Back to Yesterday (8 page)

Sophie let me walk her home every day after that. We spoke casually most of the time, never getting too personal, and I was okay with that. I learned Sophie’s telltale clues over time. Like, when she was nervous, her left eye would twitch. When she was excited, she hummed. When she was mad, well, you needed to get out of her way because she was a pistol. I even started referring to her as my little spitfire. She absolutely hated it. I absolutely loved it.

I learned other things about her, too. Even though Sophie was only eighteen years old to my twenty-two, she was mature and spoke with quiet sophistication. She had dreams of becoming a writer someday, and she wanted to become a schoolteacher.

Every new thing I learned about Sophie only reinforced why I had been attracted to her from the start.

I was falling for her.

She was falling for me too, although she worked at hiding it. I knew, though. It was the subtle things that I picked up on. I would be sitting at the café reading a newspaper, look up, and catch her staring. She would instantly look away, embarrassed. At times, when I would speak to her, she would watch my lips move. I loved those moments best because I got to say, “Eyes up here, sweetheart.” Her whole face would burn a nice scarlet color and sometimes that earned me a smack in the head with her dishcloth before she walked away. Other times it was simply the way she would listen to me, like I was the most interesting person in the world to her.

I wondered if I was being fair. I knew Sophie was trying to maintain an emotional distance. She thought that if she allowed her heart to fall with mine it would hurt her more when I left. She didn’t need to tell me that, I could read between the lines. And her reluctance to get involved with me was proof enough. Sometimes I felt guilty for coming into her life, though not guilty enough to leave her. I was strong in most things, however, with Sophie, I was weak. Weak in the knees, that is, making it impossible for me to ever walk away.

We developed a routine, Sophie and I. We would stop and sit at the same bench on the way to her house and we would chat. We chatted for hours some days. Some days we only sat in silence. I often wondered on those days what she was thinking about. As for me, I thought about simple things, like how it would feel to hold her hand. If I tried would she retreat? Would she let me? I wasn’t sure, and to be honest, I wasn’t ready to. I wanted the cast off my leg first, so I could hold her hand properly while I walked her home. That’s also the reason I hadn’t taken her on a second date yet. I needed to be completely healed and able to run like the wind in case she took the notion of running. And something told me that if Sophie ran, she would want me to chase her. And I definitely would.

Until that moment came, I had to be satisfied with what she gave me. Company. Friendship. And most of all, hope. Hope for a future, that until then, I wasn’t sure I even wanted.

T
he days ticked by the same way they always had. A week later the cast came off, and with it, the proverbial ball and chain that had been weighing me down came off as well. I felt lighter, less burdened.

“How does it feel?” Dr. Amberson asked, bending and extending my leg in slow, meticulous motions. “Any pain?”

“No. Just feels itchy.”

“All right. Let’s get you on your feet. Easy…take it slow.”

Steadying myself, I put my weight on both legs. It felt unnatural at first and when I took my first steps, I did so with hesitation.

“I feel like a toddler,” I admitted to my doctor. “Like I’m learning to walk for the first time.”

Dr. Amberson handed me one crutch. He was the specialist I had been assigned to and the one who had performed my surgeries. “Put some of your weight on this and take small steps.”

I did as instructed and practiced the art of walking for a good ten minutes until I felt confident that I could do it without the aid of a crutch.

In a stern voice Doc said, “Now, I don’t want you overdoing it.”

“What’s overdoing it?”

“Too much too soon, Charles. You have screws in your leg. You’re still healing. It will take time to get your range and motion back. I want you walking and exercising in small increments throughout the day and I want you resting in between.”

“Sure.”

Doc went over a list of exercises for me to do each day, and by the time I left his office, I felt like a new man, unencumbered and determined to bounce back in record time.

In the following days, the strength in my leg improved, although I had a noticeable limp. Still, I was moving through rehabilitation like a champ and had recently been assigned a desk job for the short term. Combat crew replacement. Pretty self-explanatory. Whenever we needed to replace a pilot or rotate one out, I helped with the logistics of getting our men where they needed to be as quickly as possible.

I didn’t hate my new job. I was glad to be serving in any capacity I could, although on a base level, I was bored out of my mind. Pushing a pencil around all day did not do it for me. However, when I walked inside the café and saw the girl I could never stop thinking about all other thoughts drifted away.

I waited for Sophie’s shift to end and then I walked her home like all the times before, only this time was different. The air felt charged, magical, and spiced with exhilarating freshness. It seeped into the pores of my skin and I felt rejuvenated. It was the oddest thing. I think Sophie felt it too, because while we walked with our arms linked, she hummed.

