Loose Ends

by Kristen Ashley

  Stevie looked his fiancé in the eye. “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it this exact way.”

  Tod harrumphed, mostly because Stevie was right, but Tod’s lips were never going to form those words (ever, about anything).

  Stevie looked to the driver and called, “We can go now.”

  The driver clicked his teeth. The carriage jolted. Tod held on to Stevie. Stevie popped the cork. And suddenly all around them bits of orange and brown paper started floating.

  Tangerine and chocolate confetti.

  Tod turned to skewer Indy with his gaze.

  But he didn’t mean it and she knew it, which was probably why she was smiling so damn big.

  Silly, sweet, crazy, loving bimbo.

  “You don’t throw confetti at an engagement,” he educated her haughtily.

  “Every time you walk into a room from now until the day you get married, we’re throwing confetti at you,” she returned, pulling more out of her jeans pocket and tossing it as she and the others started trailing the carriage when the horses began to move. “Get used to it.”

  “Fire and ice for wedding colors!” Sadie cried.

  “Violet, fuchsia and charcoal!” Ava yelled, throwing more confetti that drifted around Tod and Stevie.

  The Hot Bunch were hanging back, standing in the street wearing various smiles from full-on, glamorous white (Eddie and Hector), to half-smirk (Luke), to twitches (Hank and Lee), to shit-eating (Vance), to head shaking (Mace), to reining-in-laughter (Ren).

  But the women were following them on the trot, throwing the dregs of confetti they had left and shouting out colors.

  “Peacock!” Stella called.

  “Salmon and baby pink!” Jet shouted.

  “Straw and plum,” Jules yelled.

  “Coral and sangria!” Indy bellowed as the horses started to trot and the carriage pulled away from the trailing women.

  “Sparkle!” Daisy shrieked, falling well behind the others seeing as she was trying to keep up in clear plastic platform go-aheads that Tod couldn’t tell from his distance, but it looked like they had butterflies embedded in the soles. “Don’t matter what colors, just as long as there’s lotsa sparkle!”

  Ally just stopped in the middle of the street, threw up both her hands in devil’s horns and bellowed, “Righteous!”

  Suddenly, alighting from an El Camino that had parked on the street, a huge man with a wild russet beard and a wilder head of graying blond hair, roared, “Jesus Jones! What’d I miss?”

  The Rock Chicks faded back.

  The carriage moved forward.

  And Stevie took a flute from Tod.

  He filled Tod’s first.

  Then he filled his own.

  Tod gave him a look and inquired, “Did you buy me bling?”

  Stevie caught his eyes. “Am I marrying the only man I’ve ever loved, that man being the same one I’ve lived with for decades?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes.”

  Tod smiled.

  Stevie smiled back.

  Then he leaned in and kissed his fiancé, hard and wet, but sweet.

  When Stevie pulled an inch away, he whispered, “It’s just a renewal. You’ve been my husband for a long time, honey.”

  Tod lifted his hand to Stevie’s cheek and whispered back, “Same.”

  Stevie raised his glass. “Toast. To Mr. and Mr.”

  Tod raised his own glass. “To Mr. and Mr. Forever and for always.”

  They clinked.

  They sipped.

  They sat back.

  And after Stevie set the champagne bottle into the silver ice bucket affixed to the side of the carriage, he pulled the bling out of his trouser pocket and slid the platinum engagement band set with diamonds on Tod’s left ring finger where it nestled with the marvelous-in-its-simplicity platinum band he’d given Tod at their commitment ceremony.

  They then held hands, drank champagne, and trotted through the dusk shrouding Baker Historical District in Denver.

  Ten months later, after the Rock Chicks did indeed shower Tod with varying shades of confetti nearly every time they saw him, in a ceremony that was pure class (with the colors of a peacock feather, because seriously, how fabulous was that?), Tod and Stevie were married.

