Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 15 (R)

Chapter 15

When Amber got home that late afternoon, she discovered something else difficult to believe.  Stepping off the elevator, her nose was instantly assaulted a sweet, fragrant scent.  She remembered that the manager put a bouquet of flowers into her apartment and grinned as she fitted the key in the lock.  The last time someone sent her flowers had been for Valentine’s Day back in college...and those had been from her parents.  But there wasn’t just “a” bouquet of roses on her kitchen table, there were...Amber turned in a circle, flabbergasted as she counted all the vases of pink roses in her home...there were...there were...Holy Cow!

There were fifteen.

Fifteen!  Fifteen dozen!

Some were in clear vases, some in white.  Some had sprigs of baby’s breath sticking up from among the blooms, some were unadorned by any other fauna.  And all were pink.  Some were bright pink and some were pale pink like the fresh cheeks of a newborn babe, some had hints yellow or white, and only half were in full bloom.  The rest were perfect little buds, waiting for that moment in time when they would open up and embrace the air.

This has to be a mistake, Amber refuted, denying what she could plainly see with her eyes as she droped everything in her arms -- her keys, her work tote, her mail.  Who in their right mind sends someone fifteen dozen roses?

She picked her way around all the vases to her TTY -- the beautiful blossoms also sat upon her floor -- to call the manager’s office downstairs.  No wonder the man had been pestering her all morning.  She fingered one of the roses absently as she passed it and caught sight of a small card attached to a plastic prong in the middle of the bunch.  There, under a slanting scrawl, was one word she never expected to see.  Linc.

Linc?

She snatched the card out of the arrangement and read it.  “How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself.  I’m sorry, Linc.”  Something familiar about those words echoed in her brain, but she couldn’t place it.  Going around her kitchen and living area, she pulled out all the cards and read them.  All from Linc.  All saying something different, yet all having the same “I’m sorry, Linc,” at the end, and all written in the same handwriting.  One card blatantly explained why he was sorry.  It said, “I’m sorry I called you Macie.”

Amber’s eyes widened as she realized the extent of this apology.  Oh, my heavens!  This wasn’t a mistake.  He really meant to send all these flowers!

Was he freaking CRAZY?!

The man was absolutely demented.  He had lost all his nuts and bolts in that thick skull of his.  We aren’t even dating or anything closely resembling a dating relationship!  It was one kiss...and it didn’t mean anything!  Just two people wrapped up in the same moment.  Now, Amber would admit that his kiss had blown half her own brain away, but surely, to a guy like him, it had just been another minute out of his day.

Then a warmth spread through her, starting at the center of her chest and drifting out in every direction, until a languid feeling of euphoria caused her to drop down on the nearest soft surface.  She’d bet her left foot that Macie never got fifteen dozen roses from Linc...at one time.  From what Lucy told her, Linc had probably been apologizing for something ever other breath when he’d been with Macie.  But did he ever do something like this?  Amber doubted it.  She just couldn’t see Linc taking the time to write out every card in her hands, yet she held the proof.

Her apartment was full of evidence of what Linc had done for her.  She closed her eyes and drifted back to every moment she had spent with that stubborn cowboy...the wedding, the brief encounter at the library, the police station, and here, in her home...in her bathroom...kissing her so gently and yet, so firmly.  She could still feel the pressure of his lips on her own.  Why did he have to be completely unavailable, unattainable and uninterested?  Her only answer?...fate.  Fate led her to this place and time, and fate would lead her out of it again.  She just had to be patient and calm.  Linc wasn’t in her future and she wasn’t in his.  Amber needed to remember that.  

It’s sad, though...all these flowers.  He could have just left a note.  After witnessing his pain at the cemetery, she would have understood.  But that small thought only lasted until she sighed and focused on the main issue here.

What am I going to do with fifteen vases of roses?  

She couldn’t keep them in her tiny apartment, that was for sure.  She’d trip over them anytime she got hungry and tried to get to the kitchen.  Already, her nose was starting to sting from the sweet smell, but she still couldn’t get the silly grin of disbelief off her face.  This was possibly the sweetest, craziest thing anyone had ever done for her.  But the fact of the matter was that she just couldn’t keep them all.  Her apartment was too small.  It wasn’t designed to hold a person and the Rose Parade.

Well, at least he knows what he did wrong, she thought, smiling at the explosion of pink in her apartment.  But why pink?  Was that color significant for some reason?  She shook her head.  It didn’t matter.  She still couldn’t keep all of them.  With a heavy heart, she went around and chose the one vase of roses more perfect and beautiful than the others and took it into her bedroom.  She placed it on her beside table, and then left her door open as she started knocking on the doors of neighbors.

