Chapter Four

It was Sunday Night and she had just gotten home from a long day at work. She realized she was more tired this time around since she had stayed up really late with C and then had to be up early just to take him home. 

She wondered... Why was she even going out of her way for a guy who didn't even really talk to her, let alone want to even know anything about her other then what he could get from her. 

She turned on the television and sat down with her bowl of cereal and began watching her favorite movie just to forget the fact that she was well aware of these facts. 

She laughed out loud and enjoyed her night of distraction when she decided it was time for bed. She went to the bathroom and washed off her make-up and put on her Pajamas. 

Just as she was plugging her phone into the charger, there was a Ding! 

It was Tric! 

Tric started the conversation with, "So... how are you and the boyfriend?"

She knew though... 

He was looking for it... 

The validation... 

She knew... 

Because that is what she did. 

And Tric was her reflection. 

---TRIC---

It was the end of Summer with Fall coming just around the corner when she was at her favorite park looking for inspiration. 

She really enjoyed coming up with cute little videos to share her messages to the world around her. 

She got the idea to share her message about making wishes and how they never really work because everything happens in the NOW... 

As she was by the river, with a dandelion in hand... the perfect idea came to mind. 

She got her camera ready and just as she was about to start the video, this guy came into the picture. 

He had two little boys around him and they were running a muck free as birds!

She paused and waited patiently for him and his boys to continue along their path and leave her to making her video... 

Unfortunately, he lingered. 

He waved to her acknowledging her presence and that he saw her, but yet he didn't leave. 

She pretended to be watching the river, but the whole time, she just wanted him to move on so she could get back to her idea. 

After what seemed like eternity... He took his boys and they continued up the trail towards the park play area. 

Finally, she thought... Free to work on me. 

She finishes her video and heads home for the day. 

The next day, she is back at her favorite park and is walking up the path she always takes... 

Headset on, Music blaring, her body moving with the beat as she is walking. 

She's in her own world when she feels music. 

She feels light as air! 

Just floating, flying, gliding... 

As she's in her own world, just up ahead she sees

the guy and his two boys again... 

Same place they were the other day when she was making her video. 

He waved to her and she waved back... Then when she got closer, she decided to take off her headset and ask him... 

"Are they twins?" 

And with that... 

A two hour conversation while playing with the two boys together ensued... 

The time went by so fast but the memory was one for the books. 

He mentioned seeing her before... 

And how he was really intrigued by her ability to be so independent, free, and happy. 

This was music to her ears!
When he said the words, "I had seen you before" it let her know that he was interested.
 Call it illusion.
Call it Delusion..
She was a Pisces..
Neptune ruled her..
Blinded her.
and she liked it.
So before leaving, they exchanged Instagram profiles.

------


She opened the message from Tric
and thought about what to respond to his question...
"How are you and the boyfriend?"

He wanted validation..
She wanted Truth...
So she rubbed it in real good...
"We're ok", she responded.
But she knew that was a greatly over exaggerated version of the real truth.
But it got him where she wanted him.
He began asking her all kinds of self reassurance questions..
How was it?
Is it bigger?
Better?
How many times?

She blew off all his questions making him thirst for so much more...
Then he gave up on the search and just said to her...
"Come see me!"

Her heart jumped...
She wanted to so bad.
But the fight began in her mind...
You're tired.
You just took C home this morning.
Your car is bad.

But her heart was feeling a tug...
So she responded...
"My car is bad.. you'd have to come to me."

She figured with those words, she would totally call his bluff.
But to her surprise she got the exact opposite.
"I'm on my way!"

His words rang over and over in her mind...
Shit! she wasn't ready!

She immediately barked back,
"NO!"
"you can't!!! Not tonight."

He wrote...
"I'm on the road already."

She reassured..
"No... I'm serious, you can't!"

She was in a dream turned nightmare come true...
She wanted him but not like this...
And part of her knew...
He was forbidden fruit.
Those two boys didn't come from a store.
They were a product of his love for another.

But the connection they had was beyond real..
Her mind said No,
 LOUD and clear...
 But the animal inside her always whispered,
 yes...

Chapter Three

--Friday Nights--

On this planet we like to call Earth, there was not one single person she knew that she could count on,

but she definitely knew that she could count on Friday Nights!
 They happened once a week.
Every Week.
Same time.
Same place... 

Always right there when you really needed them!

At the end of every week!

No matter what life threw at her...
She just knew that Friday Nights would come a knocking to cheer her right back up again!.

