by Levia Ortega
Table of Contents
Title
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Synopsis
By the Author
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
One month later
Title
Dreams on astrays
Levia Ortega
Copyright © 2016 by Levia Ortega
This Electronic Book is published by:
Levia Ortega
c/o AutorenServices.de
Birkenallee 24
36037 Fulda
Germany
[email protected]
English translation Magali Wardlow
Cover Designer: Levia Ortega
Cover Foto: © dvoevnore - Fotolia.com used with permission
eBook released 2016
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Synopsis
Romantic Junkie Valerie has helped her friend Chris to find her true love. Val still believes in love at first sight and such magical encounters, how Chris experienced them.
But the love is taking its time. And to make it even worse her childhood friend Miri and colleague Sabine, that Val cannot stand since first meeting her, are coming to visit over the bank holiday weekend and will be staying in Val’s apartment.
A shopping tour is going to turn into a survival trip. Meeting with some girlfriends and visiting a party together will develop into a true revelation event.
How is she supposed to survive this weekend?
By the Author
When Dreams Take Flight
Masked Feelings - A Short Erotic Halloween Story
Thursday
It usually took me several minutes to get out of bed. First I turned to the left, then to the right, then finally on the belly. In a dull resentment of unpleasure I groaned in my pillow.
The alarm clock had finally found its right place in the bedroom after years of searching. I could definitely say that it did not belong on the bedside table with me. Here is what happened, on a regular base, when the alarm clock rang on the bedside table: I stretched out my arm and switched it off. This mostly led to the fact that I, before I could pull my hand back, had again went back to sleep. And while I slept, my arm still rested outstretched on the alarm clock.
It from now on had its permanent place on a shelf, namely in the shelf which was located on the opposite side of my bed room. This meant that I was forced to get up to in order to turn off that annoying sound.
While on weekdays I accomplished this task every morning, I cursed Antoine Redier on my way to the alarm clock for his in my eyes useless invention.
But today my hand already floated an eternity above the off-switch of the alarm clock. Now I stood there, waiting for the alarm to go off and a new day began. Lost in thought, I was pondering to myself. On the one hand I was happy and on the other hand there was this indefinable bad feeling in my stomach. Today was Thursday and Miriam would arrive tonight to spend a long weekend here with me. I was really happy about it, since we had not seen each other for over a year.
Miri and I had been knowing each other since we were kids. We grew up together. For both of us it was a great fun, for our parents the worst nightmare. The strange thing was that we were normal kids, when each was to be by herself, exemplary and calm. But as soon as we were together, it was like a chemical reaction. Something always happened, either we were inciting each other and brought the other to do really bad things, or we were doing nonsense together but what did not make the trouble coming any better.
More than once a neighbor rang my parents’ doorbell to complain, so that five minutes later my mom was standing furious at the playground. Okay, retrospectively I can understand it, yes. It was not really safe to try a rollover with the swing. But it was all about which one of us would make it first. By myself, I would have never thought of such a thing to try, but Miriam had challenged me.
Speaking about challenge, in a different situation my incisor was challenged, but at least I had won at the end, and only the result counted. The good thing about our friendship was that we both never were interested in boys and it did not even bother us when the other girls were talking about the good-looking boy from the neighboring class. Or which one was the cutest guy in our own class and who it was in the parallel class. We didn't know at that time why it was the way it was, we never really had thought about it. We thought we were late bloomers, shrugged our shoulders, and with this the case was closed for us. Miri noticed it first, it was not a boy from the neighboring class, which awoke her interest, but the new girl.
It took Miri a long time to tell me about it, she had to figure out for herself before what was happening to her. But when she finally told me about her feelings for the other girls, I was so relieved that I fell on her neck. Miri first did not know what was going on when I literally jumped on her when she told me. She thought I was happy for her until I told her about myself - and my relief. I was not alone, I now knew that everything was fine with me, and that welded us and our friendship together even more.
Okay, it was kind of stupid that it was the same girl which we had fallen for, which is why we both looked shocked when we realized that. And it was even more stupid, when the girl we had both picked walked in with our class representative. But we both laugh until today about this story.
I know that not many have the luck that Miri and I shared, which is why I appreciate it until today. It made a lot easier for us having each other.
What did we not all do and experience together! And what else would happen this weekend? These thoughts put a smile on my face.
But my anticipation was quickly over by the thought of Miri's company.
Why did she have to bring Sabine along? We could have had so much fun. Sabine will again make a face as long as a fiddle, only be complaining and talking nonsense, for which I would love to tell her how I am really feeling.
