“Next time there might be two.”
“That’s perfect! Receiving two flowers at the same time is one of the things on my bucket list,” she teased.
Although Hardy felt a twinge at her reference to dying, he didn’t dwell on it, not when she was smiling into his eyes like she was. Finally, Miracle stepped back and gestured for him to come inside.
“Let me put this in some water. I’ll be right back.”
When Miracle came back into the living room, Hardy was staring at a family photo that pictured a sick and bald yet laughing Miracle. His stomach sloshed with nausea at the thought of what she’d been through.
He turned to her and smiled as brightly as he could manage. Miracle seemed not to notice his discomfort.
“So, what are we doing?”
“Do you like comedy?”
“Me? Like to laugh? Uh, yeah!”
Hardy smiled a little more genuinely. He figured as much.
“How about a movie then? Will Ferrell has that new one out.”
“Ohmigod, you had me at Will Ferrell,” she claimed happily. “A movie sounds perfect.”
“If you want, we can go ahead and go now and get some ice cream first. There’s a place downtown that has this huge waffle bowl that holds five scoops of ice cream. I thought it would fit right in with your stomach-stretching, champion eater-training efforts.”
Miracle giggled. “And you couldn’t be more right.”
Hardy treated Miracle to the biggest edible bowl of ice cream she’d ever seen. She ate all the ice cream, but left the waffle bowl, which Hardy nibbled on after he’d finished his own much smaller cone. They laughed about everything under the sun, including her sumo-sized appetite. Hardy learned that she was not only beautiful, charming and funny, but incredibly intelligent. He’d known from the first time he saw her that she was kind-hearted, so when she dropped a twenty in the Feed the Hungry jar on the concession stand at the theater, he wasn’t surprised.
Even after all that ice cream, Miracle shared a large popcorn and Coke with Hardy during the movie. She laughed until she cried more than once, enchanting Hardy even more, which he didn’t think was possible. At one point, she leaned her head over onto his shoulder as she nibbled popcorn. Hardy thought again that he wanted desperately to keep her safe and happy the rest of her days.
She invited him in when he took her home and they sat in her living room trying to stump each other with movie quotes. Miracle impressed Hardy with her depth of movie knowledge and her storehouse of useless trivia.
“I think you might be an even bigger movie buff than I am, and that’s saying a lot,” Hardy declared after she’d finished him off with a quote from an 80’s John Hughes film.
“When you’re sick for months at a time, you watch a lot of movies,” she answered casually. “In a way, you live vicariously through them. You have your first kiss with them, go to your first party, skip out on your prom, and drink your first beer with them.” She paused, a wistful smile fluttering across her lips before she spoke again. “You fall in love with them.”
Hardy couldn’t let such an opening pass him by. “Speaking of that, have you ever been in love before?”
Miracle leaned her head against the back of the couch and stared at Hardy. He thought he could drown in the fathomless depths of her shimmering eyes.
“No. Have you?”
Hardy shrugged, suddenly more uncomfortable with the topic now that it was turned in his direction. “No. I thought I was, but…”
“Cheyenne?”
Hardy’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “Yeah. I confused what everyone else wanted and what was…comfortable for feelings that just weren’t there. It wasn’t until—”
He stopped abruptly. After a few seconds, Miracle raised her head and looked at him expectantly. When he didn’t finish, she prompted him. “Until what?”
Taking his time before he answered, Hardy looked down to where Miracle’s hand rested on the couch between them. Reaching forward, he picked it up and carefully laced his fingers through hers. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered how anyone’s skin could be so soft. And how another’s hand could fit so perfectly within his.
“I’d been noticing her selfishness for a while. I don’t know if it just got worse as time went on, or if I was really just blind to it up until then, but the day I saw you in the park, it was like a wake-up call. You were everything that she wasn’t. Everything a decent person should be and she’s just…not.”
Miracle leaned her head back again, her eyes never leaving Hardy’s. “I’m sure she’s not all bad.”
“See? How do you do that? How can you look at someone like her, someone who treats you like she does, someone who treats everyone like she does, and say that?”
“She doesn’t treat you terribly, does she?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then she can’t be all bad.”
“But she—”
“I’m sure she loves her family and treats them well. And she probably has a dog or a cat or something she loves.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“She probably has a soft spot for her grandmother or the old man across the street that gave her candy when she was little.”
“She might, but—”
“See? She’s really not all bad.”
Hardy sat up straighter, tired of hearing Miracle defend someone who could be as nasty as Cheyenne could. If only she knew… “Maybe not, but she’s still not you.”
Miracle had been about to say something, but she stopped, her eyes flying to his. Hardy hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to admit it. It just came out. He hadn’t been thinking.
“I’m not perfect, Hardy. I’m just as selfish as the next person and I—”
“No, you’re not. And you’re not fooling anybody by trying to pretend you are. Maybe it’s because of what you’ve been through. Maybe it’s just the way you were born. I don’t know, but you’re special, Miracle. You may not think you’re perfect, but to some people, you’re everything they’ve ever wished for, whether they realized it or not.”
Miracle said nothing. She didn’t know what to say. She simply stared in wonder at Hardy.
They sat on the couch for a long time—looking into each other’s eyes, playing with each other’s fingers, taking it all in. They both knew something magical was happening. And they were both afraid, but for two totally different reasons.