Sucker for the Boss

by Blue Sky Books

  “Scared, excited, happy,” said Liana.

  “That is how you should always feel,” replied Lance.

  Liana nodded in agreement. She tried to let go of her fears. But she felt like everyone was watching them. There were only a few dozen couples dancing. Liana felt sure that Jamal would see her with another man. He would figure out that Lance is who she has been thinking about all the this time.

  “Liana, live in this moment, for it can last forever if you let it,” said Lance.

  Really?, yes, it can. This is what I have wanted. Liana let go of her anxiety, and for that moment she was eternally happy.

  “No matter what happens, we will always have this dance, this final dance,” said Lance.

  Yes, one dance, that is all we need. Liana felt peace like a river wash over her. Suddenly, snow began to fall from the ceiling. It was fake, but set the mood nonetheless. The music swelled, it was nearing the crescendo.

  “Don’t let this moment slip by,” said Lance.

  Liana closed her eyes, focusing on herself, how she felt, and then on the environment around her. She focused on the feeling of the floor on her feet, the heels she was wearing and the orchestra playing the background. She could hear individual instruments and feel the sound entering her ears and filling her being. Liana opened her eyes. She saw blue. Lance gazed right back at her. He saw green. They danced in that moment and were lost in a beautiful eternity. Time slowed down for Liana. She breathed deep, and savored the smell of Lance. It made her feel safe. The music began to grow softer, it was nearing the end. Liana began to think again, instead of feel, and time sped up. The music stopped.

  “That is all for tonight,” said Lance, and as quick as he showed up, he was gone.

  Liana stood speechless.

  “Hey, I’ve been looking all over for you,” said Jamal.

  “Oh...hey...ya sorry I couldn’t find you either,” said Liana.

  “I was standing in the same place, waiting for you.”

  “Well this is a large venue, I tried to find you, but I guess I got lost, I’m sorry.”

  “You have just been acting so strange lately. And who was that guy you were dancing with?” Asked Jamal.

  “What are you talking about,” said Liana.

  “Nevermind, I need to get out of here. I need some fresh air,” said Jamal as he turned to leave the dance.

  Liana followed him. Now she felt the weight of her day to day problems. She hated it, and wanted to return to Lance. He never brought problems into her life, only joy and peace and happiness. They went outside to the parking lot.

  “You know what Liana, you have never really showed much affection to me, and I get it, that is just your personality. But this past week, it has just been a different ballgame. You don’t even give me the time of day,” said Jamal in anger.

  “Jamal, I have a lot going on, you can’t expect to always be in the center of my world,” replied Liana.

  “See, that’s just it. I am never the center of your world, I am just a convenience to you. You know what? I am tired of doing everything I can to understand you and treat you right. I’m tired of the games and putting myself out there and getting nothing in return. I’m going home, said Jamal.

  Liana just stood there, as Jamal got into his car and left. She turned and looked back at the dance. There were couples outside, holding each other, laughing and seeming to love each other. Why can’t I find that? Why do I turn guys away? Lana sat down on the curb and began sobbing. It was supposed to be a special night. Christmas had always meant so much to her. Now she was alone, with nobody to console her. Lance is just a fantasy. He would never truly love me. He probably thinks I’m just a stupid girl. I’m sure he gets hit on by tons of young girls. Who am I that he should care. She remembered their dance, but it felt as if a dream. How could that be real. Did that really happen? She wondered what kind of guy Lance really was, if he could be trusted. Her thoughts made her more sad, and she continued to weep. A light snow began to fall, and she was very cold.

  *****

  Lance got in his car to drive home. He had taken a huge risk to dance with Liana. Driving home he felt something. There was a look in her eye that he couldn’t shake. Innocence. Lance took a deep breath. He couldn’t turn around and go talk to her. This was forbidden. He should never have come. But I must return. Lance would lose his job immediately and get his teaching license revoked. It isn’t worth it, just a fantasy, nothing more. There have been countless girls in the past he has liked and have liked him back. And there would be countless more. Why should Liana be any different. But she was. He knew it to be true. Lance turned around.

