Lottery

For the last four months since I lost my job, me and my daughter, Willow, have been living in the abandoned parking lot where the old Merry-Go-Round store used to be. Basically Willow and I have been living off of scratch-off tickets and coupons. But today was the day. It’s almost the luckiest day of the year and I am going to buy a lottery ticket.

 When I get to the store I’m so excited that I have saved the three dollars I need to buy one. I walk in and proudly slam down the three dollars and say, 

“One lottery ticket please!” he looks at the three dollars and says

 “Is this a joke? You're missing two dollars. Lotto tickets cost five dollars” I stare blankly. 

“What?” He looks at me like I’ve tried to buy a four dollar chocolate bar for two dollars. “Ma’am unless you have two more dollars I’m gonna have to ask-” 

“I’ll give you two extra dollars Ma’am” I turn around and see the homeless guy from two blocks down holding out his last dollars. I want to refuse but I need this. “Alright this is the only time I will accept money from you” I  take the two dollars from his shaking hand, trying not to think what it cost him. The cashier rolls his eyes and prints the ticket.

Outside, the air smells like rain and asphalt. I thank the man awkwardly. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say. He shrugs. 

“It's almost the luckiest day of the year, right? Figured luck works better when it's shared.” I laugh softly. No one has shared anything with us in months.

 We sit there on the hood of a rusted car watching the ticket numbers pop up on the screen. My heart pounds. One number. Two numbers. I gasp. We got all the numbers. The world goes silent. We head back inside and the clerk double-checks it, and goes pale. Suddenly he says “You might wanna sit down.”

fifty-thousand dollars. I won fifty-thousand dollars. It’s not the millions I had dreamed of but it’s enough. Enough for an apartment. Enough for Willow to go to school with new shoes instead of the tapped walmart brand sneakers that she’s been wearing. Enough to breathe again.

I step outside in a daze, the ticket trembling in my hand. “I guess you were my lucky charm,” I told him. Just noticing he was handsome as hell. 

He smiles, but there’s something different in his eyes – not excitement. But peace. 

“I don’t need half,” he says before I can even speak. “Just…promise, you'll use it. For her.” 

“No.” I say firmly. “You bought this with me. It’s ours.” He  hesitates before he says something I never knew. 

“I wasn’t always…” He gestures to the worn jacket, the shopping cart down the block. “I used to manage that Merry-Go-Round store. Before it closed. Before everything fell apart.” The abandoned lot. The place Willow and I have been sleeping. 

“You’re the reason we’ve been parking there?” I whisper. “I never chased you off,” he says quietly. “Figured someone should have something good come from that place.”

The twist settles in my chest.

He wasn’t just some stranger from two blocks down, He’d been watching over us the whole time – leaving bags of returned bakery bread near the lot, making sure no one bothered us at night. I thought it was a coincidence. It wasn’t. The lottery didn’t save us. 

He did.

And when I tell that half the money is his whether he likes it or not, and that Willow and I aren’t moving anywhere without him having a key too… he laughs for the first time, really laughs.

Maybe the luckiest day of the year wasn’t about the ticket at all. It was about finally seeing the person who’d been standing beside me the whole time.