AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Boyfriend, children?” I asked, curiously.
“No kids and broken-hearted.”
“Heartbroken?”
“I lost my partner in a motorcycle accident.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling sad for her. I focused on the water pitcher on the table and poured us both a drink.
“Not as sorry as I am. I was a mess at the time, but I’m resigned to his loss now.” She gave me a sad smile and cast her gaze out of the window again.
“Still …” I pondered. “I can’t imagine what that was like for you.” I felt a great deal of sympathy toward her and thought how terrible it would feel to lose someone like that, how it would feel never to have the chance to know what they may have been.
“No one can. Sometimes I feel stuck in my grief and at others I just feel numb. Then, there are times when a memory takes me by surprised and I get a wave of chaotic feelings all at the same time.” Reaching for her water, she took a sip and I could see how difficult she found it to talk about. It had appeared as if Rhea and I both carried regrets with us neither of us could change.
“Looking at you, it’s hard to imagine you dealt with all that grief.”
“For the most part, I’ve learned to accept he’s gone and I try to take each day as it comes, live life as if it’s my last day… dance naked in the rain and all that jazz.”
“Not literally, or where can I buy a ticket for that?” I replied, chuckling.
She shrugged. “No, not literally, but sometimes I think, why not? If my experience has taught me anything it’s that life is short. Don’t you think we should make the most of it? I mean, what’s the harm of dancing as nature intended us?”
I chuckled, “That’s a very hippy perspective.”
“I guess,” she agreed, laughing and glancing up at the waiter who’d arrived at our table.
“Burger, deluxe, mayo and a Cherry Coke, please,” she ordered when we hadn’t even seen the menus.
“Filet steak, medium rare, salad, and a large whiskey.”
“A steak and whiskey man,” she surmised, narrowing her gaze again.
“Predictable?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow and a small smile on my face.
“Traditional, like that suit you’re wearing.”
“My suit?” I asked, glancing down and fingering the threads of my jacket.
When I looked back up, a woman walking by caught my eye, and my heart almost stopped when I smelled a fragrance I instantly recognized.
“What’s wrong?” Rhea asked, sounding alarmed. When my eyes darted toward her, concern etched her face. I had vaguely heard her question, but I couldn’t reply because my mind instantly emptied when I saw a ghost from my past, as Tricia strolled past me.
My world paused as I stared in disbelief because I couldn’t understand how she could possibly be in the same restaurant in Denver, seventeen hundred miles away from where she lived.
“James, are you okay?” Rhea’s voice broke through my daze.
“Sorry, what?” I asked, my eyes still trained on Tricia as my whole body reeled from feelings too hard to explain. It had been a while since I’d thought about her, yet at the first glimpse of her again my mind had gone into meltdown.
Again, like the time before, she was with another man. Even though it had been years since our hookups, the mere sight of her had made my chest feel tight. From the way he held her close to his body it was easy to see how familiar they were with the other.
When they reached the table, her companion stepped forward and chivalrously pulled out her chair. As she sat down, she glanced up, and flashed him her beautiful engaging smile that lit up a room. That smile and her eyes were some of the things I had found most disarming about her, and her small gesture of appreciation toward him sent a surge of jealousy through me.
“I’m … sorry,” I said, struggling for words, my appetite all but gone with the shock of Tricia’s unexpected appearance. Being thrown together in the same hotel restaurant many miles from home was the last place I had thought I’d ever see her.
It was apparent when I met her again at Hammer’s party, that Tricia was my nemesis. She elicited feelings within me I had no words for… other than addiction, and I craved her in a way I’d never felt for anyone else. An emotional meltdown took all other thoughts from my mind, such was the power she had over me. None of how I felt about her made any sense because I hardly knew her.
“Sorry—”
