Back to Yesterday (3 page)

Ooomph!

Clatter!

Clank!

Bang!

We were both on the floor, only I got the worst of it.

“Oh my God, are you okay? I’m so sorry.”

I was lying flat on my back and she was on top of me. I had never seen eyes so blue before. They looked like the ocean.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying not to grin at the way her cheeks were turning pink.

She quickly got to her feet, bending down to help me up. “Are you hurt? Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry.” I pretended to be more disoriented than I was so I had an excuse to wrap my arms around her tiny frame. Once I was in a sitting position, I reached for my crutches.

“I am
so
sorry!”

I lifted myself up and held the crutches underneath my armpits. “It’s okay. I didn’t see you. You didn’t see me. It happens.”

“Come sit down. Let me look you over. I feel awful. You have a broken leg and here I come barreling through the door knocking you down. God, I’m such a klutz.”

I took a gander at her now frazzled appearance. Brown strands of silky hair had broken free from the hair pin she was wearing and her blue dress that stayed mostly hidden behind her white apron had risen up to mid-thigh. I could tell she was embarrassed as she tried to fix her clothes.

I sat down in one of the booths by the window while she took my crutches and leaned them against the wall beside me.

“I’m fine,” I said again. “Really, don’t worry about it.”

She twirled pieces of her hair and locked them into place by resituating her hair pin. “No, it’s not fine. I could have hurt you.” She paused and took in my uniform. “You’re in the Army Air Corp?” She glanced at the wings above my chest pocket. “Are you a pilot?”

Her eyes were zoned in on the wings, and I was zoned in on the ocean in her eyes. I reached up and immediately started loosening my tie because the air felt thick all of a sudden.

“I am, yes.”

For a moment, neither she nor I said anything, the air only growing thicker between us. I don’t know why I couldn’t find any words. I was good with words. In fact, I had been practicing what I would say to her when the opportunity presented itself. I had timed it perfectly. I had waited for her to step outside to take her friend a standing to-go order. It was the same time every afternoon. She had been waving goodbye when she pushed open the door of the café and I put myself in her path. And now, everything I had wanted to say to her vanished from my head, and I sat…with no words.

“Well, I see you’re okay.” She hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “I need to finish my shift, so…”

She turned to leave and I reached for her arm. “Wait.” I didn’t know what I was doing, I only knew I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. “You think we could…talk…sometime? I could really use the company.”

It wasn’t a smile. It wasn’t a grin either. It was something in between; like a well kept secret she was trying to keep hidden.

“I get off in an hour,” she said.

Her eyes lowered to my hand where I was still holding on to her arm. I immediately withdrew with an apology.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“It’s okay. Do you want to sit here and wait for me? I can bring you a cup of coffee. Black, right?”

I tilted my head slightly to the right and tried not to smirk. All this time I had been coming into the café where she worked, hoping to grab her attention, only to have all the other waitresses wait on me, and yet she knew how I took my coffee. I smirked anyway.

“I would love a cup of coffee.”

Having a pair of eyes staring at you when you wake up is not pleasant. I sat straight up with instant regret.

“Ow, shit.”

“Easy, mister. You have a nasty bump on your head.”

“Where’s my plane?” I looked around. “Where am
I
?”

“You’re in our barn. My father carried you in.” The young man pointed behind me. “And your plane is around back. It’s hidden. Don’t worry.”

“How did the two of you move it by yourselves?”

“We hooked our mules up to your tail wheel and drug it.”

“Ah.” I tried to stand, and then thought better of it, automatically reaching for my head and feeling bandages.

“It probably feels worse than it actually is,” he said, pointing to my head. “Here, have some water.”

“Thank you.” I drank it, not realizing how thirsty I was. “Can I have some more?”

“Sure.” He filled my tin cup with more cold water and I leaned against the back wall.

“Who’s Sophie?” the young man asked.

“What?”

“You were saying Sophie before. Is she your girlfriend?”

I set the cup on the dirt floor and got back in the same spot I woke up in. I wasn’t in immediate danger anymore and my head felt like it was splitting in two. “I need to rest a bit longer,” I said. “We’ll figure out if the plane can be fixed when I wake up.” I no longer felt like talking, so I ignored his question. Sophie was mine, and I didn’t want to share her with anyone. I reached into my inside chest pocket, making sure the letter was still there and closed my eyes.

