That was a lovely surprise to wake up to 😵. Over 100 copies gone in 48 hours, it’s a first and probably won’t ever happen again so I’ll just bask for a little longer in the temporary glow of my tiny success.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to download it. You might still have a few hours to go to join the party.
If you end up loving it, don’t forget to leave a review, this is more important than you can imagine. And if you hate it, let’s just pretend our paths have never crossed 😬👋🏻
It’s been a while since I last promoted my novel, so here I am. It’s FREE on Amazon today so don’t miss the chance to get it and, equally important, please share the love with any fellow reader enjoying contemporary romance!
As I move forward with the novel, I thought it was time to give it a cover worthy of its name. Hello hello, here it is and I adore it! In the next few hours, I will also post the next installment so hold on to your couches and reading sofas! Comments of appreciation are welcome lol
Hi, my ongoing novel, The Crimson Stone, has been updated and Chapter 4 is now available for registered members to read on Channillo.
Enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe!
With immense pride, I announce that my ongoing novel, The Crimson Stone, was picked by Channillo to be published as a series.
Starting from today, it will be updated on a monthly basis. And while the first chapter is publicly visible for everyone, the rest of the story will be available to members only.
No words can express how happy I am to be given such an opportunity. That’s why I want to share with you the first installment that was published today while inviting you to subscribe to the Channillo site where you will discover an entire new world of talented authors.
Happy reading!!
“Leave him, he’s not the one.”
What upset me more at the time was that he didn’t show any sign of the typical charlatan. No arrogance, no intimidation, no stupid smirks or toothy smiles. Actually, he barely looked at me at all. His voice was disturbingly calm and careless. His gaze was deep into reading the cards in front of him. Absorbed in his job – actually more like a hobby – like his life depended on my future. Or better, on mining my future before it had the chance to become such. And he was doing it for free.
I was eighteen.
I had so many options; drop my not-the-one in the middle of the vacation, wait till our plane landed back home, use the fortune-teller’s own words and tell him straight he wasn’t the one. But with the rebellion of my young age, I stayed. You don’t dictate to a teen girl who she’s supposed to date or not to. Especially to a teen girl who’s on her first vacation with her boyfriend. It’s nothing more than reverse psychology. Every parent knows it. But maybe the fortune-teller didn’t have kids.
So I took his words, packed them on the dusty bottom of some unreachable drawer and buried them under fifteen years of marriage, a son and a slobbery dog.
I have to admit, sometimes I dared peeping. When things were rough, when I was mad, disappointed or frustrated for whatever reason. Just a quick glance back at those words, wondering if “the one” was next to me, if we crossed paths already but I couldn’t recognize him, if I had to meet him yet and all these years had served the purpose of preparing me for something bigger and better.
There had been Emile, my first real crush – a crush returned with the most horrible timing. I still remember making such a fuss with my friends because he was the coolest and cutest guy in town. I also remember the hate on the face of every girl who happened to meet us on our way back home from license school. Now he’s married to my sister’s best friend and has two girls.
There had been Alex. I still don’t know so many years later what the hell I saw in him. He couldn’t possibly be the one. Now he’s married with two girls.
Then Manuel, never much into him, to be honest. Or Raphael, so boring I could never picture a whole day with him, go figure an entire life. Or Daniel, possibly even worse than Raphael.
And then there was Luke. Same firm. Different offices. For a long while we’ve been friends. Flirting friends is maybe a better way to define us. Lunches together, pleasantries, attentions, a sympathy that made people wonder if we were something. Except we weren’t and we’ve never been. It was just that, a sympathy. Guess his fate? Married a couple of years later, now father of two girls. And I start to see a pattern here. It’s like some higher god is looking down and making fun of me for the two daughters I always wanted and never had. Haha, look what you missed with your teen rebellion?
Maybe they all could have been the one. Maybe no one. Maybe the one never existed and never will. Maybe it was simply the fortune-teller’s way to tell me I was destined to something different and the one wasn’t some guy but maybe a mission?
