Love's not Time's fool,
Though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
“THEY DO NOT LOVE THAT DO NOT SHOW THEIR LOVE” - Hamlet was scrolled across the whiteboard in block letters the following afternoon.
Fern pondered that one all day. Obviously, Ambrose hadn't felt welcomed home with outstretched arms. She wondered why. People had wanted to throw him a parade, hadn't they? And Coach Sheen and Bailey had gone to see him and been turned away. Maybe people wanted to see him . . . but maybe they were afraid. Or maybe it hurt too much. The town had been rocked. Ambrose hadn't seen the devastation after the news had hit Hannah Lake. A writhing tornado had whipped its way up and down the streets, leaving families and friends leveled. Maybe no one had been with him in his darkest hours because they were stumbling around in their own.
Fern spent her half-hour dinner break finding a suitable response. Was he talking about her? Surely he hadn't wanted to see her. The possibility that he might be referring to her gave her the courage to be bold in her reply. He could doubt the town, but he wouldn't be able to claim that she didn't care. It was a little over the top, but it was Shakespeare.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love.”
And his response?
“DO YOU THINK I AM EASIER TO BE PLAYED ON THAN A PIPE?”
“Shakespeare didn't say that.” Fern scowled, talking to herself and staring at the flippant response. But when she typed the quote into the search engine, she found he had. The quote was from Hamlet again. Big surprise. This wasn't quite what she’d had in mind when she'd started writing messages. Not at all. Squaring her shoulders she tried again. And she hoped he would understand.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
She watched for him that night, wondering if he would respond right away. She checked the board before she left for the night. He'd responded all right.
NAIVE OR STUPID?
Fern felt the tears flood her eyes and spill out onto her cheeks. With a straight back and chin held high she walked to her register, picked up her purse from beneath the counter and walked out of the store. He might be hiding but she was through seeking Ambrose Young.
Ambrose watched Fern go, and he felt like an ass**le. He'd made her cry. Awesome. She was trying to be nice. He knew that. But he didn't want nice. He didn't want to be encouraged and he sure as hell didn't want to keep finding Shakespeare quotes to write on that damn whiteboard. Better that he run her off right away. Period.
He scratched at his cheek. The shrapnel still buried in his skin drove him crazy. It itched, and he could feel the pieces working their way out. The doctors told him some of the shrapnel, the pieces buried deep in his right arm and shoulder and some of the pieces in his skull would probably never work themselves out. He wouldn't be going through any metal detectors without setting them clanging. That was fine, but the shrapnel in his face, the pieces that he could feel, they bothered him, and he had a hard time not touching them.
His thoughts flew back to Fern. He worried that if he let her get too close he might have a hard time not touching her, too. And he was pretty sure she didn't want that. He had started back at the bakery full-time a month ago. He'd been working a few hours in the early morning with his dad for longer than that, but it had only been a month since he had completely taken over the night shift, the most important shift for the bakery. He made pies, cakes, cookies, donuts, rolls, and bread. His dad had taught him well over the years, and it was work he knew how to do. The work was comforting and quiet–safe. His dad would do the cake decorating and the specialty orders when he came in at four and they would work together for an hour or two before the bakery opened. Ambrose would slip out when it was still dark and head home without being seen, just the way he liked it.
For a long time, no one had known he was working at the bakery again. But Fern closed the store five nights a week, and for an hour or two after he came into work most nights, Ambrose and Fern were alone in the store. There was the random customer coming for a last-minute gallon of milk or a late-night grocery run, but from about nine to eleven it was quiet and slow. Before long, Fern had seen him in the kitchen, though he had tried to stay out of sight.
He'd been watching her long before she'd realized he was there. She was a quiet girl; her hair was the loudest thing about her, a fiery, riotous crown on an otherwise demure face. She had let it grow since he'd seen her last and it hung in long curls halfway down her back. And she no longer wore glasses. The long hair and the missing glasses had thrown him that night, the night he'd made her crash her bike. And of course he'd been trying not to look directly at her so she wouldn't look directly at him.
Her eyes were a deep, soft brown and a sprinkling of freckles speckled her small nose. Her mouth was slightly disproportionate to the rest of her face. In high school, when she wore braces, her top lip had looked almost comical, like a duck bill stretched over her protruding teeth. Now her mouth was almost sensual, her teeth straight and white, her smile wide and unpretentious. She was quietly lovely, unassumingly pretty, completely unaware that at some point between awkwardness and adulthood she had grown so appealing. And because she was unaware, she became more appealing still.
Ambrose had watched her, night after night, positioning himself where he could gaze at her unobtrusively. And he wondered more than once how he could have so easily dismissed her before. Moments like these made him long for the face that he used to see when he looked in the mirror, a face that he'd taken for granted. A face that had smoothed his way more than once with a pretty girl that caught his eye. It was a face that would surely attract her to him, the way she'd been attracted to him before. But it was a face he would never have again, and he found he was lost without it. So he just watched.