by Audra Hart
She hates to admit how often her mind has drifted during those talks to her vivid fantasies of making love with him. She blushes now at the thought, but can’t help the smile that illuminates her face. After a mental shake meant to bring her back to the here and now she continues to look around the room; Lucian has good taste…
The coffee table and two end tables are sleek modern black lacquer numbers. Very functional, but attractive too. The coffee table is always neat, unlike her own. There is usually a book or two, various medical and scientific journals on the coffee table, but there isn‘t any of the chaotic clutter that covers almost every surface in her house. The end tables each have a lamp with gray shades and warm red, geometric sculptures for bases. All three tables have a small yellow ashtray, but Deidra never uses them because she once caught a glimpse of Lucian wrinkling his nose in distaste when she was smoking at her place, so now she doesn’t smoke when she’s around him.
There’s a hammered metal and glass desk in one corner where the telephone and computer are. The desk is very well organized and is always tidy, as is his office downstairs. She grimaces as she thinks of her jumbled work area at her place. She knows she hasn’t always been so disorganized, but she hasn’t quite figured out how to get back to that place in her life yet.
There isn’t a TV in the room, but there are three huge bookshelves filled with books. She has looked at the titles before. She‘s even borrowed a few. His reading interests are widely varied, like her own. All in all, it is a very comfortable and inviting room. She enjoys spending time here when she comes to visit him. She scoots her bottom toward the backrest of the sofa. Feeling very glad that Lucian is her friend, and quite frankly more than a little bit surprised that he is her friend.
She thinks back to when she met him with Seth Bailey in the hospital. She chuckles at herself and the mistake she made by assuming he was a P.T. student. Pop always said, ‘When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.’ How true.
Deidra smiles when she recalls meeting up with him and Seth again. It was quite a shock. After she left the hospital AMA she did everything she could to leave her old life behind, short of moving out of state. She can’t quite bring herself to do that, her memories of her kids are here… they are buried here…
Stop it Dee!
Dee had spent that first night out of the hospital sitting on the floor in front of her door crying. She had wept and wept. She had no idea one person could cry so much. When daylight finally filled the living room of her home that once was filled with life when her babies were alive. She struggled to get up out of the floor and eventually walked through every room in the house.
That’s when she realizes she couldn’t stay there any longer. She finds the folder the attorney gave her and reads through it. Okay, so I have options. I can walk away from this house. If I stay here… I will die, I will take my own life because the pain of living among their memories will drive me insane. The documents indicate that $100,000 had been deposited into her checking account and the rest was held in trust. Yes, I have options.
Deidra contacts a local group that works with adults with disabilities. She contracts with them to come out and remove everything from her home and sell it in their thrift store, keeping the funds for the people they serve. She then files all of the family’s important documents into a file cabinet and finds a couple of plastic storage tubs to pack up with a few clothes and the like. She fills another tub with all of the family photos from the walls, the mantle and various shelves. She retrieves the photo albums from the closet. At the last moment she finds her digital camera, there are probably pictures of the kids on there that she never printed. And then she steels herself to enter each child’s room and packs up various mementos of each child and then closes the door on her past.
She made arrangements to have the file cabinet moved to a local mini storage. She packs the four storage tubs into the backseat and trunk of Rolan’s Camry, and drives away without even looking back. She’s really not sure exactly why she chose to drive out to Connerville to see her old friend, Mad Mike.
Mike had lived in El Paso for thirty years. That’s where she originally met him. She actually worked as a bartender in his bar when she was attending college. It was a rough biker bar, but Mike looked out for his employees and paid them well.
They had kept in touch over the years. Mike was a good friend. He moved to Connerville five years ago to be near his grown daughter who was ill. It’s a small, freaky world we live in. Mattie, his daughter, died last year. So now Mad Mike and Deidra were both alone. When she showed up at his backwoods biker hangout south of Connerville, he had offered her a job. She didn’t need the money, but she figured Mike needed a friend and she knew she did. So she went to work for him. Why not? I have already turned my back on my former life. Hanging out with my old buddy, Mad Mike, might be just what I need.
She had been working there about a week when Dee suggests to Mike that they start hosting a regular pool tournament night. She remembers Lucian telling her that he and Seth were pool buddies and they enjoyed hitting tournaments in the area. It might be a good idea for the bar, maybe bring in a broader customer base.
So now, every Tuesday, The Shack holds a small pool tournament, and sells half price pitchers of beer. It is always a busy night. Three weeks in, Deidra looks up when more customers walk into the rundown beer joint. A big smile illuminates her face. It’s Seth Bailey and Lucian Michaels. Seth spots her right away and goes to her to hug her.
Mike makes a move to run interference for Deidra, but it’s quickly obvious that Dee knows these guys and is friendly with them. In fact, Mike is happy to see the effect they have on her. She actually smiles. Not that fake barmaid smile she pastes on for the customers, but a real, honest to God smile. The newcomers spend an hour chatting with Dee at the bar. She’s animated when she’s interacting with them.