  He had just got done telling Liana that she should always feel alive, on the edge, excited and dangerous. Now he would live out those words. He sped up, his heart rate rising. Lance felt alive now. Lance was Don Quixote rescuing Dulcinea, or Romeo about to meet Juliet, knowing that their love was forbidden. Lance knew the cost. He knew that Pyramus and Thisbe died, that Romeo and Juliet committed suicide. He knew that forbidden love often ended with tragedy, but that was made it beautiful, and why the poets and muses sing of it. Lance had lived his life according to the rules, and it was good. But now Lance was no longer satisfied with good. He wanted a beautiful, dangerous love. He wanted Liana.

  Now his heart was soaring, as he imagined the scene that was about to take place. Forbidden love didn’t have to be forbidden for long. There was a way for them to be together, and he would make it happen. His car continued. He turned the last corner and there she was, alone in the cold without a coat.

  *****

  Liana’s spirits were now completely downcast and any hint of forlorn hope seemed to slip away. She was nearly out of tears. The cold set it, and she began to shiver. She looked around. The ground was beginning to cover up with snow. A few people were still entering the dance, it had not ended yet. She didn’t feel like going back, though. There was nothing for her there but pain and sorrow.

  Suddenly, a large truck pulled up right beside her. She looked up. The door opened and a well built handsome man stepped out.

  “Lance!” said Liana surprised.

  “Liana”

  “You came back for me. I didn’t think you really cared. I thought that…”

  Lance put a finger to Liana’s mouth. “Liana, you are young, and there are a lot of things about life that you do not know. I have noticed that you love the romantics, you love Romeo and Juliet, Guinevere and Lancelot, and other of the great love stories. I think that is wonderful, attractive, and really admire that in you. But what you must understand, is that at my age, I have lived long enough to see how precious they are. Those stories remind us of the power we have to feel. Liana, if we live our lives by the rules and we do what others tell us, and try to do what we think is right, we will never feel. I want to feel again. Ever since I laid eyes on you, I have felt deeply. You have stirred within me something new, something I never even realized existed. I don’t care how old you are, or our backgrounds. I just care if you feel the same way. When we danced in there earlier, we floated, like a prince and a princess, as if we were animated from the pen strokes of Lord Byron himself. I say that we live out what we believe, and we follow our hearts. What say you?”

  “Oh Lance, you have no idea how often this past week I have dreamed of something like this. Every love story I have ever read is fulfilled in you Lance. You captured my heart when I first saw you. You spoke not just to my mind or my body, but to my spirit. I feel that kindred connection that you speak of. Lance you speak as a poet, articulate and deft of tongue. I could listen to you hours on end. Your voice is like a balm to my ears. I do love you Lance, with all my heart,” said Liana, with tears of joy streaming down her face.

  “Then take my hand, my dear. Let us walk arm and arm into the party together. Let dance there without our masks on for everyone to see. We need not be ashamed of our love,” said Lance.

  “But if they see us together, you will lose your job,” said
Liana.

  “Probably, if that happened, if I lost my job, then our love wouldn’t be forbidden, would it?”

  Liana understood. He really cared for her, and would sacrifice his career for her. They walked in together, arm in arm. Liana’s favorite Christmas song was playing, and her and Lance slow danced in the middle of the dance floor. Neither of them had their masks on, and neither of them cared. They could not keep pretending to be other people and live the lives others expected of them. This is what they wanted.

  The other teachers took notice and began talking to one another and notified the principal. The teachers and the principal stopped dancing and gathered to the side. Now the only people dancing were Liana and Lance and a few other students. Eventually the students saw what was happening, and it was just Liana and Lance.

  “Do you see what is going on around us?” asked Liana.

  “Of course,” replied Lance.

