by Amber Burns
“Oh no, what have I done?” She muttered, looking at the carnage around her.
She had momentarily lost control and destroyed the single most expensive thing she had ever owned, and with that thought she grinned and started laughing manically.
“Malcolm paid for the dress!” she laughed to herself.
Her spirits were instantly lifted by the act of childish vandalism, and she put the scissors back where they belonged. Dressed in jeans and a T-Shirt, Annabelle padded down to her kitchen to fetch garbage bags. It took three to stuff the mass of fabric into, and she left it near the front door to take away at the next opportunity.
For the next three days she cleared her house of every piece of evidence of Malcolm’s existence. She threw out photo albums, trashed gifts he had given her, got rid of clothing that reminded her too much of him. She even tossed out her perfume she’d used when they were together. It was time for a total change, and by the end of it she felt able to breathe again. The process had been the catharsis she needed. She was a total hermit for these three days, not even leaving the house even to go for her walks in the evening. Finally finished, Annabelle stood on her porch looking out over the sea and thinking of Michel Deverroux.
Annabelle had no idea how concerned Michel was about her, and that he stood on his own porch every single night watching for her, waiting to see her pass by. He had gone to the shop every day, buying items he didn’t need, simply to talk to her. But every time he stopped by he found someone who wasn’t Annabelle manning the register. Within a few days Michel found his wine cellar was pretty well stocked.
But she pictured him, the slightly too long dark hair, those unfathomable deep brown eyes, and she was curious about the tattoo on his back. He was so well built and she daydreamed what it would be like to hold him. She pictured his lips that looked so soft, with that pronounced cupid’s bow…
“Geez, down girl.” She reprimanded herself and then walked back inside.
It was just past six thirty when there was a knock on her door and she jumped up from where she sat in her kitchen to go and check on who it was. As she moved aside the small curtain at the glass she saw Michel’s profile through the door, and cursed under her breath. She looked terrible. She was sweaty, dressed in torn denim shorts and a faded old navy blue T-Shirt. Her hair was knotted in a rough plait down her back, and she wore no makeup.
She opened the door with a flush on her cheeks and stood flustered, wiping the strands of hair from her face while she greeted him.
“Michel, hi. What are you doing here?” She stood back and beckoned him inside. “Please excuse the state I’m in, and the house, I have been doing a lot of… Cleaning out.”
He looked around and commented, “You have a lovely home, and in truth I came to check that you were okay. I haven’t seen you take your walks and I got worried. You weren’t at the shop either.”
She stopped and gazed intently at him.
“You’re checking up on me?” She asked, frowning.
Michel stood with his arms crossed and looked around, everywhere but at her. He nodded, but didn’t speak. Annabelle felt suddenly very self-conscious, even more so than before she had opened the door for him, and she didn’t quite know what to do.
“Michel, I am not used to having anybody check up on me, and I am not used to anybody caring for me anymore besides my father. After Malcolm… Men scare me, and I don’t want to get hurt again.”
She stepped from foot to foot, her equivalent to a nervous twitch, and didn’t know whether to sit, stand or walk around.
“Sorry, that was a bit blunt. Would you like some tea? Coffee? I think I have decaf. Come through to the kitchen.”
He followed her and sat when she gestured to a seat for him.
“Coffee would be nice thanks,” Michel replied.
She watched as he rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.
“Annabelle, I can’t explain why I had to check on you, or why I worried about you, except that I knew I had to. I have wanted to know you since the very first time I saw you in the shop, and as I said, I have wanted to walk out to you since the first time I saw you standing on that beach staring out at the sea, so desolate.” He looked up at her, “God knows, I am a bad person for some of the things I have done, a lot of the things I have done, but every part of me wants to protect you and keep you safe, no matter what.”
Annabelle was leaning against the counter, her back to the kettle as it boiled and hissed a cloud of steam.
“Why me, when you could have your pick of any beautiful, perfect holiday girl here?”
I stared at this angelic girl with the turquoise eyes and said sternly, “Do you not see yourself clearly Annabelle? You are kind and gentle, you speak with love in your voice when you mention your father, and then you work in his store during holidays when you could be off having fun. You are soft and loving to animals, I think Armand might be in love with you just by the way. Besides the lovely personality and nature you have, you are beautiful. Do you want to know what I have secretly nicknamed you?”
I looked straight into her eyes, where a few tears were forming, and she nodded. I smiled.
“Mermaid. You look most at home standing on that beach, but you look as though you want to shed your skin and disappear into the water. It makes me think about the Scottish legend of the Kelpies.”
