Since You've Been Gone

This is an excert from something I'm working on:

It was 4 o’clock. 

 

‘Good, I made it home before him.’, she thought as she hurried to park in the garage so that he wouldn’t know she was already home.  Nothing was going to ruin this surprise.

 

‘I got dinner. Got the wine and the dessert. Got the negligee and the candles. Great I think that’s everything’ Tonight was special. Tonight would be memorable. She would see to that.

 

She put the food in the oven that she special’d ordered from Carrabba’s and set the oven to medium low heat. Then she rushed to pick up the bags and clean up the trash she’d brought in. After that she made sure that the candles were in place. She was going to make this one of those nights that, when recollected, brought chills and a cold sweat. She would then shower, slip into that barely there nightie she’d just purchased, scatter some rose petals from the front door leading up to the master bedroom and prepare the wine, the honey and the handcuffs!

 

They’d been married for almost four years now and rarely had time to spend together. Between the consulting firm he started last year and her career as a journalist the majority of the time they shared was during REM sleep. He’d complained a bit but, being the understanding man she married, he didn’t push.

 

And being that he was so understanding she was able to finish her work and land her story in a major publication just yesterday giving her a huge leg up in the journalism world. She’d spent hours over the last few weeks working her leads, researching information and making she was in the right places at the right times in order for her to see her name, Simone Graves, in print. Yes, the time they’ve spent apart, furthering their careers is going to have been all worth it in the end. And this dinner was just the beginning.

 

This wasn’t quite how they had seen their lives together. Simone knew from the moment she laid eyes on him that they would be man and wife. She didn’t think it, she knew it. In her heart. In her soul. She saw it before it ever happened. In his eyes. She felt it with her entire being. But it was when he too knew it that became real.

 

~ - ~

 

Simone had met them all, all three of them, walking across the field after a practice in their junior year of college. She saw then all at the same time but her attention was arrested by his eyes.  His eyes were the most hypnotic and delving as she’d ever seen. Simone firmly believed that the eyes were the gateway to your soul and she could feel down to her toes that his soul was kindred to her own. But it was the other two guys who showed the most interest. It was almost as if she didn’t warrant a response from him. Or maybe she did.

 

Maybe he was playing it cool as not to appear desperate or “pressed” as they used to say. He might have been playing the hard to get role. Oh, she hoped to God that he was cause as much as he drew her in, as much as she felt lost in the moment when their eyes first met, she’d be damned if she’d make a fool of herself for any man on this campus least of all one who may or may not even really want her.

 

But she wanted to know.  She had to find out what was there. Whether it was her eyes and her heart that stopped beating for a few seconds when she first saw him or whether it was her hormones that were the ones lying to her.

 

So she did what any other female in her situation would do.  She pretended not to notice him and began to innocently flirt with his friends; one and then the other until she zeroed in on the one who would prove to be the most eager to please, the one most likely to be her ally. That would be Derrick. Derrick was 6 feet tall. A good looking man but one you could tell was a little low on self esteem. And if the fact that the other guy, Mike, was 6’3 and 210 lbs of rippling muscles and mocha colored skin that looked as smooth as silk with a smile that could make a blind man see and enough cockiness to be the reason why the school’s mascot was a rooster. And though they both were fine looking specimens Jabari had to be the reason God made man.

 

So as Mike continually checked out her ‘assets’ and Derrick gave her his best and most earnest compliments Jabari stood back and flipped through his pager while mouthing something incoherent to himself. And drove her crazy without even knowing it.

 

And it was that non-chalet move that made her decide that Derrick would be the least harmful and hopefully win over to her side of the now fierce war being waged between Jabari Graves and Simone Washington.

 

~ - ~

 

The doorbell rang and she was hoping that it wasn’t one of those Jehovah’s Witness or kids trying to sell magazine subscriptions. That would just totally kill the sex high she was on. But a Witness, a gaggle of kids, even Friday the Thirteenth’s Jason Voorhees himself would have been preferred to what awaited her on the other side of that door.

 

The moment she opened the door she saw it in his face that her lover, her best friend, her world was gone. Derrick looked sick. He looked like he was moments away from death himself. He’d been crying, anyone could tell that. But she knew instinctively that it wasn’t over a woman. She knew derrick well enough to know that there had never been nor would there ever be a woman that could break him down that way. She knew that it had to be Jabari. And she froze.

 

Whatever it was that he was about to say, she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to go back to the moment before she answered the door, maybe pretend like she didn’t hear it and continue preparing an evening a passion and bliss for her and her man. She wanted to turn back the clock, perhaps to this morning when he asked her to play hooky with him just this once.

 

Simone thought Oh God! Oh dear God no! Please let me turn back the hand of time, just this once. Please dear lord I swear I will never ask you for another single thing in all my life if you just please let me have him back. Let me go back to this morning and stay in bed with her husband. This would never have happened if I had, just this once, put my man before my career.

