By Greg Jackson
Copyright 2014 by Greg Jackson
I rolled on my side and stared at the clock, which seemed to be mocking me. I don’t know why, exactly, but it was mocking me. The digital numbers just glared like angry little demons, just waiting until they tripped the alarm to scare the hell out of me into going about the day. But I got the better of them. Thanks in no part to my semi-routine insomnia, I was up to silence the infernal beast before it struck.
I rolled out of bed, stretched and scratched the parts that needed scratching and went about my business: Making coffee, showering while the carafe dripped, shaving and making myself look semi-decent, which never really was an easy thing. In some part of my brain, I think every day that someone broke into my house and replaced my mirror with trickery. They put up a mirror that aged me to the point that I didn’t even resemble the person that I was on the inside. And when I find the bastards that did it? Well, I’m going to show them what for. Not really, I’m not a fan of confrontation.
This was my life. Waking up, drinking coffee until I had the energy to get to Dunkin’ to get some real coffee. Then I’d come home, write until my eyes were tired and my fingertips bled with resentment and then I’d settle in and watch some television until I was tired. I’d finally close my eyes and dream dreams that were full of hope and love; I’d have someone here to occupy the other half of my life and everything would be so rosy. But then…then I’d wake up and realize that it was merely my head playing tricks on me. I’d roll over and my dream girl will turn into the reality of stacks of books on the passenger side of my bed. So, what’s a sane man with a dash of insanity to do? Well, that insane sane man refuses to sleep through the night, that’s what. I turn the dream’s reality into reality’s dream. I take everything I felt; every touch, every scent and every sweet, warm kiss of breath playing out in my mind and I mold it into some character for my fans to adore well beyond my existence. Yeah, I know. It’s kind of cocky but it’s all I have.
February 14th, the day normally dreaded by the likes of the single. Yes, the one day where all the people in the world who don’t have the connection to anyone else that would be deemed as anything “electric” walk around with a permanent grimace. It’s the day where you walk into any store and you’re bombarded with shiny red mylar balloons and various stuffed things holding hearts that express their love under plastic, creepy eyes. It’s a pink and red assault of the senses, designed to make the single nearly jump out of their skin and take a headlong trip into oncoming traffic. Yes, it’s corporate America telling me that I should be in love and I should seal it not with a kiss, but with a stuffed bear named Bertram who “Can’t Bear to Be Without You” or some such nonsense.
So, as fate would have it, I left my house and karma decided that I needed rain to make this day complete. It was pouring but I desperately needed coffee so I pressed on like the devoted soldier of singularity that I hung my hat on, so to speak. I smelled the rain on the streets and in the air and I was filled not with gloom, but with my senses all coming together to enjoy nature’s way of saying “Sorry, folks. Parks closed for a few weeks so we can clean and repair America’s favorite family fun park.” Okay, I borrowed that line from Marty Moose, but at least he wasn’t holding a stuffed heart that told me he loved me. Nature was cleansing for a new day, got it. Flush out the negative so the positive is even brighter.
I got my coffee, talked with all my friends at Dunkin’ who have become a surrogate family over the years and I walked to a table. Normally I wouldn’t sit in here and drink my coffee but something inside me was begging me to stay. I have no idea what it was, but it was there, gnawing at my gut like a wolverine. People came in, people left, on and on for about ten minutes. And that’s when it happened:
“I thought that was you.” Amanda said, breaking me out of my dreamlike state. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Oh my God, what’s it been? Five years?” I smiled. Yes, the gods were looking down on me today. My gut knew the deal and on my way out, I planned on thanking my gut with a garlic bagel, not toasted with cream cheese.
“Something like that.” She smiled and sat, placing her coffee down with her right hand. “How the hell are you? You’re looking good.”
“Now I know you’re lying.” I laughed like an idiot.
“How weird is this?” She smiled. “Didn’t we meet here?”
“On Valentine’s Day, I think.”
“Oh, you know it was.” She said. “You remember everything. I bet you remember what I was wearing.”
“No, I don’t.” I lied. She wasn’t buying it. “Okay, fine. You were wearing a grey shirt, off the shoulder because it was like 85 outside but you still had a scarf on. You were late and didn’t have cash…”
“So you paid for it.”
I just sat there and looked into the face that I’ve stared into for three years and I got lost.
Eight years ago…
“Thanks for the coffee.” Amanda said as she ran out. “I owe you one.”
The look lingered and I was frozen in time. It was like her saucer-wide eyes were boring a hole right through me, paralyzing me like she was a sexy little Medusa and I was her prey. I felt the lump in my throat and all the heat left my fingertips. I shook like a leaf trying to break from the limb it called home.
“No problem.” I replied, not giving chase.
