Читать книгу Damaged Hearts - Jan St. Marcus - Страница 15

Bran is silent on the drive to Main Street in Santa Monica. It’s a short drive, and there are lots of different places to shop along the wide street. Lots of bars and restaurants, too. I drive with the windows down, partly because I’m not a fan of air conditioning and partly because I love the sound of the engine revving as I drive. Bran is alternating looking out the window and running his hands along the upholstery of his seat. He looks . . . dare I say . . . cute. Well, except for the faded, ugly, orange T-shirt. I mean, that thing couldn’t have looked good when it was brand new. And I’m not being a snob; it’s just really ugly.

“Where do you want to shop?” I ask him.

He looks over at me like he’s just waking up from a dream. “Huh? Oh. I don’t care.” He looks from one side of the street to the other and then points to our left. “There—GAP.”

I see it, but I am torn. I was thinking something with a little more style, but then again, I don’t want to make him less comfortable than he probably already feels. But GAP? Really? “GAP it is,” I say as I get into the turn lane. A moment later, we’re walking up to the front doors. His eyes are wide as we enter, and he looks hesitant.

“So how does this work?”

“I think you pick out clothes and then we pay for them and then we leave, right?”

This earns me a glare from him. “Yeah, smartass. I get the concept. I meant is there a plan?”

I look at him and motion for him to follow me to the counter. A cute girl in a pixie cut and skinny jeans smiles at us from behind the counter. Her nametag reads MINDY.

“Hi, Mindy, I’m Michelangelo, and this is my friend, Bran.”

She sticks out her hand and smiles brightly at Bran. “Hi. How can I help y’all?”

I like her instantly. “I lost a bet and so I have to pay for Bran’s shopping spree. Can you help him and just charge it to my card?” I remove one of my credit cards and driver’s license and hand them to her. “Just charge it, and he’ll bring me the card and my license.” I look at Bran. “I’m going to go two doors up and have a beer. Meet you there when you’re done?”

“Sure. We can do that,” Mindy says, taking my card and license.

“Have fun,” I say to Bran before turning and heading for the door. I get about three steps when Bran grabs my elbow to stop me. “What’s up?”

Bran looks up at me, eyes pleading. “I . . . you’re not going to stay?”

“Do you want me to?”

He looks embarrassed and he starts to blush. “I kind of do. I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?”

He leans up and whispers to me, “Shopped. In a store. Like for clothes.”

I look into his eyes again, searching to see if he’s serious. He looks very serious. I turn and walk back towards Mindy, holding out my hand for my card and license. “Change of plans. I guess I’m staying.”

“Great!” she says. “Here you go. Y’all let me know if you need anything, all right?”

“We will,” I assure her. I glance around the store to get the lay of the land and head over towards the jeans. So, go ahead, call me a snob because I’ve never shopped at GAP before. Like I care. I smile and head towards the wall of jeans. “Okay,” I tell Bran, “let’s start with some jeans.” He follows.

When I was a kid, like twelve, my brother and I watched Pretty Woman on TV, and my brother loved it. He was kind of a romantic and thought it was like this sweet Cinderella story. I saw the darker side of it, you know, she was a hooker. And as I stand here, watching Bran with eyes as wide as saucers as I suggest various pairs of jeans, I think of that scene in the movie where Julia Roberts was in that fancy store on Rodeo Drive trying on dresses. Of course, nobody would ever confuse the GAP with Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, but you wouldn’t know it from Bran’s expression. After we set aside three pairs of jeans, he comes up to me and whispers to me again.

“Okay, I know you’ll think this is kind of weird, but you dress really nicely. Like, when I saw you this morning, you looked like a model, and I don’t even think you realize how good you look. Do you think you can help me look like that?” He blushes again.

“Thank you?” I say. I look around the store again and find the button-down shirts. I pull a couple off the rack and give them to him. “Try one of these on.” He’s still wearing the last pair of jeans he tried on. They’re dark blue, and the shirt he tries on is sky blue with a button-down collar. He buttons it up, and I am kind of surprised that it fits him perfectly. And I smile when I see how good he looks. “Talk about looking like a model—that works for you.”

His eyes explode in that sparkling bright green. “Really?” He finds the mirror and looks at himself. Instantly, I see the brief flash of confusion as he deals with the image he must have of himself as the homeless kid and the image he’s actually seeing of himself in decent clothes. He turns to me and his expression changes. He seems self-conscious. Is he embarrassed? That expression doesn’t last long. It was just a flash. I smile at him and nod.

He’s smiling like a kid at Christmas. “I can’t believe how nice I look.” He turns and checks himself out in the mirror again. I smile and drift over to the sweatshirts. We spend another thirty minutes or so adding items to his new wardrobe, and when we’re done, I ask Mindy if she’d be kind enough to cut off the tags. He insists on wearing the dark-blue jeans and light-blue shirt out. He’s also fallen in love with the shoes we bought, so his Chucks go into the bag with his old clothes as Mindy rings everything up and hands us our bags. I slip her a twenty-dollar bill and thank her for her help. I open the trunk of the car (which is in the front) and he puts the bags inside. He looks at me like he doesn’t want to go home. I don’t blame him. I pop my head back in the store and make sure that it’s okay with Mindy that I leave the car in her parking lot for a little while. And while Bran doesn’t know how much I spent, I figure that for five hundred bucks, I should be able to leave my car there for a couple of beers. I am right.

We walk a couple of doors north to a nice little restaurant/bar and I catch Bran checking himself out in the windows of the shops we pass. I like smiling, and watching Bran enjoying his new appearance, I am smiling again. As we sit on a couple of barstools, it strikes me how easy it is to change someone’s life for the better. Bran, who showed up in my life looking like what he was—a homeless guy starving and looking for some food scraps—now looks like he could be a college student hanging out after classes at UCLA. And his whole demeanor has changed, too. He’s still shy, but his eyes are bright. His head is slowly but surely spending more time up and less time looking at the ground. And he’s got a great smile.

Our stay at the bar is cut short by a bartender who insists on seeing Bran’s ID, which he doesn’t have. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know how old he is. I am thinking about asking him when I see how disappointed he is. I guess I’m disappointed too. I really like the food at this place. I was looking forward to a good dinner. Oh well. I kind of learned to deal with disappointment at a young age. I lead him out and once outside, I look up and down the street, trying to remember another place where the food is good. I’m not too thrilled to leave my car parked in front of the GAP. I’m sure that a car like mine would up the status of the store if people saw it parked there, but then again, if someone I knew saw it parked there, what would they think of me? I’m joking. I honestly couldn’t care less what anybody like that thinks of me. But I’ve got beer at home, and I’m now kind of hoping that Bran sticks around for long enough that we’ll have more chances to hang out in the future. “I’ve got beer at home,” I say as I head back towards the car.

“Yeah. Okay.”

“You’re disappointed, huh?”

“Kind of. Like I said earlier, I don’t think I’ve ever looked this nice before …” His words trail off, and I let the silence settle on us like a slow-moving fog. He’ll get over it.

“Well, why don’t we stop at Chipotle and take it home, drink some beers and eat?”

He perks up at this. “I can live with that.”

As we near the parking lot, I realize that I’m actually disappointed a little bit, too. Not disappointed enough to go driving around looking for a place to eat out, but disappointed nonetheless. As soon as the engine roars to life, I begin to smile again. Damn, I love my car!