T
he café felt a bit like home to me. I don’t know if it was the Formica tabletops with chrome edges, the metal chairs, the Linoleum floors, the smell of hamburgers and apple pie, or the wooden radio that played Bing Crosby, but it beckoned me to sit and stay, so I did. I found myself stopping by the café every day, staying longer and longer each time. I soon realized that it wasn’t the café that beckoned me at all. It was Sophie.

It wasn’t intentional in the beginning, wanting to be where she was, to be near her. I didn’t even know her. All I knew was I liked the way she sounded when she laughed out loud. Her laugh was like a baptism for my soul. The sound would trickle over me like water, making me feel brand new, like I had been reborn. After a while I needed her laugh like I needed air to breathe.

It also didn’t hurt that she was beautiful. I mean
really
beautiful. Her hair was always styled so elegantly, parted down the middle, rolled, and pinned off her face so her vibrant blue eyes were on full display. And her lips were always painted a brilliant red. I was drawn to her, drawn to everything about her. I loved that she liked to sing when she thought no one was listening, and that she cursed under her breath,
especially
when she thought no one was listening. I wanted to laugh every time. She thought she could hide it. She couldn’t. Not with me. I saw everything, and seeing her that way made me want to stay in her presence. I had found true beauty when I met Sophie, in a world where I had begun to think such things no longer existed. When I found her, I wanted to hold on to her.

“I would say we could go for a walk but…” she eyed my crutches, “…that’s probably not a good idea.”

Her evening shift was over and I had patiently waited for her, sipping my coffee, her refilling my cup whenever it would run low before I even had to ask. “I don’t mind,” I said. ” In truth, I would have been willing to crawl on all fours if it meant spending time with her.

“That wouldn’t be very fair to you,” she said. “There’s a park across the street. We can go there and have a seat on one of the benches, maybe people-watch.” She observed me curiously and I was more than okay being observed by her. “How does that sound?” she paused, “Mr…?”

“Charles,” I said. “My name is Charles.”

“Charles,” she repeated softly. “Do you like to people-watch? I find it very entertaining.”

“I enjoy it if they hold my attention.”

“Do many people hold your attention, Charlie?”

No one ever called me Charlie, but I found I liked it when she said it. I sat up straighter, wondering if this was a question she was asking because she knew I had been watching her for the past couple of weeks. Maybe she was testing my honesty, so I decided I would do just that, be honest with her.

“Only one person seems to have snagged my attention.”

She contemplated that for a moment and then said, “You haven’t asked me my name. Don’t you want to know?”

I pointed to her nametag on her waitress uniform. “Your nametag says Sophie.” I smiled and reached for my crutches. “Can we go to the park now?”

I was eager to see what she was like outside of the café, under the big open sky.

When we sat down on the park bench together, away from the prying eyes of everyone else, we fell into casual conversation, the usual pleasantries of getting to know someone. Then I asked her, “Are you rationed, Sophie?

“Rationed?”

“Yes. Are you going steady with anyone?

She blushed and looked away. “No, I’m not. Are you?”

Relieved, I answered, “No.”

“How did you break your leg?”

War was an ugly subject, and I didn’t want to taint the beauty I had found. It also wasn’t a subject I liked to discuss – how I got my injury, however, the ocean in her eyes held a calming effect over me so I told her how it happened.

“There was a flak burst that sent shrapnel into my fuselage. My leg caught the worst of it.”

“What’s a flak burst?”

“It’s an artillery shell that is shot from the ground to blow planes out of the sky.” I watched her expression closely. “It blew a hole in the side of my plane.”

“How did you keep from crashing?”

“It wasn’t unexpected. We were escorting our bombers when we came under fire. It was commonplace, so we knew to take evasive action three minutes outside our target area. However, I still got hit by a piece of it and, well, this was the result. I had to abort and head back to base. If I hadn’t taken shrapnel in the leg I could have continued on my mission, hole or no hole. You’d be surprised how much damage a fighter plane can take and still fly.” I looked away from her at that point. “Humans can only take so much, though,” I said to myself quietly.

“Is that why you’re here now? Because you got hurt? They sent you back home?”

I breathed out a sigh. “Yeah. I can’t fly with a busted leg.”

After about a minute of silence Sophie said, “You don’t want to talk about this do you?”