Title: Anaranjado
Category: Resolution
Summary: Sure enough, the trees were full of white flowers and the scent of the flowers hung heavy in the air.
She squinted in the bright sunlight, her eyes gravitating toward the green lushness behind the fence to her right. Green flecks of paint flecked off the metal bars as she sighed and ran her finger down one, waiting for the light to change to walk across. Her shoes were already covered with dust from walking on the uneven ground that seemed to serve as a sidewalk on this side of the street.
Her phone rang just as the light turned and she grabbed for it while she walked.
"What?"
"You picked the perfect time of year for a visit."
She didn't bother getting exasperated, and she didn't break her stride. "Jarod." She reached the other side of the road.
When he continued speaking, she could almost hear the grin in his voice. "Perfect temperatures, dry, sunny--for the most part, although I ran into a terrible rainstorm the other afternoon--and the orange trees are blossoming."
Miss Parker's head jerked up. Sure enough, the trees were full of white flowers and the scent of the flowers hung heavy in the air. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it earlier--the streets were lines with the trees, stretching in either direction as far as she could see.
"What would you do without me to make you take your eyes off the road?"
She whirled. The voice had come from behind her. His voice. He grinned at her, leaning against an orange tree, already moving his cell phone to his pocket. She lowered her own, snapping it closed. She strode to the tree, not failing to notice that his hair was shorter again, that the dappled light from the bright sun made his features softer, almost like he had lost five or six years, almost like the first--no, the second--year after he'd escaped, back after he'd seen the world a little, and before he'd become jaded.
She had to admit she liked him best like this, with the light of humor back in his eyes. It had been only a few months since she'd seen that humor, and a year and a half since he'd not been crippled by the dark.
It had been four years since she knew she was not beyond hope. Three before they tried to take that hope away from her.
Maybe Jarod had lost his faith for a while, too.
Whatever the case had been in those two dark years, they'd somehow managed to come back from the edge.
She met him with a smile. Of sorts.
He met her with a bitter-edged twist of the lips, a hand on her shoulder. The sun still fell softly around the razor-edges of leaves above, and a few passerby noted their presence before moving on. But the two beneath the leaves paid them no attention.
"How do you always know?" she asked him.
He smiled broadly. "How do you?"
She paused. She considered it, took the time to turn his question over, letting it sink in. Then she tilted her head back under the orange trees of Seville and laughed.