The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two

by Rita Stradling

  The Fourteen Day Soul Detox

  Volume Two

  RITA STRADLING

  This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Rita Stradling.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit this book in any form or by any means. For subsidiary rights please contact the author.

  Email: ritastradling@yahoo.com

  Edited by: Monique Fischer

  Cover and Interior:

  Title Font by WC Fonts

  Author Font on Cover by Tup Wanders

  Again, this serial is for my sisters and girl friends, because if I did not have such true friends in my life, I would never be able to write them.

  You inspire me.

  The Fourteen Day Soul Detox

  In the next fourteen days, I plan to:

  Body

  1) Cut back on my coffee intake.

  2) Gain some of my weight back.

  3) Start getting some exercise again. Yoga? Maybe.

  4) Sleep.

  Mind

  5) Take on my daughter’s school board.

  6) Sell my coffee shop.

  7) Go on a date.

  Soul

  8) Stop wearing my wedding ring.

  9) Spread my husband’s ashes.

  10) Forgive the woman who killed him.

  11) Stop sleeping with her ex-husband.

  12) Remember what love feels like.

  13) Be happy.

  14) (Vetoed and erased from the list.)

  Day Two

  Eating My Feelings

  Day Two: Two-forty AM

  After exiting my car and crossing the parking lot at the side of my duplex, I peeked around the building. Soft white light outlined my front door and porch. Almost no light escaped into Clarke’s neighboring yard, and I had to squint to bring the yard into focus.

  Unless he was ducking behind our adjoining fence, he wasn’t in his yard. I took a deep breath.

  Behind me, a loud swooshing sound broke the silence.

  I jumped, spinning to see a neighbor stepping out of the light and away from their open window.

  Exhaling heavily, I turned back to my duplex.

  Clarke still wasn’t there, no one was there.

  “You’re being such a chicken shit,” I whispered to myself. Taking my phone out of my purse, I pulled up Cameron’s name.

  Me: You awake?

  Cameron: Yes.

  Me: Will you open the front door for me?

  A second later, Cameron opened the door. He stepped out, looking around. The light silhouetted his dark hair, giving him a crown of light.

  I hurried up to him, not quite running, but close. “Hey,” I said in a low voice.

  “Everything okay?” Cameron asked when I stopped a step away from him. Though shadows entirely masked his features, I could feel his gaze intently on mine.

  I nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

  “Okay, good,” he said, stepping back inside.

  After following him in, I turned, making sure to lock both locks before looking back to Cameron.

  He smiled down at me. “Hey, baby, how was work?”

  “Busy, busy. But I made almost three hundred in tips.”

  “Nice,” he said, leaning down and giving me a soft kiss on my lips. “I still haven’t given you your birthday present,” he said, stepping back but taking my hand.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, grinning. I tossed my purse onto the table we walked past.

  “Yep, it’s all wrapped up in your room,” he said with a smoldering grin.

  I laughed. “That type of present, is it?”

  “You’ll have to see,” he said, bobbing his eyebrows at me.

  “Ha, okay. I’ll just check on Sarah, and then meet you in there,” I said, lifting his hand up and giving it a quick kiss before releasing it.

  Sarah was fast asleep in her bed, her leg thrown over the covers. She snored softly, her wavy hair streaks of blonde in a sea of purple.

  I tucked her foot back under her covers and smoothed the blanket over her. Giving her a soft kiss on her forehead, I whispered, “I love you, angel.”

  Quickly, I checked that the window in her room was securely locked, and then I left her room, closing the door behind me.

  I walked into my room to find Cameron lying across my bed.

  I stopped, just taking in the sight of him lying across my bed. His head was propped up with his hand. The grin twisting his lips invited me closer.

  “I never see you on my bed,” I said, then I corrected, “When I’m not in it.”

  “Do you want me to sleep in your bed?” he asked, and though his expression stayed casual, his gaze seemed intense.

  “Well… Sarah still crawls in bed with me most nights,” I said, shrugging.

  “If you warned her first, I think she can handle it. I’ve been staying over for close to a year now and she sees how we act together.”

  I swallowed. “Maybe… Could we talk about it later? I’m just a little too tired to talk about anything serious.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, and then looked down. Looking back into my eyes, he took a deep breath. “Alright, well, come over here I want to give you your present.”

  He held up a medium-size rectangular package, wrapped in tissue paper.

  I crawled onto the bed toward him.

  Cameron dropped the box, and grabbed me, leading me to straddle his lap.

  “Is it a book?” I asked, looking down at him.

  “You’ll see,” he said with a grin.

  Picking the package up from where it landed on the bed, I ran my finger under the tape. The tissue paper tore in a long fissure up the length of the present. Pulling the paper away, I stared down at a photo-montage frame.

  “Is this…”

  “The Ultimate Sunshine Tour,” he said, with a grin.