She couldn’t help herself she, had been drawn to them, especially Lucian. Once they join the pool tournament at nine o’clock she catches herself watching Lucian play pool. After that, they came to play pool every Tuesday night at The Shack. That’s how she came to be friendly acquaintances and later friends with Seth Bailey and Lucian Michaels. But she didn’t become close to Lucian until later.
She smiles at the memory and folds her hands in her lap as she looks down at her feet. What she sees disappoints her even further. Angry moisture wells up in her eyes. “Dammit! I didn’t even put on real shoes,” she mutters as she glares at the house shoes encasing her feet.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lucian has been watching her from the doorway. He is pleased that she likes the room and feels comfortable here. She doesn‘t seem too keyed up right now, she even smiled that smile he knows so well a few seconds ago. When he saw her glance down and become upset over the shoes he knows she probably sees them as another failure on her part. He sighs and steps into the room.
“Deidra? Stop it, love, don’t get bogged down in the details. You’re here, and not in your bed. That’s what counts. Look at me.”
Lucian is kneeling before her. His cool, pale hand is raised to her chin. He gently tilts her face up to his. Their eyes meet. He smiles as he raises both of his hands to clasp her face between them. She closes her eyes, and savors his cool touch. He uses his thumbs to gently wipe the moisture that‘s coating her lashes. It takes every ounce of self-control that he possesses to resist the urge to kiss her and take her into his arms. He misses her so much. Baby, come back to me. I need you!
“Look at me,” he commands softly. Finally, she opens her now defiant eyes. He chuckles and effortlessly rises to sit beside her on the couch. She never likes to be told what to do. He gently takes her shaking hands into his cool, pale ones. She shivers as she marvels at the hardness, and the strength she feels in those hands.
“Cold?” he asks.
“No, of course not,” she replies. “You know I never feel cold with you.” She wonders why she said that. Looking up she searches his face to s
ee if he thinks she’s weird for saying things like that. But all she sees in his face is loving acceptance.
They smile at each other. Lucian lets go of her hands and picks up her coffee from the tray and hands it to her. “Drink. I don’t think you are fully awake yet,” he softly chuckles.
“I am just operating on auto-pilot this morning. Sorry.” Deidra admits this with embarrassment coloring her cheeks. She accepts the cup and smiles, he has added cream and sugar, just as she likes it. It’s delicious.
Luca resists the urge to chuckle at her tendency to blush. She has always blushed easily around him. “Did you eat anything?” he queries gently as he raises one of his thick, dark eyebrows for emphasis.
Deidra silently shakes her head no.
“I didn‘t think so. Well, there’s food on the tray. Eat up. I am eager to hear more about your life.” She looks at the yellow lacquer tray. There’s a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich on it, and some mixed fresh fruit, cut up in a small glass bowl.
Deidra snorts and rolls her eyes at him. “How does he do that?” she wonders. She had been craving cantaloupe, strawberries, and kiwi fruit for a couple of days. She had put them on the grocery list on her fridge, but hadn‘t been shopping in a while. Her appetite has been fleeting at best since the crash.
Then she asks him a question as another thought occurs to her, “Lucian, why don’t we have these sessions down stairs, in your offices?”
“Well, love,” he grins, “you and I don’t have sessions. You are not my client. You are my friend. A very dear, precious friend.” He brings her hands up to his lips and kisses them gently. “Dee, you don’t need a counselor, you need a friend. I have counseling sessions with my clients downstairs. But I spend time with my friends in my residence. Make sense?” He leans in closer and brushes a stray curl from her face.
Deidra looks into his gorgeous eyes and decides to tell him the whole truth, as it pertains to his question, anyway. “I’m glad you see it that way too. But still I wonder why I am a friend. I know I am. I feel it, a connection, and a bond that I have never experienced before I met you. I have always felt it from the first time I met you, at the hospital. We certainly have been connected in some strange way ever since you and Seth started coming to The Shack for the pool tournaments. I thought you were one extraordinary, remarkable, beautiful young man. You always seem to get me, even when I don‘t understand myself.”
“And then when my friend, Mike, talked me into checking out that grief support group. I walk in and guess who’s running the group?” Deidra chuckles at the memory, “I was so embarrassed, but you wouldn‘t let me crawl off into my little hole, would you?” He smiles and shakes his head no.
She pauses to think about their friendship, and then says, “Lucian, it seems like you have taken it upon yourself to bring me back from the brink ever since that night.” The last part of her little speech was so quiet that most people wouldn’t have been able to hear it, but Lucian did, and it makes him smile.
“How long has it been since we became friends? Three months?” she asks uncertainly.
“No, love, it’s been six months since we became friends at Mike‘s place,” he reminds her gently.
There’s a long pause. That means it has been eleven months since the crash. She wonders why she keeps losing chunks of time. “I’m still losing track of time…” she whispers. It really troubles her, and makes her feel totally out of control. She takes a deep breath to try to calm herself before she resumes, “But I don’t understand this connection between us. It’s so real, so deep, so personal… Do you? Understand this connection, I mean.” She asks Lucian softly.
Lucian smiles happily at the question. “Yes,” is his only reply.
