A Flame From The Past

33: A Key

I was spiraling, I sat in my classroom as the kids drew up their Christmas lists for Santa. They all thought I was worried about if he would get in time, when really I was worried about buying all of this, Santa had a long list of things to get done for this year. And it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet, these three months all in a row was terror to me.

I had already heard from some of the teachers that their Christmas shopping was complete. Officially complete, my fingers were still recovering from Halloween, stitching and sewing. So I rushed back in and we switched from our prompts from favorite part of Halloween to Christmas List For Santa.

"What can't Santa make?" Chloe shouted out as I went over to help, knowing it would probably be some large oven, her obsession this year was baking, everything she wrote about was being a baker. She promised to help the class make Christmas cookies this year, but if she drew an oven, she would get one of those mini-ovens with cookie dough batter. I can't be responsible for letting her burn down her foster home.

"He can make anything", Jasmine told her friend, leaning over to see her paper.

"You can get many things too, Santa wants you to have the best Christmas", I told her as she nodded her head and picked up another crayon.

The intercom on the class buzzed, as I rushed out of the classroom and to the front to let Luca in. He chatted to the office lady, as she winked at me.

"I missed you". He picked me up, landing a passionate kiss on my lips and smiling sweetly.

He was wearing his team sweatpants and sweatshirt, which seemed like I had worn them more than he did. I smelled the sweatshirt and it smelled just like me, yet he had no idea. His scar was still there, with a line of stitches above his eyebrow. I hated that my father had given him that, I hated that it was my fault, even though I had been comforted by everyone including Luca himself, that it wasn't my fault, but I'm the reason he was in that position in the first place.

I ran my fingers over the rugged stitches and he moved my hand down to caress his face. If it was up to him he would've gone back in time and just never wanted me to call my mother back that day. He hated that I blamed myself.

"How come you decided to drop by?" I asked him as we hovered outside of my classroom, still keeping an eye on the busy kids, that they didn't even notice I was gone.

"Well, I had something I wanted to give you". He fished something out of his pocket, as I checked the time. He loved playing with the time and racing against the clock, he had thirty minutes to get to his flight for his game, which was tomorrow.

He handed me the little see-through bag, as I saw a silver key, the key I had seen multiple times when Luca would unlock his place. He was giving me a key. A KEY. To his place of all places.

"I want you to keep this, in case you ever want to come over or whenever you do move in you'll already have a key", he said, watching my face intently, to see how I felt about this. I knew he had wanted me to move in, but my answer was still in the air. I would if so many things didn't depend on it, I had Ally that depended on me to bring in my share of rent, and I don't know how Ray would feel moving suddenly and what if something went wrong, what if we were to break up. I had to think about Ray before myself, I didn't want to rush him into something he wasn't ready for.

"I know you needed somewhere to stash gifts, and I thought you could use one of the rooms to keep the gifts in". My heart went squish and my heart beat fast. Over the last couple of days which we had spent at Luca's, I had told him a couple of days ago, when we were on the phone while he was at practice. All I had heard from his end was him nodding along, I had thought he wasn't listening. But here he was surprising me.