Free Wait for Me by Mary Kay McComas Page B

to sip away every drop to quench his thirst. She pushed her dark hair up and away from her face. He wondered if he’d ever known anything as uniquely and naturally beautiful as Holly Loftin. “There’s nothing like a good rain to wash away your troubles,” she said.
    “Do you have troubles?”
    “Who, me?” she asked, thinking of her drawer full of bills and overdrawn bank slips. “Troubles are for people who think too much, but never think to change anything.”
    They talked about Oakland on the way to the park—after a small show of getting him his own transit pass.
    “After school I took some time off; there were...” she hesitated briefly “...some things I’d been wanting to do for a long time. I started looking around San Francisco, and then I got sidetracked to Oakland. I found someone here that I didn’t think I could leave. So I stayed. I got a job and a place to live and started a life here. And I like it. I like the town and I like the people. I’m comfortable here.”
    Only a fool would have assumed that there hadn’t been any other men in her life—and Oliver was no fool. He wasn’t even disappointed. But he felt a certain blackness in his heart for the person who’d had the power to make her give up her home and family to live in a strange town, alone, fending for herself.
    “Have you been anywhere else?” he asked. “Have you done much traveling?”
    The answer was no, and the rest of the trip was taken up with places she dreamed of seeing and the places he’d already seen.
    The rain drizzled as they ambled through the children’s park and the picnic area and stood on the banks of the lake watching a few die-hard sailors braving the wind and waves. Their conversation bounced from hither to thither, but nowhere near yawn. They laughed and teased and fed whole wheat bread from his brown paper bag to the squawking mallards and a few wayward Canadian honkers.
    “I wasn’t sure if they’d prefer white or dark bread. So I brought both,” he explained.
    “Let’s keep ’em healthy and feed them the dark. What are you going to do with the other loaf?”
    He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it. Throw it away? Leave it on a bench for someone else to feed to the ducks?
    “Can I have it?”
    “Sure,” he said, handing her the bag, concern biting at his mind. Couldn’t she afford food?
    “The Paulson Clinic thanks you,” she said with a gracious smile. “Even leftover duck food is a welcome sight.”
    Suddenly he was feeling too fat, too well fed.
    “I wish it were a truckload of bread.”
    “So do I.”
    The best part of the afternoon, however, were the long, contented moments of silence. Whole segments of time when being male or female, rich or poor, blue blood or foster child didn’t matter. Precious pieces of time when it was enough to simply be and be together.
    It was during one such moment when Holly chanced to glance at Oliver. She liked looking at him. He was certainly handsome, but it was his confidence and quiet intelligence that appealed to her most. It made her feel safe.
    There wasn’t a woman alive, or a man for that matter, who didn’t want to feel that the person they were with was capable of protecting them, of taking care of them, of caring for them. Being the captain of one’s own ship was frightening and lonely sometimes. A safe harbor and solid land were always a comforting sight. Oliver was a comforting sight.
    He was feeling safe and comfortable, too, she noted. It made her happy and sad at once to see that he felt free to be himself in her presence, that he didn’t think he needed to be constantly in good cheer for her. But it was a shame to see that he had that isolated and lonely look on his face again, the one he got when his guard was down; when he didn’t think anyone would notice; when he didn’t think anyone would care.
    “What was he like?” she asked softly.
    He chuckled and shook his head. When he looked at her, his expression had changed