Eventually, Luke fell into the same oblivion of all the other potential “the ones.” He became my boss, we settled easily into our working proximity, getting along quite well. Until one day I found out that back on the old days he used to have a huge crush on me. Hello blindness, my old friend. I took the revelation, stored it still burning in a different drawer so it wouldn’t meet the infamous fortune-teller, moved on again with the wisdom of knowing it didn’t matter anymore. It seemed to be the dancing story of my life. One step forward, two leaps back. Two steps forward, one leap back. Right to the start. Forgotten. Remembered. Restored never to get retrieved again.
***
The cafeteria is particularly noisy today, more than it generally is on Fridays. Cutlery clinking, forks scraping, dishes clattering. The tv is on, playing the highlights of a reality show nobody cares about. Chatter is loud to surmount the tv. Mindy keeps blabbering about something. I’m not listening, lost in my own thoughts. It’s lunch time. Six coworkers taking a break from one chaos just to jump into a different one.
“Have you already moved?” Mindy asks, with a surprise that shakes the bills off my mind. Nothing ever surprises Mindy. But this thing just did.
“Of course, what should I wait for?” It’s Luke who, in-between bites, confirms the move.
Great. Luke and his perfect family apparently moved to a new house. I can already see it. Huge, clean, compulsively tidy because his wife doesn’t need to work all day.
“You sure didn’t waste time!”
Of course they didn’t. Meanwhile, last time I moved, it only took me five months to pack things. They’re still packed two years later.
“Yesterday I did my first grocery all alone. And I had so much fun.”
Something in those words is off. Something that makes me prick up my ears.
“Oh, the first grocery is always fun,” Bob chimes in, “I separated five years ago and still have stock on toilet paper for another five.”
Everyone bursts into laughter. Everyone but me. I’m still trying to process the whole situation. Separated? Is that what he meant with moving? Moving out? Alone?
I’m suddenly beset by an odd feeling. Good or bad, I can’t say. It’s a conflict bound to drive me insane. I want to be sorry, I want to think it’s bad. For him, for his wife, for his girls. But I can’t. The selfish, wicked witch in me is already doing a happy dance in front of a boiling cauldron. I do my best to ignore her, but she chants louder to make sure I hear her. Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Shut up!
I don’t ask him anything. Not that day, not the next. Not for a couple of weeks. I hate to intrude, it’s not me. But as the days go by, I can’t help noticing his attitude. There’s no anger, no resentment. It’s like he’s completely at peace with the choice. He’s the usual himself. And truth be told, I don’t know what I was expecting. But I keep being silent, regardless of how selfish and uncaring I may appear. I guess I simply don’t know how to tackle the issue, at work, with discretion.
That night I sit on my couch, watching a movie, enjoying the calm of my son without homework for once. A terribly performed fortune-teller issues his catastrophic verdict, the Hanged Man is rarely a good sign.
The fortune-teller. It’s been a long while since I last thought of his words. Maybe the events of these past weeks are meant to mean something? Of course not, I’d only be fooling myself.
Leave him, he’s not the one.
The words are acrid and come with a strong aftertaste of camphor. When I realize that the old drawer has been opened wide, it’s too late. Its content has sneaked out, almost unnoticed, and has started hissing into my ears. I had forgotten how upsetting those few words could be. What gives a man the right to decide your fate based on a worn piece of cardboard paper? Maybe the Hanged Man is only a joker and all this damn movie is based on some misinterpretation.
Maybe the Hanged Man is really an asshole.
It’s a sunny, but terribly freezing Wednesday, when the coffee machine is not crowded and I finally dare to say something. “I’m sorry if I haven’t asked you anything about… you know what. It’s only that I don’t like to intrude.” I couldn’t be lamer than that, but Luke is polite enough to chuckle and pat me on the shoulder.
“You never intrude.”
That’s actually true. “Good. So now, what?” I attempt, unsure about the answer I’ll get, about the answer I’d want to hear.
“I don’t know. I’m still adjusting.”
How long has it been? Maybe two or three weeks. I’ve seen people still trying to adjust after two or three years. All I can do is nod and stare down at the coffee cooling in my hands.
“You know what’s funny?” He reawakens my interest with an odd question. What’s there so funny in a divorce? “Many years ago, before I got even married, I was on a vacation with her, and a fortune-teller told me, leave her, she’s not the one. Took me quite a few years to believe him.”
