Twisted Valentine
Fiction from Jaycee Durand
You’re gone.
Stay gone, damn it!
My mouth trembles with the urge to gnash until my teeth crumble. Like the uneasy dreams of lost pearly whites tumbling from one’s mouth, hailstones of doom.
Adam will visit your grave today, Marcia. Today of all days.
He’s mine now. Jeanie’s. I’ll show you.
See how my body yields into his and my fingers trace firm lips as he slumbers, but not for long.
He opens his eyes. A smile like sun rays bursting free of moody clouds lights his face. I incite that heat from him. Me. It ignites an answering fever within me. Our lips dance. Devour. Strong hands slip over lines and curves as familiar to him now as his own reflection in a mirror. Softness arches against hard muscle. Our senses revel in skin feverish to the touch, salty and spicy, and the rise of musky scents from our bodies, spiked by wafting accents of yesterday’s cologne. Sweet crisp apples and vanilla kissed cinnamon. Rising murmurs and moans create a symphony fit for the ears of heaven’s hosts.
Too much, Marcia? Exaggeration? I don’t care.
He’s the oxygen necessary for life. I’d suffocate without him. Something primal within me, deep and mysterious, whispered this truth the moment I set eyes on him.
Valentine’s day. Two years ago. That party. Remember?
“Jeanie, what are you doing? It’s the man’s prerogative to cut in on a dance, not the woman’s.”
Your mouth dropped open when I grabbed Adam’s arm and slipped between the two of you.
“Since when have I ever been a stickler for conformity, Marcia?”
“Never.” You said.
“So now, having no date of my own, I’d like to take this handsome man off your hands for a dance. You don’t mind, do you, sweetie?”
I knew you wouldn’t say no.
“Well…I…it’s up to Adam, I suppose.”
“He’s too much of a gentlemen to protest, aren’t you?” I laughed and fluttered eyelashes.
“Deny your oldest friend a spin on the dance floor? Of course not.” He’d said, and I recognized that light of interest in his eyes.
“Well, if Adam’s game…”
“You’re such a darling friend, Marcia.” Poor dear.
Pathetic. The effort to take him from you was no more strenuous than a bold stare, the curve of a sensuous smile and the accidental brush of breasts against his arm — aided and abetted by your inaction.
If you’d fought harder, it could be you lying here warm and sated beside him.
Still, his loyalty is strong. I can’t deny.
While Adam’s ambition raced for gold, always searching for the next deal that would elevate his station in life, he nursed a soft spot for you. He wanted me, but not at the expense of your suffering.
You’d always been the day dreamer. Myself, the hard realist stomping on your idyllic imaginings of homemaker, baby maker.
I didn’t stomp enough on those dreams, though. The next Valentine’s day, you wanted to take Adam away. Treat him. Stars in your eyes. I knocked them out. Was it really only a year ago? My, how time flies.
I just wanted you to see sense. To set him free.
You’ll think me cold, but I did mourn. Thought back to the hazy summers of our youth. Laughing like loons when the rope snapped on the tire swing just as Kenny sailed over the pond. He could have drowned, but we coughed and spluttered with hilarity. Remember the day I stole a cooling cherry pie off Mrs Dingle’s windowsill while you shivered with the fear of discovery? You scoffed down your share quick enough, though.
Beside Adam, I’ll stare down at your headstone. He expects it of me. I’ll glare at my reflection in the dark shiny marble and not a shiver of regret will move me.
My heart is too full of him; dancing blue eyes of merriment, sweat slicked bodies joined in abandoned ecstasy, shared laughter at a private joke. Too full to step toe to toe with remorse.
One Valentine’s day morning, he’ll wake up, and his only thought will be of Jeanie. No more staring at Marcia’s headstone, or flowers on your grave. No more pretending from me.
You were a good friend, Marcia. Full of light, and milk and honey. Are you an angel up there?
I expect a place is set for me at the table of perdition.
Whether hell awaits me or not, at least I’ll have lived my heaven on earth.
Jaycee Durand describes herself as “A novice writer aspiring to enter the wondrous realms awaiting the spark of life from the creativity of her pen.”
