knew what she wanted. She stood in line and shifted on her feet with a bored expression.

I started to feel bad about last night. The way that I'd gone off at her was out of line and super unfair. It seemed like all I needed was a good night sleep because I felt a whole lot less irrational rage when I was looking at her now. In fact guilt was the winning emotion. Coming in second was mild curiosity. So I stood up and wandered over to the waiting line.

It was pathetic but I felt sort of nervous that she'd tell me to piss off. I wondered if her brash and bold verbal bashing was because of liquid courage. Perhaps she wasn't always so indelicate.

"Hey," I said, standing just beside and behind her.

She turned around with surprise but her expression soon turned to recognition and her face ignited with a gorgeous smile. "Well hello sunshine," she stepped forward with the line. "Need me to scare off anymore potential suitors? Oh wait- no, you're a big boy."

She laughed. She laughed so loud that the people in front of her turned around gave her a curious look. But she paid no attention to the other diners who were chewing their food and watching with puzzlement. So it hadn't been liquid courage last night.

Just her.

"Look," I scratched the back of my head. "I wanted to apologise about last night. I was a dick. It wasn't you. I was just in a bad mood."

"Oh! I hadn't noticed."

She stared at me with that pale blue gaze and it didn't seem to matter that I was a foot taller than her, she made me feel small. Her smile began to lift and she shrugged a shoulder. "Don't stress," it was her turn to order so she put her water on the countertop and pulled a ten dollar note from her bra. Cashier with the nails giggled to herself. "Can I have some fries to go please."

"Fries?" I stared at her. "At ten in the morning?"

She received her change and picked up the water bottle, all the while staring at me as if I had just offended her more than she'd ever been offended before. The cashier, whose name I needed to learn, handed over my coffee's in a tray and the bagel and lemon slice in a bag. "It is never too early for fries. Don't ever blaspheme in my presence again."

"Right," I lightly laughed and followed her as she abruptly turned around and wandered over to the booth seat that I'd been sitting in. "Well I just wanted to apologise bec-"

"Someone left their juice here," she picked up the bottle of OJ and investigated the lid to see if it's seal was broken.

"Oh that's mine," I took it when she outstretched her hand with a smile. "So uh, what was I saying. Oh. Apologising about last night-"

"It's fine," she shook it off and pointed at the seat opposite her. "Want to eat with me?"

Home wasn't too far which meant that the coffee would stay hot. So I figured that I could wait until she got her fries at the least. I slid into the other side of the booth and put my food on the table top. It was hard not to think about the fact that I could be studying with this time. But it was surprising that I didn't want to jump right out of this booth and take off. The blue gaze that was staring at me across the booth was far too captivating to consider leaving without at least learning her name.

"I'm Heath by the way."

She swallowed her mouthful of water and began to screw the cap back on. "Hot name," she whistled. "I'm Leonie."

I laughed. I realised that I was doing that a lot with her. It wasn't that life was miserable. It was just hard to find moments these days. I spent most of the time in a text book and it was hard to find humor in those. Most of the laughs I had were with Sarah and even then, even without intention, there was a taint of grief. It was small. But it was there.

"So what school do you go to?" She questioned. "We go back tomorrow. Ugh."

If I had been downing a drink, I would have choked on it. I'd almost forgotten that she'd assumed I was in high school last night. It wasn't even like I was a baby face looking dude. I was tall and had a decent build. It made me wonder what sort of dude's she went to school with now that it was confirmed that she was in school. I also wanted to know how old she was.

For. . . curiosity's sake.

"I uh. . I go to Edison," I lied. Like a liar. Because I must have been so fucking bored that I found amusement in rolling with this ridiculous charade.

She nodded. "Oh that's not far from me. I go to Everglades. Senior. I can not wait for it to be over."

"Everglades? As in Ransom Everglades?" I stared at her with surprise. "Isn't that a super expensive private school?"

She blushed a little. I think that was the first time that I'd seen her do that. For all of the things that could have brought a pink to her cheeks, the fact that she goes to a private school would not have been the first guess. She nodded and folded her arms on the surface in front of her. "Yeah that's the one. Mom is a lawyer. Like, a good one. She's up there. And I guess I've never loved going to school. So she figured that sending me to a school like that would keep me in line. I dunno. Whatever."

The cashier called out to Leonie, letting her know that her fries were done. It helped that it wasn't lunch hour. The diner had customers but most of them were in and out with their orders. There were only a few tables occupied with teens or an elder couple here and there. It would pick up around twelve. Leonie stood up and skipped over to the counter in her bare feet. We both wandered out of the diner, the bell chiming as we stepped out into the sweltering heat. It was worse than it had been fifteen minutes ago.

"Well," Leonie shaded her gaze from the sun as she stared up at me, holding her fries and water in the other hand as if she were cradling a child. "You should work on your first impressions, Heath. I think you'd be a good friend."

I chuckled. "What makes you say that?"

"Just a vibe," she nodded with a conspiratorial glare. "I'm good with vibes."

She winked and began to walk down the footpath with her head angled up at the sun. She had a vibe. Not that I was good with vibes. Whatever that meant. But her vibe was freedom. Bliss. It was hard to describe. But I couldn't stop watching her as she skipped towards a huge Range Rover parked on the side of the road. She opened the door and leaned in, placing her food on the passenger seat. Before she slid right into the car, she stood on the step and held onto the door.

"If opportunity doesn't knock," she shouted from the car. "Then build a door! Milton Berle said that. Brilliant right?"

She was giggling as she fell into the driver's seat and closed the door. It was almost tempting to run after her and ask what that meant and where it came from. Did she make a habit of hollering inspirational quotes at strangers on the street? Was I meant to take something from that? I had no idea. But what I did know, was that I sure hoped that I could see her again soon.