And so it went...
Eddie on Thursday to turn up the heat..
Then came Friday night to shake it up even more.
She went to the dance club and did her thing.
Dancing was her way of releasing the wild animal inside of her that clawed and begged to be set free!
When she danced, all the world was her stage. The more eyes on her, the more the beast enjoyed the challenge to be all it could be...

However, that Friday... Thoughts of C kept running through her mind.
This was pretty much exactly where she had chanced upon him.
She finished dancing  a few dances and went to retire.
She figured she could release all the memories the next day during a hike before work.
Good plan, she thought.


---Saturday Morning---

She wakes up and checks her phone as per usual and sees a photo C had posted to Snapchat.
It's the same exact photo of him at Starbucks. The one he had sent to her the day of their first real date..
The one that totally messed with her mind leaving her phone-less for what seemed like forever, which in this world is also known as utter chaos.
She couldn't not respond.
So no she didn't, but yes, she replied to it almost instantly.
"That was the best day of my life" she wrote.

Then she closed the app and her phone and went and made breakfast.
She did her usual routine, took a short walk at the park, and then went off to work.
Just after she clocked in, she gets a response from C!

"We could do that again if you want to"

Her heart skipped a beat and then a huge ball inflated in her throat making it really hard to swallow... but she swallowed hard anyways...
Should she?
The question danced in her head...

Though, she replies without thinking...
"Ok I'd like that."

And so it began...
C asks to come over after she gets off work.
She agreed but was feeling super nervous.
Did she do the right thing?

She hated going back to something that had ended.
Especially when she ended it.
Why does she always doubt herself?
Too late now...
Buckle your seat belts and just enjoy the ride.

Eleven o'clock rolls around,
 ever so slowly,
 and she quickly runs and buys a six pack to soften the blow... or calm the nervousness that she was feeling pretty heavy now that it was time to go see him.

They pull up in her driveway and just as she is about to turn off the GPS,
Ding!
Tric messages her on Instagram and the notification pops up front and center!
The picture of his face gleaming brighter then her future!
She looks over at C to see if he saw it and sure enough he looked at her like
She just ran over his heart with a lawn mower.

She immediately swiped it away...
But she didn't explain.
She just left it alone.
She never asks him about his conquests...
 so if he wanted to ask her.. he could, but she definitely did not feel the need to explain anything.

However... the whole night she thought about Tric.
And she tried real hard to forget him.
He was forbidden fruit.
She's already told him and herself that it was time to move on.

But as she and C were on the good foot doing the bad thing...
she couldn't feel it.
That feeling of connection.
All she felt was the act.
The demand of expectation.
Expectation to release.
But the connection was missing.

All that memory..
All that regret?
All that worry that she did the wrong thing and now it came together.
But it didn't bring her together.
Not with him.

Sunday morning rolls around and it's time to take C home and then get ready for work.
She drops off C and it's awkward.
No real kiss, just a peck on the cheeks, and a quick meaningless hug.
She could feel the distance.
Maybe he too felt shut down because of Tric.
But not in the same way as her.
She laughed cuz somehow she knew all too well that Tric really was a TRICK.
Forbidden fruit...
He wasn't real.
Yet, his spell on her and his ability to destroy everything about her was all too real.

But she was a wise one.
She knew it wasn't Tric that was the root of all evil.
It was her fear.

But she wasn't going to learn too quick.
At least not without first tasting every aspect of all of God's forbidden fruits!
Insert evil laughter here.
Muhahahaha!!!

When she got home from dropping off C... she couldn't resist the urge to follow through...
She picked up her phone and turned on Instagram...
"Hey Stranger..."
And that was all she wrote...

Chapter Two

---Eddie---

It was nearly 5 o'clock when she finished her hike and finally reached her car. She checked the vitals; oil, water, tires; before getting in and heading off to the nearest coffee house. It was a long chilly hike and she knew that she was definitely craving a nice hot cup of coffee to warm her insides back up! 

She pulled up to the Starbucks just down the road and went into the restroom to clean up a bit... 

As she stood looking in the mirror, her mind remembered C... 

He had taken a picture of himself right where she was standing and he sent it to her.

She blinked a few times and made the thought disappear. That was all gone now, She told herself. Move forward already. 

She ordered her favorite coffee, and went to sit down. 

Reaching into her back pocket to grab her phone, she realized it wasn't there! Crap! Did she leave it on the counter? She felt disorientated... She never leaves her phone anywhere.. why now? Then she stops and thinks... where was the last place she had it? And she remembered.. the bathroom. 