Inspiration can strike in any form. This came a couple of nights ago in the form of a nightmare. Hello Freud, knock if you’re lurking around.
***
The elegant building was one of the oldest in town. Dating back to the sixteenth century, it had miraculously survived the bombing that in the early seventies had destroyed nearly completely that neighborhood. It had been offering daycare and babysitting for longer than memory could reach. Years. Decades. Maybe more. It was a manna for working parents. Or for single mothers like me.
I rarely needed anyone to look after my little girl at night, – my social life was nonexistent anyway, – but that day was an exception I couldn’t do without. My firm was hosting an important dinner, I had just gotten a promotion, I couldn’t duck out. Not that night.
“There is that old daycare on Oak Street, I know they keep children to sleep, why don’t you try?” suggested a coworker. And I did.
Sophia was four years old. Generally well behaving, except for those random tantrums so typical of her age, which made it sometimes impossible to reason with her. To be completely honest, her tantrums outnumbered by far the times she behaved. Which made me loathe even more the idea of leaving her for the night. What if she wouldn’t sleep? What if the babysitter couldn’t calm her down? What if she got hurt and the babysitter wouldn’t tell me? You hear so many things nowadays.
But the moment the door opened and an old lady welcomed me, every fear disappeared. Miss Whitley looked like Nanny McPhee with the ways of Mary Poppins. Sweet but resolute, competent without a pinch of self-conceit. I immediately felt in safe hands. And it was better anyway than a teenager whose only experience was attending at their little siblings.
So that night I entrusted Sophia to her care, with a gazillion recommendations and even more guilty kisses. It was just one night after all. Nothing bad could happen once she was asleep.
When I woke up a few hours later, dawn barely turning night into day, she was my first thought. All the worst images came to my mind. Sophia not wanting to sleep. Sophia having a tantrum because she wasn’t allowed chocolate cookies late at night. Maybe the babysitter granted her cookies and it would be even worse because then Sophia would expect the same from me. All I knew was that I had a horrible feeling.
My urging knock was followed by the immediate unlock of the door.
“Miss Moore, good morning, would you like a coffee?” Miss Whitley welcomed me with the same calm smile of the day before.
“Thank you, but no, I only came to pick Sophia. I hope she was good.” Of course she was good.
“Oh, she was, Sophia is a very good girl,” the woman reassured me.
Sophia wasn’t always a good girl. Especially with strangers. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs, still getting ready. She didn’t have breakfast yet, we weren’t expecting you this early.”
I realized, it was barely 7am. On a Saturday. But who could blame a mother for wanting her daughter back? Sophia could still nap later at home. In her own bed. “I should have called maybe.” Of course I should have called. Who on earth shows up at people’s doors at dawn?
“Would you follow me upstairs please?”
As we climbed the wooden stairs, I took in the surroundings. Outside the building was still old, but inside it had definitely been refurnished over the years to suit the needs of a daycare.
Miss Whitley led me into a room, probably the room Sophia had slept in? There was a bed, soft and fluffy, the bed of a princess, I thought. Pink duvet, glowing stars on the ceiling. And dolls. Many dolls. Some looked very old, some were brand new. It gave the idea of a miniaturized wax museum. They were there, a plastic parade staring at me. Almost disturbingly.
Then I noticed the dolls house on the floor. I had one too when I was a kid. Very similar to this one. It resembled in the appearance this same building. Old outside, the stairs in the middle, the bedroom with the princess bed. It gave me the shivers.
I turned the attention back to the dolls. And this time I noticed it. It couldn’t be my imagination. Most of them resembled the witches of the fables. Dressed as Snow White was the Evil Queen. Cinderella clothes were filled by the evil stepmother. Maleficent. The White Witch. This room was scaring me.
“Where’s Sophia?” I muttered, trying not show my upheaval.
“I’m here mommy!” My little girl squealed from the door, startling my already shaken heart.
In the relief of seeing her in one piece, I hugged her so tight that I almost broke her but she didn’t complain. “Are you okay?”
“I had so much fun!”
“That’s great baby!” I felt the need to run away while at the same time not pissing Miss Whitley who was standing right outside with an attentive eye on us. “Shall we go now?”