 

They’d waited this long to have a baby because she wanted to make it to a certain point in her career before she took off to start a family. And her loving husband had been so patient, understanding and supportive that he agreed reluctantly. Oh god if only he’d have been an asshole about the whole thing they would have started their family last year like he’d suggested. But that was not in Jabari’s nature. He gave her the world and always made sure that whatever she wanted, whatever she needed was met. He knew she loved him and knew that their family was worth waiting for.

 

But what did they have to show for all of his patience? Did Jabari have a son to carry on him name? No. did he have a beautiful little girl to be the apple of his eye?

 

No and nor would he ever now that he was gone.

 

As Simone whaled and sank into the living room floor Derrick held her in his arms.  As she poured tears from her breaking heart and dying soul out onto Derrick’s shirt he tried with all his might to console her. His empty words of ‘it’s going to be alright’ did nothing but make her angry. Make her want to scream at him how not alright things were going to be from that moment on. But the crying was coming in uncontrollable waves from deep within her core, tearing through her body, causing her heart to race with the knowledge of knowing that she’d never see him again and squeezing the breath from her body. It was almost as if her spirit were willing her dead right there. And it would have been a gladly welcomed event. For at that moment death was the only thing she could think of that would stop her pain.

 

But she couldn’t speak.  She couldn’t tell him to take his words of encouragement and shove them where the good lord split you. She couldn’t find any more strength than what she currently had being spent on tears to tell him anything.  She couldn’t tell him that there was no Simone without him. She couldn’t’ tell him to leave and let her just wallow in this misery alone. She couldn’t demand that he allow whatever actions she deemed fit to sooth her pain to happen. She couldn’t do anything but lay there limply in his arms and cry. She couldn’t breathe right now but she could cry. Maybe if he had ever cared, just maybe he could hear what her mind was saying to him and understand what she wanted at that moment. She only had two options at that point; surely he had to know that. She either wanted the pain to stop, for her heart to mend, for someone to put her out of her misery or for him to tell her that he’d been mistaken and her man was fine and on his way home. That her husband, her Jabari would be walking through the door at any moment.

 

She knew deep down that there way no that that was going to happen. 

 

And when Simone had cried all that she could cry she fell limp against him. He gently swept her up into his arms, close to his heart and carried her to her couch. He laid her on his chest and held her tightly but oh so gently rocking her slowly. Simone knew what was going on but she experienced it as a third party. She was so beside herself with pain that she was total disassociated from her own body. But after a while she didn’t know if he was comforting her or if she was comforting him.

 

For six days Derrick stayed and took care of her. He answered her telephone and turned away visitors for her. He made the arrangements to lay her loving husband to rest and called her job to let them know about her time in mourning. He cooked for her, fed her, bathed her and he took care of her personal needs.  He did it all. But most of all he held her. And if it had been Jabari doing all of these things for her it would all have felt so right. But all of it would have been a mute point because nothing else in her life but losing Jabari could have sent her into this delirium. She’d still have her sanity, her will to live if only her husband were still there. Yet though she’d ever only imagined one man on earth who could have ever been all of this for her here she was receiving such loving care from someone else. And for a brief second she felt lucky to have Derrick in her life.

 

Other than that brief moment of revelation Simone was numb. She felt nothing. She wanted no one and nothing at all. She wished she could get rid of herself right now and exist as only an aura; uncontained and without emotion. Which is why she was feeling as if she were a stranger in her own body. She didn’t recognize the woman sitting here with Derrick being cared for in such a delicate way. Hell, had Derrick not been the one to come to her door and deliver the devastating news she wouldn’t have allowed him around her either.

 

And that’s when it hit her. It was Derrick. It was all Derrick’s fault that Jabari wasn’t here anymore. He was the one who came over here to tell her. He was the one who tried his best to be her friend as well as his in college when Jabari finally started to come around and stop playing like he was big pimpin’ and allowed her in all while attempting to move in on Simone. She knew that the harmless flirting she was doing in order to get to know Jabari through derrick wasn’t a good idea. Hell it wasn’t even in her nature but she was drawn to Jabari. She just couldn’t help herself.

 

But now here was her supposed friend giving her the most devastating news anyone could ever give her in her life so it was his fault that she was feeling this pain. Had he not said anything then this would not be happening. She would have her baby, her Jabari here with her and they’d be eating dinner and sharing a dessert off of one another by now. But the fact that they weren’t had to be all derrick’s doing.

 

Never mind the fact that that big rig driver was sleepy and had napped for only a moment causing him to loose control of his car and run head on into Jabari’s car. Never mind the fact that Jabari’s bad habit of texting while driving may have played a small part in it all. She knew that her man was a damn good driver and if there was anything he could have done in even a millisecond he would have and he would have been just fine. So it had to be something other than the big rig or the rain that had been falling all day long that caused Jabari’s sudden departure from her life.

 

It had to be that Derrick was jealous enough to release a negative energy into the atmosphere so strong that it found a way to take away the only thing that meant anything to her. Clearly she wasn’t thinking like a sane or rational woman right now but fuck rational! She wanted Jabari back. And she had to let derrick know such. He had to be told. So she mustered up all the strength she had and began screaming at the top of her lungs. “You bastard!!! This is all your fault!! You never wanted to see him happy! You always wanted what he had. You wanted him dead so you could take his place!!! It’s because of you he gone!!” 

