Yep, so I'm posting fiction on this page that I have decided I almost don't hate. You can read if you'd like, don't steal my stuff. It pisses me off. I'm also thinking about doing an add on story, so that you can email me additions to a starter paragraph. Could be fun. Anyway, here ya go, and please be gentle with the criticism, I don't like what I write usually, so I'm nervous about posting this stuff.
The apartment was cold. The glass, while doing its job at keeping out the harshness of the world, neglected to keep out the cold. He shrugged it off, he was used to it. He flopped onto his bed, which was little more than a mattress, and stared out the window. The neon sign across the street was blinking it’s usual “Vacant” message, the red light flooding his room. He hated that light, he wished someone would shoot the bulbs out of it. He would do it himself if he could afford a gun. But then there would be the dilemma, if there were no sign, what would he blame his sleepless nights on? Certainly not himself. It was against human nature to blame something on oneself. Perhaps he would blame it on the window, and its failed efforts to keep the cold out of his room. Perhaps he would blame it on his bed, and how the springs poked into his back, but certainly not himself. He sighed, lighting a cigarette, the little orange glow from it becoming the only illumination in the room, save the blasted neon light with its incessant blinking. He watched the smoke wind its way toward the ceiling, then seemingly disappear. He coughed. Those things were going to kill him and he knew it, yet he took another drag. He might as well know how he was going to die. He rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes as he flicked his ashes onto the floor. No need to worry about falling asleep and catching the dump on fire. He looked over at his clock, a long time to go, he thought. Morning’s far off, and sleep is too. He sighed. It was only 3 A.M.
He began to let his mind wander in that land of near sleep where all ones troubles and worries float away, carried on the wind like the scent of flowers. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to dream. He closed his eyes and imagined himself in a better place. Happily married perhaps, maybe a few kids, a job and certainly a nice house. The memories of this shack in the middle of the slums would be dissolved in the pool of his newfound happiness.
But reality would force its way back into his mind like a battering ram, forcing his eyes open to stare at the low ceiling with its cracked plaster. The cracks ran back and forth, creating some sort of pattern across the ceiling. Someone walked across the floor in the apartment above, showering dust and pieces of plaster down onto him. He coughed and wiped it off his face.
“Gotta fix that,” he uttered. His cigarette, hanging out of his mouth, bobbing up and down with every word. How unrefined, he thought, certainly not acceptable for a gentleman of his station in life. He laughed. He was so full of crap.
He closed his eyes again, wishing for sleep to find him, but knowing full well that it wouldn’t. It hadn’t found him in nearly two months. He was used to it, he wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the mind numbing boredom he suffered each night between sunset and dawn, when everyone elses world was at peace and his was in torment. He wished for one night of sleep, just one night to have a good dream. One night to dream of something happy, of something better than this.
He rolled over and looked at the clock again. The little numbers seemed to mock him. It seemed like ages had past, but it was still only 3 AM.
Ok, this is one I've just started working on, lemme know if I should bother continuing it.
Every now and then in life, we run across one person who for one reason or another leaves some sort of imprint on us. Maybe it’s not wanted, and maybe it’s the last person we would expect, but once in a while it happens and we are helpless to stop it. It is a process that begins with something as seemingly innocent as meeting a person, and fate steps in, making things happen almost effortlessly. That’s how it all started with Anya at least. It was an innocent meeting, she was the counter girl at the diner on the ground floor of my apartment building. It was a place I frequented often, due to my recurring altercations with every cooking appliance I’d ever come in contact with. I figured it was my small gift to the good of the free world that I avoid any more contact with the demon we call an oven after I set fire to my parents kitchen when I was seventeen. I started out going there out of necessity, I returned out of curiosity, and the fact is that after a few visits I was hooked. Not on the food, or even the crummy scenery of the place. The cliental left something to be desired, not that I should have expected more considering the neighborhood I was renting in, but after the first few times I spoke to her I found myself in a trance. Maybe it was her voice, maybe it was the way she smiled at me, or maybe it was the simple fact that for a few brief minutes I didn’t feel so alone. If I had known then what I was getting myself into, I would have told myself that sometimes, there are worse things than being alone.