I took my coffee and went back to the car, looking around the parking lot like a lovesick puppy, hoping to God that the stare that rendered me powerless was enough to justify Medusa being late for work. I had to do something, my mind was swimming in a pool of delightful confusion. The sun was shining differently and to this day I can’t explain in words what that feels like. It’s a different hue, a different intensity when your mind is suddenly altered. Your frequency of perception finally goes from squelch to a smooth vibration, all because of a simple stare of two people who connected.
Days went by and I went in like I always do, but with each day I felt the tinge of nerves in my gut. I ordered my coffee and the mysterious girl was nowhere to be seen. I kicked myself mentally for letting that stare go but in the back of my head, I knew it wasn’t what I was thinking it was. Maybe she thought I was a mental patient. No, that couldn’t have been a stare of her being into me. No, if she was, she’d be in here doing the same thing I’m doing. She’d be feeling the same pull like I had in my belly and the tingle of nerves, like I was dressing for the prom. I was hooked on the improbable, the impossible, I was hooked on the dream and there wasn’t an easy way to shake it.
But on the fifth day I walked in, this time that feeling in my gut subsided as the anticipation of a reality turned into a fantasy. It was an ordinary day sadly. The same coffee, the same rambunctious talk with my surrogate Dunkin’ family.
“Your coffee is taken care of.” Melissa said from behind the cash register.
“Huh? Why, am I like the millionth customer or something?” I asked. I knew I filled out one of those receipt surveys but I didn’t think I’d be rewarded with a coffee. A donut maybe.
“No, Amanda left it for you.” Melissa said. “She said she owed you or something.”
“I don’t know an Amanda.” I smiled, my stomach churning again, pulling all of my nerves to the tips of my extremities. I think I was shaking, or at the very least being Punk’d.
“Well, she bought you a coffee and left this for you.”
Melissa handed me my coffee, which had my daily smiley face-in-sharpie-marker on it, courtesy of my friends here, and a folded note. I opened it and I swear, I could have cried. It said:
Hey, I had family issues and had to go out of town. And my school hours changed, so I’m in here earlier. But I owed you a coffee so I here you go. Now it’s your turn. Tag, you’re it. – Amanda.
I caught her phone number on the back and my heart almost jumped from my chest. I couldn’t hide the smile on my face. God, I must have looked like a goon.
The weeks went by and I talked to Amanda online and text, due to her schedule. I slept like a baby for the first time in God-knows how long. I’ve been writing my first novel like a maniac and the flow was definitely running through me like an electric river. I got goose bumps when I heard my message going off on my phone first thing in the morning and it carried over all day, the small little conversations turning into phone calls and phone calls turning into a face-to-face date.
I got ready and changed my shirt four times. I didn’t like the color on the first two and the third was changed to a perspiration issue. Man, I felt like the teenaged geek I was at one point, trying to court a cheerleader named Kayla. I was giddy, I had a lump in my throat and my arms and legs were total jelly. I breathed into my hand and did my low-rent breath check about forty-six times. My breath was fine but my hand was clammy as hell now. Whatever. I hope she likes how I dressed. Was it too much? Was it not enough? Will my cologne make her gag? Oh my God, I’m going insane.
We got to the theatre and I didn’t know what to say. Amanda looked beautiful. Her eyes could kill someone if used correctly and if I wasn’t mistaken, they were being used quite well. She batted her eyelashes and comically widened them as we talked. Her laugh bounced in the air as we walked in. We took our seats and tried to numb the strangely uncomfortable silence by answering the stupid quizzes on screen. We were going at it pretty good, enough so that the loser had to buy ice cream after. I know, ice cream, right? I would have agreed to eating liver in a Speedo right about now.
I wasn’t even paying attention to the movie. No one would be. No, I was paying attention to how Amanda shifted in her seat. I could smell her perfume on me, making my skin erupt in goose flesh with every shift in her movement. Her hand brushed my leg a few times but should I grab it? Was she telling me something? God, this was so difficult. My stomach was in knots. But then she curled up as she watched the rom-com playing out for us, as if we were the only ones in the darkened theatre. Her hand moved slightly to the co-exiting chair arm between us and that’s when I first felt her touch. Her hands traced down my arm and to my hand, igniting every inch of my skin with her soft hand. Our palms finally met and suddenly the goose flesh settled as her fingers slowly intertwined with mine. I could feel the heat between us, the clammy goodness as she squeezed us into a tight, romantic grasp.
“It’s still your turn.” She whispered with a smile. “You’re it.”
