Page 51 of Spring Showers

“Do not like? How you know what you like and what you do not like until you try Alfonso cooking?”

Thandie considered the chef’s words. How does one know for certain about anything? Sometimes you just have to see things from a new perspective. That sentiment is easier said than done in reality. She acknowledged Alfonso with an affirmative grunt.

“Supper was wonderful. And thank you for your hard work this week,” she said. “I think we’re all finished here, and my tummy is growling for some of that delicious food that you put out.”

He stood up and brushed his hands on his blue apron. “Grazi.” He pointed to the tidied mess.

“You’re welcome,” she said and went straight to the buffet.

Out by the doors, she was indiscriminate in her selection. Everything looked appetizing. She took a whole-grain wrap and layered a piece of fresh-cut turkey with lettuce, tomato, and a slice of cheddar cheese. On another table, Alfonso had put out platters of fresh-cut fruit and veggies and a basket filled with individual bags of potato chips. She took one of everything.

Preferring to sit outside, Thandie turned to the doors where the late afternoon sunlight shone in and blinded her. She saw the silhouette of a person passing through, and they crashed shoulder to shoulder. Her plate of food slid from her hands, but the quick reactions of the other person saved it and replaced it in her grasp.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t see very well with the sun shining this way.”

“It was my fault. I was looking the other way and didn’t see anyone at all.” The man helped stabilize her.

She pulled down her sunglasses from the top of her head. Her eyes always watered in bright sunlight, and she blinked the wetness away, though she was certain she was hallucinating when the man came into clear view. “Davis?”

“Surprise!” he said with a joker of a smile.

“What are you doing here?”

“Grant told me you were here,” Davis said and pulled her to the side and out of the doorway so that one of the city workers could pass.

“Grant told you?” Just how Davis and Grant knew each other well enough to be speaking about her in any capacity was a question she desperately wanted an answer to. Was he spying on her somehow?

“What are you doing all the way out here, anyway?” Davis said as if nothing was strange about this encounter.

“I work here.”

He began to giggle and cleared his throat. “This place needs a botanist?”

“I’m the activities director. And you don’t need to laugh,” she said, putting down her plate on a little table, having lost her appetite. The man had never laughed at anything out of genuine joy, and now he finds something amusing about her situation, a situation he drove her to.

“So, you’re some kind of camp counselor?”

She could tell he was holding in a laugh again. When Grant had teased her with the same title, she wasn’t in the least offended, but when Davis said it, she was reminded in no uncertain terms that she had dodged a bullet when he had walked out on her the night before their wedding.

“I shouldn’t have said it that way.” Davis shrugged, but Thandie recognized that his words still fell short of an actual apology. “I found out from your cousin that you were heading this way. Only he didn’t know exactly which retreat you were working at in the area. You know that I’ve been looking at investing on the East Coast for a while now?—”

“You have?”

“Of course, silly. So, when I found out that you had a new job around here, I put out some feelers.”

“So, what you mean to say is that you were spying on me?”

“What? No.” Davis was quick to answer. “Technically, I had no idea that you worked here, at this specific location. But I hoped to find you at one of the resorts and have that reunion. I care about you, isn’t that clear?—”

“You care about something, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if it’s me,” Thandie said, and it felt good to speak her truth for once. “What do you want, Davis?” Not that it mattered anymore. He didn’t matter to her anymore. She had let go of the hurt and self-doubt of the past and was ready, for the first time in months, to see a new future for herself. A future that did not include ex-fiancés. “Did that slut from Vegas dump you or something?”

He shook his head back and forth with a grimace.

“She did, didn’t she?” Too much satisfaction licked at Thandie’s words. “How did it feel?”

“Awful,” Davis said. “And I told you that I made a mistake. I meant it.”

Thandie recognized that Davis claiming he made a mistake was not the same as an apology, but wondered if he was too proud to say it. “Is this about your voicemail?” she asked.

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