Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
The cruel hand of Fate stole you too soon from this all too fragile life and driven to desperation by your absence, I embarked on a fool’s errand, for I am forever a fool for your love, down to accursed Hades in search of the dreaded psychopomp for a solution to my heart’s devastation.
A bargain was struck, and know, beloved, that I showed no fear and no regret when I fell to my knees and kissed the lips of Death itself in order to bring you back, thus damning my soul to be cast into the pit of Tartarus for all eternity.
Enjoy your second chance at life, my sweet, and know that regardless of what happens in your future travels, you are loved.
Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…
They come at night during the Hour of the Wolf, that gap between night and dawn when most people perish, when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when nightmares become flesh, and when ghosts are at the zenith of their power.
When they were alive they were families and neighbors who came to each other’s aid and fought for peace and tragically lost the battle before that peace had been established.
Now, these tortured souls step each pre-dawn from the void of the hereafter to remind us of how far we still must travel.
“…I swim against the current of my final destiny and pass through each body gathered in this place to leave a personalized vivid memory in an effort to ensure I am not forgotten. The end,” Nessa said as she set the sheet down on top of the pile of paper.
“That was the last story?” Warren asked.
“Yup, the rest of these are all rejection letters. Thank you, by the way.” She kissed her husband on the cheek.
“For?”
“Doing this for me. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”
“Well, if I’m being totally honest here, I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would,” he admitted.
“Didn’t hate it is high praise coming from you. I need to mark this down,” Nessa smiled and mimed writing in an invisible book. “Dear Diary, today my husband took his first step toward maturity…”
“Okay, smartass, let’s not make a big deal out of it.” Warren was on the cusp of a blush, which he desperately tried to tamp down.
“Seriously, though, how do you feel? What are you thinking?”
It took awhile for him to answer because it was all too new to him. Warren wasn’t like his wife who instantly knew her precise opinion and feelings on things. He needed privacy and time to reflect, to take the situation apart and properly inspect all the pieces before he could assess it as a whole.
“I wish I had gotten to know the man who wrote those stories,” he sighed. It was the best answer he was able to provide at the moment.
“Well, you know I don’t believe in accidents,” Nessa said. “There’s a reason for everything, including us finding these stories together.”
“Oh, come on Ness, not this,” Warren said and he couldn’t stop his eyes from rolling.
“Come on nothing,” Nessa said, tapping her finger on the paper stack. “You know if you found this by yourself you would have thrown it out without even reading it. Think of what you would have missed out on.”
Warren started to saying something but Nessa cut him off, “Your father wanted you to read his stories so that you could maybe not forgive him as such but understand him a little better. I was meant to be here with you to help make that happen.”
He didn’t believe in fate or destiny but he knew arguing the absurdity of her theory was pointless. “You know what, I’d concede your point if we found a journal where he explained what he was going through, why he did the things he did, but these are just random stories.”
“Can’t you see they’re more than that? They’re pieces of his soul, something he felt he had to hide.”
Warren threw up his hands. “I—I can’t, okay? This is all too much to process right now.”
“I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to push,” Nessa said.
She busied herself by gathering all the pages together and arranging them into a neat pile, to give her husband a little time to compose himself. Carefully, she folded the Kraft paper around the pile, wound the twine around and bound it with a neat bow.
“You fulfilled your end of the deal,” she said. “So, the choice is yours: which pile do these go in?”
“I don’t know,” Warren said.
“Well, I have a thought, but you might not like it.”
“Go on, spit it out.”
“I think we should try to get them published. It’s obviously what your father wanted and maybe the timing wasn’t right for him.”
“But they’re all short, I mean, shorter than the average short story…”
“So?” Nessa shrugged. “We present them as a collection.”
“Who in their right mind is going to be interested in a collection of super-short stories from an unknown writer? Do you have some insider knowledge of what’s trending with publishers and readers that I don’t know about?”
“How do you know if we don’t try?” Nessa countered. “Besides, if all else fails, we can publish them ourselves.”
“And why would we want to go through all that trouble?”
“Because you couldn’t ask for better closure than making your father’s dream come true. And I was thinking, maybe we can include the rejection letters in a section in the back of the book…or better yet, put each letter after the actual story!”
It was a waste of time, Warren knew that as sure as bread falls butter side down, but he watched how animated Nessa became at the thought of taking on the project, and although she drove him nutty a good majority of the time, he loved seeing that sparkle in her eyes.