  The snow continued to fall on them, and the music continued to play. The ground was now white with only Liana’s red dress flowing across it.

  “Everybody is looking at us,” said Liana.

  “No, they are looking at you,” said Lance. “You have no idea how beautiful you look right now.”

  “This dance can last forever, right?” asked Liana.

  “Of course it can, because every Christmas we are going to dance, from now until forever,” said Lance.

  “You promise?” asked Liana.

  “Promise”

  Lance kept his promise. They did dance every Christmas, and do to this day. Lance lost his job of course, but with Liana by his side he took up freelance work doing stuff he really enjoyed. Being the couple that they were, with such a vast age difference, and racial difference, they could never blend in. But that is how they wanted it. They never wanted to return to being normal again. For it was only in following their hearts that they found each other, and with each other found happiness.

  The College Rockstar

  He likened an angel in a heavenly chorus.

  That is, whenever any random angel in a heavenly chorus decided to set aside the commonplace harp and pick up a wicked hot axe in its place.

  Seated at a quiet corner table at Night Grooves, a low lit night club that formed the eastern border of the campus at Primswell University, Cara Donahue stared with wide eyes at the man who stood center stage at the crowded, compact club; the ebullient backdrop of a red scarlet curtain seeming a perfect accent to his ethereal show.

  She listened enrapt as the statuesque man before her, a beautiful vision of flowing golden hair, wide azure eyes, bronzed chiseled features and—for an angel at least—a downright devilish smile, performed a rousing rock instrumental titled “Nightsong.”

  "This is an original composition,” she whispered as an aside to her companion at the table, a petite blonde who rolled her blue eyes heavenward in response to this news.

  “You don’t say?” sniffed Morgan Cleary, Cara’s roommate and partner in crime (well, as much crime as two relatively sedate English lit majors possibly could muster). “You’ve only told me that at least once during each of the eight consecutive evenings that we’ve spent here, hidden in the corner and drinking lukewarm beer while we drool profusely over the object of your desire.”

  Cara shook her head.

  “Ian so is not the object of my desire,” she mumbled these last words in a low abashed tone, even as her rebellious bespectacled eyes devoured the sublime vision of the angel with the guitar; an angel dressed tonight in a skin tight leather jumpsuit that accentuated every muscle of his tall statuesque form.

  Not that she noticed.

  “Look, I just love his music OK?” Cara insisted, turning briefly to regard her smirking roommate.as she added, “Imagine one of our very own classmates, cutting a CD and touring the state with his own brand of classic rock—all before graduation! If only I could have the same luck with that novel I’m trying to sell.” She paused here, adding as she piled a small mound of chocolate covered peanuts unceremonious between her lips, “You would think that some big city—or, what the heck, even small city—publisher would jump all over a steampunk version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined. No accounting for taste in the world of modern publishing, I guess.”

  Morgan chuckled.

  “It’ll happen Sis. And in the meantime, you’ll always have your tutoring job waiting for you at the student services building,” her roommate reminded her, adding as she nodded in the direction of the performer onstage, “And if you really are just an admirer of Ian McGovern’s music, then why are you shy about talking to him?”

  Cara bit her lip.

  “Well maybe I have yet to garner the courage to actually, you know, speak to him,” she admitted, adding with an awkward shrug, “But I did manage to move up a couple of rows from the last show—so potentially, if he ever lifts his head from that blasted guitar at any point and time, we could indeed make eye contact. Potentially.”

  Just then the object of her—um—admiration did indeed raise his head from the blasted guitar; his full moist lips graced with a slight frown as he seemed to be trying to figure out just who was talking through his show.

  “Oh drat it to blazes,” Cara released through gritted teeth, adding as she jumped from her seat and ran some skittish hands down the length of the basic black dress that covered her rubenesque form, “We’ve been found out. Code red! Let’s go!”