I woke up at eight o’clock that first morning, earlier than I ever enjoyed forcing myself out of bed. Most mornings I would just lie there, listening to my alarm clock beep, trying to pretend that it didn’t exist until the sheer noise it created pounded in my head like a battering ram, forcing my eyes open on another day that I wanted to pretend didn’t exist. It was always the same routine in my life. Wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep. Every day, day in and day out, it was the same. I had grown accustomed to the mundane routine of things, though I had never really grown to enjoy it. In truth, there was little I enjoyed. I didn’t even enjoy the things that were necessary to keep a person going. In all actuality, had it not been for fact that I had lost the desire to really leave the house, and the fact that I loathed grocery shopping and thus had no food left in my home, I would never have met her. As it turns out, in my search for any scrap of food, I ran across a crumpled five dollar bill in my cookie jar, though it’d be pointless to ask me how the hell it got in there. Now, some people would say that this was fate, and I would agree if I were the type of man that really believed in some sort of “great plan” the universe had for each of us, but I was not. The last thing on my mind was fate. At the moment it was wrapped around the thought of a cup of coffee and a day old bagel. So that’s how I ended up there, in that little dive of a diner with its sticky floors and cigarette smoke stained walls that were all the more accentuated by the harsh white lights some idiot had decided to install above the counter.
When I took my seat at the counter, I was more concerned with the sheer ugliness of the place than anything else. I was in the midst of sneering at the disheveled state of the tiles beneath my feet when she spoke to me. It was just a simple hello, and I imagine that I must have looked like an idiot with that sneer on my face, but she just smiled in a way that I suppose only she can. It was a sort of half smile, her perfectly white teeth barely peeking out from between her lips. Her green eyes were nearly hidden by her bangs which were really too long, and she had to keep brushing them out of her face every few minutes. Her sandy brown hair was pulled back in a high ponytail at the back of her head that reminded me of Barbara Eden back in her days of “I Dream of Genie” fame. She wasn’t really beautiful, she was really just ordinary, but when she smiled that sort of half smile, man she was perfect.
“Are you going to order, or just stare with that goofy grin on your face?” She asked, tilting her head to the side, looking at me, chewing on the end of her pen.
I snapped back to reality as quickly as I’d slipped out of it, suddenly very aware of what I must look like through someone else’s eyes. I quickly rubbed my hand across my chin, my face was unshaven, the stubble of two days scraping my palm for a brief moment before I ran the same hand through my hair. “Uh…yeah, how much for a cup of coffee and a bagel?”
She took the pen out of her mouth, tapping her order pad. “A dollar fifty, not including tip.”
I nodded, pushing the crumpled five dollar bill across the counter to her. “Then I’ll have that and you can keep whatever’s left over.”
She laughed softly, her voice smooth like butterscotch. “Well thanks doll.”
I looked up, startled to hear her laugh, it was both beautiful and eerie at the same time, and I was fascinated. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head, “But you’d think that you’d want to save part of that five dollars, since it looks like it’s all you’ve got left.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked, taking my turn to tilt my head and study her.
She shrugged, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “Looks like you found it in the couch cushions, it’s a little worn.”
I shook my head. “The cookie jar.” I replied.
“Ah, I thought that money was usually saved for a rainy day.”
“Well, sometimes all of your days are rainy.” I sighed, looking away from her.
She paused for a moment, absently sticking the end of the pen back into her mouth and chewing on it, then removing it as quickly as she’d placed it there. “I’ll put that order in for you.”
I nodded, stuffing my hands into my coat pockets, wanting to kick myself in the jaw for saying something like that to a complete stranger. I was prone to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and had come to the conclusion that I should start making a habit of saying nothing at all. I should have started putting that discipline into play when I woke up.
I watched her walk away, unable to help myself from staring at her ass, I had always been a sucker for those little skirts that dumps like this made their waitresses wear as part of their uniforms. When she had disappeared into the abyss of the kitchen, which was undoubtedly crawling with germs and bacteria that no one can seem to fathom the thought of ingesting, yet do so willingly every time they eat in any fast food chain across America, I turned my attention to the plate glass picture window. It was rather pointless to look out, the window itself faced an alley, so I found myself staring at a brick wall. I chuckled to myself, thinking about how blissfully ironic it was that it should be a wall out there, since it seemed that lately that I only ever came across walls in my life. Funny how life has a way of tossing that shit in your direction isn‘t it? I shook my head, turning back to the ugly counter, reaching for the ash tray in front of me. I fished around in my jacket pocket for a minute, trying to locate my lighter, pulling it out along with the pack of Marlboro’s that had been my personal sidekick since I was fourteen. Those cigarettes were like a necessary life force for me now, unfortunately it was a life force that would probably end up killing me. I stuck the cigarette into my mouth, lighting it with the half empty Bic lighter, taking a long drag from it as I dropped the lighter back into my pocket. I took a deep breath, letting the cigarette idle in the ash tray, watching the smoke tendrils curl toward the ceiling and disappear into the tiles to make their place in the world of smoke stains that had been accumulating there for years.