And somewhere deep, deep, deep within the recesses of his being, the small, non-contrarian part of him reluctantly admitted that maybe, just maybe, she was right about this being the closure he needed in order to bury the resentment for his father in the past so that he could become a better father in the future.
He could even try his hand at writing himself. If his father could manage it, how hard could it really be?
I’m thinking about collecting a bunch of short stories and since my writing has always been a random mix of genres and topics, I thought I’d create a wraparound story to somehow justify the eclectic assortment of tales. This is the beginning of one of the ideas. Do me a favor, give it the old once-over and let me know what you think. Right track? Wrong track? All opinions are welcomed. Cheers!
Prologue
The key was nearly as old as he was and the lock he slotted it into definitely predated his birth.
“There’s a knack for opening this door,” Warren Burke said, as he jiggled the key a bit in order to get the lock to turn. Grabbing the doorknob in both hands, he gave it a sharp twist and lifted it at the same time while he put his shoulder to the old wooden door in order to force it open. “Used to stick in the summer and I had the damnedest time as a kid trying to get inside.”
He was greeted for his effort with a blast of air that had been still for too long and had grown quite stale.
“We need to get these windows open and air this place out,” his wife, Nessa, said as she moved past him and made a beeline to the living room.
“You relax,” Warren said. “Let me do it.”
“I’m pregnant, not made of porcelain,” she said over her shoulder, in a tone that said you relax, as she made her way to the first window.
Warren knew she hated when he became overprotective, but in his defense, it was his first time at fatherhood and his wife was seven months pregnant with their twins. No names had been picked out because Nessa was a firm believer in the jinx, having lost a baby during pregnancy in her previous marriage.
And while Nessa pulled curtains apart and opened windows as far as they would go, Warren stood in the foyer and stared at his childhood home that seemed so much smaller than he remembered it.
This place was welcoming once, from the open door to the wide hallway. On the walls were the photographs of a family who so obviously loved each other. The floor was an old-fashioned parquet with a blend of deep homely browns and the walls were the greens of summer gardens meeting a bold white baseboard. The banister was a twirl of a branch, tamed by the carpenter’s hand, its grain flowing as water might, in waves of comforting woodland hues. Under proper lighting it was nature’s art, something that soothed right to the soul.
He hadn’t realized how long he’d been rooted to that spot until Nessa came to him after opening all of the downstairs windows.
“Hey, you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“You know, if you’re having a change of heart, we don’t have to put the house up for sale.”
“You know as well as I do that we can’t afford two houses. This place is too small for the four of us, the neighborhood’s gone to pot, and there are too many bad memories here.”
“Okay, your house, your rules.”
“My father’s house,” he corrected.
“That he left to you in his will, so technically…your house.”
Warren sighed. “Let’s make three piles in the living room: things in decent shape that we can sell, things in fair shape that we can donate, and junk to throw away.”
“And one more pile,” Nessa said. “Things that we keep.”
“I don’t want anything in here.”
“I’m not thinking about you and your unresolved resentment toward your father, I’m thinking about our children who have no beef with their late grandfather, who deserve to know where they come from. Don’t fight me on this because you’re going to lose.”
“Then that fourth pile is your hassle.”
“Thank you,” Nessa said and kissed her husband on the cheek. “Now, I need to crack the upstairs windows.”
She turned but Warren caught her gently by the arm and said, “I know how you get when you’ve got a project. Take it easy, take it slow, we’ve got plenty of time. Please, for me.”
It was Nessa’s turn to sigh, as she nodded her head in reluctant agreement.
* * *
The sorting process started in the attic. That was Nessa’s idea, start from the top and work their way down. And it became apparent quickly that no one had been up there in years.
Boxes that held Christmas decorations, handmade and store-bought Halloween costumes, pots and plates, photo albums (which Nessa snatched up immediately for her To Keep pile), old moth-eaten clothes, suitcases, and a locked steamer trunk. All resting under a thick layer of cobwebs and dust.
The thing that caught Warren’s attention was the locked steamer trunk. He had been up in this attic as a boy playing pirates with his imaginary friends and this trunk had always been the treasure chest he had to protect from thieving scallywags. He could have wasted time rummaging through the house in hopes of finding a key, but chose, instead, to look up on YouTube how to open the lock with a screwdriver.
Inside he found his father’s military uniform, duffle bag, maps, MREs, an M1911 pistol, a box of ammunition—
“The uniform and MREs are an interesting piece of history, but that gun and ammo are not finding their way into my house,” Nessa said forcefully.
