Rocket Girl Ch. 03

Will's pretty easygoing, he just needs to be shown if it's something that he'd never assume. Leona knows this about him, and on some level, Aurora does too.

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Will went upstairs to the kitchen without knowing what plan Aurora was talking about. He found Leona there, and asked her if she knew how Aurora liked her coffee.

She prepared three cups of coffee, and Will's eyebrows rose. "This one's for Aurora, this one is yours and this one is mine," she smiled, as she added the milk, "Go take this to her and come back. You and I need to have a talk."

Will came back and sat with a confused expression. She looked at him, "Paco is on the phone in our bedroom to back Aurora with her folks. It's probably going to get loud, and you ought to have your shoulder ready for her when it's all over."

Will nodded, "I already thought about that. What's on your mind, Leona?"

Leona looked down the hall to the stairs that led down to Will's part of the house. "Aurora has been living in a cage like a bird. The cage is unlocked, and she's just noticed it. She's about to push the door open and fly, Will. You showed her exactly where the door was. That's what you do when you care about someone. I know you. You always try to help in the most perfect way that people need at that moment, and the beauty of it is, you don't even know that you're doing it. One way or the other, Aurora will probably never be the same, and I'm happy for her."

Will sat looking at her lovely face in profile, remembering when they couldn't be parted and expect to live. That had been so long ago, he remembered. She'd grown up and turned into exactly the woman that he'd always known that she'd become one day. He considered himself to be so fortunate that they were still so close. Leona had miscarried once and between doing his damndest to hold Paco up and comfort Leona, it had almost torn him apart that two of the closest people to him were so hurt. It had been physical pain to him. Only Leona had known and later she'd thanked him as they'd both cried. He couldn't imagine living his life and not knowing the two of them.

She turned to look at Will, "Now I want to be happy for you too. I just want to be sure that you understand things."

Will shook his head, "Well, you can be sure that right now, I don't really have a clue what you're talking about, pretty much."

She smiled and reached with her hand to push some of his longish dirty blonde hair behind one ear. "You know? I think that if this were California or someplace like that, you'd probably be a surfer on top of everything else that you are. You've got that look to you, that slightly long blonde hair, 'I don't give a shit as long as it's a good time' kind of look."

Leona nodded, "Plus you've got that killer soft smile of yours. It's too bad you don't know how to use all of that the way that some of them do. I mean too bad for you because you're not that kind of man. Guys like that just love to smile their way into a room full of women and tally up the number of phone numbers they can get in only one pass through. You're gorgeous, Will. Not in a classic lady killer sort of way, though. You're just a little off of that because you're real. That makes you the real prize in the heap of shit that passes for men these days. I hear all about it at work and it makes me so thankful that I've got real men around me, you three honest to God real men."

She shrugged, "Too bad it's a just a shield to you, this disguise that you wear."

"You walk around like you're fat, dumb, and happy, Will. You carry on like you don't give a damn about anything. But there are people who don't believe any it for a second. We know that you're none of those things; not fat, not dumb, and especially not happy. The ones who see it are the people who know and love you." She put her hand on his.

When he looked up, he found her dark eyes boring into his own. He couldn't look away. When he tried, she closed her hand on his hard, and he looked into those eyes again. Her words were quiet, but direct.

"And now the one you call Rocket Girl is one of them."

Will's mind stopped along with his breathing.

He heard his pulse.

"I was standing with Paco at the door when Cesar arrived behind Aurora. I was also there when she spoke with her friends after she'd broken it off with him. The married one told her she'd been wasting her time with Cesar. Clara told Aurora very plainly that if she wasn't interested in you to just let her know, and Helen?"

Leona smiled, "She was a lot more direct than that."

"Aurora was trying hard not to show how upset she was, but I think she felt all of those things. She'd heard what you said."

He was mystified, "What I said?"

Leona nodded, "Something that you said yesterday. It was just a little thing and I doubt that you even remember it. But it said something that I know is in your heart."

