“Nana? Are you saying I shouldn’t do this?”
I asked her softly.
“No, because your mind is made up and you’ve always done exactly what you wanted. I’m only telling you to marry Scott because you love him with all your heart. I’m praying it works. I want everything to work out for the both of you … but if it doesn’t? You both deserve to have true love in your hearts.”
I watched as Nana slowly made her way from my room to finish getting ready. I looked around at my childhood, the rows of all of my books on the shelf, my rose chintz, love-worn chair, a bit tattered from years of being curled up in it, escaping reality with a book, wrapped in the creamy quilt Nana had stitched for me on my thirteenth birthday, still folded over the arm.
My dreams of what was to come in life, my fears, my demons of yesterday … everything organized, straightened, and dusted inside of this little room.
I knew I was lying about getting married. All morning I felt as though I was acting in a high school play and I was waiting for the curtain to come down so it would be over. Scott was a great guy. We’d dated since my sophomore year of college. He loved me, of this I had no doubt, but did I really love him? Did I love him the way I should?
Nana died in her sleep less than three weeks later. My marriage lasted another eight months. It never stood a chance.
Arizona was a new start and a lot warmer than Minnesota.
I joined some writing groups and a local hiking club. Slowly, I acclimated, went on a few dates here and there, fell in love, had my heart broken and tried to make a life for myself. If it didn’t work out, well, I would move to a new city.
When Maggie decided to take a job here in Scottsdale a few years later, I was ecstatic. Arizona had become my home and now my best friend was moving here too.
Rounding another corner onto Alma School Road, marking three miles on my route, I headed back to my home. Traffic was starting to pick up now as people headed off to work and school, delivery trucks stopping in front of businesses along the streets. Chandler was waking up and getting the day started.
My mind kept chanting one more block, one more block, as I rounded the bend to home. Hitting my driveway, I slowed down to walk in a circle, cooling my body down and catching my breath.
I looked up at my house, evaluating the curbside appeal. Some of the flowers were blooming in the bright stone pots I set here and there around the yard. It looked like my Prickly Pear in the front corner by the driveway might actually produce a flower this year. Bougainvillea grew wildly, bursting in hot pink all along the wall enclosing the backyard. It looked amazing, so full of color everywhere. Making Arizona my home was the right choice for me.
I noticed something on my front step by the door. Damn solicitations, leaving advertisement litter all over the place. I hated it.
Stepping up to the door, I realized it wasn’t litter at all. Someone had left me a red rose on my front step. One single flower. I picked it up and inhaled the heavenly scent. It was fresh. I could still see the water droplets glistening on the petals.
Glancing around me, I walked back out to the street, looking every direction. I was baffled. Who would have given me a flower, a rose to be more precise? This was so strange.
Actually, it was kind of exciting. I had to think for a minute. The last time a man gave me flowers was at least seven years ago and that would have been Elliot. There was no way Elliot left me a rose, no way in hell. So that could only mean one thing—I had a secret admirer.
The thought of it put a smile on my face and a little dance in my step. I, Emily Golden, had a secret admirer. God only knew who, but I didn’t really care. My day just got a whole lot better.
I headed inside to find a vase for my rose.
The collar of the old green army jacket was pulled up close to my jaw. The brim of my dirty, faded White Sox baseball cap was angled low over my eyes, concealing my face. My big toe poked through the fabric of my left tennis shoe.
I walked away slowly, observing my prey. Noticing how she moved her hands around her in excitement as if waving hello, yet she didn’t notice me at all. I was invisible. After finding her flower, I watched as she looked up and down the street, yet she didn’t realize I was standing there, watching. She never did. I blended in, like a statue made of stone that matched the stucco of every house on the block.
I’d been told my eyes were the only things to stand out. They gleamed, darting about, taking in every detail for later. They were evil slits, calculating, and dark, hungry eyes. Eyes that held secrets. Eyes hungry for revenge. I had the eyes of a predator, hunting for my next victim.
I was invisible. I always had been.
“Soon, beautiful one, soon you will understand. You will learn you can’t just throw someone away when you are done. There are consequences, my love, consequences to everything,” I whispered.
EMILY
The bar was hopping by the time I arrived. Louie’s had a huge patio attached in the front and around one side. It was wall-to-wall people out there. Thursday, late afternoon, and everyone was ready to start their weekend early.
Walking in the front door, I spotted Maggie at a high table close to the bar. Inside was a little quieter but not by much. After a few overcast days and a little bit of rain, people wanted to be outside enjoying the sunshine. I headed toward the table as Maggie pulled out the stool next to her.
“Andrea should be here soon. A client had her running late. I ordered you a glass of Pinot when I saw you pull into the parking lot.”
My girl knew me well. I also noted warm chips and pico on the table. Helping myself to a generous scoop, I closed my eyes and savored the incredible taste of Louie’s fresh homemade pico de gallo, the warm chips with a hint of lime, and sprinkled with mozzarella and sea salt. This was the reason I frequented the place.
“How is your self-imposed celibacy going these days?” Maggie asked me, causing me to choke on a chip.