“No complaints here,” Warren agreed, carefully placing the firearm and ammunition to the side. “I’ll call the police station and let them know we’re bringing the gun in on our way home today.”
“Good. So, what else is in there?”
Under a layer of old clothes, Warren lifted a heavy case by its handle. He set it on the floor, flipped the latches and opened the lid to reveal an old Underwood manual typewriter.
“I wonder what’s this doing in there,” Warren said, more to himself than his wife.
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” said Nessa.
“Uh-uh, you don’t know my dad. I’ve never known him to write a thing in my life.”
Nessa peered into the trunk and spotted a parcel wrapped in brown Kraft paper and tied like a present with twine that the typewriter case had been hiding. Normally, she would have let Warren open it out of respect for his father’s personal belongings, but curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she was pulling one end of the twine to undo the bow and unwrapping the package.
Inside the Kraft paper wrapping was a pile of papers, some white, some yellowing, and some gone brown like autumn leaves.
“What’s that?” Warren asked, glancing over at the papers.
“Typewritten, double spaced, looks like a manuscript to me, and it’s got your father’s name on it: Geoffery Burke.” Nessa handed the top sheet over to her husband.
“No, that’s impossible—”
“I’ve got a stack of papers in front of me that says different,” Nessa rifled through the stack. “But I think I’m wrong about it being a manuscript. It looks more like a bunch of individual stories, and the bottom half are all rejection letters. You never know, sweetheart, this manuscript could tell you about your father and his past.”
Warren glanced at the stack of paper in his wife’s hands, then looked away. He busied himself by packing up the typewriter.
“Maybe it can’t tell me anything at all.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Being like what? You want to sit here and create a fantasy life for my father, a man you never met—”
“And whose fault is that? I begged you to reconcile with him because I wanted to meet him, I wanted to know where you came from, and you denied me that, just like you denied him a son. He died all alone because you were too pigheaded and proud to bury the hatchet! Why would I want to be married to someone so callous and coldhearted?”
The temperature in the attic suddenly dropped twenty degrees and though they were mere inches apart, the distance seemed a thousand miles at minimum. Warren was at a loss for words, processing the enormity of Nessa’s outburst. Nothing but the sound of breathing passed between them for an eternity.
It was Nessa who broke the ice for she was always the bigger person whenever they argued, saying, “I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Okay, but I could have phrased it better.”
“I know you mean well,” Warren said. “But you have to understand that when I think about my father, I have two opposing sets of memories. The earliest ones, the distant ones, he was a happy man and when my mother became sick, he was the positive one, trying to keep everyone’s spirits up. My mother lost her battle with cancer when I was 10 and my second set of memories, the ones that stick, were of him shutting down emotionally.”
“Honey, he just lost his wife.”
“Yeah, and I lost my mom and my dad, too! He wasn’t a writer, okay? He was a contractor that threw himself into his work and forgot he had a son. He never raised a hand to me but sometimes I wish he had.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“At least then I would have gotten something from him besides indifference. He’d go to work each day, working as many double shifts as he could to pay off the hospital and funeral bills and when he came home he was barely human. Eating, brooding in his room, drinking himself to sleep. And who had to pick up the slack? Who cooked and cleaned and made sure things around the house got done? Me! With never a word of acknowledgment or thanks.”
“Do we really have to have a conversation about men not being the world’s best communicators?” Nessa said. “Tell me, how often do you thank or even acknowledge me for everything I do around the house?”
“But that’s different.”
“Please don’t fix your mouth to tell me that I’m your wife and that’s my responsibility—”
“Uh-uh, nope,” Warren shook his head. “Do not turn this into one of your rants on chauvinism. You know exactly what I meant.”
“Here’s what I know, when you want to be, you’re a sensible man who knows better. Is it a shame that your father shut down when your mother died? Of course, it is. And if he were still alive and shunning you, you’d have every right to be bitter about it. But he’s gone, Warren, and you shouting at his ghost isn’t going to settle the matter or change the past. Any grievances you had with your father should have been placed beside him in the coffin and left at the cemetery.”