“Yes mom.”
No complains? No tantrums that she wanted to keep a doll? Though, why would she even want to keep one of those dolls? They looked creepy.
I thanked the old woman, more politely and enthusiastic than I should, and climbed down the big stairs as fast as I could, my back hurting unnaturally in the effort of looking natural. I was expecting the door to lock me in, or something terrible. I didn’t know what. But something didn’t feel right.
Once finally outside, back in the daylight, I took Sophia for breakfast in her favorite cafeteria on the corner of Duke and Dearborn. She loved that place, she loved their croissants. If she had a tantrum about wanting two, like she always did, I was ready to yield and gave her what she wanted, such was the relief of having her back with me.
But she didn’t.
“You alright? Is your little belly full? You don’t want another croissant?”
“No mommy, I’m fine like this. Another croissant will give me a bellyache,” she explained with the funny wisdom of children. But for some reason, I wasn’t finding it funny that morning. Maybe she was only happy that I came back for her and didn’t abandon her like I threatened once? Damn. That time I hadn’t acted smartly. Kids tend to remember everything and always on the wrong moments.
I accepted her explanation and didn’t persist. Every kid has good days and bad days. Just like every adult.
But when bedtime came without a fight, I found myself wondering if maybe she was sitting on a flu.
“Do you want one of your dolls, baby?” I offered her, bracing myself for the hour long ritual of picking each one and changing her mind continuously.
“No mommy. I don’t want them.”
The parade of creepy faces popped before my eyes, food for nightmares. Maybe that’s why Sophia didn’t want hers anymore? But I didn’t feel like persisting so I hugged her, placed a kiss on her forehead and watched as she fell in a peaceful sleep.
The next day was a repeat. And so was the following. And the following again. Sophia was behaving like a perfect little girl. So perfect it started to unsettle me. I couldn’t pinpoint what disturbed me in her behavior, but I knew that it wasn’t her normal behavior.
So one morning I did what every mother would have done. I knocked on the daycare door.
A young woman, probably in her late twenties, opened the door. In the background I could hear the joyous screams of an infant. “May I help you?”
“I… I’m looking for Miss Whitley.”
The woman gave me an astonished look. “Sorry, I think you got the wrong address.”
What? The address was right. I was here only a few days before.
“Miss Whitley. The old babysitter. This is the daycare, right?” I didn’t realize my voice was shaking. I felt my cheeks burning and a knot tying right at my stomach. I took a step back, just to make sure I had knocked on the right door.
“This is the daycare, but there isn’t any Miss Whitley working here.”
My knees failed and I almost fell on the sidewalk.
“Are you okay, Madame?”
Who was that woman? Who was Miss Whitley? And what had she done to my Sophia?
You have a couple of weeks to enter the giveaway if you want to win a free copy of “The Fire Opal” ebook!
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I wrote a lot over the years. Short novels, fanfictions, sometimes I drew from my own life. There is a bit of everything. This short story blows out its first candle next week and it seems forever.
***
She lets the light of her laptop’s monitor go off as it turns to power save mode. She’s sitting at her desk, glasses resting on her nose and backlog papers deluging, no differently than any other working day. Except, her mind froze at 10.40 am that morning, on the first-row bench in federal courtroom. The rest of the day has been a daze of surrealism. She would question if it happened at all, weren’t it for her palm and fingers still prickling from the sharp impact. The slap reverberated in the long corridor and in the ears of the bystanders who happened to witness her outbreak. Steeled with sleepless nights and buried tears. Incensed with betrayal and grief.
There’s no point in trying to deny that over the last couple of years countless thoughts were wasted on the same enigma. Had I the chance to see him again, to rewind time – just enough to change events – or perhaps wake up from the longest nightmare of my life, what would I do? Most of the times she envisioned herself yielding to a liberating cry or melting into a relieved embrace. It seemed like the most human reaction, under the circumstances, and what came as the closest to her restless reveries. It couldn’t have been any further from reality.
