Temporary Shelter

“He just won't leave me alone.” The cell in Leo’s apron pocket vibrated as she reached for a pizza box, her back to the entrance. Judy skirted around her to grab an order pad before heading to the newly arrived group of college students talking loudly in the corner booth.

“Give him time,” she called over her shoulder. “Guys like that eventually run out of steam. He’s too lazy to keep going.”

Leo didn’t tell Judy how, just two days ago, Jake sat in her dad’s driveway, in his pickup, honking and demanding that he tell him where Leo was living and working. Jake refused to listen to her father’s reasoned responses, and he refused to leave until her dad had no alternative but to call the police to report a trespasser. Of course, he fled the scene by the time an officer arrived. Leo sighed and leaned against the counter for the first time all afternoon. They had been slammed and running nonstop since the start of her shift hours ago. She took a deep breath and pulled out her cell. There was a new string of text messages: Be afraid, very afraid! I know where U work. I know where U live!! She shakily shoved the phone back into her apron pocket, and in the process, her elbow knocked one of the ceramic bovines off the counter onto the ground.

It shattered.

Pieces flew across the black and white checkerboard floor. Oh, for goodness’ sake. Here you go again, letting him get under your skin. She bent over, sweeping the cow bits into a pile when she heard the restaurant’s entrance bell chime. Her stomach lurched. Was Jake already making good on his threats? The door opened. She looked up and stopped mid-sweep.

First, she noticed his eyes. They were guarded, an eerie impenetrable blue from which no light was reflected. Ray. He moved closer to her and stopped. His intense, edgy gaze traveled over her, but not in the way she was used to with Jake or his friends. Ray took in her entirety, a trained soldier’s look that missed no detail. She was not objectified but even more unnerving; she felt uncovered, seen.

****

Ray surveyed the woman before him. Leo had always been slim, but there had also been a softness, an innocence, about her. Now there settled an experience-driven tenacity in her bones, evidenced by how her clavicle and hips subtly protruded from her clothing like a provisional form of body armor shielding her interior. Leo’s hair, gathered into a tightly woven French braid, was pulled off her face, emphasizing her ethereal skin, which made her dark brown eyes look haunted and too big for the delicate features of her face. She was frightened of something or someone; of that, he was sure. He knew the shell-shocked look soldiers had after being in a war zone for a while. The unease flickered in her, too, a form of trauma. He wondered if her experience had anything to do with the lighter band of skin around her ring finger. In all the years Ray had known Leo, fear was one emotion he had never seen manifested before.

Their eyes were still locked on each other when they simultaneously said, “What the hell happened to you?” They both stood, taken aback. Leo was the first to laugh.

****

The response was hesitant at first, more like a nervous reaction, an effort to convince herself that everything would be okay. But as her giggling became more full-bodied, spreading through her like a balm, a floodgate opened. She felt a baffling mix of reprieve and confusion. What was happening? Most of all, though, she felt an inexplicable kinship with this boy, now a man from her past, who stood before her, looking at her somewhat askance, trying to contain an amused smile.

Leo caught her breath. “Can I help you?” She managed to say, in her best server’s voice possible, trying to tamp down another wave of hilarity.

Her eyes blazed as they had when she looked at him when she was young. His grin widened. When was the last time he had smiled like this? “I’m here to pick up a pie under the name of Hope Shipworth.”

“Oh.” She paused. Taking her turn to size him up. And she did so from top to bottom. “No wonder you look like crap. You're married.”

He was stunned—the absurdity of it all. Leo’s light laughter was contagious, and his defenses lowered. Her authentic, astonishingly honest observations pulled back carefully layered strands of protective tissue, reaching him on a deeper level. He laughed for the first time in months, maybe even years. Leo might have never known he had a sister. Even when Hope attended the track meets, which she rarely did because of her after-school activities, they never hung out together afterward. The farewell cookout invitation sent to the Lightfoot household never mentioned that his sister was throwing it.

He laughed, now without restraint. The tension, anger, and anxiety he’d been carrying with him momentarily lifted, a curtain rising on the anticipated first act of a beloved play. As the current swept through their cerebral cortexes, releasing endorphins, the electricity created a charged connection between them, a temporary shelter for two battle-weary beings in an unlikely place, a restaurant chock-full with memorabilia paying homage to Oklahoma’s most unassuming gentle giant, the cow.