  ~ THE END ~

  Discover Three Wishes

  When Lily Jacobs was born, she inherited Fazire – a genie. Her family had three wishes and they’d only ever used one so Fazire was stuck in the human world. This worked since he’d become a member of the family anyway.

  Even with a genie, Lily's young life wasn’t perfect. To escape the kids making her miserable at school, Lily buried herself in romance novels. One day, when the teasing was just too much, she used one of her wishes. She told Fazire she wanted to find a man like in her books and she made the most complicated wish Fazire had ever heard. Her wished-for man had to be impossibly handsome, virile, fierce, rugged and ruthless (amongst a dozen other things).

  He also had to think she was beautiful and he had to love her more than anything in the world.

  Nathaniel McAllister wasn’t born to a life where there were such things as genies granting wishes. His life was filled with drugs, crime and neglect. He was running errands for a gangster before he was in his teens and, even though life and hard work led him to wealth and respectability, he always knew, deep down, he was dirty. When Nate met Lily he knew he was no good for her but as virile, fierce, rugged and ruthless as he was, Nate was no match for the pull of sweet, innocent Lily.

  Unfortunately, Lily’s wish included that she and her hero go through trials and tribulations to test their love. And Fazire wasn’t only a good genie, he loved Lily – so he gave her exactly what she wanted.

  Turn the page to read the first chapter now!

  Sarah, Fazire & Rebecca

  April 1943

  SARAH READ THE TELEGRAM IN her hand again and sighed.

  She would only allow herself a sigh. No use worrying about what she didn’t know. Not yet anyway. That’s what Jim would tell her. She had enough to worry about today. She would allow herself to worry about it tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe (she hoped) there was nothing to worry about at all.

  She walked through the house Jim had built her with his own two hands, well most of it anyway. A sweet, somewhat rambling Indiana limestone house surrounded by ten beautifully lush acres. Smack in the front yard there was a large pond. In each windowsill, even though the house was nowhere near grand enough to carry them off, were slabs of marble. Jim had wanted her to have something spectacular and elaborate. The only bit he could afford to make elaborate on his teacher’s salary were those Italian marble slabs, and by damn he got them for her.

  She entered the back bedroom, walked to the crib and stared down at Rebecca who was taking her afternoon nap. Her baby lips were puckered into a sweet frown as if she too knew the contents of the telegram.

  Sarah felt the tears crawl insidiously up her throat and she swallowed them down with determination.

  Jim would not like it if she cried.

  She would worry about it tomorrow.

  Maybe.

  May 1943

  The package came and it was battered so badly Sarah was certain whatever it carried would be broken and useless.

  This upset her tremendously because it was from Jim.

  Sarah thought the arrival of this package was a good sign even though the letter he’d written was from months and months ago, weeks before his plane had been shot down over Germany and he’d gone missing. They still didn’t know where he was, if he survived and was captured or if he was struggling to find a way home or if . . . something else.

  To her surprise, the item in the package was safe and sound, a pretty, fragile-looking bottle made of swirly grape and turquoise-colored glass. It was elegant, elaborate and spectacular. It had a full base, a thin stem that led to a wide bubble, which went into another thin stem and up to another smaller bubble then a slender neck on top of which w
as an extraordinary twirly stopper.

  It was beautiful.

  Jim wrote a letter to go with the bottle and told her he found it in a market somewhere in London and thought she simply had to have it.

  Jim, as always, was right.

  Sarah loved it.

  However it could have been the most hideous piece of bric-a-brac on earth and Sarah would still have loved it.

  She set it, pride of place, on the chest in the dining room.

  Every time she cleaned, she’d carefully dust the beautiful, exotic, fragile bottle.

  And she’d think of Jim.

  And she’d hope he was all right and that soon, he’d come home.

  December 1945

  The war was over and a lot of the boys were home.

  Not Jim.

  Sarah waited but no word.

  She phoned, still no word.

  She wrote and no word.

  She visited the War Office.

  No word.

  Jim, she feared, was gone.