She had resisted the urge to dash outside the moment he materialized in front of her. She had mustered an enormous amount of self-constraint to keep sitting there, veiling her astray turmoil while her life was being turned upside down before her eyes. Or more simply, she was petrified and just couldn’t move at all. She took it all in, silent and composed like a dormant volcano, until eventually the realization seeped in. Walt was there, right in front of her, sitting at the stand, swearing events and words she was too shaken to grasp. It all came as muffled, almost underwater. Maybe it was just the dull thumping of her heart running amok that covered everything else.
As her mind returns to the dark quiet of her office, she takes off her glasses then closes the laptop, forceful enough so maybe its bang will distract her from the thought of him, but she is instead startled by a silhouette standing in her doorway.
Immobile, Walt is staring at her. Two years of missed gazes are crying in the dim lights as neither Walt nor Ann have the power of averting their eyes. Maybe it’s all an odd dream. Maybe I still have to wake up.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Walt’s attempt at breaking a consolidated layer of ice goes unheeded, received only by a pensive gaze and two parted lips. He straightens up, takes an invisible step back. “Sorry, terrible joke,” he quickly apologizes, clicking his tongue then looking at his feet, uncomfortable.
The silence warms up when a cautious laughter escapes Ann’s mouth, and she quickly castigates herself to a half smile. He didn’t change.
“Can… can I come in?” he hesitates, peeking around in search of permission. It’s not his place anymore, after all. Or has it ever been, to begin with?
Ann waits, her mind lingering briefly on old times, till his eyes are back into hers. With a light wave, she invites him to take a seat. “Of course.” Head down, she watches furtively as he traverses her office, stares briefly at the couch then makes himself, if not comfortable, at least something close to it.
Her fingers entwine on the desk, twitching uncomfortably, then offload the uneasiness on the temples of her glasses. When she’s in control enough to look back at Walt, he’s looking down, round-shouldered, hands entwined in front of him. His mouth is half-open, searching for something to say. Maybe he already knows what to say, he just doesn’t know where or how to start. It’s blind-walking on a minefield. And it doesn’t help at all that Ann has put back on her wounded face. And all things considered she has every right to.
“So… I know you’re mad,” he starts off with the harmless obvious.
In the dark, Ann swears she can feel the heat of her slap still radiate from his cheek. She wishes she could take it back but doesn’t at once. “Mad? Why would I…” she wonders with piercing irony. She takes a deep breath, holding it for as long as she can, long enough to put together a nonbelligerent sentence. Deep down inside, she knows it’s not about what he did today, no matter how much it wrecked all her plans. She thinks deeply, as the good old habit of holding things back almost has the upper hand. Almost. She has to recall all the self-promises to never leave anything untold – unlived – anymore. “How… How do you think it feels to know you spent the past two years of your life grieving someone who’s not dead?”
Her question floats between them, filling the weighty silence. Her gaze toys with her glasses, she doesn’t look up, just in case he catches even a small glimpse of the impact his sudden absence had on her.
“I had no choice,” Walt defends himself, with a pain in his eyes leaving no doubt that, back then, it really seemed like the only option.
Only then does Ann look up at him again, then shakes her head imperceptibly, offering a disappointed, short-lived smile. “Yes you had it.” She has a different perspective, built not by some illuminated awareness, but by a long, heartbreaking retrospection. She moved past their incomprehension and old frictions long ago, during too many imaginary heart-to-hearts. How easier it is, she sees it now, to patch things when you create the questions and shape the answers to your liking.
Walt is silently pondering her words, it’s his turn now to breathe back any excess. His eyes peer her, as she rests her arms on her desk, more resigned than combative. “Really? And what? Tearing you and all your family down? Would that have been better? Would you have forgiven me more easily?” They both know she wouldn’t have. His voice never grows, instead it lowers to a murmur. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
Back to the start. Back to the days when she was something that needed protection. Back to a weakness that never belonged her. “Well, you did.” In an even worse way, her eyes reveal, as they close themselves off.
He has no way of knowing the depth of the devastation he left behind, and even his best guess is probably far from being truthful. He looks at his feet, deep into thought, maybe just to avoid staring at her, then looks around, quietly reacquainting to what used to be the ordinariness of his life. All the late nights and earned toasts, always on the double – especially in those last months – and with the adrenaline as his best friend.
