Shades of Us

Eleven

Sabra

Her mother was beautiful and although Sabra looked like her loving father, she had always wished her mother's beauty lingered in her somewhere.

Her mother left early with a box and a hairbrush, leaving Sabra crying in the next room until her father came home from his job at the old shoe factory.

She was four then.

She hadn't missed her mother since that day. Sabra preferred her father anyways.

He was the best man she had ever met and gone far too soon. The cancer had crept in slowly and when it was there, it intended to stay. He had been dead within the year.

Sabra thought she would never get over him being gone. The days had become warm but her heart remained so cold.

She didn't know what had made her get out of bed the day that she had met that extraordinary man. But she was glad she had. He was a new barista at that old coffee shop her father loved. His smile was the first thing she noticed and when he asked for her order, she smiled too. The first time in months.

He was kind, Sabra noticed.

Sometimes you can tell when you first meet someone.

"A caramel mocha, please. Grande" She had said.

Then he smiled again "Name?".

"Sabra".

"Beautiful".

She kept coming to see him after that until he finally asked her out. Italian food, her father's favorite.

She told him about her father later in the winter when he found her curled up on the bathroom floor clutching her father's shirt in her hands. It was the green one, the one he wore the last day she'd seen him. Her boyfriend hugged her tighter after that.

The first time they had fought it was over her insecurities. The girl next door was prettier after all. He screamed it wasn't true. His eyes were only ever looking at her. "No!" He grabbed her hand and led her to the mirror. "Look!" She struggled, refusing to look at herself. Then she looked at the eyes like her father's. Deep, dark, and sad. But her mother was in there too. In the creases of her brow, she saw her the day she ruined her mother's makeup. In the tears rolling down her cheek, Sabra saw her the day she was kicked off of that movie for snorting powder in the dressing room. In Sabra's hair, she saw her leaving.

"You are what matters. Not her". He had meant another her but she had only thought of the first woman who broke her heart.