Free Sharing Harper by V. Murphy

I'm curious, but I've got to pay due to my mistakes. What happened to me in the past ain't nothing but my fault. I don’t want to hurt John if he moved on and has his own family now. My presence in his life will only be a remembrance to the times we had. That memory is something that I know both of us keep very close to our hearts, but have to move on from."
    "Wow." I was speechless. In a sense, I wanted to hug Rita so hard to try and help her ease the pain she experienced from her past, but I knew I couldn’t. She left a life where she would be flowered with love in order to better herself, but found that bettering herself made her alone and miserable.
    "I'm not as miserable as I was, you know. In my marriage, I was a sad young lady. I didn’t do anything out of the house and tried desperately to cling onto something that wasn’t working. How does the saying go? If it’s been broken for too long, don't bother fixin' it."
    "But aren’t you sad and alone now? No offen se…" I asked.
    "Sure I'm alone here, but I have my home, my books, my store , and my friends. I have moved on from the life I thought I had. My heart still lies in the south with John, but my real life is here. Sometimes we just gotta wake up in the morning and face reality no matter how bad you wanna spend the day in bed," she said while fixing herself in the small handheld mirror we had behind the counter. "Anyways, the bottom line of this story is that sometimes we love someone so much that it hurts to love them. Sometimes it's unexplainable why someone walks into your life. Most of the time it’s at a moment where we desperately aren’t looking for someone to save us, but they happen to understand that deep down we need someone to share a life with."
    "The take home message from all of this is that you need to follow your path. No matter where life takes you, there is a reason for that path , so you follow it. Follow it all the way home Harper. Do this and you'll find your rainbow. Hey, maybe you'll even be greeted by a lucky pot of gold!" She said and smiled for the first time in the conversation.
    "Thanks Rita. I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you in the past and even more so for my attitude earlier. I was out of line. Thank you for telling me that."
    "Yeah, I know I'm just some old lady telling you a wise old tale but I can see you have a past Harper. There is something deep that lives inside you and one day that something is going to come out and hurt you. I just want to make sure someone who loves you will be by your side."
    "Hey now, let ’s not talk about love. This guy just helped me one night."
    Rita winked at me and said, "Alright enough of this crying stuff ! Let’s get to work. We gotta get some customers in here otherwise I'll go crazy!"
    I gave Rita a surprising hug before she jumped down. We silently stood there connected in a very intimate moment . When we backed away from each other, I quickly got to work making signs for marketing the store. I helped a few customers during the afternoon and right around 5pm--closing time--the chimes from the door alerted me of a customer.
    "Harper Mae, where the hell did you go last night?!" Skye came barreling into the store with her blonde hair in a sleek ponytail and wearing her day-after-partying outfit and equip with a large bottle of water and oversized sunglasses.
    "Some people are working here you know”
    "Who wo rks anymore? Loser," She said as she winked at me, knowing her work ethic was slim to nothing.
    "Are you here to shop or are you coming to collect me after leaving me alone at the club last night?" Man, I was in bitch mode because even Skye shuttered at the attitude I had with her.
    "But, didn’t you leave with sexy coffee shop guy? He was absolutely bea-u-tiful last night!" She said clearly brushing off the attitude that laced my voice.
    "No…well…it's complicated."
    "Ohmigod you slut! I am so glad you did. Was he good in bed? I bet he has a great dick with that