Maybe she cleared more memories then just C. She laughed at the thought. 

She went back to bathroom and a guy walked passed her and stopped as he saw her go towards the restroom.. He yells to her, I gave it to the lady at the counter! 

She turns and thanks him and heads straight to the counter. 

With her phone finally back in her hand where she wanted it, she begins to make a video. In chimes a text!

"Are you ready for me? "

Eddie!

She was so not ready for him, but she responded anyways. 

She was honest though. 

"I'm at Starbucks. I'll be home in 30 minutes,  is that ok?"

Eddie complies. What else could he do. 

As she is driving home, traffic is slow which gives her time to reminisce... 

She met Eddie at the place she hikes.

Eddie and her attracted each other because of their sexual desires. 

In a way, their sexual nature was the same. 

Both of them feared intimacy. 

They both feared to be vulnerable. 

And they both had an ego as high as the mountains they both were climbing when they had chanced upon each other.

-------- 

She reached her house not long after only a few reminiscing thoughts and was walking up the sidewalk when she could have swore she saw his huge black truck parked by the side of the road.
She thought to herself... wow... This boy is either really desperate for sex, or he is really short for time and perhaps scheduled 2 people in one time frame. She laughed at that thought knowing it was only her fear, but then she caught a lump in her throat when she realized just how dirty the idea actually was.
 "Too late now," she said out loud to herself as if to give herself the consequences ahead of time to soften the blow when it would hit her later anyways. 

Shaking her head in disbelief, she goes into the house and starts walking up the stairs when she gets a text right away...

Ding! 

She looks at her phone... 

Eddie... 

Sure enough, That was him on the side of the street. 

Immediately the thought popped in her head;

  Should this be creepy weird,

 or

 more like a fairy tale fantasy dream come true?
Just Imagine... 

Prince charming wearing his tin foil proudly sitting in front of the castle on his brave and trusty donkey... 

Asking Rapunzel to throw him a bone! 

Yeah... this was that...
and it was so unorthodox...

so...
 Fairy tale
 or
 stranger then fiction?
She figured both..
But she definitely knew
She was no Rapunzel, and she was definitely not about to fall short of her loyalty to her spoken words...
 So she responded to his message with , "I'm putting on a dress... Be right out. "

Five minutes later she was heading down the stairs and out the door. 

Not much was required to please Eddie and that was one thing she really did kind of admire about him. 

When she got to the car... 

She got in and gave him a hug hello.. She always tried to lean in for a kiss but Eddie turned his head every time. She basically boiled it all down to the assumed facts that; 

Eddie was married and had a family with the love of his life. But every now and then the wolf inside him called out the need to feed his deeper animal hunger. 

And that's where she came in.

She was the juicy meat to satisfy the hungry wolf inside him that so desperately needed  to get fed or else die.

Good enough, she thought.
It Definitely gets her out of owning up to the responsibility that she was really just throwing herself down a bottomless pit!  

Not even Ten minutes later, and she was back home.
She got up to her room and felt like...
She really needed something...
She grabbed her vibrator and sure enough...
Found the missing piece.
Her vibrator gave her more emotions then Eddie could ever convey.
But during her emotional time with the cold hard fakeness in her hand... her mind was on the forbidden fruit... Tric... 
Somehow... He knew exactly what she needed..
and everytime she was alone with only false hope in her hands, Tric was behind each movement.
She wondered...
Would C have been like Eddie?
Or more like Tric?
Or maybe C would have been a whole different experience altogether..
Would she ever get the chance to find out? 

Chapter One

It was New Years Eve and C had text her, "what you doing tonight?"
She got all excited thinking maybe she could meet up with him. So she wrote him that she had planned to go dancing that night and that maybe he'd like to join her.
C writes back that he just plans to stay in, watch tv, and chill.
She felt a let down but pressed on.. "would you like company?" But C quickly shot it down with "sorry, my brother will be home and wants to hang with me."
At that point, she was feeling it.. The sting of rejection... And she never admits it but she wants to be the independent type... The warrior... The I don't need you I'm fine on my own type... And so she didn't let her heart get any more hurt and pushed it back... way back... probably too far even..
She told C, "you know what, I don't need to bring in my new year like this.. I'm cutting you off. goodbye."

