Free Two Short Stories and Three Very Short Stories by Madeleine Oh

 
     
     
At Long Last
     
    ©2014 Madeleine Oh
     
     
    This was it.
    As the train slowed, I snapped my novel shut, and pulled my suitcase from between the seats. In a few minutes we’d be face-to-face after thirty years. Was it curiosity or obsession that had me haring up to Aberdeen to see the man who’d shattered my twenty-two-year-old heart, when he married my cousin, Penelope?
    Why was I here? To see how the years had treated Alec? Did I hope he sported a massive beer gut? Sagging jowls? Perhaps recovering from a triple by-pass and double hip replacements? Sitting in a wheel chair pushed around by his brand new trophy wife?
    If he looked the same as he had at twenty-five, I would rail against the injustice in the world. He didn’t. But he wasn’t the one who recognized me.
    “Jasmine Waters! May I call you, Jasmine?”
    It was Emily, wife number two. One of my faithful readers. “Of course you may. It’s my name.”
    “But is seems so… You being so famous and…”
    “You must call me Jasmine. Alec does.” She all but blushed. How deliciously English and young she was, like a fat ripe plum, ready to drop off the branch into my hand.
    “He calls you, Jazzikins.”
    He would. He had. Couldn’t call me Jazz or Jasmine the way everyone else did. He had to make up a special name that still had the power to tweak my soul. Standing beside her, was my old heartache himself. “Hi, Alec.”
    A man who left his wife with an autistic teenager and a senile mother-in-law had no right to thrive on it. But heaven help us all, he was still gorgeous. His dark hair was halfway gray, but it looked good on him. And as for this laughter lines, where had they come from? From smiling to himself as he walked away from his responsibilities?
    “Jazzikins!” His smile was so sincere I wanted to spit. “Fantastic to see you!”
    I held out my hand before he had a chance to even think about hugging me. “Alec. It’s good to see you.” That wasn’t a lie. I was satisfying my curiosity and, to be truthful, he was as easy on the eyes as ever. He still had a smile to invoke impure thoughts in a virgin’s mind. It had in mine. He’d just never delivered.
    “Jazzikins.” I restrained a wince. “After all these years.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me into a hug before I could evade, planting a great smacky kiss on my left cheek. While I took a deep, cleansing breath, he stepped back, looking me up and down as if contemplating a purchase. “I still can’t believe it! You’re here, and all because of Emmsy. Who’d have thought it?”
    Thought what? That I could write? That his wife could read? That he was incapable of using anyone’s full name? I made a point of not snarling. “How could I not come? Invited to Scotland by a loyal and ardent reader?” He’d better not think I’d spent all day in a train for him. But he did.
    “Alec.” Emily put a hand on his shoulder. Marking her territory, perhaps? “Let’s head for the car. I bet Jasmine wants to kick off her shoes and have a drink.”
    I decided I might like her, even if she had supplanted my cousin, and hoped her idea of a “drink” entailed something more than a cup of tea. I couldn’t help wondering what Alec had told her about me. Was I his ex-wife’s cousin, the sister of a school friend, an old, lost love? Most likely, none of the above. Maybe he never remembered breaking my heart.
    His dark green Jaguar was an improvement on the Deux Chevaux he’d owned the last time I’d ridden with him. His transport might have changed but his laugh hadn’t, neither had his voice, or the way he drove too fast, and slid through lights as they changed. He made a very Alec crack and Emily laughed, throwing her head back a little, shaking her long, chestnut-colored hair and showing the vulnerable expanse of the long, pale neck. I’d always longed for a long neck. Still, I had bigger boobs but she had Alec.
    Did I honestly care now? Come to that, had I ever really been