*****

Linc circled Amber’s block for the third time while the sun set off in the distance, thinking he should just go home.  To hell with his curiosity.  If she wanted to thank him for the roses, she’d call him...right?  He did notice that none of his apology littered the front sidewalk, so that was a good sign, but he just couldn’t make himself drive on home.  He had to know.  The not knowing was eating him from the inside out.

Parking just outside the front entrance, he shifted the truck out of gear and peered through the windshield up at her window.  A light was on, which meant she was home.  He pictured her smiling as she arranged all the dozens of pink roses around her small apartment, maybe even picking the petals apart to drop into a hot bath...her sinking down into that steaming water, naked and wet and glowing...pink rose petals drifting along her skin, getting caught on the swells of her breasts...

A groan escaped his chest.  He shouldn’t be thinking about that.  She already told him she wanted nothing to do with him.  He needed to leave.  Leave her alone.  Leave thoughts of her right here, thrust them out of his mind.

And yet, the truck continued to idle, not going anywhere.  Linc eventually spied a reason to get into her building, to be that much more closer to her, and he jumped out of his truck to seize it.

A grandmotherly woman walked along the sidewalk, three paper sacks in her arms, full to the brim.  So when one slipped out of her grasp and spilled its contents on the ground, Linc was there to help her.

“Oh, thank you, young man,” she said with a friendly, but cautious smile.  “I had hoped to get inside before I dropped anything.”

“I was just heading up to visit a friend of mine,” he lied.  “Can I assist you to your floor?”

Wary eyes looked at him through thick glasses.  “Oh...who’s your friend?  Maybe I know him.”

“It’s a her,” he said with his best, charming smile.  “Amber Hayes on the fourth floor?”

“Oh, yes, the deaf girl,” she said.  “A true sweetheart.  Gave me some flowers earlier.”

Linc froze.  “She did?”

The woman nodded and smiled.  “Yes.  It was very nice of her.  She said some young man sent her a whole bunch of roses.”  She leaned closer to him.  “I don’t think she was very happy about that.  She’s been giving them away all afternoon.”  Then she blinked at him.  “Oh, dear...you didn’t send them, did you?”

“No,” he lied again.  Linc’s jaw set hard, nearly breaking his molars in the crush of anger.  The woman walked toward the front door and waved him inside.  He followed, ready to rush up to Amber’s apartment and demand what the hell she thought she was doing, giving away all those damn roses.  He spent a fortune on that apology!

Inside the elevator, the woman continued to make appraising comments on Amber, saying how nice of a neighbor she was.  Then she sighed and said.  “But do wish she didn’t play her music so loud.  I don’t know why she even does that.  She is deaf, right?”

“Yes, she is,” he replied and was blasted by a thumping rhythm as soon as they stepped off the elevator on Amber’s and her floor.

“Oh, dear, she’s at it again,” the woman moaned.  “At least, she knows to turn it down after eight o’clock.”  

Linc didn’t comment as he helped her to her door, down the hall from Amber.  She thanked him and tried to give him some money as a tip, but he kindly refused.  As soon as she disappeared into her apartment, Linc was charging down the hall to Amber’s door.  He pounded on it for a long time.  Then he realized...Shit, she can’t hear a freight train coming down the hall.  Why am I knocking?  So he pushed the doorbell, which he hoped sent her some kind of signal.

The music ceased.  A few seconds passed, then the door flew open.  There stood Amber, barefoot in shorts, a black tank top, and a headband.  Sweat made her clothes stick to all her curves and her hair to her head.  At first, he wondered if he got the wrong door.  This woman had cut her hair...all that beautiful hair...whacked off to above her shoulders...and highlighted!  Good god, what did she do to herself?!

Momentarily, he forgot why he was so angry.  She’d cut her hair!  And by the blue blazes in her eyes, he figured out he was gaping at it.  Her chin came straight up and her spine stiffened.

“Why you here, Linc?” she demanded.

Then he remembered why he was supposed to be so irate with her.  “Do you have any idea how much I spent on those damn roses?  And you just gave them away!”

Her eyes narrowed.  “You sent fifteen dozen,” she snarled, like she couldn’t possibly be happy about receiving flowers at all.  “Why you do that?”

“I was trying to apologize, dammit!” he shouted.  Some neighbors peeked out at them.  Amber flushed, grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him into her apartment, calling out, “Sorry!” to the curious onlookers.

Turning to face him, she stuck her fists on her hips.  “Why you apologize?”