Ann follows his gaze, trying to peek into his thoughts with discreet curiosity. It’s been more than two years, a relatively brief time in life when everything happened and everything changed, first of all herself. In retrospect, his sudden leave was the wakeup call she needed. The abrupt disequilibrium forced her to shift and reconsider more than one choice she had made, sometimes offering a new, more radical viewpoint. Has it been the same for him? Where did his choice catapult him? She realizes that, while he can easily imagine the aftermath of his disappearance, she knows nothing of his own. She hesitates for an instant. “So what have you been up to for the last two years?” Her urge to know is something that can’t be shushed, despite an intangible feeling of anxiety as she realizes that she might be unprepared to hear he moved on with his life.
Walt looks intently at her, then down, gathering his thoughts. “Waited, at first. Tried to move on. Tried to settle into a life that wasn’t mine, into a new personality. At some point I just thought I was never going to come back.” His gaze is still on the floor, probably reliving those moments, maybe searching for something, a memory, a story she’d love to hear. When he looks at her again, he’s smiling. “I own a store, a sports’ memorabilia store, right outside Seattle.”
Ann opens her mouth, but her words get engulfed by an amused astonishment. Then, her laughter. Hearty, spontaneous, unique. “You what?”
“Well, actually it’s my protected alter ego who does. I’m not sure I own anything at all now,” Walt quickly corrects himself, but the mood is lightened and he can’t help but smile.
For Ann, it’s the go ahead to the question she’s been holding back ever since she saw him conversing with Denise only a half hour before. “I’m sure Denise already offered you back your old office.”
Walt leans back, outwardly more at ease, but he doesn’t answer. “Speaking of… I thought I’d find you there. How on earth did Charlie…” His question lingers unfinished in the air.
Ann hints a smile, full with the melancholy of the first time she walked into that office as Denise’s partner. The desolation, everywhere around and inside of her, the colossal effort to hold herself together. Her smile is gone, but she probably doesn’t notice. “I actually owned it for a while. Didn’t last. Long story,” she shakes away any chance of further questioning. She wants to tell him all that happened but doesn’t at the same time, because as she looks back, there’s very little she wants to remember. “So… did Denise ask you?” she brings him back to what interests her.
Walt nods, very quietly. “She did.”
But when he doesn’t add anything, not a word, not a smile she might return, Ann realizes that something is off. He should be happy, maybe relieved that he wasn’t forgotten. Instead, he takes a deep breath, then looks away briefly. “I said no. I’m… I’m not staying.”
Ann’s mouth drops half open, but nothing manages to leave it.
I’m not staying.
Staying in Chicago? Staying at what used to be Lockhart & Gardner? She wishes for the lesser evil while reading the answer to her unvoiced question in his eyes. “Okay,” she barely whispers.
Walt peeps around, outside the office, at the dark corridors, at that single light still on in Denise’s office. To an outsider, things would look quite still the same as they’ve always been. This place used to be his home. And there’s a good load of nostalgia in his light smile as he turns his focus back on Ann. “I spent half of my life chasing the wrong things. I lived, almost slept in this place to build something and ended up with nobody to share it with. I died alone.”
“You didn’t really die,” she corrects him, though knowing what he really means.
“I did, in some sense.”
She doesn’t want to remember. “Nice funeral by the way,” she forces herself to joke about it.
Walt frowns, just a moment, before going along. “Did people cry?”
“Rivers,” she nods with resolution.
Walt shakes his head, an expression of disbelief as he chuckles. “This conversation is…”
“Surreal?” Ann finishes the sentence for him.
“I was gonna say creepy, but yes, surreal too.” Their smiles gone, Walt pauses, probably musing on the conversation they just had. “I don’t think I’d like this life anymore.”
Ann nods, choosing to ignore the discomfort. She understands him, more than he knows. She’s been there too, she’s still there now. She wheels her swivel chair slightly back, then stands up. She hesitates a moment before deciding to walk the few steps to her couch. Her gaze remains focused outside her glass doors, so their gazes can’t meet as she sits down next to him. She can feel his warmth, his favorite cologne is still the same. It makes it all more real. “At some point I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.” In the established intimacy, she shares with him her rock bottom. “Then… I don’t know, I guess that the call of law took me here again. Now… I just don’t know.” She looks around, repeating Walt’s gesture, outside at the empty offices. Empty offices. Empty home. Her need for a life changing decision seems to grow every day. “When are you leaving?” she ventures to asks, finally looking back at him.
