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boxes mainly had Tuck’s and Maddie’s clothes and some
pillows, so nothing too heavy. I could add another box, but then I
wouldn’t be able to see where I was going very well. This was one
of the many disadvantages I’d come to accept as simply part of
being short.
    Still, I’d rather make fewer trips and
be done with it sooner. I pulled another box out, set it on the top
of my stack, and closed the trunk.
    At least we didn’t have too many
things in boxes. I’d sold or donated most of our furniture and
household goods back in Carrollton before we left because I hadn’t
known how long it would be before we could get a place to live. It
made more sense to do that and start fresh than to try to haul
everything halfway across the country and find somewhere to store
it in the meanwhile.
    My plan for today was to get all of
our belongings out of the hotel room and into the condo while the
kids were at school. Yesterday, I had gone to a warehouse furniture
store and bought the barest of necessities. They’d delivered it
this morning, so we could realistically get checked out of the
hotel and move in all the way today…if I could hurry.
    I picked up the boxes, wrapping my
hands beneath the bottom box, and twisted my torso until I could
see where I was going if I did a sideways crab-walk. It wasn’t the
most comfortable way to move, but I could manage.
    When I got to the door to the condo
building, I bumped into the handicap button with my hip so it would
open the doors for me. That little bump altered my center of
balance, though, and the top box fell to the floor.
    Of course it did.
    I set the other two down, picked up
the fallen box, and resituated it at the top. By the time I’d
rearranged the boxes and picked them up again, the door had
closed.
    Being more careful this time, I tried
to push the handicap button again. The door wouldn’t open. I angled
my hip a little more, trying to push the button more firmly, but
still nothing happened. Damn it.
    Now would be a really great time for
someone else to come by, but I had no such luck. There wasn’t a
soul in sight. I couldn’t really expect people to be around in the
middle of a workday. That was hoping for too much.
    I set the boxes down and pushed the
button with my hand. The door opened. I picked up the stack again,
but the middle box shifted in a perilous manner as I straightened
my body. I tried to hurry through the open door anyway, but the
second I took a step all three boxes went flying.
    “ Shit,” I muttered beneath
my breath. I’d barely picked up the first box by the time the doors
closed again. Then I couldn’t stop myself from laughing
hysterically. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “ No, I’m totally serious,”
an unfamiliar male voice with a decidedly Canadian accent answered.
It was the O sound
in totally —long,
drawn out, but kind of hard—like nothing you’d expect to hear in
Texas. But I wasn’t in Texas anymore. People here in Portland
sounded a lot more like Canadians than they did Texans, making me
stick out like lump of charcoal in the middle of a pile of
diamonds.
    I jumped at the unexpected
interruption and dropped my box again, then turned around to see a
big, young guy walking toward me in the parking lot. He was well
over six feet tall, and he had slightly wild, overgrown light-brown
hair sticking out of a Portland Storm baseball cap. Even though it
was in the thirties out, he was in an untucked T-shirt and jeans
with no coat, and he was a little sweaty, like he’d just been
working out.
    The sixteen-year-old version of me
would have succumbed to his physical charms and fallen into bed
with him in a heartbeat.
    The twenty-five-year-old version of me
had learned the hard way that good looks didn’t necessarily make
for a good person.
    He stuck his hands in his pockets, and
amazingly, he blushed. It brought out dimples in his cheeks. Yeah,
I definitely would have done anything he wanted, back before I knew
better than to