Linc was long enough in the tooth to know when a woman was spewing out trick questions.  There had to be half a dozen answers to that particular one, and he knew he would screw up from the start.  But that wasn’t going to stop him.  He leaned over, right at her level, and said, “Because you think I called you Macie.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes.  “Oh, I think!  I think!  What you say, if not Macie?”

“No, I said Macie,” he replied, standing upright again.  She jabbed him in the chest.

“See?!  I right.”  Jab.  “You call me Macie!”  Jab, jab.  “You kiss me!  You call me Macie!”

Linc caught her finger before she could punch a hole in him.  “I did not call you Macie!”

“You just say--”

“I said, I said Macie’s name.  I did not say I called you Macie,” he returned, still holding onto her hand, trying his hardest to ignore how soft the skin of her palm was.  It was pressed against his chest now, holding her there, though that was probably the dumbest thing to do right now.  She was spitting mad.  “Did you not read any of the cards?!”

Her eyes flicked across the room for the briefest second.  Then they were back, glaring at him.  He only noticed what caught her attention.  Releasing his hold of her hand against his chest, he dragged her into the living area behind him.  She loudly protested and tried to pull away.  Linc plowed on, barely registering her opposition.  There, on a cork board above her little desk, were all his handwritten cards, neatly pinned and arranged in a circle.  They weren’t the only things on there he noticed, but at that moment, they were the most important.  Pleasure spread through him.

“So...you did read them,” he murmured, pointing his face at her.

She humphed and looked away, but a tinge of pink stained the top of her ears.  He looked again at her short haircut, how it curled and framed her face, tickling her jawline and making the blue in her eyes pop.  Now that he got over the shock of it, he thought it was kind of cute...sweet and sassy, like her.  Made her look a little more stubborn, too, and that got a grin out of him.  From the corner of her eyes, she peeked at him once, saw him grinning, and pointedly look away again.  If she could cross her arms under her breasts in a snit, she would.

“I like your hair,” he said, moving around to stand in front of her vision.  She peeked at him again as he spoke and the tension softened from her body.

“Thank you,” she returned quietly.  “I like it, too.”

“It makes you look different,” he replied, hoping to keep up this more congenial conversation, but something about that caused her face to shut down again.

“Yes,” she spit, that temper of hers back in full force.  “I Amber now.”

Linc frowned at her.  Of course, she was Amber.  “Who were you before?” he teased.

Expanding in front of him, she boldly glowered.  “I not Macie now!”

Oh, so we’re back to that, hmm?  “You weren’t Macie before,” he said.  “I’m trying to explain that.  That’s what all the damn roses and all these cards were supposed to tell you!  I didn’t think you were Macie.  I didn’t kiss you because I thought you were Macie.  I only said her name because you made me forget her!  I look at you and I can’t see Macie’s face anymore!  I kissed you and I forgot the woman I’m supposed to be in love with!  Do you think I like feeling this way?!  She was going to be my wife!  She was going to have my baby!”

Amber paled with the force of his animosity.  She backed away from him until she hit the wall which separated her bedroom.  Linc inhaled slowly.  “I’m sorry, Amber.  I shouldn’t get upset with you like this.  I’m just trying to explain.”

“You get mad,” she whispered.  “You kiss me.  I make you leave.  You get mad.  I sorry I not Macie.  I not control that.”

Linc dropped down into the chair in front of her desk.  He pressed his palms into his eyeballs, feeling ashamed of himself.  All this time, she thought he was looking at Macie when he looked at her.  He should have cleared that up from the start.  “Listen, Amber,” he said, raising his head.  She actually smirked at that, and he realized the words held a certain joke to them.  But he went on, “I have never looked at you and thought you were Macie.  Yes, you resemble her in some ways, but I could never confused you with her--”

Her eyes flared again.

Crap, he thought and stood up to pace the small room.  Why did women always have a way of twisting a man’s words around?  Deliberately misinterpreting them?  “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her, “I loved Macie.  I miss her every day.  I never wanted you to be her--”

There it was again, that burst of irritation.  Her eyes could catch fire from the heat coming out of them.  Linc figured he should quickly get his boot out of his mouth and explain in a way that won’t hurt her feelings or start a war.  “Amber, you have always been Amber to me...a sweet, beautiful young woman, and I kissed you because you are sweet and beautiful, if a bit ornery.  But it can’t ever happen again.  We can’t be anything to each other, because I can’t be the man you deserve.  My heart is buried in that grave with Macie.  I only hope that you didn’t read more into that kiss than it strictly being a man who lost control one time.”