  Just then she realized she’d said these words out loud; intensifying her ire as she grabbed the hand of her wide eyed friend and ran for the door—the tousled strands of her cocoa brown hair flying like a banner posted to note the moment of her complete and total humiliation.

  She froze before the door of the club, her cheeks flushing red hot as she heard a round of deep melodic laughter erupt from the stage behind them; followed by the opening strings of a rhythmic mid-tempo rock tune whose title and theme she knew all too well.

  “Baby don’t go,” Ian howled, his deep throaty voice and stirring guitar riffs still searing her senses—even as they drove her straight out the door. “Please don’t leave me behind you, craving your light and your love.”

  “Cha, very funny dude,” she mumbled, adding as she and her stunned friend made fast tracks out the door, “All that I’m craving right now is cab fare. Or the timely arrival of a bus. Or a friggin’ unicycle. You know, whatever works.”

  What was not working, she decided quickly, was this entire disaster of an evening.

  *****

  “Never. Again.”

  The next morning Cara found herself ensconced in a far more comfortable and familiar atmosphere; one that took the form of her modest, clean lined enclosed cubicle at the Primswell University student services center.

  Sinking in the cushioned steel grey chair that sat behind her polished cherry wood desk, she poised her cell phone up against her ear as she insisted into its defenseless receiver, “I don’t care if Ian McGovern is playing the Primswell winter festival this year. I don’t care if he’s playing the front lawn of the flipping White House, with Barack and Michelle singing back up on his popular cover version of ‘Rock’n’Roll All Night’. I hope never again to lay eyes or ears on that most unsettling man.”

  She rolled her eyes as her alleged friend Morgan met these words with a long, hard sigh.

  “Did you even bother to turn around and gauge Ian’s reaction to your little melt down at the club last night?” she asked, adding without missing as much as a beat, “Well I did, and—from what I could see, at least—he was thoroughly charmed by you. He smiled, he laughed, and—in a bizarre, totally warped sort of way—he even was serenading you as we left the club.”

  Cara shook her head—then pondered just what an ineffectual move this was to make over the telephone.

  “Don’t try to dress it up Sis. He was mocking me,” Cara insisted, adding with a snort, “And although I am as much a glutton for punishment as the next univers
ity tutor, I will not—and I repeat, I will not!—voluntarily share prime breathing space with that man. Ever. Again.”

  She fell silent seconds later, as the stout form of her mustached employer—one Gary Lennox, lead teacher at the Primswell University student tutoring center—loomed suddenly in her doorway.

  “And as I was saying,” Cara resumed her conversation, this time in a formal, officious tone, “Just keep practicing that long division, and we’ll see you acing Math 101 in no time. Got it? Good.”

  With these words she hit the off button on her phone, dropping it like a piece of hot coal on the surface of her desk as she turned to face her smiling boss.

  “Good morning, Gary!” she greeted him with a smile. “I hope we have a full roster of students awaiting us today, eager to benefit from our almost lethal dose of intellectual enlightenment. I don’t have my first class of the day until 2 p.m.”

  Gary nodded.

  “Well you’re in luck Kid,” he told her, adding with a broad gesture to the office around them, “As it turns out, your newest student is set to walk through our doors in just about 10 minutes. And this should be the first visit of many, considering the fact that he’s about to flunk Classic Literature.”

  Cara clapped her hands together, beaming her approval of this concept as she declared, “I love a challenge, especially as it pertains to a subject that I know pretty well. I am an English major, as you know, and I have written a….”

  “…a steampunk version of Pride and Prejudice with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined,” Gary finished in a deadpan tone, adding with a slight chuckle, “And I’m sure you will be more than pleased to learn that your new student also boasts a most artistic bent. He is a musician, as a matter of fact.”

  Cara nodded.

  “Well in that case he’ll make my third regular client who plays the pipes or tickles the ivories,” she reminded him. “I’m currently tutoring the French horn player and a lead saxophonist from our school’s marching band.”