Short Fiction/Free Read/Contemporary/Erotic Romance/M/F
This short story is available for free, and will be released in an ebook edition by Alpheratz Press in early 2010 under their free read Alpherbites banner. Coming soon!
Coming back is never easy…especially when you’re not sure what you were running from.
Excerpt:
God, but it’s been a long time. I’ve been trying to work it out since we spoke on the phone, but I’m really not sure if it’s five or six years. I imagine you’ll tease me for being so forgetful, yet I can’t believe I could ever come anywhere near forgetting you. Not that I’ll tell you that. Even so, I’m slugging back the vodka tonics, waiting for you, and it seems like no time has passed at all. It’s as if it was only yesterday we were in the Holly Bush illegally, sneaking furtive drinks we were too young for, and furtive kisses we couldn’t put names to. To be brutally honest, I’m glad you left. We were, I think, too young. Too young to cope with what was happening.
Of course, perhaps I just told myself that, because I didn’t want to admit what a coward I’d been. That would be shameful, I know, but I’ve done worse things since then.
I don’t think of them now, and I don’t think anymore about the past because-as always-I’ve got myself a table with my back against the wall, and I can see the door opening. My stomach does that little jump it’s done every time that damn door’s opened tonight, but this time I know it’s you, even though your body is turned to the side, turned away from me as you pass some dark-clothed woman in the doorway. Immediately, I recognise your shoulders. And, immediately, my nipples contract a little, even as my eyes are adjusting to fit your welcome shape back into the world.
It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The thinking part of me, the small part that isn’t automatically a crotch on legs as I watch you walk to the bar, is amused by the fact that this hasn’t changed. I knew it wouldn’t, somehow. I hadn’t really thought about you in years, but the reunion was like a flare to memory. I’d half-expected to see you there, surprised at my disappointment when I didn’t.
You get your drink and my hand is raised, fingers half-curled, half-waving, half-waiting… yet again, stuck somewhere between inaction and decisive movement. I want to bite my lip-you’ve made me nervous-but I don’t dare wreck my lip-gloss. It doesn’t matter, because you see me then, and you smile. God, you haven’t forgotten how to smile, that’s for sure. I am caught up and held in that megawatt grin, and as you walk over you don’t seem to have changed at all.
Coming soon from Alpheratz Press
