Coming Home

By: Lesa

'Fireflies in a windstorm.'

The line from the Dean Koontz novel she'd just read danced around in her head. It was a perfect description of how she felt at that moment. It wasn't the typical butterflies in the stomach; it was stronger, more tangible, more visceral than that. She felt disjointed, a vertiginous up is down and down is up, skin turned inside out feeling all over her body. She was almost sick with anticipation.

She was waiting.

He would be there soon.

Was she ready?

Her confidence zipped back and forth like a ping pong ball being bounced between players. He was going to love her. *whack* He was going to hate her. *whack* She would still be the center of his universe. *whack* He'd never even look twice at her.

'Fireflies in a windstorm.'

Whirling, buzzing, diving, soaring, spinning, twisting, tumbling, her emotions chased each other in the pit of her stomach. If only he'd get there soon. If only he'd never get there.

How could she ever hope to compete? His girls were younger, skinnier, prettier, more vivacious than her. 'His' girls. Girls who knew only what he allowed them to see but would go to the ends of the earth and back if he asked them to. Girls who would do anything...ANYthing to gain his favor. How could she ever hope to compete?

But how could they compare to her? They, though numerous, were faceless, blurs in the crowd, just one more person screaming his name. Without her, there would be no him. This she knew for a fact. So how could they compare?

Yet, as one who is taken for granted, she wondered. He could get along without her, she knew. But could she handle life without him? The seed had been planted long ago and now the tree of her doubt stood tall and proud, green branches of envy protruding, reaching, seeking, desperate to shelter him in her shade.

Would he still know her? Would he still want to? Would he still love her? Would he be the man she knew he could be? Or would he be a stranger, shaped by experiences she'd never shared with him and people she'd never met? And would this stranger like her? Would she like him?

These questions, new and unsettling, frolicked on the playground of her mind. And then she fell. And flew. At the same time. Falling and flying...That newly shaven head was readily identifiable, even through the throng of passengers departing the plane. She only saw it for a momnet, a second...just long enough for her already reeling world to go topsy-turvy once again.

Everything else seemed to fade away into the distance as she searched for another glimpse of that bobbing head. It had been so long...

And then he was there... in all his rhinestoned jeans and demin jacketed glory.

Her heart simultaneously plummeted to displace her stomach and rose to lodge in her throat, making it difficult for her to speak. He didn't see her. He was blind to her presence. She knew that she would pale in comparison to the others but she hadn't imagined the boiling hot poker through the stomach of agony it would bring.

And then his searching eyes fell on her.

He smiled.

Her soul sang. He was still hers.

Later on she wouldn't be able to recall if she moved or if he moved or if they both did, but suddenly her baby was standing before her--not the boy she remembered and yet not the man he was destined to become but a strange yet appealing hybrid of the two.

He gathered her into his arms and she felt the first trickle of the tears she'd sworn not to shed. He was still hers. No one had replaced her in his heart. Soon, she knew...

He sighed into her hair and when he spoke, the raw emotion in his voice told her that she still had time left to revel in being the number one woman in his heart. "Mom."

Lynn Harless took a step back and looked up at her son, beamed up at him, a smile so wide she thought her face would crack but she couldn't help it. She reached up to run her hand over his head, something only a mother or a lover could do. "Let's go home."

The End

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