“Do you always start your day off with coffee and a smoke?” She asked me, having appeared there by what I still believe was magic. I hadn’t seen or heard her approach the counter again, but there she was, staring at me, that same half smile playing at her lips.
“No, sometimes I start off by snorting coke and drinking vodka.” I replied, smiling at her.
“Oh I see.” She said, leaning forward, her elbows rested on the counter top, chin rested in her hands. “You don’t look like the coke and vodka type.”
“I don’t huh? And I suppose you’re an expert on types right?”
“Sure am doll.” She smiled, this time a full smile so that her teeth glittered in the harsh neon light. “You look like the stay up late, hate my job, feel like I’m going nowhere so I might as well stay where I am type.”
I nodded, startled by how well she could pinpoint my problems. “Yeah, that pretty much covers it.”
“Thought so.”
“So tell me, does it normally take this long to get a cup of coffee and a bagle around here, or is it a special treat just for me?”
She laughed, biting her lower lip. “Well it’s not like I’m working for the extra tip.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”
“I know. Fact is, I was making a new pot of coffee, I didn’t think you’d appreciate drinking the sludge that’s been sitting back there since five o’clock this morning, but if you’d rather have sludge then you let me know the next time you come in and I’ll bring it right out to you.”
I laughed, an action that had been nearly nonexistent in my life for a while. “Thanks. And if I come back again, I’ll pass on the sludge.”
“You’ll be back.” She said, turning away from the counter and back into the kitchen, and this time I think she knew that I was looking at her ass.
I smiled again, picking up the cigarette and bringing it to my lips, talking to myself. “You’re right, I probably will.”
She sat the cup of coffee down in front of me, alongside a bagel that was toasted to the point of being rock solid. I choked it down, praying I didn't crack a tooth, or worse yet, choke on the damn thing. She kept looking back over at me, smiling every now and again as she took care of the other customers. I caught myself smiling back once or twice, but quickly returned to my coffee before she could get the idea that I was interested (though in truth, I was). As I stood to leave, she hurried over, catching me at the door.
"That was on the house." She smiled, pressing the crumpled five dollar bill back into my hand. "I figure if you have as many rainy days as you claim, you should keep saving."
I stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment before closing my hand around the bill. "Thanks."
"No thanks needed doll, just come back and visit me some time."
"I don't even know your name, how am I supposed to ask if you're working?"
"It's Anya." She replied, turning away from me, making her way back to the few customers she'd been neglecting.
"Mine's Ethan." I called after her.
She put up a hand, not turning from the customer she was currently listening to, but offering me acknowedgement that she'd heard me anyway. I shook my head and made my way out the door.
I walked to work every day, mostly because my car had died about six months before, and I hadn’t had the money or the ambition to bother getting it fixed. Walking wasn’t so bad, until you got hit with a snow storm in the middle of January and the wind began to blow so hard that it could knock you over. Then I began to resent my own laziness and by the time I got to work I was usually a human ice cube. I also blamed my walk for making me go broke. From the time it took me to get from home to work, I would have smoked no less than four cigarettes, and cigarettes equal money, which I didn’t have. I think I would have quit at some point in my life, had I ever had any real reason, but the fact was that it was one of the only constant things I ever had around me, and that gave me some sick sort of comfort. Talk about your hazardous relationships. And psychologists thought it was a problem to break up with women. Try to break off a relationship with a pack of cigarettes. Man is she a bitch when you try to reject her.
Work was another part of my life that I liked to pretend didn’t exist. I’d sit in my cubical every day, staring at the walls, pretending that I was somewhere else. It was a horribly mundane, and after a while you start running out of places to envision yourself in. That’s when the boredom sets in. You start recycling old fantasies, but you get tired because you know exactly how it’s going to end, and then you start to get angry, like someone ruined the end of a movie for you. I’d once seen a movie that said that when you didn’t sleep, everything was a copy of a copy of a copy. I don’t know how true that is, but in my life, everything became a rerun. My fantasies, the movies I watched, my daily routine, the television shows I turned on when I got home, and even the number of cigarettes I would smoke on my morning commute. Some people find routine comforting, and I did as well, to an extent. But when everything is a chain of reruns, you get to the point where you start to contemplate the idea of digging your eyes out with a spoon just for the sheer change of pace that would result. That morning at work, I found myself wishing I had a spoon.