He paused to wait for her response or reaction, but she only stared blankly at him.  Taking a deep breath, he added, “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.  This is the reason I sent you all those flowers--”  He looked around at the apartment.  “Did you keep any of them?”

The tiniest of smiles curved her lips.  And her eyes softened.  She pointed around the corner to her bedroom area, and Linc sidestepped to see.  A large vase of perfect pink roses sat atop her nightstand, right there where she would see them every night before she went to bed and every morning when she woke up.  He looked back at her.  “Thank you.  That makes me feel better.”

A larger smile bloomed on her face.  “It too many,” she said, blushing and looking down at her toes.  “It too crowded here.  I share with people...sorry.”

He bent his knees to get down into her vision.  She didn’t look at him, so he tipped her chin up with his finger.  Those big, blue eyes blinked at him.  “It’s okay, Amber.  I was stupid to order so many.  I just wanted you to understand that I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I do like you -- most of the time.”  That earned him one of her adorable smirks.  “Friends?”

Tilting her head back to get away from his finger on her chin, she arched her neck in a smug way and said, “Eh,” fluttering her hand, “I have opening for new friend...maybe.”

Linc chuckled.  “You just told a joke.”

Her hand came up, forefinger and thumb an inch apart.  “Small joke.”

“Then I’m forgiven?”

Scanning his face with that diligent gaze of hers, she relaxed and shrugged away from the wall.  “I forgive you yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” he asked, confused.  “Then why were you mad when I showed up here?”

Gently, she pushed her headband off her head and shook out her hair.  “You not like my hair,” she answered primly.

“I said I like it,” he protested.

“Yes, but you gape.”

“I was just surprised,” he defended himself.  But there really was no need.  From the glint in her eyes, he knew she was teasing him.  “I promise you, I like it.  It suits you.”  Not thinking it would do any harm, he reached up and touched one of the tendrils at her temple.  It curled around his finger, soft like silk, locking him to her.  His brown eyes met her blue ones, and for that one moment in time, he regretted not being able to kiss her again.  Her pink lips glistened like the sheen of a rose petal, and he knew from experience just how sweet they tasted.

Clearing his throat, he gave her some distance, backing away, though her curl almost refused to let him go.  He frantically looked around for a diversion, and his attention settled on her cork board again.  “What’s this?” he asked, touching a torn sheet from a legal pad.  Two columns of things were written on there, like a shopping list.  Haircut was crossed out at the very top, along with Get A Promotion at the very bottom.

She smiled broadly.  “My To-Do List.  I not get chance to do much when little girl.  I do them now.  I write it last night.”

So...these are all the things she wanted to do?  Kind of like a Bucket List, but in Amber’s case, it was all the things that normal people would have experienced by now.  Linc studied her thoughtfully.  She must have lived a very sheltered life.  

Half-way down the first column, Learn To Dance was circled, but not marked off.  Swiftly, he put two and two together.  The old woman complaining about Amber’s loud music, the sweat glistening on her skin...and the large speakers face down on the floor next to her sofa.

“Are you teaching yourself to dance?”

Her bottom lip folded in as she bit down on it.  Embarrassment heightened the color of her cheeks.  “Yes,” she sighed.  “I need to learn.”

Hoping to bait a laugh out of her, he grinned and asked, “Got a hot date or something?”

Amber flamed with pink from the tips of her toes to her hairline.  “Yes.”

Whatever playfulness he tried to initiate immediately evaporated as a surge of jealousy claimed him.  But he had no right to feel this way.  “Oh,” he said and tucked his hands in his back pockets.

Those lovely blue gems of hers implored at him.  “First date in long, long time.  I nervous.  He take me dancing.  I not know how.  I need learn before date comes.”

“Oh,” he repeated, thinking he should get out of there and let her finish teaching herself before he did something stupid, like offer to help her.

“You dance, Linc?”

His eyes whipped to her.  “Dance?  Me?”  She nodded, looking eager, and he thought about holding her as he taught her to dance, and he didn’t have that much control.  “Not so much any more.”

“Oh,” she replied glumly, and sighed again.  

“Well...” he balked, “I’ll, uh, see you around, okay?”

She nodded in response, frowning at her stereo speakers.  She didn’t see him out.  He made it all the way to the bottom floor in the elevator before groaning in defeat and pushed the fourth floor button again.

I’m going to regret this, I know it.  When she opened the door that time, still in her shorts and tight tank top, he groaned again, but said, “Put some decent clothes and your shoes on.  I’m taking you dancing.”