“Life isn’t that simple!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Nessa said, taking hold of her husband’s hand. “Life is that simple. It’s us with all our expectation baggage that makes it difficult. Your father tried to handle his grief the best way he knew how, a lesson he probably picked up from his father. But what your father didn’t do was hang his depression over your head like a dark cloud for the entirety of your life. You did that all on your own. And you can stop doing that, as well. If you can’t manage it all on your own, guess what? You’ve got me to help you out. But I’ll tell you what I’m not going to help you do, and that’s dragging that dark cloud over into our family. Our baby deserves a fresh start with a cloud-free daddy, and I aim to see he gets just that, comprende?”
In every argument there comes a point where continuing to quarrel is futile, realizing this, Warren said, “Okay, since you’ve got all the answers, how do we go about dispersing the cloud?”
Nessa held up the stack of papers in her other hand. “This might give us a head start.”
“You want me to read his stories, stories he kept hidden from me all these years?” Warren tone made his opinion of his wife’s suggestion crystal clear.
“No,” Nessa clarified. “I want us to read the stories together and maybe we can talk about how they make you feel.”
“What, like I’m in therapy?”
“No, like you care for your wife and your unborn child and you’re willing to take this first step to make peace with your past for the sake of your family’s future.”
“It really means that much to you?”
“You can’t even imagine.”
“All right,” Warren said. “Here’s the compromise: we’ll read one story together, and if I’m not feeling it, we pack the rest away, never mention them again and find some other way to help me move on.”
Nessa set the papers down, spat in her palm and extended her hand, saying, “Deal!”
Warren eyed his wife with bewilderment. “You don’t expect me to—”
“Spit, candyass, and let’s seal the deal.”
Warren sighed, hocked a loogie into palm and grasped Nessa’s hand firmly. “Choose wisely.”
Nessa flipped through the pages, examining titles until she plucked a sheet from the pile. “How about this one?” she smiled.
If cities had pulses, then neighborhoods had temperaments and the patch of Houston, Texas Incognita and Toby settled in used to be a pocket dimension where art and creativity thrived. Over the near fifteen years in which their marriage occurred, they traded up from a shoebox apartment to a starter home, and a pandemic forced the world into seclusion, the area transformed into a land where bars, nightclubs and fast food joints held sway and common courtesy was no longer common.
It was late August, going on Eight in the evening when the sun had retired from the cloudless skies and Nita decided to walk home from work, taking the long way to help clear out her head because it had been a particularly stressful day and she hated bringing work home with her.
Her mother had a saying, If not for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all, and that was probably why she found herself standing in the middle of the street, fear and rage a bubble in her chest about to burst because it was seven to one and the odds were not in her favor. They were on the cusp of manhood, sixteen, seventeen at best, youth and speed on their side and probably hopped up on a drug that boosted their adrenaline, while she was a thirty-four-year-old woman with a bad knee who happened to be three months pregnant. The only advantage she had was their concentration was focused on the girl about their age that they were putting the boots to.
Armed only with a half-used canister of pepper spray, a lipstick stun gun that reportedly delivered 25,000,000 volts, and a pair of steel-toed boots, she dove into the fray. The plan was to tag at least five of them while she had the element of surprise but only managed to catch one teen with a foot to the crotch, another with the stun gun, and two others with a sweeping blast of the pepper spray.
“Wait! Hold on a minute,” Toby said, interrupting Nita’s recounting of events. “You took on seven guys in your condition?”
They were in Nita’s office at the community center, where she was seated on a second-hand couch with a sixteen-year-old girl whose face was a mess of cuts and contusions. A first-aid kit and a bottle of alcohol sat between them. Toby paced back and forth while his wife gingerly cleaned out the girl’s wounds, tossing the bloody gauze pads into a waste-paper bin that was slowly beginning to fill up.
“Took on is overstating the matter,” Nita said. “I put myself between Hannah and the boys, we had a brief standoff, they decided that getting their asses handed to them by some old broad wasn’t worth their time or trouble, and they left.”
“What you meant to say was, you’re lucky they didn’t regroup and gang up to stomp a new mudhole in your ass. What if they were carrying weapons?’
“I know, Toby, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t just walk past and do nothing.”
“And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have helped, you just need to find a safer way to do it.”
“Sorry to be so much trouble,” Hannah said.
“This isn’t about you,” Toby said, then course-corrected. “I mean, of course it’s about you, and I’m glad my wife was able to help prevent something more serious from happening to you. I’m just mad at her for acting like some rebel teen auditioning for Black Widow’s vacant spot in The Avengers.”