Glaring at her, I made a grab for the water sitting on the table to drown my coughing.
“That bad, huh?” she commented with a laugh.
By the time Andrea walked in, we were both giggling like a couple of high school girls watching the soccer team strut by.
The next hour was another glass of wine and catching up. My eyes drifted around the bar observing people as we talked.
Andrea elbowed me and nodded her head toward a man making his way from table to table where any woman was seated. I would guess he was in his mid-twenties, perfectly tousled hair, lacquered with a pint of gel, a body hugging T-shirt showcasing the ripples of his abs. He casually looked over each woman, as if trying to gauge his chances. Obviously this man worked hard at being a stud.
“Hey gorgeous,” I heard him say to the blond at the table next us.
“Hey stupid,” she replied.
Without hesitating, he turned toward our table next and to Maggie, who had been reading something on her phone, while sipping her wine and not paying any attention to what he had been doing.
“Hey beautiful,” he said.
She choked on her wine, as she looked him up and down, estimating his age.
“Seriously?” she groaned.
I broke out in a loud laugh. Several patrons around us glanced over to see what was happening. Waiting for the idiot to try a line on me, I ran through several planned replies in my head. Instead, Mr. Stud turned to Andrea.
Hopefully his ego was still in one piece. I needed to learn the stare down Andrea was so great at. She never said one word, but she had him apologizing profusely for bothering us. It was amazing to watch; although, I felt bad I didn’t get to blast him with one of my perfected ego bruising knockdowns.
“Hey, I forgot to tell you all. I found a rose on my doorstep this morning! I think I may have a secret admirer,” I bragged.
Maggie immediately began teasing me about it. Only Andrea was quiet.
“Do you have any idea who could have left it?” she asked.
“Not a clue
.”
“You haven’t met anyone new lately or noticed someone watching you?”
I thought about it for a moment. I couldn’t come up with any possibilities, not even one.
“I honestly have no idea at all,” I told her.
“What about Jailbait?”
I laughed at the idea.
“No way it was Steve. He doesn’t spend money on flowers. To him that’s a waste because flowers die. In fact, I can’t remember him ever spending money on anything.”
I had been kind of excited earlier. I never had an admirer before, much less one leaving flowers anonymously on my front step. Andrea’s silence made me a little apprehensive.
“Just be careful, Emily, there are a lot of crazies out there. It’s probably just what it seems to be, a secret admirer. But they had to have been watching you to leave it when you were out. Obviously, they know where you live and your routine. That makes me nervous.”
Andrea, always the worrier.
I blew it off and assured her I would pay attention to my surroundings. She left shortly after, claiming an early day and a long weekend ahead of her.
Maggie and I decided to hang out for a little bit longer. I wasn’t ready for a quiet house or a lonely night of TV quite yet.
That was another thing … I usually liked being alone. I relished the quiet surroundings I’d created. Everything was just the way I wanted it to be and I didn’t have to talk to another person if I so chose. But lately, I seemed to be more restless and I couldn’t explain why. I looked around my house and I saw too much stuff. It was closing in on me. I wanted to go through everything and get rid of most of it. I felt complicated and tied up both inside and out, and I wanted to purge that.
My rampant thoughts must be clearly broadcasting across my expressions as Maggie watched me.
“Your mind is racing again.”
“My mind is always racing these days. I just wish I could clear it out like I’m doing with my house … remove all the bull so I can figure out what I want.”
“What’s really going on, Emily?” she asked, her voice soft and concerned. “You seem so twisted up and not like yourself these days.” Maggie leaned in toward me, rolling her wine glass between her palms, ready to listen.
“I have so many memories running through my mind these days. Fun times, regrets, wishes, dreams … I think it’s why I decided I need changes. Life is so much simpler in my daydreams than in reality, and the bitch of it is, life doesn’t work that way. I’m struggling to move past that.”
“Life in general? Or is there something or someone in particular? A guy? I can’t ever remember a guy that could twist you up like you seem now. Is it work?”
“No—” I hesitated. “I love what I do and I’m happy for the most part, but I want more. It’s like I said a few weeks ago, I want my life to be more, to mean something. I keep looking back, and sometimes I feel like such a shit. I wasted so much time on things that meant so little. I didn’t like who I was and what I did to some people. I have regrets, you know? I want to change and I’m doing that, but it can be frustrating as all hell.”
Maggie nodded, seeming to understand. “There was the time, just after you moved down here, when we didn’t talk as much. I was dealing with my life, and you were starting a new one. It seemed like you went off the grid for a while, over a year actually. Did you meet someone back then? Someone you want to forget?”
My heart skipped a beat and I visibly paled as the memories I tried to keep buried deep down inside threatened to consume me. Memories that made me smile and made me sob in longing and pain. Mental images I kept locked down, allowing to resurface only when I was alone and felt the need to torture myself.