She looks at him, waiting for him to fill her in. When she realizes he‘s not going to, she tries to prod him. “Could you explain it to me?”
“It’s not really important right now.” He replies and picks up the bowl of fruit and the fork and hands them to her with a gentle smile. “In time, I am sure you will understand. But until then, Dee it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do have that connection and we are friends. And we have some talking to do today. So eat up and let‘s get to it.”
She eats in silence. Lucian settles into the sofa, turning himself to face her with his left knee drawn up on the cushion between them. He watches as she slowly eats the fruit and sandwich while she sips her coffee. A smile curls his lips as he wonders how many hundreds of ham and cheese sandwiches he has watched her eat over the lifetimes.
As he watches her eat, his eyes devour her features as a starving man would a steak dinner. Her wavy, pale reddish-blonde hair is streaked with gray here and there. It’s really very attractive. The gray appears as a lighter blonde to the casual observer. Luca knows that she really doesn’t like the gray streaks. She feels as though they don’t belong, that they signify some sort of failure, something that has gone terribly wrong. He knows that she doesn’t understand why she feels that way. But he finds the gray streaks lovely. She recently had her hair bobbed in a short cut that looks very stylish and requires little fuss. The hair style looks very professional when she remembers to straighten it, but it makes her look sweet, soft and vulnerable when she doesn‘t style it. She is so hard on herself when she doesn’t “fix herself up” as she puts it. This thought brings a smile to his lips.
It makes no difference to him; she’s beautiful in his eyes. She’s fairly tall, a little over six feet and solidly built. He knows that she would cringe at that description, but she is truly an imposing figure. Her body is curvaceous and supple, and Lucian winces every time she tries to hide it under those shapeless clothes she favors. Despite the horrific injuries to her body, she moves with a latent grace, and lithe power she doesn’t even recognize.
She is not beautiful in the classical sense, but to him she is the loveliest of all women. Her captivating face is somewhat angular in this incarnation. She has a rather long, patrician nose, but it suits her well. Her rosy, soft lips are full and inviting. Taken separately her features are ordinary, but taken as a whole, he thinks she’s breathtaking.
There is a faint dusting of tiny freckles across her nose and cheekbones that warm his heart. The faint lines at her eyes and around her mouth testify to her strength, and all that she has endured. The jagged scar running from her temple down her left cheek signifies a failure on his part, to him anyway. To her it’s a brutal reminder of everything that she has lost.
A few seconds pass before he realizes that she is looking directly at him. She’s probably wondering what he is staring at. He knows he should look away, smile or something before she gets self-conscious. But he can’t look away. He’s trapped in those beautiful emerald eyes. The same bright, lovely eyes that he has followed through the centuries.
“Uh… I … guess I will take this stuff and put it away. Be right back,” she says as she skitters away from the couch to the kitchen.
“Damn!” he mutters to himself. “Fool, you are going to scare her away if you don’t watch out.”
Lucian listens to Deidra as she putters around his kitchen, cleaning up the remains of her breakfast. He can hear her heart racing, and her breathing is slightly elevated. If he could see her face he knows her cheeks would be bright with a scarlet blush. But after a little while he can hear her heart rate and breathing calm. He can picture her clutching the counter, willing herself to compose her features and calm her racing heart. She sighs in frustration over her reaction to him. Lucian knows she’s very attracted to him and feels self-conscious about it.
He can’t help but smile, she certainly wasn’t uncertain when they first met. She was a confident warrior and Spell Weaver who was attracted to him from the first moment they laid eyes on each other. He chuckles as he remembers that he was the one lacking confidence, but she was patient. She waited for him to come around and confess his love for her.
He’s brought back to the present when she calls out, “I’ll be right out, I nee
d to visit the ‘necessary. ‘ Okay?”
He chuckles over her use of the term “necessary”. He is almost surprised she didn’t say “human necessary” like the old days. She seems just on the verge of returning. “Sure Deidra, go ahead. Take your time. I am not going anywhere,” he calls out to her.
“Damn I hate that name!” he thinks to himself. “But it is fitting.” The name means ‘lost wanderer’ in Gaelic. “She is indeed lost right now. Soon she will remember who she really is, who I really am. Patience, I just need a little more patience.” He strokes his raspy whiskered jaw thoughtfully and uses the time to compose his face into an easy, welcoming mask. His smile is sincere, he really can’t wait until she comes out from hiding in his bathroom. But the easy part is truly an effect. His impatience and eagerness are becoming palpable things, fueling a yearning, even stronger than the thirst that rules his existence. I really should go hunting tonight, he muses, but she asked ‘me’ to come back. I’ll just have to go nearby, south of Deer Creek.
A Big Piece of Stupid
Deidra walks into the living room hesitantly, looking slightly embarrassed. “Do you really want to do this today? I am feeling like an idiot at the moment, and probably should just go home.”
Lucian stands and walks over to stand before her. He takes her hands into his own, and smiles; “Dee, are you trying to run away from the feelings, or is it me you want to get away from?” Lucian demands gently.
“The feelings! Never you!” she admits quietly as she stares at her hands in his. She is feeling more than a little unsure of herself around him at the moment.