Around nine thirty, after an intense half hour of staring into space and every now and again pretending to check my computer for some sort of update, the rest of my day actually began. At nine thirty-five, Ted would come around to my cubical and decide to tell me some story about what woman he was screwing the night before, and why, and how it all happened. I continue to stare blankly, though this time at him rather than at the screen in front of me. Twenty-five minutes later he would leave, I assume feeling better about himself, because he always had the same smug grin on his face. I always thought about telling him that he wouldn’t be nearly as smug if he knew that his wife was messing around on him worse than he was on her. I knew for a fact that she’d had every male in my department, myself excluded since I personally thought she was a hooker disguised as a booze hound, disguised as a housewife, not to mention half of the mail room staff and the boss. A word to the wise, never volunteer your house for the company Christmas party and drink until you pass out on your own sofa, because God knows what your wife is doing with your boss upstairs. Words to live by.
So after Ted leaves, my time is freed up for more vacant staring, which lasts for at least another fifteen minutes before I actually log into my computer and begin to do actual work. Accounting is a boring career, and doing all of the data entry for the accounting department was even more boring. I’d enter figures for about two hours, then make some phone calls to ask why the numbers I was entering didn’t match up with what they had told the rest of the company, which usually was for a completely legitimate reason, like the fact that they just made up the figures in the first place. So then there was lunch, most of which I spent smoking outside, mainly to avoid the recap of Ted’s roll in the hay, which he felt the need to repeat for anyone who would listen. Then after lunch I would have another hour or so of vacant staring, sometimes I’d make personal phone calls to my friends halfway across the country on the company dime, that way I felt somehow reimbursed for the money they’d been dicking me out of for years. At one o’clock there was my daily visit from Dave. I hated Dave. Dave was a pompous windbag who made his way to supervisor by kissing ass and sucking dick, which we all knew and surprised most of us. We figured that since the boss was sleeping with Ted‘s wife, his current job must have been a case of some serious ass kissing, but we had to wonder if Dave did it because he liked it, or because he really wanted that extra five dollars an hour. Didn’t matter to me either way, he was still a horrible excuse for a human being.
“Ethan.” He said, just like every day, always with the same drawl in his speech, and the same greasy air about him.
“Dave.” I’d always reply, trying my best not to mock him, but failing every time.
“I was thinking, you’ve been making a lot of calls down to the accounting department lately, and taking up a lot of their precious time. Your job is to enter the data they send you, not to call them every five minutes and ask if the decimal is really supposed to go there. So why don’t we let accounting do their thing, and we’ll stay up here and do ours, and we won’t bother each other. How does that sound?” He asked, leaning against the wall of my cubical. I made a mental note to sterilize the wall.
“I wouldn’t call if they would give me the right figures in the first place Dave. The fact is, half of the time they make up the numbers they send to us, and then when we have to enter it in and make it balance, it doesn’t, and I was under the impression that when all of the final figures get sent upstairs we wanted to have everything in order so we don’t get our asses chewed, and by we I mean you.” I replied, putting on my most false smile, leaning back in my chair.
“Right. Well why don’t we try to keep those calls down to a minimum ok?”
“Anything for you Dave.” I replied, perhaps a bit to cheerfully, but I didn’t really care.
So after my afternoon encounters with Dave, the rest of my day would go much like the first part. I would do another two or three hours of actual work, spaced out with the hours I would spend staring into space, or playing video games over the internet, and then would come the commute home, on which I would smoke no less than four cigarettes.
That afternoon was different though. I didn’t just trudge home like an ant returning to the hill after a long day’s work. I was almost shocked that I found my mood lightening the closer I go to home, and then I realized that I kept looking for her. I was searching the faces of the people passing me on the street, hoping hers might be among them. I looked into the doorways of buildings, in case she lived in one and had locked herself out. I looked for her in windows, and allies, and in the faces peeking out through the bus windows. I didn’t see her, but just the thought that there was a chance I may made my entire mood brighten. I looked inside the diner as I walked past, the afternoon clientele looking much like the ones in the morning, tired and dejected. It was a different kind of tired though. The morning people had that just-rolled-out-of-bed-don’t-want-to-go-to-work tired look about them. The afternoon people had a physical tiredness about them, as if the work day had broken their spirits. I studied their faces, and searched for any sign of her. She wasn’t there, and I knew she wouldn’t be, but I had hoped. I walked past the entrance, around the corner of the building to the door that led to the apartments above. I stepped over Mrs. O’Riley’s cat, and around Jack Canfield, who was sleeping on the stairs again. He probably came home drunk and his wife locked him out as usual. As I unlocked my door, I found myself almost in a rush to go to bed so that I could wake up and see her the next morning.
