When I turned 18, one of the first things I did was get a tattoo. It was of the biblical definition of love. In red. In the shape of a heart. I felt like I’d carried love on my back for so long it’d started to feel like a burden. I needed any and everyone to know that if I turned my back on them, it was only because I needed to remind them of what love was. What it looked like. What it felt like.
The Man with the Glow shared his light and his love without expectation of return. Not even because he knew what I needed, but because he knew what he wanted to give me. When he found out that I had gone to school for Cosmetology, he asked if I could teach him how to cut women’s hair. He was barbering while in college, for extra money, and cutting longer hair would expand his business. I agreed, but only if he’d take it seriously. He agreed. “Great! Then your final exam will be to cut mine.” At the time, I had waist-length hair. He said he was scared to mess it up. “Then don’t,” I shrugged.
About six months after having to move out of my house, I found a roommate and got an apartment. I wasn’t a stranger to roommate situations, so we set a few ground rules. No rah-rah after midnight she stated. No problem. Clean up what you or your guests mess up, she suggested. Done. Pay your portion on time. Normal stuff. The only rule I had was that there were certain groceries—my chips and my pizza, that were off limits. Anything else, I am more than willing to share, just let me know it’s been shared. We agreed.
After a particularly long day of teaching, then tutoring, then running the after school program, then having a cut lesson with the Man with the Glow, I was spent. And it was cold and rainy out. Plus, I just realized that I didn’t have any money left after bills were paid. But I was grateful bills were paid and I had frozen pizza and chips at home, so I worried not. I just wanted a hot shower, and chips and pizza. That’s it, that’s all.
I got back to the apartment, and my roommate’s boyfriend was in the shower. Fine. I can wait. I would just eat first. I went to the kitchen to munch on my chips while the pizza cooked. I climbed on top of the counter to reach the cabinet over the refrigerator, where I’d put them to make sure that they were not easily visible. No chips. I opened the other side. No chips. I climbed down and opened every cabinet door. No chips. Checked the freezer for my pizza. No pizza. I didn’t need to check my purse to know I also didn’t have any money.
My roommate walked into the kitchen just as the realization that my hopes for my evening had been crushed. “Hey. C didn’t want my vegetarian food, so he ate your pizza and chips. I will replace them when I get paid,” she said nonchalantly.
My head tilted. My eyes blinked. The rage of frustration began to creep up my back, onto my neck, and out of my throat. “What was the one rule I had? Do you remember?”
Her head tilted. It was her eyes’ turn to blink. “Excuse me?”
“When we moved in, I had one rule to your three. Do you remember what it was?”
“Yea, you had stuff you didn’t want anyone to eat but if they did, to let you know. I’m letting you know.” Her voice was flippant. Her face was polite. The incongruity was not purposeful.
“No, it was that my pizza and my chips were off limits. And anything else could be eaten as long as you let me know.”
Her eyes blinked again. “How’s that different?”
“The difference is that one leaves me with my favorites as the fruit of my labor. I don’t have a credit card to spend at will for someone else to pay. I don’t have a job that will allow me to go in whenever I want to get extra hours just because. And I don’t have a boyfriend funding anything the other two won’t cover. What I have is all I have.”
“Damn, girl, calm down. Matter of fact, me and C are going out tonight. You should come. Drinks on me because you definitely need it. Get dressed. Bathroom is open now, but fair warning there may not be much hot water left so make it quick.” Her mouth flashed a smile.
The hot water warning broke the levies, but only a stream trickled out.
“I’m not going out. I’ll be in my room.” I turned on my heels because I knew hot, frustrated tears would come soon.
“Ugh! You are no fun. You’re always sad. Always in your room. Always doing homework. I thought being your roommate would mean we’d be friends. Hang out. Partayyy.” Her smile widened as her shoulders shimmied the last of her statement.
A heaving sigh released like a balloon deflating. “I wasn’t looking for friends. I was looking for a safe space to stay. I’m working on a Master’s degree and it’s important to me to finish and finish well.” The truth escaped with quiet assurance.
Her mouth chuckled as her eyes narrowed into slits. “I see why your man left you.”
Sorrow and anger pushed for a greater share of mind space. Neither won. Defeat took lead as I quietly retreated to my room. I flopped onto the edge of my bed and closed the door just as my roommate’s boyfriend walked out of the bathroom with plumes of steam rising off his golden skin. Just as angry tears got caught in my throat, my phone vibrated. I wasn’t going to acknowledge it, but I needed a distraction. It was the Man with the Glow. He was asking me for a favor. Part of me wanted to tell him I was tired of being used for the day and maybe he should try again tomorrow, but I remembered how patient and attentive he’d been during our cut lesson earlier. He didn’t deserve that.
