Title: This is Enough
Word Count: 1638
Rating: PG
Summery: Ever since then I have been floating aimlessly through admission letters, daily specials, and old Baptist hymns trying to fill this void that he has left in my heart.
Authors Notes: none

The air was vastly different from what it was when I had come into work earlier, I decided as I stepped through the door of the diner, pausing only to throw a goodbye over my shoulder to the rest of the night shift. When I had entered through this same door seven hours earlier, the summer heat had been stifling, as if the air were wrapping itself around you, threatening to suffocate you and drown you in your own sweat. As I made my way around the building, seven hours and about a million orders of the daily special later, I noted that the air was balmy, laying comfortably on my skin, like a warm blanket. I looked up at the overcast sky, knowing that a summer storm was soon to be on its way, the grey clouds threatening to let loose a torrential down pour at any moment.

It was then that I turned my eyes to my parking spot and I stopped dead in my tracks. Leaning against the hood of my car was Creole James, his face tilted toward the ground watching his ragged cowboy boots scuff against the parking lot, hands dug deep in the pockets of his grease stained jeans. I should not have been shocked. This was not the first time Creole had shown up out of no where, guarding my only means of escape. I began to walk toward him again, the sound of my sneakers smacking the pavement, echoing off into the silent night.

Creole looked up, shaking his dust colored hair out of his eyes, giving me a grin that beamed brilliantly through the fading light and I fought the urge to grin giddily back at him, giving only a tight lipped smile in return. I slowly closed the space between us, taking time to assess that his old Ford pickup was no where in sight.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Well, hello to you too Miss Leerla.” He grins at me and I have to look away lest he see me smile.

“Creole, I don't have time for this. My momma knows I get off work at nine and expects me home by a quarter till ten.” I begin to step around him but he slides his body in front of mine, blocking my path.

“Then we have forty-five minutes, don't we?”

“Creole-”

“Come on Mae,” he pleads and I stop to look at him for a moment.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and we both look up at the sky, which was now looking more ominous than before. Our eyes meet again and I see a softness hidden in the depth of his indigo orbs, a softness not many get the chance to witness.

You see, Creole is what our little town calls a “good ole boy”. He dropped out of high school our junior year and works full time at Billy Craine's auto body shop, goes hunting at five every Saturday morning, goes out drinking at Earl's, the roughest redneck bar in the tri-state area, every Saturday night, and meets his momma for church every Sunday morning nursing a hangover and is barely conscious during the sermon. When it rains he goes mudding in the Harrisons ' corn field and goes swimming in the strip pits during the summer time. He wears his beat up cowboy boots everywhere and always has motor oil under his fingernails.

Creole is a “good ole boy” which is exactly why I should not be with him. I was valedictorian of my class and am currently taking a full course load at the community college in the next town over while working as a waitress in a locally owned diner for three-seventy an hour and almost no tips. I clean the house every Saturday morning, study at the Stoneybrook café every Saturday night, and go to church with my momma every Sunday where I take notes in my bible during the sermon. When it rains I help the widow down the street gather her horses into the barn and I help with vacation bible school in the summer time.

My momma tells me that Creole James in not the right kind of boy for me. I have Ivy League schools in my future; that is if she can get a second mortgage on the house to pay for it. I have the chance to get out of this tiny hillbilly town and make something of myself. She tells me Creole James is nothing but a white trash hick, destined to live and die in that little shit hole of a mechanic's shop. She says the best of Creole James ran down the inside of his momma's leg in the backseat at the drive-in. She says Creole James is just the kind of boy that would hold me back.

Momma wants me to be a doctor. Momma says that I'm just smart enough that I could find the cure for cancer. But right now, staring into Creole's cobalt blue eyes, all I want to do is find a cure for this aching in my chest. Right now I don't want to go to college; I don't want to be a doctor. I want to be a mechanic's wife and chase little boys with dust colored hair into the house for dinner.

What Momma doesn't understand is that Creole was my first. He was the first friend I met in kindergarten at West Side Elementary. He was the first to tease me about my frizzy hair in first grade and the first to beat up the next boy to do so. He was the first person I ever cursed at and the first person to hold me when I found out my father had died in the coalmines. He was my first dance, my first kiss, my first love and, when he dropped out our junior year, he gave me my first broken heart.

Ever since then I have been floating aimlessly through admission letters, daily specials, and old Baptist hymns trying to fill this void that this backwards, hayseed hick has left in my heart. I continue to stare at him as the thunder rolls and the lightning strikes and the first fat drops of summer rain fall onto my cheeks, causing the tears, that are now zigzagging down to my jaw, to become lost

Or so I thought.

Creole brings his oil-stained hands to my face and wipes away the rain and my tears the same way he did the day my father died and pulls me to him as we stand there, two lost souls finding their home in us again. I think about my momma and the pile of scholarship applications that are sitting on the kitchen table at home. I think about how tomorrow the daily special will be the Delux All American Burger Basket and how our pastor had talked to us last Sunday about how God messes with our plans as Creole's lips find mine, his tears warm, contrasting the cool rain that is drenching us both. We part then and stare at each other the best we can in this blinding torrent.

“Where's your truck?” I find myself asking.

“Back at the shop,” he replies.

“Did you walk here?”

“Summ'n like ‘at,” he mumbles and I smile.

“Why?”

“Wanted you to give me a ride home.” He grins.

“Why's ‘at?” I ask, and I feel his arms snake around my waist.

“I miss you, Mae,” he says only loud enough for me to hear, his lips brushing mine as he forms the words.

“I miss you too, Creole.”

“Let's get married.”

“Creole-”

“Nah, now here me out. I got a good thing goin' at the shop, I'm making plenty for us to get by on and I've been savin' to get you this pretty ring I seen at Hammond 's jewelry shop. I ain't quite there yet but gimme a couple months and I-”

“Creole-”

“Nah, Mae you ain't listenin'. I also been savin' for you and your college. I don't want you givin' up your college because of me-”

“Creole are you gonna let me answer or are you gonna go on jabbering?” I ask and his mouth goes slack before snapping shut and I watch him swallow hard. “Ask me again.”

“Will you marry me, Mae?”

His voice is soft with a hint of a Tennessee inflection. His eyes are imploring and wide, terrified beyond belief and it takes me two seconds to decide the rest of my life.

“Yes, Creole,” I say and watch him exhale heavily, crashing his forehead into mine and I support us both for a moment while he pulls himself back together. If only the boys at Earl's could see him now.

“Well, let's go,” he says, his arms unwinding themselves from my waist and I gaze at him astonished.

“Now?” I question and he nods opening the driver's side door, pausing to look at me.

“Come on Mae. Its about time I made an honest woman outta ya.” He gives me another southern boy grin and I don't hold back my smile any more.

“What about my momma?”

“Your momma don't like me.”

“What about your momma.”

“She'll understand.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

I give him the keys as we climb into my beat up Chevy, and we pull out of the parking lot of the diner as the night begins to clear, clouds parting to reveal a clear and twinkling sky. I glance over at Creole who has one arm hanging out the open window while the other resides at twelve on the steering wheel, and I know that this is enough. He and I, just a mechanic and a coalminer's daughter, is enough. It will always be enough.