I didn’t go to bed though. Heaven forbid I did anything to break his usual daily routine. Instead, I unlocked the door to my apartment, tossing my keys on the counter as usual as I kicked the door shut. The place was utterly silent, like the hollow sound of a tomb. I’d thought about getting a pet of some type, maybe a cat or something. It would be nice to have someone to come home to. I went to the freezer, pulling out one of my many frozen dinners, and tossed it into the microwave. I never understood how that stuff qualified as dinner really, it should really have been called dinner in a box, and the box probably had more nutrients than the entire dinner itself. It was a good thing I was never one to worry about stupid things like nutrients. I punched two minutes into the keypad on the microwave and began searching for the remote control. Normally this ended up being a race between myself and the microwave timer. It was a challenge to find where I’d tossed the remote the pervious night, before the timer on the microwave went off. I was the victor that night though, finding the remote under the edge of the couch. I flipped on the T.V. and switched it to Wheel of Fortune just as the timer went off. After peeling the plastic cover off of the tray, I sat down with my dinner in a box, staring at the screen as I did every night. I looked down to examine the contents of my boxed dinner for that evening. It never ceased to amaze me what they labeled as food. Was that lump of pudding like material really supposed to be a brownie? And for all I knew, the stuff they were calling turkey could just be cat meat with a new name. Suddenly I didn’t want a pet so much anymore.
The next morning I woke up because my ass was ringing, or at least that’s what it seemed like. It seemed that I had fallen asleep on the couch and managed to roll over onto the phone. I was glad that was the case, since I’m told that hearing your own ass ring is one of the early signs of insanity.
“What?” I demanded from whoever was on the other end that had the nerve to interfere with my sleep.
“Dude, why’d you ditch me last night?” The voice on the other end asked.
I sighed, picking up my pack of cigarettes from the floor and lighting one, taking a long drag before I answered. It was too early to deal with pissed off people. “What was last night?”
“You were supposed to meet me at that bar I told you about. You remember, it was your idea. You came up with it that night that you were telling me that I need to get out more. I waited around for your ass for like an hour or something. I could have been at home talking to Jennifer.” The voice on the other end replied.
“Drew, sitting around in your apartment all night talking to your internet girlfriend and your fish is not how normal people would spend their evenings. Even if I didn’t show, you were better off for having left the house for that hour you spent waiting.”
“Leave Prudence out of this.”
“Drew, she’s just a fish.”
“Maybe to you.”
This is something I wrote for a friend who was stuck with a story, so I wrote this to help get them un-stuck, but I don't hate it, so I'm posting it.
“You need to decide what you want Mike. You’re standing on the edge between the past and the future and you need to decide. You know what was in the past and you’ve seen it and you can stay there if you want, or you can take a step off and find out what the future can be for you.” She said, looking him right in the eyes.
He looked at her, eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe what she was asking him to do. “It’s not a choice so easily made.”
“No choice is expected to be easy, but I can’t wait a lifetime for you to make it. I only have one lifetime and I can’t waste it with waiting. I’m tired of standing still, I need to move somewhere and backward is not an option.”
“But you don’t understand, she is my entire past, even if it is a past of pain and lies, and you don’t forget years in an instant Laura. Maybe you need to move, but what if I’m not ready to?”
“I never asked you to forget, because sometimes memories are all we have, I only want you to see that you can have a future without her, even if you could never have a past without her.” She replied quietly.
He nodded, eyes lowering to the ground “I know, and I know that if I follow you I can find a happiness I’ve never known before. I also know that if I stay here, and bound to her, I may know only the same things I always have, and yet I’m still afraid to move in either direction.”
“If you step forward,” she said, taking his hands in hers, “I will always be there to guide you.”
He allowed himself a small smile “And that is why I’ve grown to care so much about you, because you are always there, always present and always offering to sacrifice for another.”
“Then trust me, and take a step.” She whispered.
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“There’s a difference?”