He wanted to use my address to order pizza. They didn’t deliver to where he was. I didn’t ask where he was or why. I knew the city enough to know that’s not uncommon. I said it was fine and gave him my address, then laid down. “At least someone gets to eat today,” I mumbled to myself. Immediately, I thought about how, if I’d never sowed that seed, I’d still be in my house with my own bathroom. I’d probably have food, too. Even if I was miserable every day there versus just frustrated by people every so often here.
Twenty minutes later, I heard my roommate and her boyfriend leave. Thirty minutes later, I heard a knock at the apartment door. I laid still. I wasn’t getting up for my roommate or her boyfriend if she forgot her key. Another knock. I thought it could be the pizza man, but it was more rhythmic than the pizza man had ever offered. Then, it turned into a Clipse lunch table beat. I still didn’t know who it could be, but I was fully prepared to tell someone they’re at the wrong door when I trudged to check the peep hole. It was the Man with the Glow. He had three pizzas in hand. I opened the door with caution.
“Here ya go,” he smiled that smile that lit up rooms while handing me a pizza box off the top, “I hope you like pepperoni. I forgot to ask. I met the pizza guy downstairs. You didn’t tell me you live right across the street. You could probably see them making the pizzas.”
I stared at him in silence, my hands holding the box up without fully accepting it into my hands. “You didn’t have to get me one.”
“I know I didn’t have to, but what kinda person would I be to use your address and you not get something out of it. That’s rude. I’m not rude.”
My eyes grew juicy. “I appreciate you. Thank you.”
“No thanks needed. Enjoy!” And there he went. Smile and glow and all.
A root grew that day.
For months, about once a week or so, he’d use my address to have pizza delivered and give me a box or two. I never told him that he was the reason I ate most days. I didn’t tell him that the times he left two boxes were the times I didn’t know how I was going to eat between paydays. Every box of pizza became a leaf.
One day, he asked if I ate anything other than pizza. He invited me to IHOP’s free pancake day. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was our first date. And the stem grew longer.
Then, after a cut lesson, we went to the beach and walked and talked so long that I lost my phone and we ran out of beach to walk and didn’t even know either happened til they did. We lamented the dating scene together. And sometimes, he’d help me grade papers after a cut lesson. Branches stretched up, up, and out.
After my divorce was finalized and Master’s degree earned , we sat on my apartment balcony as the rain poured from the nighttime sky. I told him I had to tell something important and he replied the same. I let him go first because I didn’t have the courage to say that I had feelings for him, but I didn’t want to ruin the friendship that was in full bloom. He shared that he was joining the military and would be leaving soon. I told him I was happy for him, which I was. It was for me sorrow loomed. More leaves.
I had two job offers. One local, one distant. I took the offer to move an hour north to teach once I knew he would be gone. On moving day, he came to help. Despite being sick. Despite my parents and sister pestering him with incessant curiosity. Despite my ex-husband showing up and trying to show him up. Despite my former roommate’s ex-boyfriend being flippant toward him. He showed up. He helped. He deflected when needed and protected when wanted. Buds formed.
I started my new job and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. It was like East Side High from Lean on Me. I was exhausted and frustrated and lonely. My new roommate was better than the last, but she wasn’t my person. She wasn’t him. I didn’t know what to do with that. I would talk to him for hours until I glowed right along with him. And then fear would envelop me and I would avoid him for weeks. Branches stretched just to be pruned.
Then came the time for him to process into the military. He was 15 minutes away and I wanted to be in his space and have him in mine. We went to dinner. We talked. At the end of the night, we hugged differently. Like we didn’t want to let go. The buds bloomed into a vibrant yellow and would not close.
The following weekend, I went to visit him. He asked me what’s taking me so long to be his girlfriend. I stared sheepishly. I said I didn’t know because I didn’t know what else to say. I knew it was because I was scared of forever. I knew it was because I didn’t know if I could trust someone else with my heart again. Not like last time. But that this didn’t feel like last time. His eyes twinkled, he bent toward me just enough that his words had nowhere else to go but in my ear. “Don’t tell me you’ll be my girlfriend unless you’re willing to be my wife.” I blushed. “Fair enough.”
I sowed a seed for my husband–a mustard seed of faith wrapped in a crisp $20 bill. Both tears and rainstorms watered it. It found light from the man’s glow, my smile with him, and our energy combined. It found fertilizer in the mess of life and the ones that weren’t worthy. The seed found bloom in love. Biblical love. It took a year or two to fully mature, and once it did, the tattoo faded as if I’d never again need to remind anyone was love was. What it looked like. What it felt like. They could see it in us.
bloom + flow 