  There were three pictures, one with both of us screaming, the other was just of me, looking over my shoulder at him, almost lost in the immense crowd. In the third picture, I was kissing his cheek, Cameron’s eyes squeezed closed, and a smile stretched wide across his face.

  “I thought you lost that disposable camera?” I said excitedly. I pointed to the fourth frame. “Wow, Cameron! And those are the tickets. You kept the tickets.”

  “Of course I did,” he said.

  “How old were we here? Seventeen?”

  “Sixteen,” he said.

  “We look so young…” I laughed. “Remember how everyone was so mad at us for ditching that end of summer bonfire thing.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “That was… to this day, probably the best concert I ever went to. We had so much fun. I don’t know if you remember this, but you kissed me while we were dancing.”

  “I remember,” he said.

  I smiled at him. “Me too. I had such a crush on you that summer. But, you know, you were brand new to town, and I knew you kissed a lot of girls, so I didn’t think too much of it.”

  “Who told you that I kissed a lot of girls?” he asked.

  “I don’t know… probably Logan,” I said, laughing. “He was so jealous after we went to that show, so angry and brooding. He wouldn’t even talk to me for days and then, bam, he asked me out. We were always in this ‘maybe’ place, and then suddenly he asked me out after all those years. I always wondered if the idea that I had a crush on you was what prompted him to ask me out.”

  “Probably. Logan knew that I was really into you, I
’m sure that helped encourage him to act too,” he said.

  “You were?” I asked, surprised. I looked up from the picture to smile at him. “I always thought you just thought of me as a friend back then. Aside from, you know, how much chemistry we had—but you were so popular with the ladies, you seemed to have chemistry with everyone.”

  His hand came up to run through my hair. “I was crazy about you.”

  “How funny,” I breathed out a laugh. “Imagine how things would have been different if you’d just asked me out first,” I mused, meeting his gaze.

  He didn’t say, ‘I have imagined that,’ but the serious expression he regarded me with said it loud and clear. Finally, he said, “I’m glad things happened the way they did, even though some of it was rough, because we have Sarah in our life.”

  I swallowed heavily. “She’s the center of my life.”

  “I know,” he said, he looked deeply into my eyes as if he was saying something silently that I could almost hear.

  “Well, I love the present,” I said, leaning over to place it on my nightstand. “Thank you so much.”

  Cameron’s hands came up to my hips as I moved, then pulled me back to him. His hand grazed up the side of my body, as I looked down at him.

  “Hey beautiful,” he whispered.

  Leaning down, I kissed him.

  His hands immediately threaded through my hair, pulling me closer into him. He kissed me deeply, our breaths soon coming heavily between us. I felt him lifting at the hem of my shirt and I broke away to let him lift my shirt off me. With a quick flick of his fingers, my bra followed. With one arm around my back and the other cupping my head, Cameron rolled us over so that he was now on top of me.

  Letting out a little gasp, I smiled up at him.

  He gave me a mischievous grin before his lips started making their way down my chest as his fingers unbuttoned my jeans, and slowly let down the zipper. His hand caressed over my lacy underwear, then slipped under.

  Minutes later, we were both naked and my body was liquid with waves of pleasure washing over me. Cameron poised to enter me.

  His eyes locked on mine, and I stared up at him, completely captivated. Again, it was as if he was speaking to me only with his gaze. His lips came down hard on mine as he entered me gently.

  A long time later, Cameron collapsed over me, his breath heavy. “Hmm, this is my happy place,” he whispered, chuckling before pulling out of me.

  My hand slipped over his back, feeling over the ridges of muscle. “I like this feeling. You’re so heavy, but it feels really nice.” I closed my eyes, but blinked them open. “We need to shower, and I think I might need to change my bed sheets too. We’re so sweaty.”

  Cameron slipped down my body, so that his head rested on my stomach. “If you just stay here for one more minute, I’ll do the bed sheets and let you take a shower alone.”

  “Okay, but you have to wake me if I fall asleep,” I said, closing my eyes.

  “I will,” he said, kissing my stomach. Then a second later, “Baby?”

  “Huh?” I said, blinking furiously. My heavy eyelids glued themselves together.

  “You fell asleep,” Cameron whispered. When I fought my eyes open, I whispered, “Whoa, you moved.”

  “You fell asleep,” he repeated, kissing me lightly on my lips. “Do you want my help in the shower?”

  “Um…” I sat up with some effort, but immediately sagged forward while I scanned the room. “No, I have it,” I said. Scooting forward off the bed, I trudged to the bathroom across the hall.

  Turning on the faucet to the right temperature, I stepped into the spray. The tears came then, hot and immediate, as if the faucet had turned them on too. Stuffing my hand in my mouth, I muffled the sounds of my sobs. I turned from the spray and moved my hand away to take a couple deep breaths.

  “I can’t keep doing this,” I whispered, pressing my head into the cool tile of the shower wall.

