Blank Canvas

Chapter 3

 I shake my thoughts away and use my colorful, striped towel to wrap my body, then continue off to my room to finish off my routine, you know, lotion and all that fun stuff.

I get dressed, then peacefully walk around knowing I'm smelling like flowers, which is honestly such an amazing feeling if you ask me. I blow dry my hair a little bit, then braid it so that it's out of my way while I'm working. my face scrunches as soon as my eyes hit the mirror, noticing how much of a little girl I look like with a braid and no makeup. I chuckle a little and gather everything before heading out my room door. While attempting to keep my purse on my shoulder without it falling down my arm, I walk down the stairs and towards the coat hanger. Slipping into my shoes and my coat.

"Bye mom" I say while walking towards her to give her a kiss on the cheek as a form of goodbye. She's lying comfortably on the couch, watching her favorite show. She looks so beautiful, I can't believe that woman created me.

"Cuidate" she says before I head out the door.

The whiff of cold air hits me as I begin to walk down the street towards my nearest bus stop. Like I said, no car, so I like to use to bus instead of asking for rides, just seems more appropriate to me. I begin to check my phone as I'm waiting for the bus, noticing I got 0 messages from Henry. There's a small pain in my chest, I hate to believe that Henry could be anything except amazing, but I shrug my shoulders and continue to put in my earbuds, allowing me to block any overthinking to reach my pea sized brain. The bright bus lights begin to blind me as the bus is driving towards me, then makes a stop so that the door entrance is right in front of me.

The bus doors open, I walk up the steps and scan my card when all the sudden I see Jeraldo sitting right next to the door. He locks eye contact with me and pats the torn up bus seat next to him. Smiling, I walk towards him and take a seat next to him. 

"Why are you here? Don't you have a car that you can take to work?" I ask.

 He nods and clasps his hands together. 

"I know you don't like asking for rides, even though I can take you to work cause you know, we work together and have pretty much the same schedule, and I know you take the bus so I took the bus too. I just want to make sure you're okay" he says to me, making me feel loved and cared for.

"Well thank you for taking the time and effort to come find me and make sure i'm okay, but everything's okay Jeraldo, you don't have anything to worry about" I say.

He opens his mouth but then lets out a big sigh before continuing to speak. 

"I want you to be safe, Dahlia and-" he says before I cut him off

"I get that you want me to be safe, but you're acting a bit odd, are you sure it's not you that's not okay?" I ask, looking at him straight into his dark eyes. 

"I'm sorry, I just care. Henry.. he's a little, out there you know" Jeraldo says. 

I nod, but still don't quite understand what's going on. 

"If anything is going on, anything at all, I want you to let me know, because I know how you are and how you like to keep things to yourself." he says. 

my teeth slowly caress their way towards my bottom lip, as I breathe in to take a long, deep breath.

"No yeah I understand" I say, remembering how Henry told me that we weren't at the level of meeting each other's families. 

You know, it's honestly probably not even that big of a deal, I'm just making it a big deal. 

"Come on this is our stop" I say to Jeraldo while gathering my stuff to head out. 

Lucky for us, the bakery is right outside of the bus stop. As soon as I open the door, the smell of coffee and bread hits me, filling me with a sensation of comfort.. And hunger. Walking to the back, we leave our stuff and to put our hats and apron on, enjoying the fact that we have kitchen duty today.

Jeraldo and I always have a blast when we work in the kitchen, it's truly something else. As soon as everything is good to go, we begin to work, gathering all the utensils and measuring cups to sort out all the dry ingredients, while J works on all the wet ingredients, which is all placed in the fridge of course. And before we know it, it's off to town we go.

Measuring is the simple part, it's the cleaning up process that kills us. Lucky for me, I have company. As I'm drying one of the cups, I turn around to take a look at Jeraldo, who is wiping down the counters.

"Henry doesn't want to meet my mom yet" I say, cutting off the small silence that was left after we talked and talked about the most simplest to the most complex topics anyone could come up with.

He takes a look at me and takes a look back down the counter where his towel is laying. "Well, your mom can be something else sometimes" he says while chuckling.

"Hey! Stop.. I know. Which is why I'm scared but I don't see why he could be scared" I say.

"Well, what did he say when you asked him" Jeraldo asks.

"He said that we're not at the stage yet to where we can meet each other's family." I reply.

"How long have you been talking to him?" he asks

"About 3 months now.." i drift off.

"Wow, okay ouch let's just pretend like you didn't just keep a secret away from me for 3 months. Anyway, I think 3 months is okay? I mean you guys are flirting at this point I suppose, and are starting to get exclusive. I don't see the problem" Jeraldo says.

"Try telling him that" I say as I roll my eyes.

"Give it time, you can tell he's not the kind of guy that knows what to do when it comes to meeting someone who they like's parents" Jeraldo says while shrugging and looking down at his dirty rag.

I stay quiet for a second, processing everything that he just said to me.

"You have a point" I say, taking a quick peek at him and what he's doing. 

He's currently washing the rag that he used to clean off the counter, while I'm still drying the utensils that were already cleaned. He catches my eye while I'm obviously staring at him.

"What? Do i have something on my face?" he asks, frantically touching his face. I smile at the exaggeration, but allow him to act out for a few seconds.

"No, no, it's nothing" I say and turn around, continuing to dry the silverware so that he doesn't see my face of embarrassment of accidentally staring at him. I feel him walk up to me, our shoulders touching..