There really was only one man years ago when I first moved to Phoenix. Maybe if I had been smarter and more mature, less self-involved, it may have worked out. I blew it big time. He broke me into a thousand little pieces. I blamed him for everything bad in my life after he left. After time, a lot of healing, and some growing up on my part, I started to realize it wasn’t all his fault. I think maybe … a lot of it was mine. I’d been paying for the mistakes I made with him ever since. Right guy, but definitely the wrong time in my life.
“Elliot,” I said simply. “I think Elliot is the only man I have ever really been in love with. I hurt him, he hurt me, and I’ve been running away from relationships ever since.”
EMILY
EIGHT YEARS EARLIER
It was a Tuesday morning in April … April fifth, to be exact. Everything that could go wrong in a day was happening to me. I woke up later than I normally do, throwing me into mass disorientation. I was an admitted control freak, my days mapped out weeks in advance, so it threw me off-kilter. Then I stubbed my toe on the door moulding of my bathroom because I was rushing around, which in turn, caused my toe to bleed all over my stone tile bathroom floor. I spent the next twenty minutes scrubbing a mess that should have only taken a minute or two, except the blood creeped into the grout making it harder to clean up, and to complicate things further, I couldn’t find the damn Bon Ami cleanser or a scrub brush.
Now I was on my way to the grocery store because I realized I had no breakfast food in the house, and I needed a new toothbrush since my old one was used to clean up the bloody grout.
I was born a disaster and never grew out of it.
I kept my head down while I hurried through the grocery store, grabbing cleaning supplies, a box of Fruit Loops, and some milk for breakfast. My hair was thrown up into a messy pony because I hadn’t bothered to try and comb out the tangled up mass of curls I possessed. The knees of my jeans had disintegrated several years ago and the wrinkled T-shirt I wore still had the remains of my latest cooking experiment dripped down the front of it. Glancing down at my feet, I noticed most of the polish had chipped off my big toenail and I had on one black and one navy flip-flop.
Silently, I prayed I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. God was not listening to me.
Rounding the corner into the snack section, I rammed my cart right into another customer. Afraid to look up, I started to apologize profusely as I noticed the rugged flip-flops and a pair of beautifully sculpted hairy legs—man legs.
Allowing my eyes to roam upward, I took in muscled thighs covered by a pair of cargo shorts and a T-shirt stretched tightly over a well-toned chest. Both his arms and legs were a golden tan from the sun. Dark curls framed his shoulders. I could feel the blush creeping up my neck as I finally made eye contact with the man I had carelessly rammed into.
Recognition made me stop apologizing mid-sentence.
His eyes twinkled with mischief as his deep, raspy voice greeted me.
“Good morning. You’re Emily, right? Emily Golden? You were in my writing seminar a few weeks ago.”
Oh my God! I wanted to die on the spot. I needed a hole to open up in the middle of the damn grocery store and swallow me whole. I looked like something the dog would have thrown up, and who do I run into? Only the man I had been fantasizing about for the last two weeks.
Two weeks ago I went to a workshop for writers in Phoenix. The class was held by an up and coming author, Elliot D’Arcy. I loved his work and always splurged on his books as soon as they were released. Although I enjoyed my job as a freelance editor, my dream had always been to write. I played with it off and on, never really having the discipline to keep at it for long. I needed direction, so I decided to try attending a few seminars and workshops to give myself a boost.
Elliot D’Arcy’s class was one of the best I had attended. I left feeling energized and eager about writing. I also walked out with a huge schoolgirl crush on the instructor. Elliot D’Arcy was the epitome of what I thought the perfect man should be—funny, driven, successful, and absolutely beautiful. The man was sexy as all hell, and he fueled more than a few fantasies over the last two weeks as I wrote—and slept—and breathed.
And here he was, standing in front of me in a grocery store, looking at me when I looked like dog shit. Thi
s only happened to me.
“Hi.” I sounded like an idiot. “You have a good memory. It is Emily … I loved your seminar, I got a lot out of it…” I knew I was rambling. “I usually don’t look like this,” I tried to explain. “Let’s just say I wasn’t having the best of mornings today.”
He laughed as I fumbled with my words.
“I don’t think you could ever look anything but beautiful,” he replied.
I looked at him to see if he was making fun of me but he didn’t appear to be.
“To be honest with you, I have been kind of looking around and hoping for a chance to run into you again,” he continued. “I could have looked up your info on the registration from my class, but I wasn’t sure how you would have taken my calling you. I didn’t want to come off all stalkerish.”
“Why?” Then I laughed. Could I get any more stupid sounding? A gorgeous man was looking for me and I asked why?
“Well,” he sounded nervous now, “I wanted to know if you would like to get together for a glass of wine or dinner?”
“With you?”
“Yes, with me.”
I groaned and covered my face. This was a disaster—I was a complete nutcase.
“I’m sorry, Elliot. I am way off my game this morning and sound like a total idiot. You caught me off guard and I’m so embarrassed … I would love to have a glass of wine with you or dinner.”
“I have a lot of days like that. Don’t be embarrassed. You really do look beautiful. I don’t want to sound too eager, but, what the hell, are you free tonight?”
Shattered Pearls Page 3