Chapter One.
“More coffee?” a woman in a cherry, pin-up girl dress asked me, filling my half full mug with the rich aroma of impatience.
Impatience: A virtue that I wish more people were immune to.
I smiled a crinkled smile of appreciation, dreading her return. There was something about her that I could not put my finger on. She was different; fresh. I would find a place for her somewhere, someday. Today was not that day.
I had been sitting in the same dingy booth since the rising of dawn. I had watched as the strangers filled my sanctuary, my eyes straining against the flickering sunlight that caught my attention when the door was slammed shut: another customer content.
“Where is he?” I hushed to myself. The question brimming in my mind, uneasy and unsettling.
I was at a point in which my own fears had hit their highest limits, causing my fingers to tremble, to shake: fighting against my own self-inflicted nervousness.
I sipped from my lipstick smeared mug. The taste bittersweet in my mouth. The same as Jeth had been so many nights ago.
I wiped my sugar-coated lips on a nearby napkin, taking the time to feel my fingertips touching my skin.
How I yearned for his heavy body in collision with mine, pressing hard against me. His teeth nipping the lump in my throat that distinguished everything that made me who I was, In society's eyes: Sickening.
How I longed for the sheltering tear drops of rain that we had surrendered to. Together in the midst of the hot, storm season. The Monsoon, as Dolorous had called it and I had her to thank.
For if it had not been for her childish humor, peer pressure and unquestionably, filthy, bed jokes, I would not have been sitting in this tattered booth sipping on musky coffee. While dreaming of the man who had taken my heart and ravished it in a world where I was Cinderella and he was the charming prince looking for the perfect glass slipper.
I was by far “The cliché maiden.”
I replied heavily on society's stereotypes to get me by.
By day I was respected, loved, cherished. People looked up to me as an inspiration. A knight in shining armor. The good guy, with a good job, a good home, good friends.
What else could I want when the sun rose and set over the sky scrapers, over the parks in which the trees swayed their peaceful melodies of beauty and over the city I had grown up in? Where I had been surrounded by so many, but felt so alone? What more did I need?
By the night I was someone different, someone I was only beginning to understand. Someone who had been locked inside since my bitter childhood. Someone who knew how to escape it all.
The lights, the sound, the tastes, the smell. The men, all of them like me. Though in my self awareness I had doubt.
The man I was when the stars danced over the city, was a man I could not be with anyone else other than Jeth.
By night I was no Bridget Jones, neither was I any Angelina Jolie and while though the singleton life of chronic alcoholism, tobacco spitting, anti-social journal feasts kept me thoroughly occupied on myself. There was much more to me than the endless pages of drivel I churned out in hopes of one day fulfilling my wildest dreams.
To share my story, to make a difference in the world. To somehow, someday, step outside and walk the streets as I did every Saturday morning. Four blocks away from the man that everyone knew to the man I wanted to be. The man Jeth had allowed me to be.
The man I was. I had defined as simply as I could on a regular basis.
How could anyone ever love someone like me? I was simple, drag, monotonous. At least as long as the sun shone bright I was.
How could someone of my personality and dedication be someone that Jeth had fallen in love with. Who he wanted to live with and someday Marry--- Marry? Who would want to marry a person like me?
Marry. How foolish of me.
No man nor woman would marry a man like me.
A man so dependent on the observation and journey of life itself that I hardly had the time to live my own.
If my inclinations were no flaw to Jeth. Nothing mattered to him, but our connection, our love.
For some unquestionable reason Jeth had fallen madly in love with the writer I was to become. He had become infatuated with the storyteller I was. He had invested his whole livelihood into making my dreams come true and for what?
I continue to question myself with a heavy heart and mind.
I look up to see that the clock had long stricken past Twelve.
He is late, tardy.
Once again I am left alone in my thoughts. The place where without my characters I fall into the darkness that pulls me under the vines of self-conscientiousness that strangled me whole.
Today is yet another day. Another page. Another story to add to my every growing collection of life's juicy secrets.
Today I have learned detachment.
Oh the sorrowful detachment from my yearning.
For yearning and longing can spoil a person, degrade a person and lose a person in insanity's ferocious grip.
I detached myself from my surroundings, hearing the faint jingle of the doorbell. A warning that yet another stranger had walked through the doors of my sanctuary. Thirsty, ready to quench their parched souls with the optional juices that life had to offer.
I sipped on my coffee, draining the warm, bittersweet release, knowing that in no time the cherry, pin-up waitress will be back to fill my mug with her intolerance & impatience.
As the clock strikes half-past. I dig deep into what feels like a bottomless pit inside my handbag.
I reach for my cell. I can feel the caffeine surging its way through my body.
My nerves, cliche: like steel.
I feel aggression igniting inside of me, fear becoming weary.
Patience was never one of my finer virtues.
© Tennille Chase 2008
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