Valentine Kisses: A Kiss to Last a Lifetime

by Abigail Drake

  “You were a minor, Anaïs. You wouldn’t have been persecuted like a grown-up.”

  He kissed the top of her head. His forgiveness had no limits, because he was too good a person to be able to conceive the depravity of her actions.

  “That’s a technicality. A person is dead and I’m a murderer.” She still shivered. “Or so I thought.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Her spent body was dead weight in Damon’s lap.

  “I think it’s him, Damon. I couldn’t see his face, but his eyes...If it is him, he’s crazier than ever. And I’m so bloody scared.”

  “But you said...”

  “That I ran. I ran when I saw him at the window, clawing at the door to get out. The body was never found. He never showed up. It was presumed the fire was so intense that his remains were burnt to ashes. But maybe... he escaped and let me believe all these years that he’d died. To punish me or to plan revenge.”

  ***

  There weren’t many things in her life she could be proud of. But Damon falling in love with her was something she would always cherish because it gave her hope she was redeemable, that there was something in her worth loving. Someone so good and smart as Damon couldn’t be wrong, could he?

  “You’ve given me something I didn’t even know I was missing,” she told him before she left his place. “You’ve given me back a part of myself.”

  Her emotions were all over the place and the exhaustion made her careless. Returning to the hotel, she left traces in the newly fallen snow, translucent on the sidewalk. Despite the dreary sky, the day seemed almost magical.

  But as she turned the corner, the weather changed. She started up the alley, familiar from the night before, and the snowflakes melted into raindrops. Where the flakes were light and cheery, the raindrops were laden with gloom. Her jacket was soggy by the time she entered the hotel lobby.

  She nodded at the clerk, his eyes shifty, and ran up the stairs. She craved a hot bath and a strong drink.

  The stairs and hallways were lined with red carpeting, showing traces of suitcase wheels dragging across them a thousand times too many, of chewing gum being trodden on, cigarettes singing spots into them like pockmarks. At least, the carpeting muted her steps, because otherwise he would have noticed her first. As it was, her breath hitched in her throat when she saw the dark silhouette quietly pulling the door to her room closed. She didn’t wait to see his face when he turned; she’d seen enough of his tall frame and his sharp profile to know it was him.

  Her heart stumbling with its frantic pace, she turned, almost slipped on the edge of the step, and propelled herself toward the bottom of the stairs.

  She didn’t even look at the clerk who probably knew, when she had come in earlier, that someone was upstairs rummaging through her room.

  As she pulled the door open, the heavy, rushing footsteps trundled on the stairs.

  “Anaïs!”

  She burst out the door, ran up the short alley into a wide street. She would be an easy target in the scarce foot traffic. Without much thought, she ducked into a drug store. Her head down, damp hair in her eyes, she ambled up the aisle, pretending she searched for something on the bottom shelf.

  Her heart hammered in her ears. She had difficulty hearing the outside noises. Anaïs hadn’t looked at him for longer than ten seconds, yet his image transported her back in time and she was again fourteen, beaten, distraught with fear and hatred. He was still alive.

  Out of the corner of one eye, she saw him run out of the alley, stop, look up and down the street, and then make a full circle on his feet. He ducked back into the alley.

  Bile rose to her throat and she shuddered. Would this be the last taste she got to experience? She felt a sharp pain in her gut when she remembered the taste of Damon’s tongue on hers. And how she missed it once she’d stolen off in the middle of the night.

  She had been right to leave Damon this morning. It wasn’t safe for them to meet at his place again. Ralph had found her at the hotel; he could just as easily follow her to Damon’s. She didn’t want to endanger Damon. She couldn’t live with herself if something happened to him because of her.

  The need to cry was childish. Tears wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, she focused on the shelves with hair dyes. She grabbed one and walked up to the counter, glancing out the window. The clerk didn’t comment on her disheveled look. In the mirror behind him, she saw her face with the nervous red patches on her cheeks. She didn’t recognize herself with the harassed look, the flying hair, and the thin line of her mouth. Had she met this woman in her previous life, she would have despised her for her lack of grace and style. Maman used to tell her not to judge people because everyone fought battles she knew nothing about. But judged she had, and she didn’t think she could stop now. Empathy had never been part of her emotional toolbox.

  “Anything else, Miss?” the clerk said. “Perhaps you’d like a card?”

  She glanced at the selection of Valentine cards. Next to them, there were heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, pink with large black mustaches on them and the words ‘I mustache you a question. Will you be my Valentine?’

  The bizarre contrast between her situation and the ridiculous Valentine gifts almost brought her to tears.

  The clerk must have felt something was wrong, because he added up the bill with no further questions.

  The empty street outside looked desolate, forbidding, but once she’d paid, she had no reason to dawdle behind.

  She walked in the opposite direction from Ralph. Her shoes started to give her blisters. She’d need a new pair. When she’d gone on the run, she didn’t expect it to be quite so literal.