“A big one.” She said, a strange tone creeping into the edges of her voice.
“Laura look, you just don’t understand. I care about you as much as I’ve ever cared about anyone.”
“Obviously not.” She spat.
He flinched at the sudden coldness of her voice, and the eerie sort of calmness edged with contempt. “I do. It’s just that I don’t think I gave her a fair chance. I started being the defeatist the moment things started to go poorly. She deserves a fair chance, I owe her that much at least.”
“You don’t owe her anything. If anything at all, she owes you.”
“You don’t know her Laura, you don’t understand what’s gone on between us in the past.”
“You’re right, I don’t know her, and honestly I’m beginning to wish I didn’t know you.”
"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked.
“It means that what you’re telling me, or what you’re trying to tell me hurts like hell Mike. It’s painful. I’m beginning to wish that I didn’t know you at all, so I could spare myself all of the pain that I know is coming.” She said, firing the oration like a weapon, though her eyes told of a deep hurt that her voice refused to give way to.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to cause you any pain, I never did.”
“No, you just want to do everything that you know will hurt me.”
“I just want to be happy. I just want something in my life to make sense for the first time ever. I want to give her a chance, and I want to give myself a chance. I want to find love.” He said softly, searching her face for any sign of understanding.
“I thought you had…” She said, turning away from him and leaning against the balcony railing. He sighed and put his hand on her shoulder, trying to offer some small amount of comfort, but she spun back to face him and smacked his hand away in disgust. “Don’t! Don’t touch me. You lost any right to do that about five minutes ago.”
He took a step backward, looking at his hand as if a snake had just bitten it. “I-I’m sorry.”
“I’ll bet you are.” She replied, the same cold tone retained in her voice.
“No, I really am. I never wanted things to turn out this way, especially with you. You’ve been one of my best friends for so long now that I don’t want to lose you.”
“Is that all I was to you? A friend?”
“No, you’re more, of course. And stop talking about yourself in the past tense.”
“Why? I am the past now, she’s the present and the future. I’m sorry, you don’t want to lose me as a friend, because you’re going to. She’ll make sure of that. She hates me for ever taking even a little bit of attention from her in the first place. Take a look and say good by Mike. Now do you enjoy where your choices are taking you?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
He shook his head. “No, this isn’t what I want at all.”
“Too late pal. Go to her, you made your choice.” She blinked back the tears that were beginning to well up in her eyes, turning away from him and staring out at the black expanse of the ocean.
“Laura, I…” he began.
“Stop. I’m tired of excuses, just leave.” She interrupted, her voice shaking.
“If that’s what you want.”
“I think what I want got thrown out the window a while ago, funny you should start taking it into consideration now.”
“Don’t be like that.” He sighed.
“No, I have every right to be. Go to hell Mike, but before you do, let me be the first to wish you happiness with her. But when, not if but when things go wrong, I’m going to laugh in your face. May you get everything you deserve.” She said, turning to face him, a mixture of rage and hurt in her eyes, her face tear streaked.
He sighed as he watched her walk down the stairs to the beach below, a wave of hurt and regret washing over him. He really hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He hadn’t wanted things to turn out as they had, but he knew it was what he had to do. He watched her, the solitary figure looking so small against the ocean, and felt a sudden need to protect her, but he knew she would never permit such a thing, at least not anymore. And what was worst of all was that he knew she was right. He knew he had just lost the best friend he’d had in a long time, because Amelia would never permit her to talk to him again, and the sudden sense of loss was excruciating. He missed her already.
Laura stood, staring at the ocean, the waves licking her feet, sending an icy rush through her body. She held hope that it would cool her temper, and wash away all of the hurt. She turned to look back at the club, seeing him still standing on the balcony staring at her.
“Move damn it.” She said aloud to him, though he would never hear her, and in truth she didn’t want him to. “Forward or backward, it doesn’t matter which, but move.”
He turned and went back inside, and she was sure that she could literally hear her heart break. As long as he still stood on that balcony, staring at her, she held out hope that whatever thread held them together would prevail. When he walked away she knew it was over. She sat down in the sand, staring out at the ocean, tears spilling down her cheeks. She sobbed, thinking her tears would soon begin to create another ocean around her, but she didn’t care. She wiped her eyes, trying to make sense of what just happened, trying to somehow justify the pain she was feeling. She hated him and still loved him at the same time. In truth, she hated that she loved him, and she hated that he could hurt her like no one else she had ever known.