I was so caught up in thoughts that it scared me right when the alarm clock finally rang. And then I had the prove that it was Sabine's fault. The thought of her and what would happen to me because of her had made me completely forget the alarm clock, and I hated to be frightened.
When the morning already starts bad, then the day is usually going on the same way. With this theory I now stood in front of my coffee maker.
I like to drink coffee, and not just a little. I spent more time buying the right coffee maker than for the purchase of my car.
How much I had paid for it, I had not even told Chris who would have declared me crazy.
Even if the car sometime in the morning will not start, the day at least begins with a reasonable coffee.
I needed a long time to get used to the early morning sounds and changed smells. No longer the bubbling of the
brewing process or the delicious aroma that filled the kitchen. No, now the horrible and especially at an early hour nerve-wracking grinding of the coffee beans. This brief moment when I always thought: Aahh, that's too loud!
But this thought always disappeared exactly when the scent filled the room, I had my first sip, savoring the taste of the black gold at rest. This pure and soothing taste of my coffee with its fine sweet flavor and its mild chocolate flavor, which spread in my mouth, without having been corrupted by milk or sugar.
When the day was beginning feeling cranky, only one thing helped to lift the mood, and that was one delicious cup of coffee.
So I turned on the coffee maker and put my cup underneath. I pressed Start, but nothing happened. I pressed the switch again, just to make sure that the first attempt had been too timid. Again, nothing happened.
What did my high-tech display say?
Empty dish.
Said and done.
Press Start!
Fill up the water tank.
I took the tank out and filled it with water.
Press Start!
A short twitch, the beans were grinding. The machine did its job and I heard the coffee beans being grounded. The machine was grinding on, but I heard no more coffee beans crunch. When I noticed the missing beans noise, the engine stopped working at the same time!
Refill coffee beans.
I closed my eyes for a second, grabbed the top of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, shook my head and deeply once breathed in and out. If I would not live alone, I would have already stormed into the bedroom and my unfortunately still unknown soulmates would have gotten into huge trouble. It was after all about my coffee maker!
So I had no choice but to do what my machine told me to do, to get what I wanted.
But not even the only thing that could cheer my morning's up had success.
Ferociously I went on my way to go to work.
* * *
And just in the same bad mood, I came into the office, threw myself on the chair and vent my spleen on audibly at the keyboard. Chris knew why I was in such a bad mood, and she fortunately left me alone. She took care of the customers, while I voluntarily tried on to the accounting records. And only because I voluntarily took care of the boring accounting, Chris left me alone throughout the rest of the day. Every now and then I felt her questioning look on me and saw out of the corner of my eye, as she was about to speak; but every time she decided not to.
Internally, I had to smile and it cheered me up a bit that Chris wanted something from me, but hummed and hawed the whole day. I wondered how long it should still go on that way.
I got the answer after work, as Chris plopped down on the visitor's chair in front of my desk and cleared her throat before she started speaking.
"Emilia and I ..." Every time she mentioned Emilia's name her eyes lit up and a loving smile slid across her face. Had she not been my best friend, I would definitely have been jealous. But after all the roller coaster ride that we had both been through together to find Emilia, I was happy for her.
I wish I would soon find my own soulmate.
Every morning when I woke up, I felt that a little bit of hope was gone. Not much, but every morning a little bit more, and this bit had accumulated so much that I slowly began to doubt. But that I could not and I did not want to tell Christine. She would just try to cheer me up in her obsessive love, and in her eyes I would only be the frustrated friend who lost all hope. I could not compete with a Christine in love, and who knows what all she would think of to cheer me up. She was my best friend and I did not want to deprive her of her happiness state, in which she currently was with her great love Emilia; not burdening it with my bad mood.
Stunned, I just realized that our roles had reversed. Where had my reverie gone and where did these negative thoughts come from? And at the same time I wondered whether and how long I would hold these thoughts and if I would end up totally bitter. Maybe that was just a phase, that I should sit out in peace.
No, I decided against it, I did not want to sit it out in peace. I concentrated on shaking off those negative thoughts.
A coughing grabbed my attention and I saw the worried look of Chris rest on me.
I smiled at her and knew my smile never reached my eyes. But she left it at that and not did not persist. I saw how Chris whirled with the ballpoint pen in her hand. A sign that she did not really know how she should start with something.
"So ..." she hesitantly said. "Miriam is coming today."
"Uh-huh." That's all I could say, because I knew exactly what she was aiming at.
"So ... Are you happy already?" The pen whirled onwards through her hand.