“Message received, loud and clear,” Nita said, moving off the couch, taking Toby by the arm and ushering him into the hallway. She closed the door behind them to give them the semblance of privacy. “I agree with you one hundred percent. It was a stupid thing to do and I promise to be more careful in the future.”
If she thought that statement would assuage his anger, she was dead wrong. Toby continued to argue at her, but she kept her tone and manner gentle and apologetic until she diffused the majority of his wrath because she realized it came from a place of concern and love.
“Can you at least explain to me why there are no cops here, and why she’s sitting in your office instead of a hospital?” Toby asked, looking at the girl on the couch whose clothes were covered in blood. She was staring at her smartphone.
“She’s afraid to go to the police or the hospital because she’s underage, smells like a bar at last call, and her pupils are dilated so there’s no telling what she’s on. It was tough enough convincing her to come here.”
“Is she local?”
“She lives in Sugar Land, that much I was able to get out of her,” Nita said. “I think she came here to have a little fun without the risk of running into anyone she knows.”
“Yeah, like no one travels to Houston.”
“I didn’t say it was a good plan, and remember, she’s young. I’m going to go back in to finish patching her up. Why don’t you see if there’s some ice in the break room for a compress, her lip’s starting to swell. And thanks for coming over so quickly.” Nita kissed her husband before heading back into the office.
***
“We weren’t bothering anyone,” Hannah said, hissing every time Nita touched an alcohol swab to one of her cuts. “We were just out enjoying ourselves, you know. Okay, so we partied a little but we were definitely still in control, and we were on our way to get something to eat, walking because the weather was nice, and Ella, that’s my girlfriend, said something sweet so I kissed her.
“All of a sudden these guys showed up and they began harassing us. They were making all kinds of nasty comments and demanding that we kiss again but this time like we meant it. We tried to ignore them, hoping they’d get bored and leave but they surrounded us and started asking which one of us was theman and how we got off by bumping donuts and disgusting things like that.
“I told them to fuck off, which was probably the wrong thing to say but they made me angry, and one of them hit me in the back of the head with something and I was looking around for Ella but they were punching, kicking and spitting on me, calling me names, and—and that’s when you showed up. You probably saved my life.”
Before Nita could respond, Toby stepped into the office with a tray loaded with ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel, a slice of pizza on a paper plate and a mug of hot tea.
“Managed to rustle up a cold compress and a slice. Don’t worry, it’s not Domino’s, it’s quality pizza that tastes pretty decent reheated, and I hope you’re a tea drinker ‘cause there ain’t a drop of coffee in the place.”
Nita took the compress and handed it to Hannah, saying, “Try not to talk so much and hold this to your lip. It’ll help reduce the pain and swelling. Keep in mind that this is only a patch-up job. You should really have someone at a hospital take a look at you, you might have a concussion or internal injuries.”
“I—I can’t,” Hannah said. “My parents would kill me.”
“And you don’t think it’s going to kill them seeing you hurt like this?” Toby asked.
“He’s right,” Nita said. “And it doesn’t seem like it right now, but in the long run, it’s easier just to tell the truth and deal with the consequences outright.”
“I need to think about it,” Hannah said.
“Okay, no pressure,” Nita reached over and plucked a business card off her desk to hand to the girl. “You know, I do this sort of thing for a living, so if you wanted me to be there when you spoke with your folks, I’m totally fine with that.”
Hannah studied the card. “Look, just because I kissed my friend doesn’t mean I’m gay, or whatever.”
“You don’t have to be, and we don’t make judgments here. This center does more than just offer outreach programs for the LGBTQ community. We offer a safe space where women are treated with dignity and can escape negative influences. We even teach self-defense classes, which are more than just learning to punch and kick. You can learn how to deescalate situations or spot the warning signs and avoid them altogether.”
“When I came in just now, I thought I heard you mention you were with a friend when this happened,” Toby said. “What happened to her?”
“She wasn’t there when I turned up on scene,” Nita said.
“She’s home,” Hannah said.
“In Sugar Land?” Nita asked.
Hannah nodded, dug the smartphone out of her pocket and held up a text message. “We drove here in Ella’s mom’s car. She sent me a text while you two were out in the hallway. She took off when the trouble started. For some reason they just let her go. She said she didn’t remember running away or getting into the car and before she knew it she was home. I didn’t answer her back because I don’t know what to say. I never would have left her like that, I don’t care how many guys there were.”
“None of us knows what we’d do in situations like that,” Nita sighed.