She silently turned her back to me and finished making coffee. When she placed everything on the table, she sat opposite me with eyes full of tears now.
“Michel, no man has called me beautiful before, and Malcolm did a very good job of destroying any confidence I had when he left. I know about the Kelpies, and I wish I was one. You describe someone I do not see in the mirror, or feel when I dress.”
She wiped at her face again, and I automatically handed her the handkerchief I had in my pocket, it got a giggle from her.
“I didn’t even know men still carried these.”
“Old habit taught by my uncle, for situations just like this one.”
She frowned at me, “What? So you are frequently making women cry?”
I shook my head, “No Annabelle, but it’s nicer to be handed a cotton hanky than a wad of tissue when it does happen, not so?”
“Yes, it is.”
We drank our coffee, and when I stood to leave, just innately sensing that she needed the space, I saw three large garbage bags piled in a corner.
“Do you need help with those? There’s a dumpster in the road behind your house right? I can take them away for you?”
The expression in her eyes told me that she was torn between wanting to part with them and wanting to keep them, but her mouth firmed and set in a resolve.
“That would help, thank you.” She had stepped back from me and then hesitated, “Michel, thank you.”
With that she walked into my arms and hugged me tightly, her thin arms going around my torso. I carefully enfolded her in my own, and though it seemed far too intimate, kissed her hair and rested my chin on her head.
If I had thought talking to her was a sign, and that I needed this girl, then touching her, however innocently, was the baseball bat to the head that I was in love with her. There was no more denying it. We stood for an infinity, neither wanting to let go.
“Annabelle, are you feeling any specific connection here or am I being an idiot and misreading things?” I asked into her hair, the scent of strawberries and vanilla in my nose.
I felt her nod.
“I don’t want to let go, but I am not ready to ask you to stay yet, can you be patient with me?”
She started trembling in my arms, and I squeezed her.
“I have all the patience in the world, and I swear I will never hurt you.”
She raised her eyes to mine and said the most heart breaking words I had ever heard.
“Until you do.”
Annabelle stepped out of my arms and walked with me to the door as I picked up the surprisingly lightweight bags.
“Can you, Armand and I have a dinner date on the beach? Perhaps Friday night?” I asked hopefully.
Seriousness broken, she laughed her wind-chime laugh and nodded.
“Anything for Armand’s little purr on my shoulder again.”
I shook my head, “No fair you know, he has had more physical contact with you than I have!”
I gave a child-like pout and turned away to hear her say, “Oh Michel, but you don’t purr…”
There was a dumpster two blocks down the road behind her house, so that was my first port of call. I had to admit curiosity as to what she was throwing out, and when I tossed them into the full dumpster, I opened one bag. It took me a while to figure out what all of it was, but the garment bag in the top of the next bag gave it away; she had destroyed her wedding dress. It seemed expensive too. Granted I was a man and knew very little of these things, it just looked pricy, and I saw the name ‘Vera Wang’ in there somewhere…
It felt wrong to have gone through her garbage, but then, it was in my nature to need to know things about people. As I made my way home I stopped, a sudden ‘hallelujah’ moment had occurred in my brain. Had Annabelle hidden in her house to clear out her ex’s stuff these past few days? Was she doing something she had perhaps not let herself do until now? I walked the rest of the way home thinking I’d ask her over for dinner in two days’ time. If I was going to build a relationship with this nervous girl I wanted to know her thought process.
When I got home I found a blast from my past on my doorstep. Andrews sat on my porch with a khaki duffel bag next to him, his head and arms were resting on his knees. I stopped in my tracks when he looked up and I saw the dark purple circles under his eyes.
“Andrews? Are you okay? What are you doing here?”
He looked so defeated that I felt broken for him.
“I found out you were here Michel, I heard you’d gotten back on your feet and I wanted to come see you, I haven’t heard from anyone else I tried to reach since I got back two weeks ago.”
My heart started thumping in my chest when he took a joint out of his pocket and lit it up.
“You only got back two weeks ago? How are Briggs and the others?” I asked.
He shook his head and didn’t speak, looking down at the ground between his feet again, his shoulders shaking.
“Shit. I’m sorry man,” I sat down on the step next to him. “Well please stay as long as you’d like to, you’re welcome here.”
We sat in silence for a while, passing the joint back and forth, and then I stood, opened the door and took him inside. The first thing he needed was a shower.
“Come on, I have a spare bedroom this way. Let me just grab some sheets, it hasn’t been used yet.”
I made the bed with the spare linen I had kept from originally moving in and placed a clean set of towels down for him while he stood dejectedly in the corner.