  She cried as she dusted the bottle, his last present to her, the last thing that he touched that she would also touch. Sarah had lost weight, her eyes were sunken in her head and deep, dark circles had moved in to stay underneath them.

  Three-year-old Rebecca played on the floor in the dining room as blindly, and not as carefully as normal, Sarah dusted the bottle. She rubbed it frantically, maybe a little madly, almost like she wanted to rub the color right off of it.

  The dust rag fell out of her hand and she didn’t notice it. She just kept rubbing the bottle with her hands, her fingers, rub, rub, rubbing it. She thought a little hysterically that she might just rub it forever.

  The stopper fell out and she didn’t even notice.

  Rebecca, seeing the pretty stopper, toddled over, grabbed it and immediately put it in her mouth.

  But Sarah didn’t notice her daughter, she just kept rubbing.

  And then she stopped rubbing because in a grand poof of grape and turquoise-colored smoke that shot out of the neck of the bottle, a shape had formed.

  The shape was a fat, jolly-looking man wearing a grape-colored fez with a little turquoise tassel on the top. He had a bizarre outfit of turquoise and grape with an embroidered grape bolero vest and billowy turquoise trousers. The trousers ended in purple shoes that had little curls at the pointed toes. He had long gold bands affixed to his wrists that went up his forearms heavily and were embedded with blue and purple jewels and thick, gold hoops dangled from his ears. He had a shock of jet-black hair and a jet-black goatee pointed arrogantly from his chin. He had sparkly brown eyes that tilted up at the corners and looked like they were lined in black kohl.

  He floated in the air, his arms and legs crossed, and he stared down at her from his place about two feet below the ceiling.

  Sarah thought she’d finally gone mad. Perhaps she should have worried about Jim the minute that awful telegram came. Perhaps she should have quit wishing and hoping and thinking everything would be okay for Jim, for Rebecca and lastly, for Sarah. Maybe she should have come to terms with losing her dearest Jim, being alone, sleeping alone, eating alone and raising a child by herself on her own single teacher’s salary. Maybe, since she didn’t, it all crept over her through the years and made her insane.

  Because only crazy women saw men floating in their dining room wearing fezzes, curly shoes and sporting goatees.

  “You, my mistress, have three wishes,” the man said.

  Sarah’s mouth dropped open and if she had been looking, she would have noticed that Rebecca’s did too, and the stopper dropped out of Becky’s toddler mouth and rolled, unseen, under the cabinet.

  “Who are you?” Sarah breathed.

  “I am Fazire. I am a genie. And I am here to grant you three wishes,” he stated grandly and rather pompously.

  Sarah stared. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head as she mumbled to herself, “I’ve lost my mind.”

  “You have not lost your mind. I am a genie. I am here—”

  “I heard what you said!” Sarah snapped at the astonished genie then leaned down and snatched her child from the ground and held Becky protectively to her trembling body. She backed away slowly, whispering, “Go away.”

  “I am Faz . . . er, what?” he started to say in his overblown genie voice but stuttered to a halt at her words. No one had ever told him to go away before.

  Ever.

  They were usually very happy to see him and quite quick with their wishes. Great wealth, which he could do. It was a snap, literally. Long life, a bit harder, and eternal life was not allowed in the Genie Code. Vengeance, he didn’t like to do that but a wish was a wish. And so on.

  But no one had ever told him to go away before.

  Ever.

  And no one had ever snapped at him.

  Unless, of course, they wished for something silly and it backfired on them but that wasn’t Fazire’s fault.

  He tried again. “You have three wishes. Your wish is my command.”

  She was still backing away. And blinking. A lot. Every time she closed her eyes and opened them again, it seemed she was shocked to see him.

  Then she ran from the room.

  He floated after her, repeating over and over the many statements of introduction that he’d been taught in Genie Training School. She was ignoring him. So much so, hours later she packed her bags, took the pretty child with her and got in her car and drove away.