Leona took his hand in both of hers, "Remember who we were once Will, you and I. I know you inside out, and I always have. It was a thing you said that you thought would settle down that brute Cesar a little. He wasn't listening, but every woman there heard it like a clear bell, especially Aurora. You said that as long as she wore his ring,..."

Leona allowed a second for him to absorb it.

"Well the ring is off, Will. I'm trying to tell you that you'll have your chance, if that's what you want - but I'm also here to tell you that now it's you who needs to smarten up, because it's really what you both want. I'd even say that it's what you both need."

She stopped for a moment to let it sink in, and then smiled, "I'm just saying, I won't guess here, but if it were me in her place, and I'd never known Paco," she looked into his eyes.

"When that call is over, you ought to be prepared for a few things. There's a good chance that in the next few days or so, you and Paco will be moving a few of her things here from her home in that truck of yours. You already probably had that in mind if she asked. But that's not the way that I see it happening. You'll move her stuff here for a slightly different reason and she won't really ask because she won't need to."

She looked down, "Our people come from Andalusia, and I'm part gypsy. You know how my feelings turn into little realities sometimes, so listen carefully now. There's a chance that my daydream for you and Aurora will come to pass, and you'll be having a talk with her parents one day. That might not happen, but I can tell you one sure bet if I were her, and I know we're alike in a lot of ways."

He looked at her in some surprise, but he knew she was right far more often than her daydreams, as she called them, were off the mark.

She held both of his hands and shrugged, "You tell me if I'm wrong later, but that bird is free now, or about to be. This is it for you Will, unless you reject her. This is your own great love, right there for you. I know because I've seen it in her face. She'll be upset and will probably be crying hard, but she'll have made up her mind. To her, it finishes what she's leaving behind at the same time that it hopefully begins a love with you in no uncertain terms." Will sat transfixed as Leona went on.

"Unlike you, that girl doesn't need to be hit on the head. Our families come from the same place, and even know each other back in Spain. I've known her for a long time and she's exactly the same as me."

Leona leaned forward to be sure that her eyes locked onto his. For his own good, she wasn't about to let his wonderful mind wander very far from what she was telling him.

"In her family's history and in that place, in our culture and most of all in her beautiful heart - she's exactly the same as me, so I know what's behind all of what she's feeling."

"For damn sure Will, when you go downstairs after this call, you sure wouldn't find me on your couch. I'd bet a week's pay that she won't be there, either. She knows her great love when she has it in front of her. Forgive her the speed of this, but she knows what she wants now, and it's you and her together. She really has no choice in it if she wants the chance at that love, and she knows that too. You need to see that you don't have a choice either, unless you want to go on alone from here."

"That's the way love works sometimes. You're standing at the same crossroads, both of you. Make the right choice here, Will. Everything I ever learned from my grandmother says this is happiness for you both. Here, I'll show you."

Leona stood up and returned with her worn cards, "I know you don't doubt me, since we've known each other most of our lives. You once asked me to do this for you. I brushed it off at the time, and said that it wasn't a parlor game for bored people."

She smiled apologetically, "You know how I love you, my old friend. I've always been doing this for you, though you've never known it, because I want so much for you to be happy. I just told you that when you asked because aside from a few little blips, there's never really been anything on your horizon - until now."

Leona shuffled and laid out the cards, and then took a piece of paper from a shelf, "I'll do this once more with you here. I've already done this twenty times at least over the past week and a half. The cards will come up very close to what I've written down here. I've done this in other ways besides my cards, and the answers lately have always been consistent."

She didn't say anything when she was done. Will compared the cards to the paper. When he looked up, Leona nodded, "When this is all over, I'll explain everything here to you both and what it means, but for now I can say that in my life, I've only ever been so sure of the cards for one other man."

"And I married him." She laughed softly, "Is that good enough?"

She indicated one card with her finger. "This is the only one that has changed today from what I've written. It concerns the timing." She looked up at him and he waited but she said nothing.

He sighed, "Ok, what about the timing?"

Leona pointed to the card again.

"Tonight." It was all that she said.