“I know how you feel at the moment, and I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but it gets easier I swear. It might take months, but I swear, it will. I’m going to go make something to eat, why don’t you have a shower in the bathroom down the hall and then come to the kitchen?”
He nodded and then I left the room, heading to my kitchen to get some food sorted. Half an hour later when he hadn’t appeared yet I went to check in on him and found him curled in a ball under the blankets fast asleep, a pill bottle on the side table. For a moment I panicked, but when I saw his chest rise and fall evenly I breathed a sigh of relief. I picked up the bottle and was again happy to see it was a legitimate prescription for sleeping tablets, soon to run out though. I had to find out what happened to mess him up. Did this happen to every single man who went to that shit hole?
7
I seemed to have been put on a permanent babysitting duty over the next forty eight hours, because I was so intensely aware of what he was going through. The first days after I got out were fuzzy in my own memory, but they were there. I had a constant and niggling worry that something bad was headed my way.
After trying to set my mind at ease that it was still okay to have dinner with Annabelle, I prepared a basket, as before, and packed snacks. Olives and cheese, crackers, wine and cold meats. When I left the house Andrews smiled and greeted me happily, to my surprise he even gave me a hug as I stepped off the porch with Armand over one shoulder and a basket in the other hand.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me these past two days Michel, I appreciate it.”
“Anytime Travis.”
It was the first time I had called him by his first name since Afghanistan. I should have known something deeper was up when he turned to walk back into the house.
Dinner with Annabelle was amazing, she came walking down the beach toward me in a floaty light pink dress, the skirts clinging to the outline of her shapely legs as she approached in the early evening dusky light. Armand of course shot straight toward her like a moth to a flame, and she greeted me with a kiss to the cheek. The contact left a spot of my skin tingling.
We sat down and spoke about the most random things, covering topics from cats, to me telling her about Travis Andrews showing up at my house days ago in a very sorry state. I still had not heard from him what had happened before he came home, and she laid a hand softly on my arm when she probably saw the worry on my face.
“I am worried about him, I don’t think he has seen a psychiatrist yet,” I said, staring back toward the house, we weren’t sitting very far from it.
Annabelle moved closer to me on the picnic blanket.
“Let’s change the subject to something a bit more pleasant,” she said, smiling shyly.
I sat back with my arms out straight behind me and my legs crossed at the ankles.
“What do you think we should talk about then Miss Annabelle?”
She looked down at her hands and I truly did love the blush on her cheeks, it made her look so young.
“How old are you Annabelle?” I asked, and she giggled.
“I’m twenty three Michel.”
I blew out a big breath.
“Phew, I’m thirty. Old grizzled and thirty.”
She laughed again.
“Well I think you are handsome,” She gushed.
I straightened and crossed my legs.
“Will you come closer Annabelle?”
I reached forward and raised her chin to look into her eyes. She nodded and crawled toward me on her hands and knees, stopping right in front of my own legs. The mood changed between us very suddenly and I could sense her heart racing when I reached to bring her onto my lap, you could cut the tension between us with a knife.
“Michel I, I haven’t been with anybody since…” Her voice trailed off.
She was as light as a bird on my legs and as nervous as one too.
“It’s okay, I am not like him. I won’t hurt you, and I won’t rush you.”
I spoke softly and took her face in my hands, feeling the tremors run through her. She was the one who brought her lips to mine, I was not going to let her feel scared. She held them there, her soft silk lips against mine, and when I pushed more firmly against her mouth she yielded to me with a sound in the back of her throat, a soft ‘mewl’ not unlike those Armand made in his sleep.
Her hands snaked up my chest, tentatively at first, and then she was wrapped around me like a strangler fig vine around a tree. This is how we were entangled when I heard the gunshot, and though my eyes were closed, I saw the flare of the revolver muzzle in the distance down the beach to our left.
Annabelle jumped in my arms and we released each other as though burnt. I instinctively knew what that sound was and didn’t want her to see what I knew waited up that beach.
“Annabelle, please go into my house and call an ambulance, don’t come further up the beach.”
She stared at me, in shock and looked terrified.
“Why, what was that? What just happened Michel?”
She looked from me to the house to the
area down the beach, hysteria building in her voice. I took her face in my hands again and spoke as sternly as I could, because my own insides were shaking.
“Listen! Do as I said, take Armand with you, and don’t you come down that beach!” I bent down and picked the kitten up to hand him to her, and watched her walk away. “The phone is in the kitchen,” I called after her.
Only once I saw her close my front door behind her did I walk down the beach, steeling myself for the sight I knew was there. I found Travis near the water, lying on his stomach, what was left of his head in the sand. I sank to my knees about two feet away.