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“Best friend?”
“I guess you could say that. She’d been helping me with some things, and I was hurt when she suddenly informed me that she was moving to Florida.”
“Helping you with what?”
“You just don’t stop, do you?” I was almost laughing now.
He shrugged.
“I’m a curious guy and it’s just a simple question.”
“As far as helping me, I guess it’s just one of those female angst thing…trying to figure out who I am, that sort of thing.” I couldn’t decide why he was asking me these questions, and what’s more, I couldn’t figure why I was answering, except that he was a real, warm, caring body, and that felt good at the moment. Oddly, I was too tired to bother with the fact that he was so darn attractive.
“So, who are you?”
“That’s what I don’t know. I feel out of place almost everywhere, don’t know what I’d really like to do. I’m bored with my life, but when I try to get out of my rut, I get scared or hurt.”
“So who’s the person you don’t want to be?”
“I guess you could call her plain and sweet and rather girlish.”
“And that’s not who you really are,” he stated, as if that fact was obvious to him.
He took a drink of wine, while I averted his steady gaze, looking at the table in front of me. I fixed on a beautiful blown glass vase—red, turquoise, amazing design.
“Alex?” he had to prompt me.
I looked up startled, remembering the conversation. “No, the girlish innocent is not me, but it’s easy. It was what I was brought up to be.”
“Easier than what?” he led me on.
“Well that’s hard to explain. Jane, my friend from work…she’s like a–a poem, all put together so perfectly. There’s nothing about her, not one movement, one gesture out of place. Confident. Self-assured. I love being with her, just to watch her move and talk and smile.” As I brought Jane to mind, I could feel the tears trying to return, the hurt beginning to build again. “She took me places, bought me clothes, different clothes like this. We went dancing and she found me men and…this is going to sound strange, but some of the things we did were right out of fantasies I’ve had. Things I’d make up in my head were beginning to come true.” I don’t know why I was telling him this, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
“Really?” He seemed genuinely interested.
I took a deep breath.
“Don’t believe me, do you? I wouldn’t have either if I hadn’t lived it.”
“Lived what? Tell me.”
I smiled self-consciously, blushing. “Well, twice within a month, I walk into a bar, only to find that everything is a replica of my own imagination; things I made up in my head and never saw before were right there before my eyes. Isn’t that weird?”
Will looked impressed. “That’s pretty freaky.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty freaky. So, what do I do? I get rattled and run away.”
“Is that what happened tonight?”
“No!” I answered too sharply. I thought back to how the evening began at the Red Rose, “Well, sort of. But what’s really got me upset is Jane leaving. The shock of it.”
The light in the room was dim. Will had turned off the bright overhead in the kitchen. Only the neon and the moon illuminated our conversation. I felt like a child telling ghost stories around
a campfire on a cool summer evening. In the light of his apartment, the same spine tingling horror moved through my body that had moved in me those long ago summer nights, though this was far more terrifying.
He saw the fright in my eyes.
“Considering your prophetic fantasies, sounds to me like you’re getting what you want. Humm?”