Hannah’s brow furrowed. “Are you defending her?”
“No, I’m just suggesting that you give her a chance to explain herself. She may have a good reason for what she did, maybe something in her past got triggered and put her on autopilot, or maybe she’s someone you just can’t depend on in a clutch. I know plenty of people like that and I still consider some of them friends.”
And the discussion went on. Hannah had eaten a little and when she calmed down a bit, she still refused the police or hospital recommendations, so Nita and Toby drove her home.
During the ride it seemed as if Hannah was warming to the idea of Nita being a part of the conversation with her parents, but as the car pulled up to her home, she politely declined and thanked them for the ride and all they had done for her.
***
A few days later, Nita was in the midst of juggling three different things for three different sets of people when there was a knock at her office door.
“Ain’t it always the way,” she said to herself as she stomped to the door, and swung it wide open. “What?”
She felt the flutter of tiny wings in her belly as her eyes fell on features that had aged over the years, become more angular yet were still as beautiful as ever. It was the face that belonged to…
“Lorelei Kilgareth?” Nita’s jaw should have cracked, it hit the floor so hard.
Lorelei smiled and held up her right hand to display her wedding ring. “Actually, it’s O’Leary now. I married someone we went to school with, maybe you remember him…”
“Tommy O’Leary? You married brace-face?” If it were at all possible for Nita’s jaw to hit the floor twice, it would have.
“Well, it’s been a long time since Tom wore braces,” Lorelei said. “You look like you’re in the middle of something, I can come back if this is a bad time.”
“No, no, come in,” Nita said, perhaps a bit too eagerly. She gestured at the couch. “Please, have a seat.”
Lorelei sat at one end, Nita at the other, and the past took its place in the space between them.
“Long time, no see,” Lorelei said after a long uncomfortable silence.
Nita nodded. “So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
Lorelei dipped into her handbag and brought out Nita’s business card. “You gave this to my daughter the other night.”
“Daughter?” Realization sometimes dawned slowly on Nita. “Hannah…?”
“O’Leary,” Lorelei nodded. “She told us what happened. Tom wanted to call and thank you, but I thought this was something best done in person. He would have been here, too, but he’s taken Hannah to the police station to file a report, so you should be receiving a call from them.”
“I’ll help in any way I can,” Nita said. “Did you make her go to the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Good, we were worried about that, Toby and me. Toby’s my husband,” Nita held up her own hand to put her ring on display. “Not as impressive as yours, but still…” She had no idea why she added that last bit and regretted it immediately.
“It’s a beautiful ring.”
“Thanks,” Nita said with absolutely zero confidence. “Like I was saying, we were concerned she might have had some internal injuries…”
“Luckily, no.”
There was another awkward pause which Lorelei broke again. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“It’s plenty. What happened to Hannah happens more often than you think, so she wasn’t the first girl I helped from being seriously injured in an attack, and sadly, she won’t be the last. Unfortunately, the world is still a dangerous place for women, gay or straight.”
Lorelei found it hard to meet Nita’s eyes. “She told me about the kiss.”
“I wouldn’t read too much into that. She’s young and probably still trying to figure things out. We’re more capable than men to differentiate between emotional and sexual attraction, so it could have just been a spur-of-the-moment thing. You know that as well as I do,” Nita said in a tone that surprised her. “And if she happens to like kissing girls, she shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed for it. Acceptance is probably one of the greatest gifts a parent can give. But that’s a conversation you should have with your daughter before involving an outside party.”
“I wasn’t—it’s not a—I don’t have—” Lorelei started several times, caught herself and tried to regroup, sighed and finally settled on, “I just wanted to express my gratitude to you. I still can’t believe how fortunate we were that she was saved by a friend.”
“We’re not friends,” Nita said curtly.
“Um, okay, I guess I deserved that, then by a former friend.”
“We were never friends.”
“How can you say that?”
“For the longest time I gave you credit for not joining in with the others in the bullying, but then I came to realize that you never, not once, stuck up for me. I didn’t expect you to stand in front and take the blows, but you never uttered one word in my defense, something a real friend would have done.”
“I was young…”
“You were Switzerland. You remained neutral because you were one of the lucky kids who flew under the radar. Nobody ever messed with you. And thinking about it, if I had gotten a Wonka golden ticket during grade school, maybe I wouldn’t have said anything either. And if I’m being totally honest with myself, I didn’t want to be your friend either.”
“Now, I’m totally confused.”
