The saddest girl to wear a yellow dress

"A wondering lime" (3)

The sun jerked her eyes awake, the roof above her was definitely unexpected. The drumming of traffic buzzed in the background. A spontaneous groan spilled from her throat as she realizes her neck was stiff- as it often was when she would spend the night on uncomfortable places such as the back seat of a car.

As she painfully rises from the leather seat, she notices the wrinkles marking her pale arm, evidence it had served as a pillow. A burning twinge on one side of her head she tries to rub away with the heel of her hand and as she stretches her limbs, she quickly discovers her body has this been stricken by a dull sensation of malaise.

A hangover? UGH! It all makes sense now.

The smell of her breath - another, not so subtle, hint. 

She is used to the confusion accompanying the next day - waking up in random places and settings is the norm.

Whose car that is, she does not know.

How did she get there? A puzzle her tired and scrambling brain is not willing nor energetic enough to decipher.

She reaches blindly for the car door handle and stumbles out. Her legs are wobbly and heavy. She crouches over to tie one of her black leather boot laces and she knows she has to get away before someone sees her.

Bouncing from place to place had kept her away from the unwanted questions and the prying people...

Prying people...

Bucky!

Why does she distinctively remembers that name? Did she see him last night at whatever pub she was at?

Oh no!

Not handsome, charming and kind-hearted, bus stop Bucky!

Horror bubbles deep in her stomach - bitter and raw. Worry swallows her whole, yet it serves as fuel, awarding her with enough stamina to run away. The parking lot is interminable, yet she leaves it quickly behind. She has to get rid of the uncomfortable, awfully tight clothes and the worn, tight boots. She can't stand them one more minute. There is a leather jacket securely wrapped around her waist.

Bucky!

He's seen her, he's paid enough attention and that's not good. It's not ideal when people look closely. It complicates things and she is oh-so-tired of complications. 

There was a time when she dared to hope it would stop - the running and the hiding and the figuring things out the next morning - but that time was long gone now and even though she had accepted the way things were, acceptance hadn't made mornings like those any easier nor any less disturbing.

She reaches the edge of the street and the car she woke up in is so far behind she can no longer see it. She can breathe. For now.

She pats her back pocket to discover her wallet is still there so she hails a taxi. 

She's been staying at her Aunt Carrie's for about a month now and it has been pretty perfect. Aunt Carrie is much older, and she is usually in bed by eight. She's been paying her rent with the money her father left her and buying food for the house and, in exchange, Carrie has left her alone...mostly.

Those times she had felt she didn't have a choice, Aunt Carrie had offered a kind word - enough fuel for her to keep going. She was thankful for that.

The rest of her neighbors were as old, if not older than her aunt and didn't pay enough attention...another plus. She had been a ghost during her stay...or at least tried to be. Well, that was until Bucky had spotted her.

She thinks of his icy blue eyes as her ripped, denim jeans flop around her ankles and her leather jacket lands on top of her inflatable mattress. She suspects he is dangerous and she is aware caution is a must when it comes to him. Getting lost in such a beautiful man would be too easy.

She reeks of cigarettes and alcohol. She removes her undergarments and flees to the shower.

---- ----- -----

It has been a week of semi-normalcy.

Average enough for her - and those types of weeks were a blessing and a curse. They often came, supplemented with a sense of tranquility; feeding the part of her that craved to believe there was a light at the end of the very narrow and merciless tunnel of her condition. They made it too easy for false encouragement to seep in and for the illusion that things were going to be okay one day to be almost a tangible reality.

For the time being, she was making sure it stayed that way for as long as she could, so she had actively avoided the areas of town where her two meetings with Bucky had taken place. Aunt Carrie had sent her out for the ingredients to an ancient recipe she had remembered on a whim (and Aunt Carrie never asked for anything) so, despite her better judgment, she felt she had to oblige.

She had almost convinced herself her trip to the market had been a smashing success when she exits the local store.

Dropping her head, she glances at the brown bag's opening she hugs against her chest. Doubt creeps inside her mind, making her second-guess she has forgotten something, so she reaches inside her Bohemian, shoulder-strapped purse for the list her aunt had given her to perform a brief double-check.

Her forehead is sweaty and she is balancing the noisy bag with the one arm pressed firmly on it - with the other shes trying to read her aunt's sloppy handwriting - and during her unforeseen juggle, she doesn't see the man nor his dog until she's already slammed against him.

 Several items spill out our her bag. 

 "Will you pay attention to where you are going?" The mousey, fedora-wearing, middle-aged man shouts at her, but she's far too busy, attempting to follow one of her limes' trajectory down the sidewalk. It rolls and spins, and her ingredient list has already flown off at this point, but the glimpse of sunlight bouncing off of metal- polished silver against vivid green - and her body is at a standstill when her eyes dart forward.

"Watch it!" Bucky barks at the mousey, stressed man while he straightens his mighty body after picking up her wondering lime. She glances over her shoulder, but the mousey man is hurrying along - eyes swelling with sheer intimidation as he yanks his unfortunate Terrier by its leash.

Her breathing has momentarily paused as she gradually moves her head back to Bucky. He is unworriedly walking forward until he is standing only inches from her, a "gotcha" grin cast on the surface of his rosy lips.

"Are you going to pretend you don't know who I am again?" The question contains a scoop of sarcasm...a dash of wounded ego, perhaps? Unquestionably heavy on hidden emotion - and she gulps, falteringly recovering the lime from his peculiar, prosthetic outstretched hand and stuffing it inside her brown, crinkly sounding and now emotionally shielding bag.