  Two Days Later

  Sarah cautiously approached her pretty limestone house. It seemed quiet and normal.

  She and Rebecca had stayed with her mother. Sarah had ranted and raved and even, somewhat to her horror but she couldn’t stop herself, blasphemed.

  Then she’d cried, a whole day and a whole night.

  And after that she’d slept while her mother cared for her daughter.

  And now she was home.

  And her heart was broken.

  Because she knew Jim would never be home.

  And she decided that if Hitler wasn’t already dead, she’d hunt him down herself and wring his silly little neck.

  Invading Poland, what kind of a fool idea was that? Didn’t he know the trouble he’d cause? So many lives, destroyed. Entire families, gone.

  And Jim, vital, strong, tall, clever, wonderful Jim. He’d never again play tennis like he was doing the first time she saw him. He’d never again turn the rich, dark soil in the garden. He’d never again present her with one of his luscious Indiana tomatoes. He’d never hold her in his arms. He’d never lay eyes on his beautiful daughter.

  She had to blame someone so she blamed Hitler. He was, of course, to blame for a lot of things, and Sarah was happy for her religion (even though she’d cursed God only the day before). She was happy for it because her religion meant she could visualize, quite happily, Hitler stretched over a charcoal pit, twisting on a rotisserie, roasting in agony for eternity.

  Regardless of her vengeful thoughts, Sarah was still weary, immensely sad and forever and ever broken, such was her love for Jim.

  But, she thought, she was no longer crazy enough to see genies floating around in her house.

  She no sooner opened the door and got herself and her daughter inside when the genie floated forward and shouted somewhat peevishly, “Where have you been?”

  She started and then whirled to go right back out the door.

  “No, don’t go! Just give me your three wishes. I’ll grant them and go back in the bottle.” She hesitated and the genie forged on, “That’s how it works. I go back in the bottle. You put the stopper on and then you give me away, or sell me, or . . . whatever. It just can’t be to a member of your blood family or a friend and you can’t tell anyone what the bottle does. I have to go to someone you don’t know and they can’t know what I do. And you can never tell anyone I was here or a thousand curses will fall on your bloodline forever. Those are the rules.”

  Sarah had never thought genies would have rules. She’d never thought genie
s existed at all.

  No, she shook her head, she still didn’t think genies existed at all.

  Fazire watched her and realized she was still not going to believe in him.

  Tiredly, because usually his task took him about five minutes, not days (people knew exactly what to wish for and didn’t dally about getting it), he said, “Just wish for something, I’ll show you what I can do.”

  Sarah didn’t hesitate. “I want Jim back.”

  Fazire’s levitated body came down a couple of feet as he saw the raw pain on her face.

  Magically, of course, he knew exactly what she was wishing and he shook his head.

  That, unfortunately, as well as world peace and the eradication of all disease, poverty, ignorance, bigotry (which was also just ignorance), pestilence, plague, yadda, yadda, yadda, he could not do.

  Those were the rules. The Big Rules in the Genie Code that no one broke.

  The Jim he could bring back, if he broke the rules, would be no kind of Jim she actually wanted back.

  “I want Jim back!” she shouted when Fazire didn’t respond. “I wish for my Jim to come back! That’s what I wish. That’s all I wish . . . for Jim to come back.”

  After she shouted at him, her voice half an ache, half a passionate scream, she collapsed to the floor and cradled her toddler in her arms, rocking the child back and forth as the pretty little girl’s lips began to quiver with fear at her mother’s breakdown.

  Fazire found himself floating lower to the floor. He didn’t like to float low and it had been years since his feet actually touched the earth (the very thought made him shiver with revulsion). Still, something about her forced Fazire to come close to her.

  “Woman, I cannot do what you ask, your Jim is gone,” he told her gently. “I cannot bring him back. You must wish for something else.”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “Fame, maybe?”

  More shaking of the head.

  “Riches beyond your wildest dreams?”

  Still she shook her head.

  “Good health?” Fazire tried.