  Turning off the faucet, I wrapped a towel around me. I took a deep breath before walking into my bedroom.

  Cameron looked up from where he was laying a new top sheet over my bed. He smiled over at me.

  “You don’t need to do that, Cameron,” I said.

  “That was our deal, remember?” he said. “Now come lie down and I’ll tuck you in.”

  “I can’t just yet, I have to put on some pajamas,” I said, not quite able to meet his eyes.

  “Alright, I’ll wait,” he said.

  “Cameron, I…” I looked up into his gaze, into his beautiful, smiling face. “Are you okay with things just staying as they are between us?”

  “Yeah,” he said, automatically.

  “Forever? Or, until someone else comes along for you?” I said.

  His eyelids narrowed and brow furrowed. “Jamie, it might take a while, but one day you’re going to be ready to move on completely. I can wait for that day.”

  I sat down on the bed, tears running down my face. “I don’t want you to be waiting for me to move on, Cameron. It’s not fair to you,” I said.

  He kneeled down in front of me. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

  “No, it’s not fair to you… because we’re never going to end up together. Not in any real way.”

  He rocked back. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because, we’re each other’s history, we’re never going to be able to move on if we cling to the past through each other.”

  “That’s what you’re doing? You’re clinging to the past through me?” His shoulders came up, as if he was pulling into himself.

  “What Logan and Vanessa did to us, and then we started sleeping together only a few months later… how are we supposed to ever make something real out of that?”

  “What are you saying, exactly? What has this relationship between us been to you? Some elaborate revenge against Vanessa?” He glared at me as he spoke, his nostrils flaring.

  “Of course not!”

  “Shit, Jamie. I thought—” His head fell back, his hands covering his face. His hands fell away and his eyes came back to glare into mine. “I thought you loved me. But I’m just some long, elaborate grudge-fuck for you?”

  Tears came faster now. “No. You know that I love you, Cameron. But that’s not—”

  “Not, what?”

  “You knew!” I shouted at him. “You knew for weeks and you never told me. You even covered for them,” I said. “I’ve tried so hard to move past it, because I’m in love with you. But I can’t move past it, I can’t. Every time we have sex, the words beat into my fucking head. He knew. He knew. He knew!”

  Tears coursed down his face now, too. “I’m not fucking perfect, Jamie.”

  “I know, and I know I’m far from perfect. I’m a big fucking mess. But, I really want to move forward in my life, and you and I are just carrying around our past everywhere.”

  “You just had sex with me, right here, just a few minutes ago, and now you lay all this on me?” he said, before shaking his head.

  “I’m so sorry. You just keep saying and doing these amazingly sweet things, and I’m so filled with guilt. You deserve better,” I said.

  “Yeah, I do.” His hand came up to my cheek and his thumb brushed my tears away. “I do deserve better from you. Like a little fucking understanding about what I was going through at that time. I’m going to the living room to sleep. We can talk about all this stuff later. I’m not in the right mindset right now.”

  “Okay,” I said, tears still coursing down my face.

  He stood, but didn’t walk away for a second. His eyes squeezed together. “I really wish that this wasn’t the way you told me that you loved me for the first time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He opened his eyes, and stared directly into mine. “Yeah, me too. Goodnight, Jamie.”

  Day Two: Ten-thirty

  When I opened my eyes, light filled my room. I had thrown off my blankets sometime in the night, but the leg that was still covered fel
t like it was baking. Looking beside me, I found an empty bed.

  “Sarah?” I called out.

  “She’s out here,” Cameron called from the kitchen.

  Glancing over at the clock, I read the time: ten-thirty. “Whoa,” I said, under my breath. After crawling off my bed, I trudged out of my room.

  “Wow, I slept in. I’m sorry, Cameron,” I said with a yawn.

  Sarah and Cameron sat at the kitchen table, a puzzle on the table before them. They’d put together the edges, as well as a gymnast, midair between the uneven bars.

  “No worries,” Cameron said as he connected another puzzle piece. “I promised Sarah I’d do this puzzle with her in the morning.”

  Sarah smiled up at me, her hair big and crimped.

  “Morning, angel.” I kissed her forehead. “Are you hungry? Oh, you already ate,” I said, noticing the plate left out for me, a pot lid covering it.

  “Yeah, sorry we didn’t wait for you,” Cameron said, standing up. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I attempted to keep my voice even.

  He tilted his head to the living room and I followed him when he headed that way.

  When Cameron turned around to face me, he gave me a straight-lipped smile. His hand came up and brushed up and down my arm. “Hey,” he said.

  I swallowed. Looking everywhere but at him, I said, “Thanks for everything this morning, letting me sleep in, and the breakfast and everything.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I—”

  “It was really wonderful of you, staying overnight too.”

  He nodded. “No problem. I want—”

  “And the present you gave me was so special.”