Will sat back with a feeling something like having been hit in the chest with the broad side of a shovel. He looked up from the table, "Does Aurora know this?"

"In her way, yes," Leona smiled, "I haven't shown her any of this. But she knows it, Will. Where we come from is a region known for the finest horses and life there is lived by one's heart. The women there have never forgotten how to listen to their own hearts." She nodded to him once, "It's who we are."

Will shook his head as if to clear it, "Look Leona, I'm not successful like Cesar obviously is, and I'm sure not rich. I'm just a guy, a regular guy. I'm not what she deserves. How the hell could that ever work?"

She shook her head sadly, "One day, Will, I really will hit you over the head. Maybe I just ought to do it right now and save a lot of time."

She pointed to the stairs, "Listen to her voice right now, not the words - the voice, Will! Does that sound like a woman who has been deliriously happy to you? Mother of God, why do you have to be so thick?"

She reached over and grabbed his jaw, pulling it so that he could look nowhere other than into her darkness of her eyes, "Do you think that you could spare that girl one kiss? If you haven't heard one thing I've said here, then you'd better listen well now."

"Whether you've been trying to win it or not, you idiot, you already hold Aurora's heart in your hand. I'm telling you now, one touch - one caress from you and a kiss. That's all you need to do if you want her."

"How is that not successful? Picture her in your mind and tell me this, would you think yourself to be rich if you had her love?"

The thought blew his mind right there. He nodded weakly, "Yes."

"Rich beyond any measure?"

There was no hesitation, "Yes," he said.

"Well good, because you already have it! She's already decided what she deserves."

She shook her head in a bit of frustration, "Did you hear what I called this? This is no casual thing here. Not for someone like her. Not for someone like you and how much I love you even still almost thirteen years later. Neither of you would even sniff at something like that. I've seen it," she pointed to her cards, "I know it, or we wouldn't be talking here right now. I'd never even tell you because you're worth that much to me and I never want to see you hurt again. Now," she wiped a tear from her eye, "do you believe me or not, Will?"

He nodded slowly, "I've always believed you, Leona."

Leona nodded as she released his jaw and softly slapped his cheek, "Besides the way that you have of lighting up a room - and melting female hearts with your soft smile, I think women must love you so much because you're such a fool."

She smiled, "The greatest challenge comes from trying to get through the thick insulation over your heart, and the even thicker layer over your brain. You're the best friend that girl has ever had and you were just being your fine self. I've watched you guys since her bike showed up here."

She shook her head, "This is obvious to everyone, and now it's even obvious to her. She didn't want to have dinner tonight, she just tortured it on her plate while you ate. More than anything now, she wants to be closer to you that that stupid T-shirt."

She looked at the writing there on his chest, reading it aloud, "'Everyone loves a Canadian boy', Gawd, I need to find a marker and fix that. It ought to read 'Aurora loves her stupid Will'."

Leona laughed as he shrugged helplessly, "God help her."

It took over two hours. Will heard Aurora weeping at the end of it, and realized how he ached to go to her. He knew that Leona was right. He had no choice at all, and was surprised that it made him happy to know that. At last, he walked down the stairs and didn't bother to look in the study at all. He didn't need to.

He closed his bedroom door behind him. Aurora was a weepy mess, but he stared at her in wonder anyway. He'd never seen her hair spilling down free like some shining dark fluid - she'd never had it untied like that before. He felt as though he was in some dream someplace, and then thought of Leona's words. It made absolute sense to him then.

While she'd been telling - for the first time, telling her parents that she intended to change things for herself and live her own life now, no matter what they said or thought, she'd been thinking things through in other areas. While they'd continued to order and harangue in their attempts to regain control with regard to what their daughter was to do, she'd come to several realizations.

She was proud of herself and what she was as the daughter they'd raised. She hoped that sooner or later, they'd be able to feel that way about her too because other than trying to marry her off to a self-centered jerk, they'd done a fine job and she was thankful for it.