And as she pounded her fists into his chest she knew she’d struck a cord. She’d delivered a low and unnecessary blow to Derrick’s gut and it was so unfair. He knew exactly what she meant. And it killed him a little bit more to remember that.

 

~ - ~

 

He hadn’t meant for her to find that poem. She grabbed the notebook he’d hidden under his mattress just as she walked into his dorm room with little more than a single light tap on the door. She’d begun to read when his back was turned. She’d found out all on her own something he never meant for anyone to know. He knew he could never say anything. That he could never betray his boy like that. Coveting his girl was wrong and derrick was ashamed but he couldn’t help how he was feeling. Those feelings, so deep, so real that he couldn’t ignore them. He’d tried but to no avail. So he did the only other thing he could do and wrote them down with the intent that the whole notebook would be burned once he got it all out of his system. Once he was finished pouring his heart into those pages until his poor beating organ was empty and numb. Yes he loved Simone. Yes he’d wish he could have her for his own. But he would never act on it. All of his frustrations and anger over how hard it was to know every day that Jabari had easily won the one woman that Derrick would have gladly died for and it was just not fair to him. Derrick would write it all down, get it all out and move on with his life. But Simone just had to know what it was. She’d see the notebook before and figured that he’d been writing something sentimental in the pages but was too macho to share those feelings with her. She didn’t know why. And she figured she’d take a peek and possibly help him along with his situation. Maybe give him some advice or assistance in getting the girl whose essence was inked on the pages before her. But as she read she saw familiar imagery fill her minds eye. And it didn’t take long to realize that the pages were filled with his essence. And she was shocked.

 

She’d had no idea that Derrick’s feeling ran this deep. And she had to leave.

 

~ - ~

 

Now, here he was. He’d lost a brother yes but she’d lost the other half of her heart. How was she supposed to live with only half a heart?

 

It was almost enough to send him into his own stupor and she almost felt sorry for having said that to him.

 

Almost.

 

Simone continued to beat Derrick, letting out all of her anger and frustrations. She hit him until her arms were like jelly. Derrick never budged. He took it all in. She looked up so that he could see the pain in her eyes. She wanted to make sure that he knew without a doubt that she hated him. But instead of sending him all of the detestation she held for him in that moment she was caught off guard by what she saw. Derrick held his stance firm, no longer looking worn and wary. He stared into her eyes. And then she saw it. She saw something somewhat familiar in his eyes. And she slipped a little in that moment. Caught up for just a second in a moment with a lover now gone.

 

Before she could stop herself she reached out her hand to touch his eye lids lightly. Derrick gladly closed his eyes and allowed her warmth to rest on his face. And he was overwhelmed with the intensity he received in that one small touch.

 

His hand reached up to grab hers and he felt the rush of excitement rise up in the pit of his stomach and spread throughout his gut, down. There had never been a woman whose touch could do so much to him with so little contact except for Simone. And in that moment he too lost himself.

 

~ - ~

 

Beautiful.

 

There was nothing else that could be said, nothing else that could describe what they had just experienced.

 

Beautiful.

 

The way he caught her slowly and gentle around her waste and eased her into him hold.

 

Beautiful.

 

The way her looked deep into her eyes.  As his eyes said unspoken words to her from his heart telling her just how good it hurt to feel that euphoria of total and exquisite love while making promises of forever.

 

Beautiful.

 

How he touched his lips to hers slowly and lingered letting the heat between them grow and radiate then kissing her deep and hungrily as he surrender a groan from deep within his soul. This kiss was so real, so intimate there is no way that anyone had ever had a kiss like this before.

 

Beautiful.

 

When he pulled back just far enough to look into the face of the woman who would, on this night, become his lover he touched her face in a molded stare as to remember every contour of her cheeks and her lips he wanted to say something but caught himself before the words could escape his mouth. He bit his bottom lips and gave a half shy grin as his eyes almost began to water. He shook his head gently like he couldn’t believe this was all real. Then he messages the fingers of his left hand into her hair and pulled her firm against his lips as his right arm encircled her holding her close to him and showered her with his emotions, told her everything he couldn’t say verbally and made her understand just how much this meant to him.

 

Beautiful.

 

And when he held her tight in his arms and lifted her, carrying her across the room never once misplacing a single kiss he laid her on his bed and smothered both their doubts and all of their fears about moving too fast, about not being sure if this was real, about becoming too serious with so much time left before graduation. Because when he undressed and felt for the first time Simone’s naked body, felt her warmth against him and penetrated his goddess, he’d found home.

 

So damned beautiful.

Hi Everyone!!

This is a new blog where I can share my short stories and poems. I've got many that I want to share including those to come so I decided to create a place where I can do so.

I welcome and appreciate your comments, feedback and suggestions and I hope to find allies in the worlds I look forward to creating.

Again, thank you for looking and stay tuned for me to come.