  ***

  The picture of the black Virgin Mary on the wall and the incense sticks gave her newest hotel room a whiff of the Caribbean. She felt as if she were dislodged from her life and transported into someone else’s. She simply didn’t fit into this shambles of a room where the windows rattled every time the train surged from the underground to the surface. There was linoleum on the floor, for God’s sake.

  This was not her life. This could not be happening.

  And yet, a part of her accepted it. Somehow, it made her flight easier, but also more hopeless.

  Within a week, she went from owning half of Stella McCartney’s line to being a walking commercial for Goodwill with her second-hand cast-offs. . But right now she was stripped to her waist, scissors in one hand and a luscious lock of black hair in the other. Tears slid down her face as the rest of her rich mane fell to the floor, creating a black, fallen halo around her bare feet.

  She had the bottle of peroxide ready on the shelf above the sink. At least, its smell would drown out the stink of sewage, mold and incense.

  When she was done with her hair, she busied herself with washing her clothes. She used hand soap. Her knuckles bled as she rinsed the clothes. She hung them up over the shower curtain rod. Wrapped in a towel, she dragged her sore feet and tired body to the bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

  When she woke up, she walked into the bathroom to wash the sleep off her face. In front of the mirror, she shrieked and jerked around to face the stranger behind her. There was no one there.

  She’d forgotten she’d dyed and cut her hair the day before.

  “For fuck’s sake!” She breathed hard, grasping the edge of the sink while she calmed down.

  She left her dingy room with a plan to protect Damon because Ralph was capable of anything.

  She would run. Faster and further than before. She’d been running all along, anyhow. Why else was she using her mother’s maiden name? Moving to a tiny studio when her father owned an apartment in Kensington which was empty while he was in the Philippines? Why was she friendless and got a rash every time her name got mentioned outside her tight circle of acquaintances? She was even hiding from the fact that she was hiding.

  She hummed the Queen’s “Great Pretender” in homage to her own bizarre situation.

  ***

>   When she entered the park, Damon already waited for her on the bench under a poplar tree. The whole path across the park was lined with them. Their naked upward-pointing branches looked like they were in elated prayer.

  She needed one of those now.

  His black hood was pulled over his thick dark hair and she was reminded of her hacked, bleached locks. With a heavy heart, she went to join him on the bench.

  “No...” He tried stopping her with his hand, but then he obviously realized his mistake. “Oh.”

  Her smile felt as washed out as her hair. “It’s okay. I screamed when I saw myself in the mirror this morning.”

  “So good to see you,” he whispered in her ear, and her eyes started to sting. She would have given anything for this to be a normal meeting of a normal couple. But she knew it was a goodbye; she felt it in her exhausted bones.

  She cried a little when she said, “Fucking brilliant seeing you.” She clung to him with desperation that must have reeked a mile away.

  “Sh.” He caressed her soul with whispers and warm touches and she melted with gratitude. She didn’t deserve any of it, but she needed it badly.

  “Everything will be fine.”

  “God, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you know?”

  She looked at him and saw him as if for the first time. The honest planes of his face, his unassuming love for her imprinted in his smiling lines, the adoring blue eyes that reflected her own traitorous face back to her. She’d given it all up over a principle or maybe out of fear.

  “I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?” she said, eyes wide at the painful realization.

  “You did the best you could. You were young and it left a deep mark on you. It’s only natural that...” He squeezed her shoulder in comfort.

  At first, she was confused until she realized he was talking about Ralph and what had happened between them years ago.

  “I meant you. Us.”

  He looked at her, his expression wavering between heartbreak and generosity.

  “You did the best you could,” he said again.

  “It wasn’t good enough.” She dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap. “You’re not coming with me, are you?” she whispered.

  His side was warmly pressed into hers so she more felt the movement than heard the sigh. “I have a life here.”

  “But you hate it, the jobs you have to take, the dump of a place you live in.”

  “What will I have anywhere else? No fancy penthouses for sure. It’s miserable, I can’t argue. But it’s all I have.”

  “I need you, Damon. I know I used to think that I don’t, but I know better now.”

  His chuckle shocked her. Even as she looked at him, appalled, he didn’t seem rattled by her piqued temper.

  “You think you do. If this had never happened, if we had a chance at normalcy, then maybe. But now, the stress would get to us and we’d start to get on each other’s nerves.”

  “It wouldn’t. We wouldn’t.” The words sounded impotent.

  He shook his head, playing absent-mindedly with a lock of her stark blond hair.

  “You’d rather stay here where you can barely survive than go with me?” It was a low blow playing on the money card, but she was desperate to get him to see they would be better off together.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but then he hesitated.

  “I’m not broke because of the circumstances, it’s because I don’t give a fuck about money. I might as well stay put. I’d rather you were safe.”

  It was like the wind was knocked out of her, and all she managed was, “I see.”

  He stared in her eyes for an eternity but really it lasted all of a minute. He kissed her mouth, and if ever there was an expression of love that meant everything that would never be, this was it. It woke up such contrasting emotions they made her tremble. She feared for him, she feared for herself. There was the sense of being loved profoundly, of uncontrollable longing, of hurt.