“
Smile
.”

“What?” Sophie asked.

“You’re humming
Smile
by Charlie Chaplin.”

“I was? I didn’t realize.”

“Is it the song you like or the fact that it was written by someone who shares my name?”

“Well, it would have to be the name, of course,” Sophie said, poking me in the side. “Do you have family, Charlie?”

I chuckled because Sophie was like a ping pong ball at times, bouncing from one topic to the next without a break in between.

“What? What’s so funny?”

“You are. You switch gears faster than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“If you can’t keep up then say so.”

“I can keep up.”

“Good. Then answer the question.” She poked me again.

We walked a little further before I answered. “My mother died when I was eleven. My father raised me.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly.

“My dad and I, we did okay.”

“Does your dad live nearby?”

“Nah, he lives in Oklahoma.”

“Then why are you here in Tennessee and not there?”

“The type of injury I had required a specialist who happens to be here. I got lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yeah,” I said with a wink. “If I didn’t need a specialist then I never would have met you.”

She shook her head and chuckled quietly. The sun was beginning to set, and the orange glow was doing amazing things to Sophie’s features. I found myself unable to look away.

“I feel like I’m leading the blind,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

That jewel of a smile that was uniquely hers showcased itself. “If you don’t start watching where you’re going you’re gonna have another broken leg. Eyes in front, Charlie.”

“I’m multi-tasking. I have great peripheral vision. No need to worry about me.”

She scoffed like the idea was preposterous. “I’m worried about being seen with the guy who trips over his own two feet because he wasn’t paying attention. Crowds would gather, people would stare. I’m only trying to spare you the humiliation of it all.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you.”

“
I
thought so.” She squeezed my arm. “Look at that.” She was admiring the sun setting on the horizon, looking at the sky as though she were seeing it for the first time. “It’s so beautiful,” she whispered.

I wasn’t looking at the horizon. I was looking at her. “Sure is.”

“What’s it like to fly, Charlie?”

“I’m not sure I can describe it really.”

“Then tell me what you love about it.”

I pondered that for a moment. I had never tried to put my love of flying into words. It was always something that I felt, mostly because no one had ever asked me before.

My eyes traveled upwards where blues, grays, oranges, reds, and yellows decorated the skyline like a beautiful canvas, an artist’s masterpiece. “Up there is like another world where you can escape the one below. Everything is simultaneously larger and smaller. When you look down, the Earth beneath you seems small. But when you look towards the vast open sky all around, you realize that there is so much more to living than the little boxes we create for ourselves. Anything seems possible when I’m soaring above the clouds. The view offers a unique perspective we’re not granted with our feet on the ground.” My gaze traveled back to Sophie and I offered an apologetic shrug. “I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s the best I can do. I don’t think it was meant to be explained, only experienced.”

“When you put it that way, I can understand why you love it.” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She nuzzled into me while we walked, resting her head on my arm. “This is nice.”

Her body was warm against mine and she smelled of jasmine and vanilla. And that’s when I felt it. That moment of utter awareness when your heart, mind, body, and soul agree on the exact same thing at the exact same time.

I, Charles Edward Hudson, was falling in love.

“Are you ever afraid?”

“Of flying?” I asked. “No.”

“Are you afraid of anything?”

“I’m human, Sophie. I have fears like anyone else.”

“What fears?”

I didn’t want to get into the things that scared me and we had reached her house by then, so I said, “Some other time perhaps.”

We stood facing one another a moment longer than we ever had. The magic in the air still crackled around us and it left me feeling brave enough that I swept a loose curl behind her ear. “I wondered what it would feel like.”

“What?” she asked.

“This.” Slowly, gently, I kissed her, offering her a taste of what I could give. My heart was thumping, my pulse was racing, and I felt that tingling warm sensation in my stomach that I only ever felt when I was flying across majestic landscapes or over the wide ocean blue.

Pulling back, I traced the seam of her lips with the pad of my thumb, memorizing their softness, their taste.

“Are you in love with me yet, Sophie?”

In a voice that had lost its confidence, she said, “Not yet.”

“How much longer you think?”

“It could be a while,” she whimpered. Her chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths. “I need to help my mother start dinner.”

“Sophie.”

She pulled away. “I need to go inside. See you tomorrow?” she asked, voice trembling. She cleared her throat and turned away, fidgeting with the lock, and swinging the gate open.

I placed my hands inside my front pockets, took a step back, and crashed back to Earth. “Same time, same place.” And because I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer I said to her retreating back, “It’s easier if you don’t fight it.”

She didn’t hear me because she had already closed the door.