Aurora knew what she looked like, and she knew what she felt, and could feel. She was wasted with a fool who'd take her to bed, grunt over her as though she was the doll that she'd mentioned to him in that last phone call, totally absorbed in himself for the three or four minutes that he'd needed to fill a condom.

It made her furious now to think about. She was sure that the condom wasn't there to prevent an unwanted pregnancy; it was there because he considered himself so much better than even the woman that he professed to love. She was on the pill and he knew it.

And then the great stud would fall asleep within two minutes every time leaving her to feel like just another one of his acquisitions - another of the things that he surrounded himself with.

She wanted a man who would make her feel like a thoroughbred rather than a statuette of a mare to be placed on Cesar's shelf along with all of the other possessions.

From what she'd seen of his heart, Will was a man like that. She really didn't have any doubt, but if it turned out that he was the same way, she'd leave this as a friendship and keep looking. Because that was what she was prepared to do now if she had to. She'd raised the bar all by herself and her sense of worth with it, but in a less self-centered way for the first time.

But then she'd smiled to herself while her father was pissing and moaning about the money spent on the preparations for the wedding that Aurora had been given very little say in.

She'd smiled again, thinking of Will's term. She didn't give a rat's ass about any of that. She'd almost laughed to herself in the middle of her father's hair-pulling. Aurora reminded herself of all of the things that had just seemed to pull her to him. It was why she was here in his bed right now.

She already knew that Will would do anything for her, and the feeling was mutual. What they did - or didn't do here tonight would tell her for certain, but for her part, she was pretty sure that his heart was all that she needed because that would drive the rest

Well she knew that she already had that if she could get him to see how this could be.

Aurora could almost hear what her father would have to say about Will if they met. She already had her cannons loaded if he thought to try to argue.

Who cares if his eyes are blue instead of brown? She thought that his eyes were amazing. Her dad would have something to say about his slightly long hair but she didn't give a damn about what he thought anymore. She'd just gotten rid of her father's choice, and that wasn't going to happen to her ever again.

She already knew what her sisters would say, not that it mattered to her. All the acceptance that Aurora would need would come from her mother once she got a look at him and seen that little smile of his. She already knew that her mother would keep still, but smile at her and nod only once when no one was watching.

She heard the door close and looked up to see him there with concern written all over him.

"I heard you and brought a box of tissues," He didn't know what else to say.

She nodded with a sniffle, "Thanks. Can I hold you for a while?"

He smiled softly,"Sure,"

He noticed her little top and the panties that she wore as he got into bed with her. It was so easy to hold her to him as she hid her face against his chest and wept for a while longer. When he became aware of the wetness of her tears on the bicep that her head was on, he felt so sad for her and kissed her head. "If there's anything I - "

She shushed him with a sniffle and whispered, "I already know you'd do anything for me. It means a lot, you know?"

She reached up and caressed his face with a soggy smile, "It took me a long time to figure out that you're different, like how I'd just met you and after I treated you so badly you were wanting to help me with my bike, and even after you knew I was engaged."

"Would you really let me be anything that I'd want to be, Will?"

He nodded, "Yeah, whatever you'd want. You know that. Right now, I just can't stand seeing you hurt like this."

"It's ok," she smiled, "I've cried a lot over this for a long time. Now I feel as though I'm coming to the end of it. It's not so much over that asshole, it's more over how I've felt so,... so alone in the middle of my family. Like I was forsaken or something."

She sniffled, "But at least my mother is mad at my dad too now. Both of my sisters were allowed to find their own men. One minute, I was riding free in the wind, and the next, I had this guy pressuring me. I think my dad was just trying to find a way to get me settled down, but it hurts."

She looked up at him, "So you'd let me be the Prime Minister, or the head of XYZ Corporation, you said. What if I were the faster rider between us? Would you let me be that?"

He nodded, "I told you, I don't care. Do whatever you want to, and I'll be proud of you. Who cares who's the faster rider, as long as we ride? But sure, I won't mind. There are lots of people who are faster than either of us, but if it's between us, I sure don't mind if it's you. But now, I think I'd prefer it if you actually raced on a track, since it's safer for everyone."