“I don’t know yet.” Their eyes meet again, even if just for a few seconds. “I was asked to stay around till it’s over, in case… in case they want me to testify again in the trial. I don’t think it will be necessary, but still…”
The mention of the trial takes her back to the real reasons behind his return. The trial. Perry. The conversation with Lucy. What do you want? Suddenly things looks ugly and all she knows is that she doesn’t want to deal with that kind of guilt. You have some idealized notion of a man you’re not even sure cared about you. Perry’s words had been a poisoned, twisting knife back then, but she sees now the bit of truth that laid in there. When Walt left, they weren’t on the best terms. Denise claimed he wasn’t mad at her, but her subconscious always disagreed. And his reappearance, with its long train of consequences, is in her chaotic mind the confirmation she was right.
Oh come on, Ann, you know that is not true.
“Are you still mad? At me?” The question comes a bit out of the blue to Walt, who stares at her, seemingly confused at first, then brooding.
“No. I don’t think I’ve ever really been. Were you?” he asks in return.
“No,” she agrees softly.
They both were, no matter what they claim today, but it’s somehow become irrelevant, when all those wounding memories have been overwritten by the more pleasant ones they created meanwhile.
Walt sighs, his lips shape into an amused smile. “Isn’t it funny? I did it to protect my career too, after all, and now that it’s finally over I don’t care about it anymore.”
Ann takes in his words with a mild laughter. “Sometimes a change leads to another change.”
“I guess so.”
She tries to picture him living his new life, it’s pleasing and sad at the same time. “So, how is it, selling sports’ memorabilia for living?” she teases him, but her inquiry holds a sincere interest.
“I feel like I’m selling a piece of my heart every time.” His voice is grave, his features are tense in faux sorrow.
“I can totally see you bickering with customers because you refuse to sell them stuff,” she concurs, entertained by the image in her mind.
“I actually did once,” Walt remembers, furrowing his brows as he brings the memory into focus, “but in my defense, it was Kris Bryant’s autographed game bat, I couldn’t let it go.” His statement is source of hilarity. He watches as Ann chuckles at his words, with that admiration in his eyes revealing she’s still the one. She probably always will be.
“I don’t think I ever fought that hard to defend a client,” Walt wonders to himself.
“Talk about priorities.”
Walt smiles, letting the conversation vanish to silence. For a while, they bask in the newly found comfort of their proximity, until eventually Walt breaks the quiet. “What about you?”
“About me what?” She stiffens, imperceptibly but she does, as her present life is singled out.
“Your priorities. Still saving the world?” he teases her, without malice.
Ann’s answer is a deep, dramatic exhale. “I don’t know anymore. I thought I did. But I’m already having a hard time trying to save myself I guess.”
“That’s a start,” he sympathizes, with an imperceptible nudge of his shoulder.
For a moment she considers sharing she’s divorcing Perry. In another life, he’d definitely be happy. Now? She doubts he’d care at all. Yet, the words are out before she can really make a decision about them. “I started the divorce procedures.” No matter what he is going to say or do, no matter how behind time these words are coming, it’s liberating to engrave them.
Walt stares at her, surprise etched on his face, but he doesn’t respond anything. He takes her words in with a quiet nod and a very faint smile, but his gaze is on her, confident and… she can’t really say what else, but there’s more in them that the darkness is concealing from her sight. He tries not to show it, but her confession clearly affects him more than he gives away. She wants him to say something, anything, but quickly realizes that she doesn’t need any words.
So when he leaves, just a few minutes later, unhurried, laid back, almost reluctant, she knows with instinctive certainty that this is not the last time they meet. They don’t set dates or celebratory drinks, nor a place or a call. But the way he stops on the doorstep, drinking her in with a sweet smile, a smile she hadn’t seen in years, it’s all she needs.