“From the first moment I saw you, you gave me butterflies in my stomach. The only person to ever do that. I love my husband better than I love chocolate cake and I’d take a bullet for him without thinking about it, but he never gave me that feeling. Only you, and we’ve never been intimate. Back then I wanted you to please notice me, please talk to me, please hold my hand, please hold me, please kiss me, and you did all that in your own sweet time and I got it all twisted up in my head and my heart and I fell for you. I wanted you so bad, but it wasn’t a sex thing, I just wanted to be with you all the time because, besides home, you were the only place that felt safe.”
“I never knew.”
Nita shot Lorelei a suspicious look, and said, “Really? Because I met a girl in high school that felt that way about me, Charlotte was her name, and she was the kindest, gentlest, most sincere person I had ever met, and she adored me. And I sure as hell noticed it and I loved being adored. The problem was, although I cared about her in my own way, I didn’t feel the same way she felt. And to her credit, she stuck around longer than I would have, but when the reality of the situation finally sank in, she collected the shattered pieces of her pride and left. Never heard from her again and I can only hope that she found someone who appreciates just how special she is, because she deserves it.”
“As for me,” Nita continued. “I was screwed because you became the high-water mark that I compared all my relationships to. There’s a saying, chasing the dragon which refers to a drug user’s pursuit of the original or ultimate but unattainable high. In my case I spent my youth chasing butterflies, until I met Toby and through sheer persistence he showed me I didn’t need butterflies to be happy.”
“Not to sound callous or anything,” Lorelei said. “But that was such a long time ago. Can’t we just put that incident, that I would absolutely undo if I could, behind us and start fresh? I don’t know how you feel about all this but I think fate brought us back together for a reason.”
Nita considered it for a moment. “You may be right. But I need to clear up something that’s been bugging me.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”
Lorelei concentrated, flipping through the Rolodex of her memories.
“Here, let me help you,” Nita said. “It was class picture day.”
Lorelei snapped her finger and pointed at Nita. “You were wearing that pink dress!”
“And you were staring at me.”
“Of course, I was. I had never seen you in a dress before. You were beautiful. I wanted to come over, to say hi or sorry or something, but I was afraid that you were still mad at me.”
“You were staring at my chest.”
“I was surprised at how quickly you developed. You used to hide beneath baggy clothes.”
“You kept staring at my chest.”
Lorelei’s mouth opened and closed several times but no words managed to find their way past her tongue.
“I didn’t know it at the time, but since then, I’ve seen that look several times so now I know what it means, and I know that you’ll probably never say what I need to hear you say,” Nita slid across the couch, closing the gap with Lorelei.
“So, instead, I want to tell you something and I need you to believe that it comes from the bottom of my heart,” Nita said as she cupped Lorelei’s face in her hands and felt the woman tremble at her touch.
She moved in and pressed her lips to Lorelei’s mouth and deftly delivered a kiss with enough body English to make the woman’s legs wobble. And she held that kiss until she felt the last of the butterflies depart her pregnant belly in search of a new home.
When she broke the kiss, Nita said, “I forgive you. And you’re right, we need to put the incident, as you call it, behind us, so I never want to see you or your husband again because you both belong in my past. Your daughter, however, is the future, and she is welcome here anytime to avail herself of any of the programs we offer, and if the location is too far, I’ll find her a place she can visit that’s closer to home.”
Nita rose from the couch, walked to her office door, and opened it wide. Gesturing for Lorelei to leave, she said, “Goodbye, Lorelei O’Leary. I trust you can find your way out.”
The stunned, smudged-lipsticked Lorelei, left without uttering a word.
Nita leaned against her closed office door for longer than she cared to admit, processing what had transpired, feeling the weight of the past slowly lifting from her shoulders.
Her next step would be to call Toby and tell him what happened. He was going to be upset, oh boy, was he ever, but eventually when he calmed down and realized she finally had the closure she’d been searching for nearly all her adult life, he’d understand, and she’d find a way to make things right between them.
And as she heard his voice on the other end of the phone line, she rested her hand on her butterfly-free pregnant belly and knew that everything was going to work out just fine.
Thus concludes what started out as a character bio that somehow transformed into a look inside and stroll through the life of a young lady who still will not reveal her name to me. Thank you to everyone who commented or who even left a simple “Like” along the way, as I stumbled my way to a conclusion, of sorts. Much appreciated.
MADD FICTIONAL 