  She wrapped her arms around herself as if to contain it all inside, as a keepsake.

  “I never really fit in here, anyhow,” she said, thinking of the childhood years she’d spent in France with Maman. London had always felt alien. She couldn’t stand it any longer; she had to get far away. For a while, at least.

  “It’s the people who care about you that make you feel at home. It doesn’t matter in which country or city.”

  She chuckled, examining her chilled fingers. “The people I love always leave. The ones I can’t stand stay. That’s my curse.”

  “It’s everyone’s curse. But it’s the way we are.”

  At that, she smiled just as the tears touched the corners of her lips. It was a rainbow sort of smile. Half and half. Neither here nor there. She was by Damon’s side now, a few hours from now she would be on the Eurostar.

  “This is it, then?”

  Her soul felt bruised, and she would give anything to be able to sit back down and press into him for all eternity. She’d fit there, mold into him.

  Certain things are only appealing because they cannot happen.

  Too hurt for a proper goodbye, she started to walk away but she couldn’t leave just yet.

  “What’s next for you, then?” she asked.

  “I’ll get wasted with cheap wine. Then I’ll pretend I’m over you and I’ll go back to Uni and my shitty jobs.”

  “Promise me you’ll take care.”

  “I’ll wait for you. I promise.”

  When she turned her back to him and walked down the alley, tears chilled her cheeks. Loved ones leaving was not the worst, having to leave them behind was.

  When a silly heart-shaped balloon bobbled into her path, she swatted at it furiously causing the girl carrying it to jump back in shock. While her heart shattered, Anaïs didn’t need reminding it was Valentine’s Day.

  ***

  The train journey across the Channel couldn’t have felt longer if she’d travelled to the other side of the world. Anaïs’s nails were bitten to the quick by the time she reached her hometown. It took her as much time to get from the city center to their country estate as it had to get from London to France.

  Mme. Réno had retired after Father and Anaïs left and the house had been locked up since. The lock resisted Anaïs’s first attempt at opening the door. When she finally entered her chest squeezed at the sight. There was something tragic in how the white sheets and dust covered the exquisite heirloom furniture. The manor had been in her mother’s family for centuries but even at the worst of times it probably hadn’t been as neglected as now.

  When the rage at her father and his selfishness stirred to life in Anaïs, she walked back out and slammed the front door behind her. She couldn’t spend the night here. Despite the dusk, she still had some time to find a place to stay since it was only late afternoon.

  She didn’t get far down the country lane when she was forced to stop. Her blistered feet were killing her.

  “Putain!”

  Her furious cry echoed in the surrounding forest, mocking her, when she sat down by the side of the road to loosen the laces.

  Her stomach turned when she pulled the shoe off and saw her bloodied sock. She couldn’t deal with blood since the day she’d found Maman. The two were indelibly linked and she would never get over it.

  What she’d give to have Damon with her, he’d know what to do. But he was back in London, probably three sheets to the wind, maybe even romancing some girl.

  She moaned. God, she couldn’t think of him with someone else. Only weeks ago, she’d have insisted she felt nothing for him. Now that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—pretend anymore, he was just as far out of her reach as the moon and the stars which winked at her gleefully.

  With her feet too hurt to walk much further, her only choice was to return to the house no matter how many miserable memories it stirred up.

  Almost back to the front door, she veered right and around the corner into the backyard. There was the caretaker’s cottage
at the end of the gravel path. She could sleep there, at least for a few nights before she decided what to do next.

  She had a hard time remembering the layout of the place because she’d only visited it a few times. She peered in, but in the dark, it was difficult to see through the grimy windows.

  The rock she threw breaking the glass made an awful noise in the dead of night. The backpack got cut in a few spots when she used it to clear out the remaining jagged pieces in the frame. However, she still cut her hand on a piece when she climbed through the broken window.

  The cottage was just as abandoned as the main house but without the dust of memories which was all she needed to be able to get some sleep.

  Uncovering the small sofa stirred so much dust she sneezed, so she left the rest of the house hidden under the sheets.

  Her feet throbbed with pain when she removed her shoes, but despite aching all over, she curled up on the sofa and dropped off to sleep.

  ***

  Painful brightness stabbed her eyelids and she jerked upright. Who was that? What was going on? She slid from the edge of the sofa and landed on the floor, the jolt sending a shooting pain from her feet up her calves.

  “Aie!”

  Apart from her cry of pain, the room was quiet, and the light came from the kitchen window where sunshine blazed its way into the room.

  She’d arrived to the estate late last night and hadn’t had the chance to look it over because it was dark and she didn’t have a flashlight with her. In daylight, everything seemed even more depressing.

  She dusted off her trousers and reluctantly put on her shoes. Walking barefoot across the dirty floor would be a health hazard.

  Her stomach turned at the filthy sink and the trail of mouse droppings across the kitchen counter. Perhaps the bathroom was cleaner.