I was about to laugh out loud. As Chris always hummed and hawed, if she did not know exactly how she could steer the conversation on a specific topic. And I already noticed how my mood got better.
"Of course I am happy. Miri is my best friend." Crap, I am such an idiot!
Okay, now that was awkward. In the moment when the sentence left my mouth, I knew it was wrong. I saw a flare in the eyes of Chris. I had hurt her, and I did not want that.
"Hmm, well, she was my best friend when we were growing up together. But then each of us went their own way, we grew up and she moved to Frankfurt." Full of expectation Chris' look rested on me and I looked at her with gullible eyes. "When I started my professional education, I met a young woman. As fate would have it so, I sat next to her on the first day. We exchanged glances, spoke a few words and clicked immediately." Now Chris' eyes began to glow. "I knew I had found someone who was on the same level as I, and that we would be very best friends."
My smile went from one ear to another, and exactly the same smile was mirrored by Chris' face. Then she began to laugh out loud and threw her pen at me when she said: "Not bad, not bad, Mrs. Cervantes. You fortunately got your act together right on time, you little charmeuse."
"Well, what can I say? That's just me." I strengthened my testimony by batting my shoulders.
"Wow! Yes, that's right," Chris cleared her throat, then she went on with her tone turned serious: "Emilia and I thought about that the weekend with Sabine certainly will not be easy, and we thought we would help you a bit. I do not understand anyway, why agreed to both of them staying with you."
"Miri is nevertheless still my friend. I had already made the suggestion to stay with me before I knew that Sabine was coming along. What was I supposed to say? You can come, but not Sabine? Come on, Chris, you would not have done this either."
"Why is Sabine coming anyway?"
"The clothing store, that both work for, opens a branch in Hamburg and Sabine will be the store manager. The shop is rented and the reconstruction works are being executed. Both want to take a look at that and meet early in the morning with the boss to discuss everything on site. Then they will even look at apartments. So it will be a pretty packed weekend. But Miri wanted to absolutely visit me. And since the weekend is so busy, she thought she could stay with me, so we can spend a bit more time together. Two birds with one stone. What were you saying?"
"Well, Emilia and I thought, we would help you a little bit. You three come for dinner Friday night and afterwards we will go to the new club Chima."
"Will you be cooking?" I asked in a worried voice. Actually, I could have become an actress because Chris believed me everything and always reacted immediately on it. What sometimes led to the fact, not sometimes, almost always, that I did it on purpose.
Indignantly Chris crossed her arms over her chest. "I said we wanted to go to the club afterwards and not to the emergency room. Therefore, Emilia is cooking."
As Chris even began to push the lower lip defiantly forward, I could not hold it in any longer and began to laugh out loud. As fierce as I had entered the office a few hours ago, my bad premonitions abruptly went phut at the sight of Chris' face. I was fully caught by a bursting laugh, so bad that I held my belly and my eyes were watering. It
took minutes, a burst of laughter to exhaustion.
I wiped away the last tear; and as I was breathing normally again, I continued: "My mother has invited us to eat for tomorrow. What in reality is not an invitation, but an unwritten law. You know yourself how long something like this always goes on."
Chris nodded, she knew from personal experience. "What about Saturday?"
"Saturday could work. I do not know what the two have planned, but let Em know, I'll talk to Miri and Sabine, and then I'll let you guys know." When I said Em, Chris rolled her eyes. I knew she hated shortcuts. But what Chris again did not know, was, that I would not even do it if she would not react so strongly to it. I loved to tease her.
Oh Chris, if I did not have you, my life would be pretty boring!
Hence my work day still ended in a good mood.
* * *
So, everything is cleaned up and the bed is freshly made.
I did not want to give Sabine a reason to say anything negative. The two would sleep in the bedroom and myself on the fold out couch in the living room.
Yep! This way I have access to all areas in my apartment, without bothering the two. And I would have the opportunity to disappear quickly and easily if I started having cabin fever. I looked around in my apartment and nodded my head. Now off to wait.
Time is relative! Even that was true, especially when cleaning up let time go by faster. But to sit on the sofa and stare at the walls, to continuously look at the clock and to wait for the sounds of a taxi, felt like an eternity.
I wanted to pick both up the train station, but Miri had insisted to take a taxi, after all, everything was paid by the boss and I should not stress myself out. I heard a car and suddenly sat bolt upright on the sofa. The muffled sound of a slamming car door was to be heard, that of a second door and I thought even the slamming of a trunk lid. My heart beat faster and my joy increased with each passing second.