And all C said in response. "Thank you"

She was fuming... She wanted to retaliate... But she took a deep breath instead and pulled herself together...
She wasn't going to let some kid get the best of her. No... she was worth more then that.
So she got herself ready and went to work for the day.
While she was working, her self worth started to rise with each customer that she helped and she was finally feeling better inside.
Along comes E. She met E a while back.. He came through her line one time and they flirted and exchanged numbers. But nothing progressed because she had someone at the time and did not want to confuse the situation.
So here was E, standing in front of her check out lane... Their conversation began to flow. E looked so excited. He looked like he wanted to jump across the checkout lane and hug the crap out of her.. She feared he might actually do it too! So once again E starts texting her and they set up a date for the night. She says to E in text, "meet me and the dance place." E replies with ok, I'm on my way.

At the dance place, it's nearly midnight. Almost Time to ring in the new year. Yet, she's alone with her beer in hand. She decided to go dance alone. She goes out to the dance floor and begins to dance. A girl comes up and they hug... They knew each other from a previous night so it was good to see an old friend to bring in the new year with. The dance place does the count down and everyone is shouting happy new year! She hugs her friend and they continue dancing. A guy comes up and asks her friend to dance and away she goes leaving her behind with only her beer in hand yet that's almost empty too.. Along comes H. She saw H watching her earlier. She winked at him and smiled letting him know she saw him watching and was ok with it. So H walks up to her and asks her to dance. She looks around and doesn't see E anywhere.. He stood her up is her first initial thought and was so totally over the immaturity of most of these guys... So when H asked her to dance she took him up on it right away. To hell with the cowards she thought.

The night rolls on and her and H are getting along pretty well. He bought her a beer and they dance for a while before going upstairs and making out a bit. They exchange numbers and she tells him she is ready to go home... He offers to walk her to her car.
She accepts the offer cuz she knew he just wanted more kisses..
She has nothing against kissing.. In fact, it was her favorite thing to do with the opposite sex.
When she got to her car, there was a text on her phone. E had written to her, "I see you honey"
Her first instinct was a HUGE BURST of LAUGHTER! Which she did!
Must have looked pretty stupid sitting in a dark car, then face lights up from the bright phone screen and all you see is this drunk woman laughing!
But then... she regrouped herself... She thought for a moment...
Saw me?
So he was there? But then why didn't he come to me?
Now that's just creepy!
A guy who would rather watch you then actually be with you...
Yeah, now she was like... Thank God I didn't get with that one!


The next day She woke up and was feeling really great! On top of the world! She went to work and all went really well. It was a slow day.. not many people went shopping the day after new years... Guess they all were hungover... She giggled at that thought. Later that night, she texts H. She asks him if he works the next two days and he says, no, he's on vacation right now since he goes to college and only works part time at the school. She gets excited and asks him to go hiking with her. His response is one of disappointment. He says, He does not like nature.
Who doesn't like nature? She thought to herself..
Obviously this guy.
So she immediately lost interest.
But yet, the guy pressed on and asked to meet her after 6pm for drinks. She said sure, then ended the conversation rather quick.

The next morning she wakes up to a text from Eddie. She met Eddie a long long time ago. Eddie was her 'go to guy'.
Eddie was always there no matter what she threw at him.
He was the type that just didn't care.
The type that is there when he can be but never when you want it.
But for her, there was no emotional attachment with Eddie. With Eddie it was just a plain and simple  "wham bam thank you ma'am." sort a thing.
 Let's just say She gets more emotion from her vibrator then she does Eddie. But yet, she keeps Eddie around.
So that morning Ding!
Eddie texts her, "I want to see you."
She had just woke up... she hadn't even had her morning coffee yet but she decided to text him back with "Ok"

He asked her, "what you doing today".. To which She replied, "I'm going hiking". He says great, so I'll see you after 6pm...
'H' popped into her head with that word...
"After 6pm"...
She was like... wow... Weird how they both used 'after 6pm'.. But that was her brain working distractions even more...
But back to her only dilemma...
Deciding who she wanted to meet up with...

While hiking, she thought about all the guys.. C, E, H, and Eddie... And she asked herself...
What is her truth?
She really liked C. He was so much like her. Even in fears. No... especially in fears.
But at least C went hiking with her. C was there to dance with her. So why did she cut him off so quick?
FEAR...
So she chose Eddie..
Why?
Because With Eddie there was no emotion.
With Eddie it was safe.
With Eddie she could hide away from it all and pretend like she was winning.
But was she?
She never thinks about the rest...
It's too much..
but...
What about H?
What about her regret with C?
and
What's going to happen with Eddie?

To be continued..