Big news! I’m still alive! Apologies for the long absence, and if Lord grants me some peace I should now be able to post more frequently. Also, I have a huge (for me, eh eh) surprise in store. Till then, here I am with a new short story. Enjoy!
***
The atmosphere was eerie that morning. A purplish shade of doom tinged the ether as far as the eye could see, leaden clouds flared up, turning into a burnt orange as falling stars crossed the sky. Except those weren’t falling stars. Augustine knew very well that the shining bodies shooting on the horizon were balls of flame, leaving behind a fascinating tail of death. She was a spirit of fire, she could feel its destructive force coursing inside of her, lava flowing in her veins.
There was a war raging, right beyond the forest, where the Lym river forked for a couple of miles, making way for a small village. Only once had Augustine dared to venture into the forest, back in the days where she was a child who still couldn’t dominate her volatile nature. Sometimes it still came back in form of nightmares. The crackling of wood, leaves blazing into ashes, the smoke, the screams. The screams. Those were the worst. Their sound was distorted, cavernous, belonging to another world. After that day, where two spirits of the forest became one with earth, she never dared walking among those breathing trees and everything they sheltered.
But the village humming beyond held the irresistible magic of the unknown. One day she took courage and skirted around the woods. She ran along the Lym river for half a day, defying the dangers of water, just to satisfy her young curiosity. She didn’t know what a village looked like, she’d never seen one. Spirits didn’t gather, or socialize. Especially with humans. It was simply against their nature; after all, they existed to protect the earth exactly from the damages that the humans caused.
So when she reached the point where the river broke in two, hugging protectively a small tract of land, she stood a moment to take it all in, unseen from all those busy eyes. Or so she had believed back then.
Victor, that was his name, that was the name of her love. Victor the blacksmith, Victor the onyx eyes, Victor the human.
There weren’t rules forbidding relationships between spirits and human. It was all about common sense. But Augustine was young and still had a lot to learn. Her apprentice wasn’t complete yet. You will be a real spirit of fire the day your tears turn stone into fire. That’s what the ancient had said. Which made no sense to her. She didn’t have the gift of tears to cry, nor a heart that could be broken. And stone couldn’t become fire, of that she was sure. Or so she had been taught.
A ball of fire, bigger than the others, crossed the sky over her head, forcing her back to the destructive reality. She could feel the ground shake under her feet and tried to steady herself so she wouldn’t lose balance. But she fell on her knees, pulled down by something she couldn’t define. It came from inside of her. A sensation of dread, of pain, of oxygen being taken away from her, of fire withering. In that moment, from miles away, she knew.
Where once there had been green and life, now there was only ash, death, desolation. That same fire she manipulated to bring life into the world, was used by humans to take lives away.
She stared at her hands, watched the fire flow in her veins, felt its vital warmth. She had already revived a human before, it was something permitted by the ancients. Then why wasn’t Victor opening his eyes? Why wasn’t his chest rising and falling? Why couldn’t she feel the pulse of life in his body? It took her a moment to realize that if fire had killed him, then more fire couldn’t bring him back. You don’t smother flames with more flames.
Augustine traipsed for hours, uncertain what to do, or where to go, until she stopped by the river, collapsing under the weight of her sorrow. Defeated. Abandoned.
Alone.
She was a spirit of fire, yet couldn’t ignite life in the cold body of her lover. Then what was she useful for?
From the safety of a rock she stared at the water, still in that point; sparkling with the rays of a mocking sun, stained by the somber reflection of the stones. She feared yet was lured by its fleeing nature, by its ability of washing everything away. Or of concealing it in its depths. She wished she could do the same, but fire never came and left unnoticed. Smoke and ashes were faithful remnants.
Her skin started burning in a way she never experienced before. Fearing her nemesis, she retreated her feet before realizing that she was too far from its danger. If it wasn’t the water, then what? She lifted her fiery eyes to the sky, searching for signs of raindrops. And that’s when she felt it. Something blurring her sight, burning her cheek.
One tear fell.
It landed on a small rock. Steam rose, the incandescence made it glow. Augustine took it and turned it over in her hands. The stone had lost its gloomy gray. It was translucent, shining with the flaming reflections of her soul. You will be a real spirit of fire the day your tears turn stone into fire.
Tousled reveries 