I don’t remember a time where we weren’t holding hands. It was such a simple thing, holding hands, but it was a simple thing that carried an enormous impact. Our fingers intertwined perfectly and they fit together like two lost pieces of a puzzle. Each playful squeeze becoming more important than the last, until it felt like we were inseparable. We were one unit, brought together in a singular moment in time, sharing an existence and a closeness that was only measured by two clasped hands occupying the world.
We walked the beach at night, never at any moment feeling the need to let go. We were comfortable and with each step in the sand, the barriers of discomfort were obliterated. And we laughed into the night, hand in hand as the waves crashed on Clearwater Beach.
“I don’t want tonight to end.” Amanda said as she pulled us both down into the beach.
“Me either.” I smiled in the moonlit darkness.
“I had fun tonight.” She said, looking down at their hands. She pulled mine up and stared at it, as if she were trying to solve a riddle hidden within our intertwined fingers. “This feels right.”
“I can’t argue with that.” I smiled.
She tossed her gaze up to me under the moonlight. The breeze swept through her hair and kissed it gently as it framed her alabaster skin. Her eyes twinkled as she stared into me again, rendering me almost catatonic. I looked down at her tooth playfully biting her pouty bottom lip, her eyes glistening in a playful, coy dance of wanting and unknowing. The crashing waves fell silent, the gulls became mute. The only thing I heard was the pounding of my heart. The world evaporated around us and the universe held us within a cocoon of unknown intimacy. My world was about to change under Amanda’s bewitching little stare.
I leaned in slowly and pulled away slightly as I tried to gauge the situation. I read all the signs and I could see it in her face that she wanted to kiss me but I knew in the back of my peppered mind that this was too good to be true . But with each approach I got closer and closer. I could feel the heat of her breath brushing my lips. I smelled the sweet scent of her lip gloss riding the wave of her delicate perfume, each one making me tremble just a little bit more.
I felt her lips on mine, a delicate touch of Amanda’s impossibly soft touch, opening slightly as we fell into each other. Each little kiss turned my world inside out as they turned more intense. The world outside didn’t matter. It didn’t need to exist. All I ever wanted was right here, pushing into me like I was the only other person in existence, our two lives melding into one defining moment that lasted for what seemed to be a year.
Present day…
“Hey, are you still here?” Amanda asked.
“Sorry, I got caught up.” I smiled.
“I was just telling you about where my husband is taking us for Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh, sorry.” I smiled. “I heard you and I hope you know that I’m really happy for you.”
“Thank you.” Her laugh still bounced in the air. “It was really nice catching up with you and seeing you again, but I’m kinda late.”
“It was nice seeing you.” I smiled.
“Don’t be a stranger.” She said as she ran her arm over my shoulder. She still had the same perfume.
“I won’t.”
And I watched her leave.
I got another coffee and sat there for what seemed like another hour. I thought about the three years Amanda and I spent together. The thought ran through my mind like a bulldozer of waking up with her in my arms, brushing the hair from her face and not caring about her morning breath, which smelled like she just had a corpse for breakfast. I wouldn’t change a thing about her. She was perfect in every sense of the term and everything about her made her who she was. I know that she’s sharing her new moments with someone else and some may think it’s pathetic that I’m happy for her but it is what it is. The world is a better place when she’s happy.
And also true , there’s a part of me that longs for those moments again. I long for the moments where the universe tucked us away in a protective world where we were the only population. I miss running my fingers through her hair. I miss holding her hand and I miss the kiss that could freeze the world. But those were our moments before life got in the way. That was love. That was pure, untouched love that can’t exist on a stuffed animal’s placard.
And it’s in these things that I remember and everyone that I ever shared them with. Sharing those tender little moments that no one else was privy to, sharing yourself as if the rest of the world didn’t matter. I thought about all those moments over the course of my life and how they shaped me into the man that I am today and I’m immensely proud to be who I am. There’s no amount of gratitude that I can give to the people of my past. I live on those fleeting moments, I breathe for those moments. Hell, it’s those small little moments that have inhabited my fiction since that night on the beach.
Fate has a funny way of making its point. Amanda didn’t have to come in here today, but for some reason we met again after all these years and I’m left only with the comforting thought that I have love in my heart and I owe it all to those relationships I’ve had, all the little moments that made me appreciate the little things. Holding hands, a gentle kiss, laughing at the jokes that exist only between the two of you. That’s the love I know. Those are the moments that matter and those are the ones that stay with you.
So as I sit here, I speak in my mind a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has ever shared a piece of the universe with me over the course of time that I’ve been lucky enough to breathe on this little planet. I humbly wish you all the best for the future and I tip my hat to you.
I know my moment is coming. I could feel my universe changing as I hopped into the car.
I just smiled and stared out the window as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird played on my radio like an anthem.
I started driving into the horizon and imagine that…
It stopped raining.
THE END
