look nice for the PTA
meeting tonight and then I head to the shops.
Monotony is my
routine.
The store is
quiet and I test a lipstick on the back of my hand – it’s a red lipstick
and not one that I’d usually wear.
I’m beige and
neutral.
I glance at
myself in the display mirror, I see my long, freshly washed blonde hair and
yes, I look nice.
Rick likes me to always look nice.
He likes our
house to look nice and the garden to be well maintained. I have to keep myself well maintained
too - he complains if I gain a couple of pounds, we have an image to maintain,
he reminds.
And so I
maintain it.
I just don’t
know that I can for much longer. There is an anxiety building in me, one that
says I can’t wait till the children finish school, that I can’t maintain the façade for much longer.
I stare in the
mirror and I see my green eyes dart as the ever present panic starts to build
– I want to smear the red-lipstick on, I want to go over the edges, I am
gripped with a need for escape but every exit is blocked by Rick….
But there has to
be something for me.
There has to be…
I see glitter return to my eyes and then
I look out to the aisles.
I know what I
want, I know what I am going to do, but I can’t risk it again.
I mustn’t.
Yet, somehow I
know that I will.
I am already
there! I am caught up in the rush and there is no stopping me now.
I put the
lipstick back and push my full trolley along the aisle.
There is no-one
around and I move to the condom display and I stand for a moment as if
carefully choosing – I pick up a tube of lube and then put it back and
then another, only this time I pick up two.
Only one is
returned to the shelf.
It’s for me, this is for me, just me.
I’m about to
turn, to go, my heart is pounding right up to my throat, I want to get home, I
want to be home so that I…
‘I have a suggestion.’
I hear a very
deep voice and I still, just at the sound of him, just as the very male scent
of him reaches me. But it can’t be him I tell myself… my imagination is playing
overtime and, given where I’m standing, it’s probably some perve.
‘I don’t think
so.’ I don’t look over my shoulder, instead I take my trolley and make to walk
off, but he halts me then, his fingers are very firm and tight on the top of my
arm, they’re hurting in fact – and I know then it is him, he’s
the only one who has ever touched me like that.
‘Drop it.’
Does he even
know that it’s me?
Does he even
care?
I turn to navy
eyes, to the sky that this morning I wanted to climb into, to the memories I
would have allowed myself to visit this afternoon.
It’s been fourteen
years since I’ve seen him and he was beautiful then, but he’s even more so now.
He’s taller, his
shoulders are broader, he’s dressed in a dark suit and tie, he is so immaculate
and groomed and grim faced that he might just as well have come from a funeral.
I thought that he’d
come from a funeral the day I first met him.
He said that he
felt as if he had.
I remember
standing by the lake, I remember my tears and the hopelessness I felt, and then
there was his hand on my arm, just as it is now - he stopped me that day, he
saved me that day and from that moment my heart has belonged to him.
I take in the
changes, but they are all good ones – time has served him well. There is
not a flicker of silver in his jet black hair, his
eyes that familiar dark navy and the only thing unkempt about him is that he
hasn’t shaved. He pulls me a touch closer to him and I get more of the scent of
him - he’s doused in expensive cologne but beneath that there’s the smell of
male that my body recognizes and it flares in instant response.
‘Luke.’ It is
the name that lives on the tip of my tongue, a name I have swallowed down for
so long, he is my past and now he is he here.
‘Put it back.’
His voice is low and his eyes are holding mine.
‘I don’t know
what you’re talking
Robert Asprin, Linda Evans, James Baen