Page 94 of Blossoms of the Heart
Chapter 19
Tai
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Eleven years ago…
The minutes were ticking by.
I didn’t know how today went so fast, but it did. Felt like I’d walked around for most of the day in a fucking daze.
I knew that this would be the last summer that things would be like this. Everything would change.
It was already changing sooner than expected.
Dad called earlier to ask me to come home early. He wanted to oversee my training as a new recruit. My old man was so excited to see me join the Marines that it got the better of him, and he didn’t think.
I was scheduled to leave next week like everyone else, but being asked to leave tomorrow was very different.
And worse, I felt bad to break the news this morning. Of all the days. It was Phoebe’s eighteenth birthday.
There was something special planned for her for the day, but I knew my news put a damper on it.
The whole time as everyone milled around her with their well wishes she masked her feelings with a plastic smile. I could tell the difference. When Phoebe smiled it reached her eyes and they would sparkle. Like when she looked at me.
I pretended for years that I didn’t know how she felt about me. Had to. I was a little over five years older and acting on my feelings would have landed me in prison. Especially with that mother of hers.
I think I first noticed it properly when she was twelve. I would have been asking for trouble at seventeen years old. Her father would have literally killed me, then mine would made sure I was dead, dead, dead.
After that it grew harder for me not to notice her changing, and the beautiful woman she kept growing into. I saw her every summer and had to keep at the forefront of my mind that she was off limits.
This summer though, things were different. Things were different because I knew that there was every chance that next summer life would be different.
She was starting college. I was so proud of her. She got into Yale.
And, me I was going to be a Marine. I was being shipped out to Iraq in a few weeks. It was exciting and I looked forward to it but what I didn’t look forward to was the fact that time was passing.
Suddenly we’d all gotten older and to what my dad referred to as that mental pause in life that made you stop and think. And, maybe… maybe do things you were scared to because you may not get the chance to do them again.
All summer I’d watched Phoebe. I got her a present this year, a special one for a special birthday.
I just waited around all day and hadn’t given it to her yet.
And here I was again waiting outside the summer house where she and her family stayed.
I hid behind the cherry blossom tree outside her window like a peeping Tom.
Akito was doing some sort of movie night so everyone was supposed to be heading to the main house.
Phoebe and her mom were inside the summer house. They’d been here for over an hour.
I’d heard Phoebe complain about having stomach cramps when we were at dinner, so her mom brought her back here. I followed conspicuously behind.
Waiting. For all I knew her mom could have decided to stay with her. I was hoping though that she’d leave her behind.
I wanted to talk to Phoebe in private. Definitely not with her mom around. That woman hated me. I didn’t know how a guy as cool as Phoebe’s dad had ended up with a snobby nosed bitch like Patrice Walker.
I didn’t go around calling people’s mother’s bitches. Thought it was completely disrespectful but that woman was absolutely one.
